So, I promised that I would tell you the story of how The Hubby and I met during this, the month in which I am more-or-less certain the anniversary of that event takes place. I have since realized that I have actually failed to fulfill two similar promises regarding other stories since starting this blog. This is becoming an ugly habit. So I figured I’d better actually follow through this time.

The short story is that I won him. Seriously. Would I joke about true love? I won him fair and square…in a flirting contest.

I mean, he didn’t know it was a contest. And truthfully, it didn’t start out as a contest. But it ended up that way. And he was the prize.

It was my senior year of high school, and I was working retail. I had been dating a guy from work for several months. We’ll call him…Steve. No, that’s no good because I actually dated a Steve once. Let’s call him…Sam. I never dated a Sam, at least not that I remember.

So Sam and I went out and hit it off and started dating. To me, it was that last relationship before graduating from high school and moving away to college. Sam, however, put in for a transfer to a store in the town where I was going to attend college and started talking about apartment shopping together over the summer. Luckily, my manager pulled me aside and asked me how I felt about this, and assured me that he wouldn’t let the transfer happen. Whew, close call.

Sam also asked my best friend—-we’ll call her Darby, because I’ve always liked that name and The Hubby never would agree to name one of the girl-children Darby—- to find out my ring size and help him pick out an engagement ring to give me for Christmas. Now, call me shallow, but at 17 years old I had no problem being engaged until summer and then breaking up. Darby, however, wasn’t tuned to the same station. She informed Sam that I wasn’t going to marry him, because I was going to be a doctor (she was always convinced that I was going to be a doctor), and I was going to have to devote all my time to my studies and that he would only hold me back. In essence, she broke up with him for me. Which I would have thanked her for about six months down the road, but back in December it was a little premature. Not to mention the fact that she never actually ran the whole thing by me ahead of time.

So instead of an engagement ring, Sam bought me a necklace. All I could think of when I opened the box was, “Dang, this was supposed to be a ring.” I know, shallow. I was only 17—are you telling me you wouldn’t have thought the same thing when you were seventeen?  I bought Sam one of those mitzpah charms—you know, the coins cut in half that read “The Lord watch between me and thee while we are absent one from another.” I worked in the jewelry department, and during the busy Christmas season, I didn’t exactly have a lot of time to shop.

Evidently Darby’s little lecture bothered Sam, because a few weeks after Christmas he had the nerve to break up with me because—–get this—- he said I was getting too serious about the relationship. Are you freaking kidding me?  Did he honestly think that Darby didn’t tell me about the ring? Which I threw in his face—I mean, the story about the ring, not the actual ring, since he didn’t actually end up buying a ring….

Anyway, that’s where I was at the time—about a month past the breakup with Sam. So one evening, my friend…Gigi and her friend…Lola and I decided to go out dancing. Gigi had the major hots for another guy we worked with…Manfred. Lola had a thing for …Bert. And I was still in my “men are whacked” phase after the whole Sam incident. So Gigi and Lola convinced me to swing by Manfred & Gary’s apartment (should we have some cheesy soap opera music in the background? I’m an anti-fan of blog music, but at this moment I’m really tempted…maybe I’ll just hum), only Manfred and Gary weren’t there. BUT their roommate P….Pete was there with his friend G…Gulliver.

No, that’s just wrong. I can’t write a story where I end up with a guy named Gulliver. I know—we’ll call him Mo.

Okay. So…Pete’s friend Mo…okay. I’m caught up. So Gigi, Lola, and I convinced Pete and Mo to come dancing with us. Now, here’s the thing you need to know about Gigi. Gigi was one of those girls who views every man she gets within 12 feet of as a potential husband. I had already seen her scare off a handful of potential husbands during the hey-we’re-not-even-dating stage. But she and Mo ended up sitting in the back seat, and I thought—Hmm, maybe they’ll end up liking each other. That was a good deal for me, because then I wouldn’t have to always be listening to Gigi complaining about not having a boyfriend, or watching her send yet another perfectly nice guy running for safety.

Now, when we picked the guys up, it was dark, so I didn’t get a good look at Mo. But when we stepped inside the club—well, lets just say I revised my whole try-and-fix-Gigi-up plan. Gigi and I took the traditional team walk to the ladies’ room, where she promptly exclaimed, “Oh my gosh—did you see Mo? Isn’t he GORGEOUS?” To which I replied, “Mmm-hmmm.”  Gigi took the opportunity to remind me that I had JUST gotten out of a relationship, and that it was her turn.

Turn? I wasn’t aware we were taking turns….

“Don’t you DARE flirt with him, Ashley. I mean it. He’s mine.”

Now, there’s just something about the word “dare,” isn’t there? It’s loaded. And I had no idea my flirting skills were so legendary.

“Look, we don’t even know if he’s” interested in either of us. I’ll make you a deal—NEITHER of us flirts, and we let him decide.”

So we struck a deal and walked back to our seats on either side of Mo. I thought he looked like he was about to turn his head my way, maybe strike up a conversation. And then Gigi grabbed his arm, and I saw the gauntlet fall to the floor at my feet.

“So, Mo, you’re from the Valley? I’m from Puerto Rico. We have palm trees in Puerto Rico. Are there palm trees in the Valley? I miss palm trees. I miss Puerto Rico. Have you ever been to Puerto Rico? You should go sometime. You could come visit my family—”

Now, somewhere around the word “so,” I realized that Gigi might just be the one person on the planet who could outtalk me. Outtalk, maybe. Outflirt? Never. So I did what any self-respecting victim of a breach in the no-flirting pact would have done….

