The Romantical Dork: The Novel

DramaMama and I returned last evening from a wonderful escape celebrating our 6th anniversary. She and the boys had spent spring break at her parents home in New Mexico, while I remained at home to work.

I took Friday off so I could drive to our getaway and prepare the place for her arrival. As things tend to go for me, several of my plans went awry. I fell back, regrouped, and did other things instead.

I pulled in half an hour later than I had intended to, but luckily DramaMama hadn't arrived yet. I made several trips up and down the stairs to the hotel carrying luggage and romantic things in.

I brought along the doll I gave her as a wedding present, and the pocket watch she gave me. I also brought several romanticalish movies, a set of candles that were supposed to smell like the ocean, CDs with music from our wedding reception, and our CD of ocean waves.

So I set about romanticalizing the place. I broke out the candles and set them ablaze in various locations around the room. I laid out all of the movies and a box of chocolates. I turned on the CD of the waves. I moved to the fireplace, and the fun began. Dave the well meaning dork emerged.

I really did go to Boy Scouts and learned how to start a fire. This one refused to start. It had newspaper and logs... nothing in between. So I arranged the paper and logs such that the burning paper should have sufficient burn time to start the logs. Nice theory. I didn't get much chance to tend my fledgling fire as the smoke alarm went off almost immediately.

"AWW CRAP!" I said, and went to deal with it. I twisted it off with the intention of yanking the battery, but it turned out that this was one of the hard wired kind. So I fanned the detector hoping to clear the smoke away from it enough to get it to shut up.

I turned to look at the fire place and the room was filling with smoke. After several minutes of trying to figure out how to turn the dern thing off, I heard a key in the door and a maintenance man came in. I set him the task of shutting up the fire alarm which he did in short order.

He then went over to the fireplace. "Well, here's your problem, the damper's closed!"

"DOH!"

So he opened that for me. By this time the smoke hung thick in the air. A very woodsy aroma. The maintenance man was very cool about it, but I'm sure he was calling me a moron in his head. Especially because there is a sign right on the fireplace that says "Danger, open the damper before lighting a fire." I didn't see it.

So after the Maintenance guy left, I tried to air out the place by opening the window and turning on the bathroom vent fan. I returned to my task of building a fire. SHEESH! This wood was nonflammable I swear! I used up most of the paper, and half a book of matches, and NOTHING!

"AAARRRRRR," I said, and got one of the votive candles that came in my set. I strategically arranged it with paper and logs thinking that a constant flame under the wood would result in fire. Apparently not.

The votive quickly became a blue puddle of goo on the bottom of the fireplace and hearth.

So remembering my Beaver Butt training in scouts, I pulled out my trusty pocket knife (A cheap mini-Swiss-army knock off) and set to making kindling from one of the logs. It was in this state that DramaMama found me when she arrived. She told me that she could smell the smoke from our room clear outside and down the hall.

She took some more paper, my kindling, and the logs I had in there and tried to get it going. It went nicely for a couple of minutes, but the inflammable logs couldn't be convinced that they were combustible.

We decided to give each other one gift that evening even though our anniversary was the next day.

I spent the most time and effort on one gift, so I had her follow the footprints on the floor that I had made that led to the drawer containing a set of 6 CDs. They are a course taught by fellow writer/blogger Jill Boehme entitled "Six Steps to Sanity."

Once I explained what it was DramaMama thought it was interesting. It is a tele-course for stay-at-home moms. I listened to class #1 (which was very good by the way) (she even says 'SNOT' on it! he he he) while fighting with the download option on my computer. I am a computer guy, but I actually had to go to our other computer to get them to download properly. I was up until 2:00 am Friday morning preparing the 6 cds.

So anyway, DramaMama gave me some gourmet toffee. It is excellent. We ordered a pizza, and watched "Maid in Manhattan". We played Scrabble, and she won. After the movie was over, she mentioned Pay-per-view movies, so I relented and offered up gift number two. It was "Walk the Line." Neither of us had seen it. We liked it.

The next day, we slept in VERY late. It was fantastic. I hardly ever get to do that. We gave each other our remaining gifts (Cutie shoes, fuzzy pink slippers, the first season of "Everybody Loves Raymond for her... A new belt, a can of wafer rolls, gourmet cookies, a new beard trimmer, and a nice new wallet for me.) We decided to get some breakfast and then go to a movie. We found a place called Johnny Angel's that touted a "John Wayne All-American Breakfast". How could I turn that down??? We arrived 20 minutes after they stopped serving breakfast. DOH!

We went for a drive in the snowy mountains which was very relaxing and nice. We drove up to a ski resort just for a peek. Then we went back and saw "Failure to Launch" which had some very funny moments. I could have done without Terry Bradshaw's butt though.

We watched "Sweet Home Alabama" on DVD then prepared to go have dinner. I decided to blow out the candles as a safety precaution. One candle wouldn't go out after two or three tries. So I wiffed my baseball cap at it in an attempt to blow more air at it. Bad idea. The adjustable part of the had smacked right into the wax puddle, and blue wax splattered all over the dresser, wall, mirror, DVDs, and one drop even hit Erica's doll.

So chalk another one up for The Dorkerer's Apprentice... no wait.. the Dorkerer.

We went to a nice seafood restaurant called "The Chalet". We both had Alaskan King Crab. with a Calamari appetizer. MMMMMMM.

So after all the cracking and snarfing and spilling drawn butter on my shirt, I gave my card to the waitress. She came back saying it declined. "AWWW CRAP!" I knew we had money in there, so she suggested that it was because she couldn't read the code on the back properly. I happened to have gotten a replacement card right before I left on the trip, so I used their phone and activated it. It went through fine.

As I was sitting back down from paying the bill, I twisted my knee. How many people can say that?

I tried out my new beard trimmer, but it was not working properly. It ranges from 1 (shortest) to 9 (longest). I could only get it from 7 to 9. So I tried it at 7 which should have been too long to even do my hair, but it was surprisingly short. My beard now looks like I have only been growing it for 3 or 4 days.

It was a very relaxing and wonderful weekend. I didn't want to come home.

I would marry her all over again in a heart beat! She is my best friend.