The New Couch

Saturday, 5 AM. The phone was ringing. The Blackberry was vibrating on the bed side table. Grabbing for the phone with one hand, reaching for the Blackberry with the other, I cleared my throat before talking.

“Hello, Martha?” I heard the tentative voice of Wayne, my Help Desk Supervisor.

“Wha’s up Wayne?” I croaked out

“Sorry to call, but we have a new virus attack. I have alerted Dan and Sonja, and we are setting up a 5:30 AM conference call.”

“Damn. Have any systems been affected?” I asked as I sat up.

“We think we are seeing some problems on the unit in Dallas. Marian has been alerted and is running diagnostics on the server. Dan is investigating what patches are available.”

“OK, thanks Wayne. I’ll dial into the call. Alert Tony as well, and let Dan know I want the current status emailed to me before the call begins. Bye.”

Hanging up the phone, I was resigned that my day’s plan, couch shopping, was on hold again. For nearly two years, I had been looking for a new couch. If the cushions were right, the arms or the legs were wrong, or the price was unreasonable. Finding the right couch was a never ending tale of unsuccessful shopping trips too often delayed by my job.

I was the CIO of a national production company. In the business world that made me the Chief Information Officer, but it could also mean your Career Is Over. The job required constant immersion into the latest crises, the latest planning session or the latest meeting. Every system and every system problem was my responsibility, seven days a week, twenty four hours a day and an easy target on my back.

As I got up, I washed my face and made a fresh pot of coffee. Early morning calls should never be taken on stale coffee. The sun was beginning to peek over my backyard fence, with only a sliver of orange light visible in the stillness of the early dawn. If there was any consolation at all for being up at this ungodly hour, it is a lovely time in the morning.

My home, like most of my neighbors, was fenced-in in the backyard with a pool, a garage in front with an entrance from the garage directly into the house. Fences in the back and gardeners in the front mean most of the neighbors could go for years without seeing each other. So although I lived there for twelve years, I didn’t know any of my neighbors. Still as I gazed out my back window, I wondered if any of them were up waiting to start an early Saturday morning conference call.

Getting situated at my desk, I dialed into the first call. As the calls droned on, I mindlessly alternated playing FreeCell and Hearts. First call done, second call complete, third call over, fourth call scheduled. Waiting, I wandered over to the on line dating service, www.YouAndITogether.com.

The previous weekend my friend Judy came to visit. After an evening of whining about the emptiness of our social calendar, neither able to remember the last movie we had actually seen in a movie cinema, nor the last time either of us had gone out on a date, we indulged ourselves with chocolate and Merlot.

Judy talked me into signing up for this online dating service. After ten years of marriage, and two children, Judy’s husband walked out declaring he was not ready to settle down. A woman of action, Judy set about with single-minded determination to tackle her current status and reverse the situation. Often she pulled me along as her co-conspirator.

Since the end of my marriage, I had equal determination to enjoy my life as an independent woman, the poster child for the single and over 50 woman. I found great pleasure to be in charge of the remote control, never compromising on what or if to cook for dinner, always finding the toilet seat where I expected it to be, and happily filling the closets in the house with my shoes.

Maybe it was the wine, or the realization that another New Years Eve had passed with out a date, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. And, although I enjoyed my single life style, it was always nice to have a date on Saturday night. We had so much fun filling out our profiles and coming up with our tag lines. Judy’s tag line is ‘Ready to share that remote?” and mine is “Looking for Mr. Good Date”. Since then, I hadn’t been back to the dating service site.

Noting the next call was due in ten minutes, I entered my username and password and to my surprise I had forty six responses to my ad. I giggled as I browsed through the mail. Many were from out of towners, even some from out of the country. It seemed a lot of work for a date, traveling to some foreign country. There was even a married man looking for an afternoon girlfriend. I just deleted that one, figuring it didn’t require a polite answer.

As I got down to the 4 to 6 emails that were local and single, it was time for my next call.

Good news. The infected systems were identified and isolated. All on line servers were current with the latest security patches. There were still some remaining remote sites that needed to be patched but they had been identified. A plan was put into effect to handle the lap tops as the users logged onto the network. At this rate, our monitoring would be complete with a few more calls and we would be finished by early afternoon. It looked like that couch shopping trip would be possible after all.

Ding rings from my computer. Lo and behold, there is an online note to me. It was from “On the Beach”, sender of one of the emails I received. I flashed over to his profile, and read what he wrote. Umm, interesting. We certainly were a good match on our love of travel and exotic places. What a nice description for his perfect date – a late afternoon walk through tropical gardens, followed by wine at the beach while watching the sunset, and a dinner picnic. And even more perfect, a second date. Very nice!

