My ears are popped or congested or something. I’ve tried everything: decongestants, irrigation, yawning, swallowing, pulling on it, shaking my head (just ended up dizzy), blowing my nose… all the tricks I know and that the internet knows.

As a result, I seem to have lost 75% of my hearing. This is frustrating Annika to no end, because she keeps trying to talk to me and I keep answering “what?” and “I’m sorry honey, I can’t hear you.” It’s frustrating to me, too, but mainly because my ear is humming because it’s stuck and I can’t hear. Sometimes I get a wave of extreme vertigo with it too, which is extra fun.

I’m glad I took a day off to continue recovering from the virus – this ear thing seems to be the last stage (hopefully). I felt kind of bad, though, because I hate missing class and it was already a tough day at school because apparently quite a few teachers weren’t able to make it in today because of the snow. I heard that about a third of the students weren’t there, which makes it tough to teach because it’s hard to do anything super-important, because you just have to teach it again the next day to the ten kids who were gone, which makes the other kids bored and yes, we can differentiate, but it’s not as easy as it sounds. It’s a tough situation.

Hopefully my ear will pop back out and I’ll be able to hear tomorrow; otherwise, it will make for an interesting day. It will be a long day, too, because I have a class after school and a hair appointment after that. Ugh. I hate long days. I better get to bed.