Of course I didn’t mean I would stop blogging. You think I’m ever going to shut up? Think again, flyboy. I have Serious Issues to consider! Like what to do with the black eye Boolie gave me last weekend. (I leaned down to hug her just as she suddenly snapped her head up and bounced it off my browbone.)

This is a serious, serious black eye. Immediately there was a bruise visible on the browbone, and by the next morning it had burst forth in blue and purple from my eyebrow to an inch below my eye. That thing is — was, as it’s finally starting to fade — fucking spectacular. Watching a black eye evolve is like watching a sunset. The shifting patterns, the changing hues. From blue and purple to yellow and green and then to a sort of maroon as it prepares to fade. Lovely.

But here’s the problem. I figure that anyone who doesn’t know us will take one look at me and assume either that I pulled an Amy Winehouse and staggered into something (fist? door? could be anything with that broad), or that Ben popped me one. Which reminds me of a joke. What do you say to a woman with two black eyes? — Nothing. You already told her twice. (And yes, yes, I know domestic violence is not funny, and hereby issue this disclaimer blah blah blah.)

Anyway. So if we are for example having lunch somewhere, should I explain my eye to the waitress when she comes to our table? It seems I shouldn’t, but you have to figure she’ll be wondering about it all through lunch. Possibly the entire wait staff will be wondering: Hmm, she doesn’t look like a loadie. Nor like Nicole Brown Simpson, for that matter. Perhaps she’s part raccoon?

Rather than explain, I’ve taken to keeping my Ray-Bans on indoors when anywhere besides home. This sometimes makes it hard to navigate, and also, it must make me look like some tourist trying to be all California cool. So should I explain that? No, I’m not an asshole, I just have a black eye. But I don’t want you to see it. That’s why the sunglasses. Or something. Ordinarily I don’t give a damn what anyone thinks, but a black eye is one of those things that just screams Think something!

And the eye makeup problem is a real bitch, too. I have to wear eye makeup — trust me, I do. So do I put makeup on both eyes? The bruised one seems to have quite enough colorful pizzazz already, but I don’t want to be asymmetrical. Perhaps I should have blacked the left eye as well, to match? Well, too late.

I told you I had serious issues on my mind.

My good friend Mark of Going Like Sixty, who is mostly absent from Facebook although a member, warned me about this. Facebook and Twitter are going to result in the death of blogging. It’s just way too convenient to post a 20-second tweet or Facebook update rather than actually sit down and think out a chunk of something well-organized and meaningful. If you look at my blogroll, which I have not updated since approximately the dawn of time, you may notice that a lot of my reads have left off blogging altogether in the past year or two.

Part of the reason for this is probably that a lot of people I know write for a living at least to some extent. Oh, I only can claim to know one novelist on a personal level, and that largely because we nursed babies simultaneously. But a lot of my friends write for at least some portion of their gainful employment, and there is the endless legal writing that consumes us legal types, even though we’re not writers as such. Many of us are eager to take a break from writing, not to escape into it, for God’s sake.

Either way, people don’t much want to take the time for words, or an attention span, anymore. We’re all about Twitter and Susan Boyle and 15 minutes of fame, little dribs and drabs of this and that. No time, no commitment. Even as I write this, I’m losing interest in writing it (although this may be in large part for the reason that all three of my young kids are simultaneously running around screaming like loons). Even when they’re not distracting me, there are the glugs of arriving e-mails and the pops of arriving chat messages. And that’s for someone like me — a total misanthropic bitch! I can’t imagine the distraction level for people of normal socialization.

I don’t want to make the point I’m trying to make for fear of lapsing into a reverie about the good old days of snail mail and network television and morning and evening newspapers. But I think it’s pretty obvious. The Internet is a two-edged sword, and people have the attention span of gnats. A bunch of years ago I was on the cutting edge of blogging. Now I’m on the cutting edge of being too lazy to blog anymore. And I’m not at all sure this is a good thing.

See y’all on Facebook.

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.

So last week Ben and I had lunch with his mother. I’ve always had a bit of a thorny relationship with her, although there’s no real animosity between us — apart, of course, from the usual animosity harbored by a mother toward the girl who her only son finally married in midlife.

It’s just that MIL and I are both very opinionated and stubborn, and said opinions are usually completely at odds, especially regarding childrearing. This stands to reason, since she’s a very 1950s buttoned-down, conservative sort of lady who believes in building character and following all the rules, which are many. Whereas I’m a sort of hippie chick who tries to go with the flow, live and let live, you know. Plus she doesn’t mind telling people how to raise their children — in fact, she insists upon it. I just do my thing and blow her off. Also, I was raised Catholic and she (for reasons never explained) is staunchly anti-Catholic.

Despite that, or quite possibly because of it, she started Pope-bashing the minute we were all in the car. You know, that to-do about advising Africans against using condoms. And I don’t mean that she disagreed with the Pope; I mean that she excoriated him. There was much bandying about of some really pejorative terms. I’m anything but a good Catholic, but I’m Catholic enough to feel very uncomfortable hearing this whether I agree with the Pope or not. (I guess she was trying to make me forswear my possibly Papist ways and denounce the Church.)

She kept trying to engage me in the conversation, but I just said Well . . . a few times and got very interested in staring out the window. I really don’t want to start sparring with her. Not worth it, and besides, poor Ben.

But she was just getting started. I have no idea on earth how the topic arose, but MIL brought up circumcision and why it’s absolutely necessary to do it, and what dire results there will be if it’s not done. Both my sons are intact, and she very well knows that. Bear in mind that the last time I birthed a boy was in 2003, so you could say it’s a done deal.

I politely explained that there’s no medical justification for circumcision according to our research. She said the presence of a foreskin leads to hygiene problems. I told her it’s easy to keep clean. (I forcibly restrained myself from asking if she thinks it’s reasonable to cut off a part of the body just because we don’t feel like washing it.) She harrumphed. Stalemate.

But she wasn’t done; she then turned a hawkish eye on the earrings, six in total, dangling from my ears. (I don’t think she’d ever seen me with more than one pair before.) Well, that certainly is a lot of earrings. What is that, three piercings? When on earth did you do that?

Nineteen ninety-three, I said.

Well. I certainly hope you haven’t gone and pierced Julia’s ears! she went on.

Are you following this, people? Jesus hemorrhaging Christ, the woman chastises us for not mutilating our sons and in the next breath forbids us to mutilate our daughter. HOW DOES THAT MAKE SENSE?

Special Bonus Joke:

A man is having digestive problems and goes to see his doctor. The doctor examines him and tells him he’s got a tapeworm. Here’s what you do, says the doctor. Every night for the next three nights, I want you to shove a hard-boiled egg up your ass. And then shove a Tootsie Roll up your ass right after. And come back and see me the day after the third night.

The guy of course thinks this is extremely strange. How will that help? he asks. You’ll see, says the doc.

So the guy does it. Every night for three nights, he shoves a hard-boiled egg up his ass, followed by a Tootsie Roll. The next day he goes and sees the doctor. The doctor immediately shoves a hard-boiled egg up the guy’s ass and grabs a hammer. The guy wonders WTF.

After a few seconds, the tapeworm sticks his head out the guy’s ass and says Hey! Where’s my fucking Tootsie Roll? whereupon the doctor hits the worm on the head with the hammer.

Cured.

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.