Oops, the call, no time for this right now.

“Okay everyone, sounds like we are making excellent progress. Let’s schedule a follow up call for one hour from now. If the current status remains the same, we can release the field network staff, but we will still need the help desk, corporate networks and management teams. Dan, anything you want to add?”

”Thanks Martha., just that I would like the network staff to remain on the line.” Dan said as we completed the current call.

Turning back to Mr. On the Beach, I wrote. “Hey there. Looks like you have done a lot of traveling.”

Ding “Looks like you’ve traveled also. Where was that picture taken?”

“Morocco. Your picture looks interesting. Where was it taken?”

Ding “Galapagos. I just got back a few weeks ago from a two week vacation. It was wonderful. Never have been to Morocco. What was that like?”

Chatting back and forth for the next hour, we discovered that we lived near each other; both were employed in Information Technology, and both were on conference calls dealing with the virus. We decided to meet at 4 PM at the Starbucks for a cup of coffee. I wondered if he looked like his pictures; if he would be as interesting in person. I couldn’t wait to tell Judy. But it was time to dial into the next conference call.

Coffee became the prelude to a dinner date, and closely following that, the perfect date – that walk in the garden, a bottle of wine, sunset on the beach, and a lovely picnic dinner. And even better, a follow up date was planned, and then another, and another.

“This is certainly the shock and awe of the year,” Judy teased as she listened to me describe our dates. “As I said, never say never.”

“It’s been barely two months since I began seeing him, but it’s like he is a part of my life now, part of my everyday. God, I sound like a ditzy teenager.”

Judy just laughed with that annoying ‘I told you so look in her eyes.’ Actually I think she was as amazed as I was. Since my divorce and a disastrous rebound relationship, I haven’t been seriously involved with anyone. That was nearly twenty years ago. Judy, in her analytical way, explained that I only selected men to date that were safe, relationships that couldn’t get too close.

“Still,” Judy said “you have exhibited nesting signs lately, even before we began our on line experiment. Just look at the way you have thrown yourself into fixing up your home. You’ve been downright domestic with the time and energy you have put into color coordinating your bathrooms. A real Martha Stewart act, without the jail time of course.”

She could be right. Possibly it was a delayed reaction to 9-11, or my way of dealing with my 23 year old daughter moving out of home and town this last year. It wasn’t that I didn’t like nice things in the house, but I never seemed to have that gene that made decorating fun.

Just then the phone rang. Judy kept herself busy reviewing my design book for the house. As I hung up the phone, she looked at my quizzically.

“Hey, what was that? You got this monotone sound to your voice.”

“That was Doug,” I replied as if that answered her question.

“And???” she asked.

“He was offered a job promotion.” I responded as Judy looked at me. “In London,” I added.

The first bathroom was complete and the construction on the second bathroom had started. To cheer me up, I upgraded the bathtub to a larger soaker model with jets for Jacuzzi and air bubbles. At least this bathroom could be my get away from it all, ultimate relaxation and self pampering room.

Following another unsuccessful couch shopping event, I met Doug for a walk on the beach, and a glass of wine. Both of us were very good at talking around his move, but not discussing what it would mean to us. Knowing our time was limited, we decided to take a weekend together to the New Orleans jazz festival.

Roaming the streets of New Orleans, we indulged our senses with every form of live jazz, bathing in flavors of Cajun cooking and dancing to the Creole tempo through the French Quarter. Toe tapping to the beats and sounds of New Orleans, strolling the historic streets, it seemed as if this could go on forever.

Maybe it was the romantic setting, the after effects of wine and oysters, or the reality that we were about to be forced to go our separate ways. Whatever the cause, three months after we met, Doug proposed to me.

Panic overwhelms me. “Breath Martha, take ten slow breaths,” I tell myself. It is just two little words to say, “I do.” I do what? I do take this man to be my husband? I do commit to change my life 180 degrees, move away from everything and everyone I know, leave my career just as I get to the top, sell my home so that I have no where to run back to, and then, I do move out of the country? My breathing becomes labored.

Do I really know this man? This is crazy. I have known him for less than 5 months, less time than it has taken to redo my bathrooms. I breathe slowly, look at him, and say “I do”.

The moving boxes are now gone, our weekends are booked hopping cheap flights to Anywhere’s-Europe, and we’ve yet to deplete our kitchen wine rack. Quite wonderful? Absolutely.

Yet with all this wonder, I still don’t have a new couch.