One Bad Ear

There is so much to catch up on that I'm not going to be able to do it all. I have a load of laundry in that needs to be hung up and I need to put various chemicals on my skin so it stops hurting me so much and I have a book to read and a bed to fall into and really that's about how my evening is going to go.

I'll start with the scuba since that has been a continuous topic recently. The short news is, I passed. Hooray me! However, it was not an easy ride. Not at all. And it came with consequences- mainly my buggy ear at the moment. I had real trouble on all the dives with my ears pressurizing. As in, they really wouldn't equalize for a long time. And a few times, I felt significant pain in one or both of my ears. By the end of the second day, my ear was really fucked. It's my left ear- it hurt a lot on the last dive as I reached the bottom, and it hasn't come back to being right since. Once upon a time, a long time ago, I had something similar happen to me on an airplane. Days later I heard this high pitched screaming like a dolphin and there was a sickening pop and my hearing came back. I assume that's what's going to happen this time as well. I'm not exactly looking forward to it- remembering that it was uncomfortable and unpleasant last time. But I am looking forward to it, because then I can hear like a normal person and stop hearing my heartbeat and breathing all the time which is slightly disconcerting.

So back to the scuba weekend. I tell you- if you do your open water dives in the UK, you can dive anywhere. It was hardcore. First there was the wetsuit- a 7mil wetsuit that was actually two pieces so that your torso is actually covered by 14mil. If I thought wetsuits were like bondage suits before, I knew nothing. This was ridiculous. I think if I had been pushed over onto the ground, I would have simply bounced back to standing. That's how encased I felt. Plus they had built in hoods and we had boots. An entirely new experience.

Then there was the water. Cold and murky. The first day it was 18 degree water (Celsius) and the second day it was 16 degree water. The wetsuits did come in handy however, because my hands and exposed parts of my face felt the cold (at first) but pretty much nothing else did. So that was good.

My first descent was scary. You really couldn't see much more than two meters in any direction. So people just disappeared into the green if you watched them descend, and equally, people emerged out of nothing. I was slightly panicked going down and when we finally reached the platform that was 6 meters below the surface I had an intense sense of vertigo. You couldn't see the top, and you couldn't see the bottom, there was just this platform that seemed to be lopsided or maybe it was just me. At any rate, it was a challenge to calm down and concentrate on breathing and staying in control. But I did it.

Then there was a scuba interlude- Saturday night I stayed with the guy who I had a date with two weeks ago. We've continued to email and I had mentioned the scuba course (and how early I had to get up to get there) and he said that he lived right by Heathrow and I could stay at his place if I wanted. Which was cool, though perhaps weird seeing as how it was sort of our second date. If you can call it a 'date'.

So really there's a whole other story stuck in here about my late afternoon and evening with M. We really weren't short on conversation which was cool. Talking across many subjects to the generally normal to the kinky. Though it's important for me to note that there was nothing intimate about our interactions although the topics were from time to time intimate. He's a quirky guy, M. And I like quirky. I just wonder if he's too quirky. As much as we have talked there are certain things he's quite guarded about. His family for starters. Every time the conversation trickles that way he seems to get tense about it. I haven't pushed, but of course anything like that will snag my curiosity.

At any rate, in keeping with the quirkiness, we slept (in separate beds) in his camper van which was parked in the parking lot of the complex where he owns a studio flat. And that was fun actually, seeing as how I love camper vans- particularly since Glastonbury. And he drove me to the scuba centre in the morning and perhaps we will revisit M again in the future.

So to hurry up the scuba issues, I should say that on both days I got a nose bleed which I never get so that freaked me out a bit. And on the second day I had real trouble taking my mask off and putting it back on. So much trouble in fact, that I almost didn't pass the class. I had to try on three separate occasions before just managing to do it at the very end. I did everything else no problem, but the shock of the cold water hitting my face and my growing sinus issues just made it truly impossible for me. Almost impossible that is. I just squeaked by, thank goodness.

In other news, there is big stuff happening on the citizenship issue job front. I have been mistaken in thinking that I could apply for citizenship right now- actually I have to apply for indefinite leave to remain. This was not at all clear in the information I have read over and over for the past few months. It was both good news and bad news. The good news was that I can get a fast track appointment where my status is decided the day I go in for the appointment. This means I can look for new work immediately and should be able to secure a new job and not be in job limbo for a while. The downside is that the application is much more based on your finances and your ability to support yourself here and I have only so many days to get the required information together. It's going to be a struggle to do that and apply for jobs at the same time. So life has gone pretty hectic. Or really, when has it stopped being hectic?

So it doesn't really please me to have a clogged ear and bad skin and a maybe cold while all of this is pressing upon me. But... I will get through it, like I get through everything else. And I will be much happier on the other side of it all. It's just getting there that's a bit of a pain.