This is going to be about a clog in my head and also my nostrils so if you would like to pick your nose while you read, please feel free to do so, as it will eventually fit with the theme of the piece. I went to Asia and when I returned I was outrageously jet-lagged. I did not pick my nose, and my nose is not featured yet, but I probably blew my nose and washed my hands. I always wash my hands. Planes are filthy and disgusting, but we all know that. Keep picking - stay on topic! There is a thirteen-hour time difference, and I slept so little while I was there - Asia - that I probably went beyond jet-lag to outer-space-lag or simple brain dysfunction.Once home, I was not "on a different clock," but sleeping perpetually. I literally could not wake up for days. When I did open my eyes, or sit up, or one day shower even, I smiled at my family through bleary eyes. Big Kid, now a proudly dry-witted young man, looked at me kindly and then lacking his customary control, burst out laughing. None of them - my little family - could really prevent themselves from laughing at me, and I could not blame them. I felt like a queasy marionette, and I sensed that my expressions were about as intelligent. I may have picked my nose at that point, but I was too semi-conscious to manage it well, I am sure.
After a few days, the cold symptoms began. One of my fellow travelers had been horribly ill, and naturally I caught it. On came the sinusitis, the ear infection, and the mucus. Well, hold on there. The mucus was not in full force for some reason. I did take a lot of sudafed -ish stuff, and a lot of night-time stuff, and generally treated all symptoms so that I could bear myself and my family could manage to live with me and watch me pathetically now sleep, cough, and drool. But there was not the usual nose-blowing ad infinitum, the sore nostrils, and the bucket full of repulsive tissues for the dog to steal and half-chew - a canine delight, for those in the know. Go wash your hands! Alternatively, you may continue picking, as we are now into the theme.
My theory is that it was the lack of flowing mucus that led to the clog behind my eustachian tube and it was the clog behind that tube - the clog that little kids get and then they go have another little tube inserted for it, the snot, to drain - that felt like a golf ball sitting behind my ear. It felt awful. The kids refused to vacuum it out and scoffed at the use of all tools, despite my pleas. No mercy. At that point (and it still has not completely gone away), I returned to the doctor, or rather the nurse. We'll call her Jan because that was her name, or close enough. Are you following all of this? My infections cleared up and I was left with a golfball-sized blockage on the left side of my head and also deaf over there. Right. Actually, left. Snotball on left.
Stop picking your nose! That's quite enough, and at this point you are lucky it isn't bleeding. Jan was a nurse I saw frequently after my brother died, or as frequently as one does see one's nurse for this or that. She had been quite compassionate and I liked her crooked face, the one nostril larger than the other, and the sweetness the big rounded eyes seemed to convey. She was a plump little person on spindly legs. But when I returned a few days ago to tell Jan, my homely-cute nurse about the golf ball, she tugged at my right ear so hard that I said "ouch." I never say ouch unless something really hurts. Then she looked in my golf-snotball ear and said there was no wax, but that it was clogged behind the aforementioned eustachian tube, and it could take a month to get better. "Crap!" I said. She registered no particular expression, described what I would need to do, and she walked out. (You may stick your finger in your ear here, if you must.)
That's when I realized that Jan had not been very friendly during the whole visit. I had said hello, how are you, and been my genial self. She had been cold and serious. My adorable older crooked-face nurse no longer liked me! Whatever had I done? To make matters worse, she gave me something to snort, and told me to buy a "neti pot" at the pharmacy. Maybe I had said "crap" too loudly? Maybe that offends an older woman with a cute little crooked face. Maybe I am an ass. Ach. Oh, pick whatever you want.
I head home, slightly ruffled by the loss of my nurse-pal and wondering if I should send a little email thanking her or something pathetic like that (I mean really, maybe she just had a bad day). I go to the pharmacy to get my new inhaler and I find my neti-pot. I google it and find a video that shows a woman using a small tea-pottish sorta thing to let water flow in one nostril and out the other over the sink. (Would love to view it here but darned site won't let me.) Eee-yooo, but at this point, the snotball is such a bummer I'll do anything. The voice-over assures me that this will rid me of all allergies. I just want the mucus wad out of my ear and it would be nice to have hearing our of that side of my head again, too.
Little did I know that when I brought my neti-pot home that it would look remarkably like a teapot with a small penis as a spout. Yes, a circumcised penis. Apparently, not all such pots have a penis-spout, but mine does. and that little penis works really well. It fits perfectly into my nose, and the water flows right out, through one side and out of the other. It plugs in there perfectly. So basically my nose has sex with a small blue teapot twice a day and eventually it unclogs the blockage behind my ear. Maybe that's why Jan the nurse was so serious? She was jealous! I need to send her a teapot penis for her crooked nose and she will feel better, too. Now you may put your hands wherever you like.
