It’s wonderful to have Ben home from the hospital, and finally I can sleep again — he was admitted on a Monday and discharged on a Friday, and in the intervening days I got all of 2.5 hours sleep. (I’m not exaggerating. I counted.) What I didn’t count on was how completely disabled he would be when he came back to me. I’m now running the house completely on my own while caring for the kids and caring for Ben. This comes as something of a shock.

There was, you know, a reason why I changed my major from Nursing to English at the end of my first undergrad year. At the time it seemed a rather random decision, but I know now that it was the Universe whispering in my ear: Because verily, thou shalt spit in the patients’ faces and tell doctors to go fuck themselves. I’m just not the Florence Nightingale type. Not that I’m not nurturing to my family, but it’s a more rough-and-tumble sort of nurture: Hey kid, get over here and get some noogies, then let’s watch Robot Chicken. This, however, is not an appropriate way of dealing with a man who is in either extraordinary pain or a Vicodin haze, and furthermore cannot walk much, lift anything, take out the garbage, or be of any help whatsoever.

It’s a daunting task. And did I mention that in addition to doing everything both of us used to do, and taking care of the kids, I’ve had to become a sort of de facto dietitian and pharmacist? I devised a daily medication schedule, posted it on the pantry door, and oversee his meds four times every day (because he is on meds and might not remember). I also maintain a day-timer calendar wherein I record his weight, his temperature (which must be taken twice daily to watch for infection), and spend considerable time daily in devising and cooking heart-healthy meals. And cleaning up afterward. And keeping a lid on the kids. And making sure Ben takes his daily walks and uses his little breathing-practice thingy and that his incision is healing properly.

This is not going to last forever, of course. In the context of our lifetime, it’s a blip, a drop in the bucket. But damn it, I’m not at all certain I’m up to the task. Oh, I can discharge my duties, but the trick is to perform them with a sunny and patient attitude. Sunshine and patience are not generally counted among my skills. People have said many things about me, but Oh, she’s got the patience of a saint is not one of them, nor is She’s so cheerful, a little ray of sunshine. No, my reviews have run more along the lines of Damn, she’s a bitch or Smile, will you? You don’t smile enough! The work I can handle, but achieving the proper attitude is testing me to my limits.

Don’t tell my husband, of course. The last things he needs, atop all his other woes, are worries about his wife. (Come to think of it, he’s on enough Vicodin that I’m not sure he knows he has a wife.) And I hate to admit it, because I fucking hate this expression, but this experience will probably build character. Besides, it might be post-surgical me someday. And I am here to tell Ben that payback’s a bitch.

As many of you know, my husband had open-heart surgery today, and let me tell you, you haven’t lived until you’ve paced around a room for 7 hours with the knowledge that your beloved has had his heart and breathing stopped and been placed on a heart-lung machine while a surgeon, whom you devoutly hope is a good one who didn’t overindulge in Scotch over the weekend, plays dicey games with the organ that keeps your husband living. I think he did a good job; my husband is, according to the CVICU, now off the respirator and sleeping with the help of some good drugs. Let’s hear it for good drugs!

The bad news is that he’s gone for the week, and in the 9 years we’ve been married, we’ve never been separated for more than overnight. I’ll see him every day, of course, but I miss him like crazy; he wasn’t awake when they let me briefly inside the CVICU after his surgery, and I haven’t heard his voice since 7:30 this morning when, under the influence of the first in a series of many good drugs, I listened to him hold forth to the anesthesiologist about the demise of President William McKinley, who was assassinated — more specifically, he died of gangrene in his gunshot wounds after an assassination attempt. (Leave it to my Ben to give a historical and medical discourse when schnockered. The anesthesiologist assured me he’d never remember a word of what he said.)

I can’t wait to see him tomorrow, when he’s conscious and hopefully lacking many of the scary tubes running in and out of him. I can’t wait to tell him how Matt’s male Monsters vs. Aliens Happy Meal toy tried to hit on Julia’s female one over dinner at McDonald’s. That’s the sort of detail that makes a dad like Ben smile. And tonight I’m very thankful that my kids have a dad.

I’m in a hurry, as it’s bath time for the kiddos, but Ben and I were talking the other day about one of our favorite dirty jokes. The best jokes are the ones where you don’t see the punch line coming (as opposed to the ones where you could see it coming even if you were on Mars). This is one of the former. Here we go. *taps mike*

So this blonde walks into a bar. She goes up and orders a Bud Light. And then she just sits there and drinks Bud Lights one after another until she passes out, whereupon all the guys in the bar take her into a back room and have their filthy way with her.

Next day, the same blonde comes in and orders a Bud Light again. Same deal: She drinks them one after another until she’s firmly schnockered and passes out, whereupon all the bar patrons take her into the back and screw her.

Day after that, in comes the blonde again. She goes up to the bar and the bartender says “Want a Bud Light?”

