I’m Erin. I’m married to a man I call G. We now have 3 children who came in 2.5 years.

But before there were five, there were just two pitiful Match.com subscribers. I emailed G based on a law school headshot he had posted.  He had dark hair and dark eyes, two features I have a weakness for.  I asked him about his dog, believing the type of dog a man owns reveals a great deal about his personality, and he responded with a dog breed I couldn’t even pronounce.  This dog – a Samoyed - plays a critical role in this story because not only does she become the sharpest thorn in my side years later but she is the reason we found each other.  See, I’d never heard of this exotic sounding Samoyed, so I had to do some Googling to see what this beast looked like.

One weekend – having still not been asked to meet this digital stranger in person –  I accepted an offer from a girlfriend to take a walk in Central Park.  We were strolling up the mall toward the fountain when I noticed the beast I’d seen on a Google search.  I looked to the other end of the leash and saw a man who resembled the dark haired and dark eyed person from the headshot. Ten minutes later this dog-walking man passed by me and my friend wearing one of those ridiculous monogrammed backpacks that only Asian expats working at Morgan Stanley have.  On it was his name…and I was sure of it because there is only 1 set of people with a name this Polish and bizarre even in a city of 18 million people.

We were engaged 6 months later.

We’ve now been married 8 years.  Our three babies came right on top of each other, forcing dimwitted people to insist they are triplets. We left city life for the quieter and stranger state of Maine.

G has days he can still set my soul on fire…and then he has days I want to set his face on fire.