This Is SO Not My Week

So, after going to rehearsal last night despite feeling week and achy, having a flat tire en route, having the fast-food burrito I grabbed afterward fall apart while I was eating it and spill goop on my skirt, running into a series of delays in a supermarket checkout line, driving home ever so slowly because of the toy ('donut') spare tire, getting stuck at at a railroad crossing, and feeling ever so much more wretched by the time I got home than when I'd left ...

... I got Very Little Sleep this morning because about an hour and a half after I finally fell asleep, I was woken by an all-bass-no-treble rumbling, crumbling, bubbling, digging sound ... that I could only hear in my left ear. And just a little bit of an itch.

Thinking, "Oh come on, there's no fucking way that this is what it sounds like," I dug at my ear unsuccessfully with a fingernail. By the time I'd woken up a little bit more I decided, "yes way, it could be what it sounds like," I stood up and tilted my head sideways and tried to dislodge the source of the noise. When that didn't work, I started to freak out a little. Not being sure this was an emergency-room situation but also knowing it was too early to get ahold of a regular doctor, and not wanting the situation to progress AT ALL, thank you, I considered my options.

After a few attempts to pour hydrogen peroxide into my ear (the dilute solution they sell in drug stores, of course), the sounds slowed, then stopped. But that still left the problem of Something In There. So I sat down cross-legged, tilted my head to point my left ear down, and pressed an electric vibrator against the hinge of my jaw, then behind my ear, then in front again, not being at all certain whether that trick was going to work.

After a while, I looked down and saw a little black dot on my thigh that hadn't been there before. So, of course, I grabbed the camera and put the bellows on it for a close look.

To my surprise, when I called the clinic to ask whether this was something I had to worry about or should just ignore and let my body clear on its own, they were able to schedule me in for an appointment today. So that's where I'll be headed soon, to have someone look in there for the missing leg and maybe flush things out. Whee. I'll post the photos later today (my computer is being too slow and I need to get out the door and go see the doctor). They will be cut-tagged as well, yes.

In other news, they're resurfacing a street three blocks south of here, the wind is currently switching back and forth between coming from the northwest and the southwest, and most of what I can smell right now is the sulferous, dieselly scent of hot asphalt.