I went to the doctor on Sunday and found I have impacted wax and an ear infection. He vacuumed out a big honkin' chunk o' wax the size of a grapefruit (just kidding, more like a desiccated pea) with a tiny bit of fungus growing on it (just a strand) and gave me a course of ear drops to take three times a day and to come back in three days. I went again today and it looks pretty well cleaned out, but since my hearing isn't back to normal he (actually a different doctor, who thought I was Korean so it took a while to break out his English) gave me antibiotics to work on the infection and to come back in three days. Don't drink alcohol or coffee, he says.

Coffee's no problem, I've descended into being satisfied with powdered Maxwell House coffee so that's easy to avoid. It's barely coffee. As for alcohol, I wasn't about to make any promises but then decided a web search was in order. In general, antibiotics and alcohol don't mix but I wanted to know what I was risking. I found a list of antibiotics that are particularly bad with alcohol and then checked if any of mine were on the list. The last tablet I checked includes two on the list and since the side-effects of mixing with alcohol are basically many of the gut problems I've had over the years and went away when I cut back on drinking, I decided to crawl on the wagon for a few days. I don't need to invite those symptoms back.

So now I get to test what I said about mindfulness practice and alcoholism. Great!🥴 Well, it's only three days, how hard can it be? If it's at all hard, I should consider myself full of crap in regard to that aspect of mindfulness practice. *sigh* I'm hungry. Hunger at this time usually goes away when I start drinking. And do I really drink that much? It doesn't feel like I do, but I guess that's what an alcoholic would say. Is a third of a bottle (and a beer appetizer) a lot? A little more than that is what I drink in a 24-hour period. Who am I talking to?