(The time my kids almost burnt down our brand-new house)
In, The Wedding Dilemma, the meet cute is more of a meet disaster. The heroine, Tamsen, is stuck in a body cast and has to be rescued by a hunky firefighter who turns out to be her future stepbrother! Talk about awkward. But her plaster disaster is a funny story to tell her future kids. I myself have a funny firefighter rescue story, but it’s about my kids.
Let me take you back a few years ago. We were moving from a tiny 2-bedroom townhome to a bigger, single family house. The move was just across the highway, literally five minutes away. We had a three-year-old and a five-month-old in addition to my husband’s job and my writing career. Talk about having our hands full!
The day of signing was full of excitement. We’d never had a place with a backyard before. I couldn’t wait to get the kids a swing set, put a hammock back there and enjoy a good romance read while the kids played. Backyard BBQ’s, running through the sprinkler in the summer, having the whole family over for the holidays now that we had a kitchen that could fit everyone (I have a very large Italian family, lol). My mind was filled with the future memories of happy years in our new home.
Once we had the key in hand my husband and I agreed that he would go back to our old place and start loading up the moving truck with boxes while I cleaned the new house top to bottom. With the pack-n-play set up in the empty living room, baby safely playing with her teething toys, I set to work. Of course, my sweet three-year-old wanted to “help mommy” clean. Armed with a feather duster I told her to dust the walls, figuring that was a safe thing for her to do while I deep cleaned the kitchen.
Oh, how wrong I was.
Our house has an open concept. The main floor is one big room so from the kitchen I could see the entire living room. However, when your head is down, gaze focused on the floor you’re scrubbing, you can’t see what shenanigans your kiddos get up to.
I was happily scrubbing away, when all of a sudden I hear…
“Mommy fire!”
Heart in my throat I glance up to see my daughter standing next to a wall of flames!
Okay, I exaggerate a bit. I’m a storyteller, can ya blame me?
Really it was just a spark of flame shooting out of the electrical socket. A quick burst and then it was gone. But since I had no idea why it happened or if it was going to happen again, I ran into the living room, grabbed my baby and toddler and rushed outside. Quickly I called the fire department.
Soon a big red truck filled with a handful of heroes arrived. They inspected what happened and found the cause. My sweet three-year-old who just wanted to help had seen me plug in the vacuum cleaner many times before. In our old place all the sockets were covered. The entire house was baby proofed. But this house was brand new. We literally signed the papers an hour before. Baby proofing was the first thing on my list as soon as I cleaned (should have made it number one, hindsight and all).
My daughter had seen the speaker wire left by the old homeowners. It was partially under the carpet because they had surround sound. Thinking she was helping she pulled on the wire and stuck it in the socket like she’d seen mommy do. Lucky for us the wire was insulated and wasn’t powerful enough to hurt her or do more than cause a tiny spark of flame that singed our wall (nothing a little paint couldn’t fix).
Yes, she scared ten years off my life, and we have talked at length since about not sticking anything in a socket. She even told her baby sister the story, so lesson learned I suppose. While my fireman encounter isn’t as embarrassing as Tamsen’s, it sure makes for a fun story.
If you enjoy hilarious romcoms with accident prone heroines, sexy firefighter heroes, all the fun banter, and steamy scenes hot enough to burn your house down (metaphorically speaking, I promise it won’t actually do that) then be sure to check out The Wedding Dilemma on sale now from Entangled Publishing.
Thanks so much for having me on today!