Hubs and I got married waaay back when no one knew what a hanging chad was. We were lucky enough to go to the Greek Islands for our honeymoon. (Pre-Euro= cheap ouzo. Opa!) It was an amazing trip and we swore we’d go back for our 10th anniversary. Crazy kids. (That was two years ago….I think we got as far as Carrabba’s.)

UM, SADLY NO, GREECE FOR 10 DAYS. COLD ASS COW HAMPSHAH 4-EVER.

Anyway, while we were vacationing near the equator, hubs teased me because I was slathering myself in buckets of sunblock….I literally massaged Coppertone all the way into my hairline. (It takes work to be this sexy. It really does. If he was hoping annulment at that point his face didn’t show it. )  I interrupted his teasing to remind him of my 100% proud Irish potato heritage. (I vacillate throughout the year between the color of flour, sugar, and pizza dough. I am? Job security for the field of dermatology. And beer distributors.) So I offer him some sunblock and he replies, “Um, no thanks…” (eyeroll) “I’m Italian!”

I reply, “Yeahhhh, you’re HALF Italian, you’re from Boston, and we’re near the equator, but it’s your party, dude!” Smarty McOliveGarden!

Fast forward to that night. My Good Fella is limping through the streets of Mykonos, fried yet shivering, whimpering in all his half Italian glory.

“I’ve never had a sunburn before.”

Welcome to my world, Homie. Welcome to my world.

I look at him, his demure bride of 4 days, my sun kissed pizza dough face glowing, and snicker, “E-qua-tor.” (Ok, it’s technically not even that close. At all. But in my defense Widipedia wasn’t even invented yet so how was I supposed to know? So maybe I took some creative license to make my point!)And, I might have added something about how he should probably listen to his smartypants wife in the future. He was too weak to reply. But I took his silence as his tacit agreement.

There have been a few million other times in our marriage that I’ve nagged. And a few times when he’s been astounded at my profound lack of common sense, mostly around cooking utensils. It’s worked, this thing we’ve got going. So fast forward 12 years, three kids, and two houses later. It’s our youngest’s three year old birthday. (Sobs!) I’m feeling sad he’s not a baby any longer, as evidenced by him managing to convince me to bake him a fire truck cake. The boy is seriously obsessed with all things firefighter. He was a firefighter for Halloween, watches Fireman Sam daily, and knocked my floor lamp down the other day shrieking, “This is my fire pole, mama!” 

 So….I didn’t want to attempt any Martha shenanigans with the cake, but I spent two and a half hours doing just that because he looked at me with those big brown eyes. (Mamas, you know the look!)I wanted to buy one, but I can’t because all the bakery ones say “may contain peanuts/tree nuts” and my boys are allergic. So I was left to my own nut free devices. By the time I finished it, I was sweating. It was kinda stressful! It took patience (I have none!), skillz (No, none!) and a steady hand (And…no.). When the thing was done, I was happy it kind of resembled the photo provided and swore to high heaven I’d never use the pan again.

 It was a crisp zero degrees in beautiful Southern New Hampshire on my boy’s birthday, and one of our small pipes wound up freezing in our basement playroom. So Hubs cut a hole, propped up my industrial strength, professional hair dryer (I know people) and retreated back upstairs. I said, “Hmm, I don’t know if that hair dryer thing is such a great idea, hun.” He mumbled something about being Italian insulating the pipe for next time, at which point I went on to attend to other pressing matters. (Food Network. Cheese and crackers. Adult beverage.)

A few minutes later we fix dinner for the kids and we’re all chatting about going bowling the next day (I kick ass with the bumpers up!) when I turn to him and say, “I smell smoke!”

He says, “I don’t smell anything!”

I say, “I.SMELL.SMOKE.”

(I am a lot of things. Some good, some not so good. But dude, my Karl Malden nose rocks. Scents give me massive headaches. I have smell radar. The police should fire Fido and hire me for their sniffing assignments. I can even walk on two legs. Not to get all braggy.)

Hubs looks at me, blasts downstairs, yells, “Whoa! Fire! Dial 911!” By now the smoke is wafting up the stairs and it’s rancid. I push the fire button on our burglar alarm pad, throw coats on the kids, and we bolt outside. They are shoeless and it is zero, but the alternative is clearly worse and I’m worried about my oldest’s asthma to boot.

Hubs runs out a few minutes later and tells me he put the fire out—it was small— and gives me the key to his car and the kids and I pile in. Within a few minutes, my street is filled with cop cars, fire cars, and two firetrucks. The firefighters go in to see what’s what. They use a machine to make sure there are no embers in the walls that could have caused another fire later. My husband ap0logizes up and down for his hair dryer experiment and he said the firefighters tried to make him not feel like a dummy by relaying other, dumber things people have attempted. (So nice!) They said he did the right thing unplugging the hair dryer, throwing it out in the snow, and dousing the fire and that if he hadn’t done that, our house would have been up in flames by the time they got there.

Scary! So grateful we were all okay.

All the awesome firefighters stopped to say Happy Birthday (including a super cool woman—girl power!) to my little buddy and remarked on the irony of this happening on his big firefighter birthday. I said the theme was a little too played out for my taste! They let the boys go on the fire truck and invited us to stop by the station for a tour. Love them and I’m sure no one will ever forget this birthday! I told the fam I will make the fire truck cake ONE more time for the kind firefighters and we’d drop it off next weekend. 

HOPEFULLY THE FIREFIGHTERS WILL JUST LOOK AT IT AND NOT TRY IT. YEAH!

Hubs wound up apologizing to the boys and me for the hair dryer stunt and I actually felt sorry for him because he felt so sorry. (We all make mistakes even me.)

But not sorry enough to stop from asking him, “Are you burnt? Do you need any sunblock?”

Hey, that flame was strong!