I kicked off my shoe and started playing footsies with him under the table.

Hey, she had to come up for air sometime, and when she did, he turned to me and asked me to dance. The rest, as they say, is history.

I saw Gigi a few years back. We hadn’t seen eachother since I left to go to college. She noticed my ring–”Oh, you’re married?” I held it up high. You don’t think I’m so petty I would rub it in all those years later, do you?

Of course I would. All’s fair in love and flirting wars.

So I suppose this makes him my Trophy Husband….

5:01. 

AM.  

There is a small person beside bed. I’m dreaming. That’s it—25 days of Christmas has gone to my head, and I’m dreaming about elves.

This is evidently Whiny the Elf.

“My noisemaker stopped working.” Sniff, sniff.

I look at the clock. But that’s not how I know it was 5:01 am, because there is no clock. Or rather, there are no bright red numbers hovering nearby.

Hubby sits up and looks around. “Power’s out.” Then he looks at his Blackberry, which is how I know what time it was.

Now, in my book, 5:01 am is still yesterday. Me and 5:01 am, we do okay as long as we stay out of eachother’s way.

The 6 year old (oh yeah, about the whole elf dream—it wasn’t) tells me she’s too scared to go back to her room, and frankly I’m too tired to get up and walk her, so I give her the go-ahead to hop up under the covers with us. It’s at this point that I realize it’s a school day, and since my alarm clock is, for the time being, merely a chunky plastic dust-magnet, there will be no blaring Spanish-language-hip-hop station to serenade me out of the oblivion I’m hoping to sink back into. There’s an upside to that, of course. A power outage is the perfect guilt-free excuse for getting the kids to school late. Except that I’ve just received a letter telling me that my preschooler has been late or absent just a few days shy of the school district filing class C misdemeanor charges against me.

I go grab my cell phone.

5:07 am

The Hubby calls the power company. The android on the other end tells him that our power will be up before midnight, which is 18 hrs and 59 minutes from now. The Hubby hangs up, perplexed, then calls back. By now the android tells him a crew has been dispatched, and our power will be restored by 6:19am.

5:12 am.

Still trying to program the alarm clock function on my cell phone. Having once accidentally deleted the camera function on this very same phone, I’m a little wary of pushing too many buttons. I finally get it set up to go off at 6:10—less than an hour away. I debate resetting it for 6:13, so I’ll have at least a full hour—because we both know that 3 minutes could make all the difference. I go ahead and turn my clock alarm to “radio” so that it will come on when the power comes back up. Just in case my mad phone-alarm-programming skills fail me.

5:17 am.

 Amazingly, I’ve managed to fall almost asleep. Then The Hubby announces that he is getting up, because he needs to leave the house by 6. I’m delighted that he values my opinion enough to run this decision by me.

At this point, I remind him that the tankless propane water heater has an electric starter (for the record—this is the only drawback to the tankless propane water heater, and it has only come into play twice in 5 years. I feel like I should have a bumper sticker that says “Ask me about my tankless water heater.” And I should get commission for it, too), so we have no hot water. Not only that, but before I went to sleep the weatherman told me that it was going to be in the low 30s, so “no hot water” is a gargantuan understatement. Try “might as well just dump the ice tray on your head.”

One thing I haven’t told you about The Hubby yet: he grew up in a completely different world than I did. Probably than you did, too. They didn’t have indoor plumbing until his birthday cake had double-digit candles on it. In order to shower, they’d boil water on the stove, then take it out and dump it into a barrel and cool it down with water from…well, I’m not sure where the other water came from. A pump, or maybe a hose. I know ultimately it came from an irrigation canal that runs behind their house. But that’s not really the point. The point is, as long as we have a gas stove, a little thing like a power outage isn’t going to stand in the way of The Hubby taking a shower.

5:25 am

I had no idea boiling water could be so noisy. Have I been making this much noise when I boil water all these years? Who knew. I guess it never mattered since there was never anyone trying to FALL ASLEEP IN THE NEXT ROOM.

5:35 am

The Hubby is heating yet another pot of hot water to dump into the Home Depot bucket (Home Depot buckets are indespensible. I think I’m going to start giving them as wedding presents. No home should be without one) when the smoke alarm starts going off.

See, I have a commercial propane stove. It gets really hot. So hot that it requires a commercial vent…which runs on electricity. So at this moment, the fan is not running. My best guess is that during the food-fest that was Thanksgiving weekend, something got spilled on the stove and collected on the drip tray beneath the burners, and that something is now giving off smoke.

Our smoke alarms are really loud. Really, really loud.

5:45 am

In the past 10 minutes, the smoke alarms have gone off 4 times.  The Hubby has alternated tending the water on the stove with rushing to fan the smoke detector with a placemat. The 14 year old and the 10 year old are now awake, and they are all having a conversation in the living room. The fact that the alarms went off 4 times before they came out to see what was going on doesn’t instill much confidence in me that my children will actually respond in case of an emergency.

5:59 am

The Hubby finally has enough hot water to take a shower. If I fall asleep right now, I will get 11 minutes before my phone alarm goes off. I am almost there. I hear the shower door open and close, and then blissful nothingness….

6:00am

The sound of Spanish language hip-hop blares me back to consciousness. “Hey, look at that honey—they got the power back on 19 minutes early. I guess you could have waited after all.”

6:01 am

Nothing that happened after this point should really go into print….