lost my hearing

So this cold is wreaking whatever havoc it can on me. In addition to the dry cough, the blocked sinuses, and the red, bleary eyes, last Friday night my ear clogged up and it's been stopped up since then (it is now Thursday afternoon).

It's been very difficult to do my job. We're sight-reading right now in the two large classes, plus switching instruments in 5th grade, and passing out solo-ensemble music in th 6th and 7th-8th grade bands. That means:

Not being able to hear the kids play their new music, which is of course also new to me and I don't know what it sounds like. I know what it should sound like, because I have a score in front of me, but I can't hear very well what the kids are actually playing.

Not being able to hear individual questions when a cluster of little 5th graders are all around me begging to have the instrument they picked.

Not being able to hear what I should hear in the middle-high class, which is ten trumpets, five clarinets, two flutes, three trombones, a baritone, and assorted percussion all busily working on their solo-ensemble music in happy, but distinguishable, cacophony.

It didn't help that I was out the last couple of days with sick children and when I'm not here the room always gets trashed and I'm behinder than I was (clearly a rant for another day, or never).

The worst part of having my ear clogged is that sounds go into my left ear and into my brain at one pitch, and into my right ear at another pitch. So for example, when the microwave beeps to tell me that the sixty seconds I waited for Chloe's oatmeal to warm are over, I hear two out-of-tune pitches.

Every pitch is like that: voices, the hums of computers and cars--and bands.

Remember the sick children I mentioned? Sick children cry, and they cry at a continuous off-key tone. Two children make two off-key, out-of-tune pitches. A mother with a clogged ear listening to two sick children cry hears four off-key, out-of-tune pitches.

A band teacher with a clogged ear listening desperately to 25 students sight-reading a new piece hears...fifty out-of-tune pitches.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is the stuff nightmares are made of.