Well, I’ve done it again.

First, a little background: last weekend my wife, the currently respiratorially impaired and humor deficient Jess Vader (or should that be Darth Jess?) caught a cold which quickly turned into bronchitis. She is not a happy camper. Just getting off the couch wipes her out. Her breathing makes noises that you would never guess had any connection with the passage of air.

Most of the time, her breathing sounds like a rock crusher crossed with an espresso machine, but then it will change and sound like somebody slowly letting the air out of balloon. The other night, we were watching tv, and I could swear that there was a dog howling in pain behind our house. I muted the tv to listen, and the noise stopped. I started the tv up again, and the noise started up again. I wasn’t sure if I was imagining it, or if there was something wrong with the tv, or if there really was a dog in terrible trouble.

I paused the tv a couple more times to listen, and was on the verge of getting up to go outside to look for Ralph, the stray dog who’s lived with us for the last 7 or so years, when I realized that the noise was Jess breathing. Every time I’d stop the tv to listen, she’d hold her breath to listen too.

Well, I was glad that Ralph was ok, but I was really starting to worry about Jess.

Anyway, with her being so miserable, she was obviously not in the mood to do any cooking, so I’ve been trying to help out by picking up carryout on the way home. Now, I’ll grant you that I’m probably the last person that anybody would (or should) choose to cater their imminent demise, but I do my best.

To be honest, cockroaches would probably die of malnutrition if they had to rely on me. Even Keith Richards probably eats healthier than I do when left to my own devices, but hey, at least I try.

Well, 2 or 3 days into her affliction, Jess was struck down even further, this time by heartburn and indigestion (in retrospect, we probably should have seen this coming), rendering her even more miserable and dejected. However, not being the sort to be kept down for long by anything, and realizing that after 3 days she was approaching a level of personal hygiene that even the French would turn up their noses at (in her own words, she was feeling “kinda swampy”), she announced that she was going to take a shower.

I pulled her up off the couch and kept her upright while she adjusted to verticality, and then went into the den to play Spider Solitaire. I heard her rattling around in the kitchen, so I looked over to see what she was doing. She was pouring a glass of milk. I asked if she was ok (I’m not completely insensitive), and she said “yeah, just some indigestion,” so I went back to my game (she’s a strong, independent woman, and I’m far too considerate to take that away from her. Besides, I was winning.).

I will admit (at the price of sounding condescending) that I left the sound off so I could hear her if she fell or called for help (I’m not a monster, you know). After a successful hosing down of all her bits, apparently her stomach was still bothering her, so she called for me, and I immediately sprang into action. She asked me to fix her a glass of milk to calm her stomach, so I went to the kitchen to get it. I got a glass, and was going to the fridge for the milk, when I noticed that she’d left the milk on the counter.

Now, that seemed a little irresponsible, even to me. I just figured that she wasn’t feeling good, and probably thought she’d need some more. So I poured the rest of the milk into the glass, and carried it in to her. She drank it, and I took the glass and set it aside.

I asked if there was anything else I could do for her, and she asked if I would comb out her hair for her. Well, I’ll try anything for her. At this point, I should explain that Jess has lovely long, very thick hair. At this time, of course, it was also very wet and looked awfully tangled to me. I grabbed the comb, and told her I’d try not to hurt her too much (give me a break. Most of the time, I don’t even comb my own hair. I just run my hand through it and trap it under a hat until it gives up and lays down.)

She stopped me before I even got started, and told me to squirt some hair goo onto my hands and to rub it into her hair. Well, I did it, and I have to say, it looked even more bedraggled and tangled than before. I got about halfway through the 1st swipe with the comb, and she took it away from me.

Then, she sort of burped (you know, the kind of inverted burp you do when you’re trying to keep your insides inside), and asked me if I’d gotten the milk out of the fridge. I said, “No, you left the milk on the counter. You know that’s not a good idea, don’t you?”

Wrong answer. Then, after she’d told me that the milk on the counter had gone bad, and that there was a jug of fresh milk in the refrigerator, I compounded the error by asking her why didn’t she dump the bad milk out. She explained (unnecessarily heatedly, I felt) that she hadn’t bothered to dump it out because SHE FELT LOUSY.

Well, you know me (or at least you’re starting to), I’m not one to stop while I’m only a little bit behind, so I laughed and asked her why she didn’t at least tell me about it. Again, she curtly explained that it was because SHE DIDN”T THINK I”D BE DUMBASS ENOUGH TO NOT LOOK IN THE FRIDGE FOR MILK! 

Well, while it’s nice to know that after 20 years of marriage I can still surprise her, I was kind of hurt by her tone. I mean, that’s just, . . . well, mean, you know? Think about it. Here I was, at her beck and call (more or less), even willing to leave a winning streak at Spider Solitaire (and if you’ve ever played, you know how rare that is), existing only to serve her. When you think about it, my only real mistake was in being overly eager to service her needs quickly, and she acts like that. Women (even the best of them, which Jess certainly is) can be so ungrateful.

On the other hand, after having her hair wadded into industrial-strength tangles and pulled and then being served bad milk on an upset stomach when she can’t breathe well enough to comb her own hair, I suppose I’ll just have to be the bigger man and forgive her. She’s a lucky, lucky girl. And I, of course, am a lucky guy, especially in that, in her current condition, my bronchial Goddess of Grumpiness, my wheezy Valkyrie of Vengeance, my not-quite-so-sweet-as-usual little Swamp Thing can’t draw enough breath to even the score.

God help me the next time I get sick.