And the blonde says “Naw. They make my pussy hurt.”

Dudes, it has been one fucked-up couple of months. No matter how prepared you are for losing a loved one, it hits you rather hard in the gonads. The holidays were a blur, although we got the oddest new artificial Christmas tree with white, not green, branches, which I perversely picked out; the boys got a Wii from Santa; and Boolie is delicious. Also: my husband is a saint for putting up with me. Between persistent pneumonia and PTSD, I’ve been a bit of a bummer, to say the least.

Anyway. Ben and I were saying today: Have you noticed how gay the TV news has become? We are CNN junkies, and suddenly everyone is talking about this big package that’s meant to stimulate everyone. Doesn’t that sound dirty to you? Also, there is all this talk about Obama’s seat. How people were trying to sell his seat, and now officials are probing his seat. There hasn’t been this much talk about a politician’s seat since the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal. Ewww.

So my Matt turned six this week, which was a cause for revelry, and of course we are looking forward to the inauguration. Things are looking up. I hope. Happy New Year, and watch your seat, lest someone attempt to probe it.

The Santa Ana winds are blowing again, and Southern California is on fire again. This time, some of the fires are in northeastern Orange County. That’s far enough from here that we don’t have to worry — other years, they have come as close as lower Newport Beach. But the autumn winds and the fires always make for some spooky shit. I don’t even live in the canyons (which burn often, and are frequently said to be haunted); but the entire place seems haunted.

Last night, the winds stayed calm where I live until around 7 p.m., whereupon they commenced to blow with the fury of a demon. The sound is different to the snowy whistle of blizzard winds or the rainy howl of hurricane or thunderstorm winds. This wind has an empty rattle like evil snakes or dry bones. It’s as though you can hear how parched the leaves are, the moisture leached out of everything. It’s a lifeless sound, a dead feeling, and it’s not good. It’s like listening to the winds of Hell.

Then, around 10:30 p.m., the wind stopped. It slammed shut like the lid of a coffin, and suddenly everything was deadly silent again. That spooked me even more than the wind had done. And then I heard a dry rustling, a creaking of the wooden fence out back which has been dried and bleached by twenty autumns just like this one. It wasn’t a rustling of the wind, it was the dry crackle of something moving. I finally determined, through my bedroom window and the illumination of our backyard spotlight, that it was only a youngish and uncommonly clumsy possum, stumbling across the top of the fence, trying to navigate the ivy. But knowing that didn’t take the chill from my spine.

That was before the fires started. Today, our family ventured out to do our Saturday errands during the late morning: the usual Target, supermarket, one-of-the-kids-needs-new-pants shuffle. At some point I came outside and thought Shit, it’s going to rain. But then I realized it wasn’t rain clouds I saw; these clouds were unmistakably brown and boiling. I blinked in disbelief for a bit, thinking of the Catholic-school images of the Apocalypse from my childhood religion text. You would have sworn Jesus was going to march out from behind those boiling clouds, that strangely orange sun. And the clouds gradually expanded and covered the sky, even though it was a warm and sunny day.

But it wasn’t the end of the world. It was only another autumn day in Southern California during fire season.

I used to think of the smell of autumn as leaves crunching underfoot, moist earth, the occasional bonfire as neighbors burned the leaves they had raked. In So Cal, autumn also smells like wood smoke, but it looks and feels like the end of the world. Tomorrow the ashes will fall like snow flurries and cover the cars and sidewalks. The National Weather Service forecast for my area predicts Hot and hazy, with smoke. Doesn’t that sound a bit like Hell to you?

* * *

Okay. Enough of that shit. My family regularly watches a situation comedy on Nickelodeon called Drake & Josh, which in a nutshell is the story of two stepbrothers and their bratty little sister. As a rerun of the show started last night, our family had this conversation:

Sam: It’s another Drake & Josh.

Me [consulting digital cable guide]: Oh yeah, I know this one. It’s the one where they have the sheep.

Sam: Yeah. And the sheep gets pregnant!

[beat]

Ben [aside, to me]: Well, was it Drake or Josh?

I had lunch with Ben today, but he didn’t bring the newspaper. I asked WTF, and he said Well, we could actually talk instead. And I said God, how can we do that? Because most couples married as long as we have been just read the paper at each other.

Anyway, we got to talking about a personal injury case in which a New Jersey lawyer we know is involved, which deals with a boating accident with horrific severed-limb type injuries. The plaintiff is a married woman who was out on a date with another man, who apparently fell overboard and got entangled in the propellor, with gruesome results, while the plaintiff was slightly physically hurt and, understandably, quite jarred by what she’d seen. She apparently got around quite a lot, despite the “married” thing, and after the boating accident she modified her personal ad in the local newspaper to stipulate “no boaters”.

This sent us into hysterics, like so:

Yeah, because God, what if it happened again? That would RUIN THE WHOLE DATE!

