Bring on the antibiotics

Phooooo!!! My breath absolutely reeks of garlic today. Good job my Strategy Hottie crush is away in Miami this week. The garlic oil didn't have a positive effect on the ear infection either so I finally caved and managed to finagle a doctor's appointment for 3.30pm this afternoon. I wonder if the doctor will be able to tell that I poured garlic infused oil in my ear last night? I'm half expecting the "the only thing you should stick in your ear is your elbow" chat. Hopefully I shall have some lovely antibiotic ear drops in my clutches in the not too distant future.

Re: my crush did I mention I actually managed to strike up a conversation with him last week? In fact this is the reason I know he's in Miami this week and not because I have been stalking him on Facebook or something lest you were wondering. He seems pretty young up close to be honest, although breathtakingly cute, but I do suspect that I really am old enough to have given birth to him, which is a depressing thought. Perhaps I should switch my attention to the Creative Cutie who has been giving me the eye, since he seems like he might be closer to my age than Strategy Hottie. I've been trying to smile at Creative Cutie to encourage him to move on from just staring at me as I walk down the hallway when he is on our floor playing ping pong - our floor has become infinitely more popular since we got a table tennis table - but he refuses to rise to the challenge and ask me out for a drink. Men eh!!

Have to say Strategy Hottie picked a good week to be in South Florida since we have a corker of a snow storm blowing. They predicted sleet that would turn to snow at some point today, but it seemed from NY1 this morning that they were thinking it would change around 3pm this afternoon. When I left just after 7am it was sleet-like, but around 8.30am it turned and now we have these massive flakes of snow. It's very pretty to watch, but I am not looking forward to walking 3 avenue blocks in it to my doctor's appointment this afternoon.

Poor Me!!

How do you fancy cuddling up to the little fellow to the left? He's a cutie isn't he? He's soft toy replica of Streptococcus pneumoniae, the bacteria responsible for ear ache, and can be yours for just $7.95 from this site.

Personally I have no need for a soft toy replica having been laid low with the real thing for the past few days. It's no fun I can tell you. I've been laid on my sofa with a hot water bottle pressed to my head hoping my body will reject the little bugger pronto without my having to resort to getting a prescription for nausea inducing antibiotics and while the pain seems to be lessening it's unfortunately not disappeared quite yet, so this evening I tried an old Indian remedy of garlic infused oil drops into my ears. I'm serious. I thought my Indian colleague was having me on when she suggested it, but she backed it up with this article from Organicauthority.com and, well, who am I to question the Organic Authority, when the word 'authority' is right there in the name.

"It doesn't work," said Ian, fellow sufferer of ear infections. "I tried that once, I bought this really posh garlic infused olive oil, warmed it and dripped it into my ears and it didn't make a blind bit of difference."

"You're not supposed to buy the oil from Dean & Deluca," retorted our Indian colleague huffily, "you're supposed to use fresh garlic and infuse it yourself. It doesn't work if you buy ready infused oil from the gourmet deli."

For some reason I have this image of Ian with bits of cotton wool and thyme garnish sticking out of his ears ha ha!!

Whatever anyway tonight I cooked up 8 cloves of garlic in a quarter of a cup of olive oil, then scooped out the cloves and dropped 10 blobs of infused oil in my offending right ear. The reserved cloves were all lovely, soft and mushy after being cooked slowly in oil for 15-20minutes. It would have been a shame to waste them, so instead I spread them on crusty french bread and enjoyed them with a nice Californian Cabernet. It's the only way to treat an ear infection ;-)

P.S. I'll let you know tomorrow if it's worked on the earache, but the treatment wasn't nearly as unpleasant as I was anticipating. Quite soothing in fact. Next week I'll likely be back to tell you how to treat for olive oil on the brain ha ha!! No, but seriously, do you think that could be a side effect?