don't stick anything in your ear smaller than your elbow.

i read a lot. i read everything i can get my hands on. i was reading clinton's blog and he recommended "the perks of being a wallflower" which i've heard is really good from several other people, my friend amanda included. so last night, i found it at the bookstore (with my mom's assistance, thank you!) and finished it up this morning. not a bad little read, it you can deal with the high school tone of voice and the letter prose. you never find out who the main character is writing to, which makes things confusing at first, but isn't a necessary piece of information. a good book, a short read, and now i'm back to pride and prejudice. and i can sort of see why i skipped over that in college. i probably missed that day on purpose because i knew there was a movie coming out sooner or later that would star someone hot. but now that i've started it i must finish it because i hate leaving a book unfinished. at this point i'm not particularly interested if elizabeth and mr. darcy ever hook up, but society tells me that i should be and i am nothing if i am not a sheep.

sometimes.

so. i have had the worst pain ever in my left ear. and regardless of what you may think, it's not from being around kids. (i just had to toss that out there so i could hear libbeth make that noise when she reads it, lol!) no, i could feel something in there, a bump or something. and it kept getting bigger. i was thinking i was growing a gremlin or some similarly adorable creature, but it got to the point where it was sort of dicking with my hearing and i knew that i must be growing both the alien and the terminator. so i'm digging at it like a damn two-year-old this evening and libbeth offers to take a look. and what does she say?

"OH MY GOD!"

reassuring, yes? so she hauls me off to the toity and gets this contraption out of the drawer.

this is a medieval torture device, currently marketed by revlon as a blackhead remover. i don't recommend putting this in your ear. but you can if you really want to. or if your friend really wants to. whatever, i don't care.

doesn't that look like fun? i've always heard never to stick anything smaller than your elbow in your ear, and while i don't necessarily listen to that advice because i could practically own stock in the q-tip corporation (i love clean ears), i don't know that small metal torture devices are the next biggest thing in ear care.

and torture is right. because that thing fucking hurts when its pressed up against the bulbuous growth in my ear canal. it hurts so much that i consider just letting the growth and nature to run its course. but in all my grossness, i'm a little curious as to what's inside. in the ever educated and scientific words of one of my favorite aunts in the world, "we gotta get the meat out." and that is exactly what we did. because when libbeth pressed down on the giant zit growing in my ear, i heard that sucker pop like a balloon. it was simultaneously the grossest and the coolest thing i have ever heard in my entire life. well, maybe this week. okay. the grossest and coolest thing i have ever heard today. because i haven't been hearing all that well lately.

however, lately when i turn my good ear towards the radio in the car when we go somewhere, they have the most rocking-est radio stations down here. they play cake and weezer and pearl jam and spacehog(!) - it's like my ipod except i don't have to blow in the end of the adapter all old-school nintendo-like and that's kind of kick ass.

i'm being told that we're going to have adult conversation and watch a movie this evening. no more laptop. i'm trying to tell them that they are not the bosses of me, but i don't think its going to work. so i'm going to sign off here... before they shut off the power and make me go away.

talk to you all (which is yankee speak for y'all) tomorrow. :)