Matt and I went out to see Mirrormask last night (with thanks to my awesome sister-in-law, who came over to babysit) and... wow.

It was gorgeous and creepy and... I saw a review somewhere that said, "If Labyrinth and Alice in Wonderland had a baby..." And that's it exactly. But creepier.

Trying to describe it to Sam, afterwards, I said it was like Labyrinth, but for adults. And that's not quite accurate. It's a PG-rated movie; there's no sex or drug use or even really any violence to speak of. It's not heavily intellectual or confusing to follow.

It's just... The art style is very Dave McKean -- which is only fair, since he co-wrote and directed the movie. But McKean's work is extremely surreal and even the lighthearted stuff was a little dark. I spent a lot of time on the edge of my seat, because I was never sure, when a new character appeared, whether it was going to turn out to be friendly or evil.

Well, that's not altogether true, either. There were any number of characters that I knew were going to be evil, and I was right. But even the ones who turned out to be friendly were kind of... disturbing.

But it was gorgeous and wonderful, and the whole special effects crew did a fantastic job -- makeup and costumes and sets and the CG integrating perfectly with the live actors. I highly recommend it.

Tonight is Book Club night. I even managed to get my reading done, but we're supposed to start a bit early because we're throwing a small shower for our member who's about to have a baby. And I'll have to leave home even earlier than that, because I have to stop at the store and get her a present. (Oops.)

Good thing I'd planned for us to have leftover chili for dinner, I guess.

I went to an ear/nose/throat doctor yesterday, to see to my hearing.

And just because I didn't have any other specific recommendations to go on, I went to the same ENT that Penny goes to. Why not?

Anyway, he says yep, it looks like allergies, and yep, there's a pressure problem. He says my eardrums look like... and this is his analogy, not mine: If you put saran wrap over a bowl of broccoli and microwave it, and then forget about it for a bit, when you come back, the saran wrap is all stretched out and sagging into the bowl.

Also, he said if it goes on too much longer, we might be looking at permanent damage to the eardrums. Yay.

So I'm going back next Monday so they can run a few hearing tests, to see how bad my hearing really is, after which he'll probably recommend that I get tubes -- that will fix the pressure problem immediately, and my eardrums should recover.

After that, I'll have to decide if I'm going to get tested for allergies and start doing allergy treatments, which is likely the only thing that will fix the problem for good.

Which is funny, because it hadn't even occurred to me. I had allergy shots when I was a kid; I had kind of assumed that I was as de-allergized as I could get, and that further treatments wouldn't do any good. Which doesn't even make sense, now that I think about it.

So, anyway. Yay. Lots of doctor's visits in my future.

The one thing that had worried me about getting tubes was that Matt's going out of town, so getting Penny to daycare and then going in for the surgery and then getting back out to pick Penny up could be problematic. But the doctor assured me that it's strictly a topical anaesthetic, and while it's not his first recommendation, I can drive myself home from the surgery if I don't have any other options.

So, there we go. And soon (hopefully), I'll be able to hear again.

--Liz