I Should Ask For a Raise

My husband has joined the ranks of the infected-ear people in our household. So far (knock on wood) I am the solitary holdout. Before I continue I would like to say that I know he is in awful pain because he conceded to staying home this morning instead of joining my dad on the worship team in church; he hasn’t had an opportunity to play his bass guitar in church for a while because of his work schedule and it is something that he really looks forward to.

Instead, he got up this morning and immediately went to our local urgent care center. The doctor that tended to him prescribed three medications, one of which is an eardrop. My husband was in too much pain to calm down enough to administer the drops himself, so I sat him down and poised myself over his writhing body with the eardrops in hand.

It is one thing to hold a toddler down and coax him to swallow his amoxicillin or attempt to keep the baby from spitting hers all over herself; it is quite another to put drops into the ear of a grown man who is over six feet tall, muscular and uncooperative. My arms are short, so I can only get so far away and still be able to drip the drops into his ear canal. I got kicked in the ankle no less than three times for my effort. He was worse than the kids.

He seems a little perkier now. When I inquired whether his ear was feeling a little bit better he immediately clutched the side of his head and moaned. I guess not. I’m quite sure that he feels entitled to a little pampering and attention since the kids get both when they are sick. A hot bowl of chicken soup, a fluffy pillow and a few “poor baby”s aught to do the trick.