11-26-08

For Christmas I got you FIRE!!!!

It all started at work, when I yelled a little too loudly for the cubicle walls “you bought what?”

“I bought you a chimnea for the back yard! I bought it for your birthday, and your Christmas…and my christmas” meaning he spent a lot on it. “Oh no, I got it on sale” he said when I asked him how much. “I opened a credit card and got $30 off.”

Here’s where my office cohorts REALLY loved me.”YOU DID WHAT?” I yelled, visions of his $2k in 2 week splurge in Miami a few years back we are still paying off.

Everything will be ok.

———-

So a few days ago the thing comes in. It’s not a chimnea, chimneas have limits…they have a roof, the flames can only go so high. This is a three foot, solid metal OPEN fire pit. It sits approximately three feet on all three sides by two wooden fences and a brick wall.

“I’m going out for fire wood” he says.

“Don’t we have a bag of briquettes in the back under the grill.” It;s not enough, he comes back in and sets a BAG of wood, nice, clean chopped, cliche logs of wood.

The girls drag the bag across the tile chanting “fire! fire!”

“The girls go to bed before you start it.”

“Awww” all three of them: instant bad guy. The girls go to sleep, I go about my business, alternating web surfing and crocheting until I smell smoke. I don’t look up, I municode.com the burning regs for Vero. Small=ok. Ok, good. I look up.

David’s dancing around the fire in some adrenaline enduced euphoria holding a poker in one hand and a bottle of lighter fluid in the other. Or at least this is what I envision if I wasn’t blinded by the flames leaping into the air rivaling the fires set by the drunk kids at A&M.

I, doing my wifely duties, fly to the door and chastize…in a low voice so as not to draw attention to the situation…which is great in retrospect because it’s hard to miss eight foot high flames. He has the fire set up boyscout style…all teepee shaped and ready to cook a frozen turkey in 9.5 minutes. ABSOLUTE MARSHMELLOW EXTERMINATION.

He is dejected, on the verge of protest, finally setteling on a “yes dear” as his body slumps.

I spin back around, sit on the couch and refuse to acknowledge my back yard for the next two hours. The smell of smoke is thick. I’m waiting for the alarms to go off.

This is the gift that rivals the “she wants a Playstation, she told me” Christmas where my brother got a new playstation after persuading my mom I wanted one so badly I couldn’t see straight.

Everything will be ok. As Ben Stein would say: Burn Mother F@Ker, burn.