If I had been born in the 1800s, I'd have died young, I think.

I'm just sitting here reflecting on how awesome Midol is. I'm not kidding. Every few months, for some reason, I spend one day a month in absolute misery. Pain all day, aching (lower back and uterus, in particular), shaky, and generally cloud-y-brained. The crappiest part of it is that Midol doesn't really do much to help on the very worst days, even though it's pretty useful the rest of the time. As you might guess, today is one of those it's-not-helping days, which is why this post probably won't make very much sense.

I got ear infections sometimes as a kid. That's where the title of this post came from. I was thinking about how if I had been a lady in the 1800s, I would probably have either been ignored or given, like, opium for my mysterious lady problems, but also they wouldn't have had amoxicillin to fix my ears. (I looked that up to confirm it, and can now state with confidence that amoxicillin was discovered, or invented, or whatever, in 1972.) I also don't know if an untreated ear infection could kill a child, but I do remember getting a terrible ear infection on Christmas Eve when I was six and we were visiting my grandparents in another state, and I can tell you that the several hours it took to find an open doctor and then an open pharmacy was enough to reduce me to tears.

I came home from work and put on pajamas and am applying a hot pad, but instead of staying here in my jammies and watching NOVA for five hours, we're going to Andy's parents' house for Andy's dad's birthday dinner. The real shame is that I'm so exhausted I probably won't even be keeping a running commentary by text message, so whatever gems Andy's dad comes out with will probably be lost to history. Or something.

This doesn't make any sense.