They smile and look sweetly at you too--it's basically grooming the person you want stuff from, instead of just leaping in (politely) and getting to business.

I ruptured mine as a kid, Ginger, and one of Sara's ruptured when she was about five. One key: If the pain builds up and then stops, and there's a horrible smell/ick coming from your ear, it probably burst.

I did something stupid involving a Q-tip. My left ear has been bothering me for months, and every few doctors' visits, I ask a doctor to look at it. They never see anything. Anyway, the itching and burning sensation has been helped by carefully swabbing the ear with alcohol. (FYI, because of the "your ears must be burning" idiom, it's difficult to google "burning sensation in ears.") I am, however, rather unsteady on my feet with the anemia, and I lost my balance and the Q-tip went in further than I meant it to. It didn't seem like anything major, but a few minutes later my hearing was reduced in that ear, and this morning I itched my ear and found dried blood. I don't know if a doctor's visit is called for, and I really don't want to admit to a doctor that a lifetime of flouting the "don't put anything in your ear smaller than your elbow" rule finally caught up with me.

ETA: On the other hand, my ear feels better than it has.

I'm pretty sure I could ignore a passive-aggressive brontosaurus forever. I do not give one single shit about someone else's arrogant entitlement, which is why I sucked at service industry jobs.

However, I think if the brontosaurus was a man, and I had asked him to sit down or step away, and he opted to continue to loom, I would call security on him, because I suspect it would feel threatening, not passive-aggresive. But a woman with what she thinks is a "kindly, benevolent" smile? Please. She can stand there until the store/counter/museum closes for all I care and then bunk down and sleep there, as long as she doesn't physically get *between* me and my actual job.

I don't think you ruptured it, Ginger. You could have had something like a zit in there -- that's happened to me, too, and it's awful.

If it were me, I wouldn't go to the doctor at this point, but I am a "wait until it's really bad" patient, so take that with a grain of salt.

Rather than alcohol for ear-swabbing, I use a dab of cortisone/anti-itch cream. Eczema inside your ear canals sucks.

I see my oncologist tomorrow. I suppose I could ask him to look in my ear one more time, although most specialists seem pretty clueless about things outside their specialties.

I don't think you ruptured it, either, but in my case, rupture has always lead to drainage and relief of symptoms. I have also had many, many boils in my ear, and they are painful, itchy, and have blood when they burst.

"Umbrage" is a synonym for "high dudgeon." "Pique" and "huff" aren't bad either. As an author, I wouldn't know where to go. So much fun.

Unrelatedly, is there a real word that means unrelatedly?

I just had to duck out of a meeting because my mom was calling me. In the middle of the day. When I'd just talked to her last night. So I was all "WHAT'S WRONG?" when I took the call, and it turns out that I got baby-dialed by my one-year-old niece.