Yeah, because she’d be like “Shit, I went to all this trouble to cheat on my husband and get my NAILS done and everything, and NOW look!”

We laughed until we cried. The personal injury business is not a pretty one for anyone involved, but if you know what you’re doing, you can find humor in everything.

I was nearly 38 years old, recently divorced, and had been dating a nice Jewish guy for the better part of a year.

He was nearly 42 years old, never married, no kids, and had long enjoyed a bachelor’s life of travel, water and snow skiing, and partying with his single buddies.

I was between jobs, and a legal temp agency placed me with an insurance company’s legal department as paralegal to two construction defect defense attorneys. I was introduced to one of them; the other one, Ben, was away at a court appearance that morning.

Linda, the secretary, showed me his office. It featured a martini flag on the wall, eyeball glasses next to the telephone, and an assortment of plastic fighter planes and rubber monsters. As you can see, she told me, he has absolutely no sense of humor.

I was intrigued.

The next day I met him. He was a big guy with salt-and-pepper hair, eyes the color of the sea, and dark olive skin. Cute. And, it turned out, brilliant. In 18 years I’d almost never worked for an attorney without secretly thinking I was smarter than he was. But Ben was different.

He had a sometimes juvenile, often wickedly un-PC sense of humor. His mouth sometimes curled into a slight sneer when sparring by telephone with an adversary, but when he laughed, his whole face lit up. He liked the music of Elvis Costello and Frank Zappa, the sci-fi comedy writing of Douglas Adams, and penis jokes.

He didn’t date co-workers.

I tried desperately to flirt with him. My pre-baby body was tiny and tight, and I used to wear snug sweater dresses and go into his office and bend over a lot. If he noticed, he never let on. After two months, I accepted a better-paying permanent position at another firm. On my way out the door, I slipped him my phone number. I always did want to go out with you, I said, and now that we’re not co-workers, call me.

A few months passed, and the winter holidays and ski season slipped by. I gave up on him and continued dating my nice Jewish guy, who was now talking marriage. One evening in March, my phone rang and my teenage daughter Erika answered. It’s for you, Mom, she called. It’s some guy named Ben.

Ben who? I asked. I really had put him out of my mind by then. But I took the call.

We talked for a half-hour, laughed a lot, gossiped about goings-on in his legal department, and agreed to meet for a wine tasting the following week. In preparation, I stopped eating and lived on Slim-Fast and chardonnay. I wanted to be thin and gorgeous for our first date.

He was 20 minutes late to arrive at the wine bar; five minutes more and I’d have left. But he showed up, and we had a great time, and he asked me to dinner. We talked and giggled like tweeners at a slumber party. Saying goodnight, he leaned in to kiss me, but sidestepped my lips and planted a kiss on my cheek. I tried again, but again he evaded. It amazed me. I could tell he liked me. Was he a fucking gentleman? Wasn’t he going to try anything?

Everything about him was completely new to me.

After the second date, I dumped my poor Jewish boyfriend, and Ben and I have been inseparable ever since. After eight years of marriage and three kids, we’re always tired and sometimes cranky, but we’re still laughing.

Happy Valentine’s Day, honey. There’s no one else on earth like you. Thanks for letting me bear your kids, see your smile, and hear your dirty jokes.

I tried to compose the obligatory January 29 anniversary post extolling your virtues, but I can’t do it; after all these years, words are neither adequate nor necessary. Happy eighth anniversary, honey. You know all the whys and wherefores, and thanks again for believing in us through the good times and the bad times. You’re an awesome father and husband.

And don’t forget to take out the garbage.

Ben and I will be celebrating our 8th wedding anniversary on Tuesday, and we are actually getting a babysitter and going out for a nice dinner. I am beside myself with excitement — we NEVER DO THIS. Usually the only time we leave our kids with anyone, except to work, is to go into the hospital and have another baby. Well, that ain’t gonna happen, Tonto.

We have reservations at a restaurant near South Coast Plaza that has some history for us; Ben took me there on one of our early dates (after I’d already put out and thus earned an expensive dinner), and it was there, on his 43rd birthday, that I offered to have his babies. (Except, me being me, it was phrased more like Well, why don’t you knock me up?)

The restaurant in question is Scott’s Seafood, and I can’t wait to eat there. But so help me, if we see Dr. Phil there, I am going to walk up and punch his lights out. Yeah, because I’m a bitch that way.

I haven’t written much about Ben lately, and I really owe it to him and to my readers to do more of it, because he is a unique character and well worth knowing. He has the most perverse sense of humor, which I will illustrate with another infamous story from his past.

He went into a grocery store and gathered up a handbasket full of groceries, various food items and a roll of toilet paper. He placed his items on the counter and, when the clerk went to ring him up, he asked her very earnestly, Do you think this is enough toilet paper for this much food?

Of course, she was stunned speechless. My husband. There’s no one like him.