One Ear Is Better Than No Ear!

It's days like this when I wish I had 2 working ears.  I seem to have developed a nice painful ear ache today.  Being deaf in one ear is sometimes a great thing, but today is not that day. When the 'good ear' is not working, there is nothing I can do about it.  Every noise sounds like I'm standing in a tunnel and can't hear much.  On top of that, I have Tinnitus, so I have a constant ringing in my ear.  This developed at the beginning of this year and I have slowly become used to it, but sometimes it keeps me awake at night.  

Since I'm complaining, I have another really annoying problem.  When I listen to music on my headphones, I sometimes don't hear all the music.  This is because some songs/artist split the music into both headphones.  For example, if I have the left earphone in, I hear the words and the drums.  Or I may hear the bass and the background singers.  This can be extremely frustrating, but can also help me to appreciate the bass players and background musicians.  Perfect example is the song 'California Dreamin' by the Mamas and the Papas.  If I put on the headphones, I hear the following:  'sky is gray......... walk on a winters day.........I'd be safe at home......L.A......... California dream'n......winters day'.  It took me the longest time to make any sense of that, until I realized that there was more to the song than what I was hearing!!  Who knew!!!!

Ok, so there is some good things with being deaf in one ear.  The best is when I'm trying to sleep and there is noise around me.  All I have to do is roll over and lay on my good ear.  Another benefit is that I have developed 'selective hearing' and can block out what people are saying if I'd rather not listen to them.

So should I really be complaining about this ear ache? Maybe I'll go listen to some soothing 'sky is gray....winter's day' music!