I dread the nights at the moment.
With this ear, I can't easily lie down to sleep. And I can't easily sleep upright, either – I've tried. So night-time becomes a long, anxious, boring ordeal of waiting for the hours to go by until I'm so tired that I'll fall asleep in whatever position I end up in.
It's been between four and five in the morning for the last few nights. Long hours spent on pointless, fiddly computer games, or roaming the world of blogs and journals, or reading everything about some trivial subject on the net.
Example: A couple of nights ago I stayed glued to the results coming in from the US House of Representatives by-election in South Dakota, where the Democrat Stephanie Herseth (pictured) squeaked a narrow victory thanks largely to votes from Native American reservations. If you like elections, it was edge-of-the-seat stuff as the lead changed hands a couple of times during the night, depending on which counties had declared their results. But I'm not sure it was worth staying up that late for, though. And, at 33, she's the same age I was when I lost my Parliamentary election, which is galling.
I haven't felt too bad today, but we tried a walk to the local garage earlier and I had a dreadful time of it – ran out of energy, had difficulty with my balance. Not good. And when I lie down the pressure immediately starts building up against the eardrum. Hopefully this will clear up soon – it's not much fun… least of all at night.