Hot guys? Anyone?

So my husband, whom I love (please don't send me a bunch of emails saying how wonderful he is - this isn't about him), has been playing this little game called "Schedule People to Work on the House Without Telling the Wife" lately.

So today I was sitting outside reading my latest manuscript in my bathing suit, trying desperately to dampen the white glow of my body in time for nationals next week. And no, I do not look like LKH's latest heroine - I look like a sickly computer programmer. Into the driveway roars a bunch of guys in a truck. I scramble for my shirt and shorts like a Yankees fan after a foul ball.

Later, after I'd recovered from my embarrassment somewhat, the doorbell rings. I go answer it to find a guy in his twenties asking if I could turn on the outside power outlets. "No," I said to his two rather large, green nipple rings. I couldn't look away. We had the whole conversation with me staring at them.

I did NOT find that hot.

In fact, I hardly ever see a hot guy anywhere. Sighting them is a very rare occurrence for me. I saw one last year at the Police Academy shooting range. Thinking... Vin Diesel was hot in PITCH BLACK (but not in other movies). Um... well, Harrison Ford, of course, but he lives near my parents in Jackson Hole Wyoming and he's sadly VERY OLD now.

Which brings me to one of those stories all my friends find so amusing. It's call Leigh Wyndfield Acts Like A Jackass, Part 182:

My family has a condo up in the mountains and I went up a few days early to write. We had ants. Lots of them. I carefully tracked them into a box of chocolate cereal the kids love, then called the exterminator, since the ants didn't go away when the cereal did. They said they’d be out “sometime.” I shrugged and forgot them, settling happily in to spend a few days merrily writing away.

A day later, there is a knock. "Weird," I thought. "No one comes here." I open the door to the most fantastically built, hot guy I've ever seen in my whole entire life. Whoa.

"Hi," I said, completely confused. Was he lost?

"Hi," he says back in a strange, kind of sexy accent - maybe Norwegian. He looked like he came from Viking stock. Muscles bulge out his uniform and he's carrying this big box by a handle -- and I swear I thought he was a stripper!!!! In my bizarre, messed up writer's mind, I immediately decided my sister-in-law had finally gone one step too far in her pranks (it was my birthday the next day).

We look at each other while I try to form words to send this fabulous hunk of man away, because I know one thing - there is no way I'm letting him take off his clothes! I'm a married woman, for god's sake!

"Um," he says, starting to look confused. "Did you say you have an ant problem?"

Then I realize that the uniform says “Ned’s Exterminators” on it and I had, indeed, called about an ant problem.

I was so embarrassed. Really and truly. But also relieved, since I hadn't yet gotten the words out to stop him from undressing. THANK GOD!!!

But really, that's one of the few men I've taken one look at and been speechless. Often, it's a man's personality that makes him for me, not his outside package. I don't the like feminine good looks you see in magazines. I guess I'm turned on by what I see on the inside more then the outside. Which might be why a lot of my heroes are pretty banged up. To me, scars mean character and experience. They symbolize the ability to face tough challenges head on and come out better for it all.

I have a feeling I may be in the minority, though.

I've been back up quite a few times to the mountains since then and while I've been on the look out, the bugs are all gone. A man who is good looking AND completes a task beyond expectations - be still my beating heart!