The burned spoon... and the balls of.... cotton.

The eldest boy, my child of few afflictions, woke me up late one night. His ear hurt, he said. And knowing him, it must have been 10/10 pain scale to:
a) wake him up
b) motivate him to bother anyone about it

Sensing the urgency of the situation, I defaulted to my mother's home remedy for ear-ache: a few drops of warm oil in ear, stopped up with cotton ball.
I first located the oil... I chose olive, that seemed the most natural somehow. And healthier too. Extra virgin. High in omega, mono-saturated goodness. Nothin' but the best for my kid's ear. I poured a little into a container and microwaved it. Olive oil came out a hot, spattering grease-bomb that clearly was not going to do the trick. I tried adding some more from the bottle to cool it, and it became disappointingly cold again. Time was of the essence, no more mucking around. This is when the idea came to me... why not the tried-and-true (payoff, finally, for all those hours of watching Intervention! hah!) of the lighter-under-spoon trick. Soon, Kid was laying on his side, nicely warmed oil in ear. This is when I realized I had no cotton balls. Q-tips* however, I did have. Commence q-tip harvest. Had I been more cognisant, I would have hummed (random fact confirming my childhood was somewhat quirky) one of the cotton picker folk songs my mother taught sis and I one summer. Alas, my focus was on the timeliness of the matter and soon I had enough that I formed into a lumpy-looking ball of cotton that went into eldest boy's ear. I got him settled, and fell back into my own bed. Mission complete.

Now imagine the following morning the sight my husband was graced with.... The bathroom now contains the following items spread over the counter that were clearly not there the night before:
a spoon (with soot on bottom)
a lighter
a bottle of specialty olive oil
several white sticks with tiny wisps of fluff clinging to the ends


**unrelated story, but worthy of mentioning (I rationalize to self at 1:04am when I should be sleeping, like every other 30+ responsible parent... we need to bank our sleep for nights when our beloved children wake us) is the story of the National Gallery of Canada where my parents brought my sister and I when we were 15 and 16, respectively, on our drive across Canada (I feel the urge to capitalize and italicize, but am resisting, to make up for over-use of commas--- yes, I am aware, but cannot stop,,,) one of the first parts of the gallery we were privy to was a display of very large sculptures. Of the WTF abstract kind. Recognising something at last, I said to my sister (a little too loudly in retrospect): 'AHA... giant Q-tips!!'. I've scoured and scoured (this is code for 'rearrange wording on google') to find a photo of this exhibit, but alas, for naught. It did, I will swear upon any religious text of your choosing, greatly resemble three very large Q-tips... kind of poking out of the floor. Now I could go into the 'what is art' ramble, but I instead recommend a really interesting documentary: My Kid Could Paint That. Come to think of it, I watched that on another night when I was up too late when I should have been banking sleep.... okay, wow, super diffuse blog entry.