Chapter 12

Laura’s turn:

What a weekend. Married. Mated. Not just the happy playing and toying and nibbling and licks and sucking, all of which I experienced for the first time with John.

Nope. Mated. In the minds of right-thinking people, we have consummated a marriage, a life-long commitment.

And did it again and again and again, just to make sure we got it right.

That takes care of the purely physical evaluation of my new marriage, and believe me, I cannot for the world of me separate the purely physical from the emotional and spiritual aspects. This all works because we love each other.

So it’s Sunday night of my honeymoon weekend and tomorrow I have to get up, get dressed, and go in for my first real day at work. Oh, whatever shall we do to entertain ourselves for the evening?

Yep! Very popular activity, I’m told. I can see (and hear and feel and taste and smell) why.

I might be an inexperienced novice...

“I really don’t know a lot about all this, baby,” I told my new husband. “You’re the first. And only.”

“Which means we play around with each other and find out what WE like.”

“I like it ALL”

“Me, too.”

“And we’ll learn each other...”

One thing I learned is that going to sleep, as one of my quite promiscuous ‘friends’ used to say, “freshly fucked,” is an order of magnitude better than a sticky finger from a nice little masturbatory orgasm.

“I don’t wanna move, John.”

“Me neither. But there’s gonna be a wet spot.”

“Life is wrought with sorrows,” I giggled, snuggling into him, immobilizing him with an arm. “Deal with it.”

Wasn’t that big an obstacle. Alarm clock. Went off a lot earlier than I’d wish, but I popped right out of bed. First day at work. Wasn’t gonna be late.

Fixings for a two-egg omelet and toast and cup of good coffee. And John’s big thermal travel mug.

“Office coffee sucks,” he said. “This’ll get you halfway through the day.”

A kiss at the door and I left my one-armed husband. He waved as he watched me drive off in HIS truck. He’ll get a company car when he goes back to work. Me? I dunno if I want to horse this big ol’ truck through a daily commute. I mean, I grew up on a farm and I learned to drive our truck early on, although Dad taught me to drive in Mom’s SUV, which was a lot smaller.

This truck, though, I certainly do feel safe. It’s big, not the biggest on the road, but plenty big, and it’s comfortable, and now, pretty familiar. Domestic transport, though. We have a farm. We NEED a truck. But as a regular commute? That thing gets less than twenty miles to a gallon in mixed driving. BIG tires. A fortune. We have two incomes now. Might just want to talk to John about a little something for my drive to work.

No, riding with him’s not really an option on all too many days. He has places to go. I work in an office. His hours and my hours won’t necessarily match up.

Hmmm. Drive time is thinking time. Nice.

I parked the truck at the building, let myself in the door with my new employee badge, said “Hi” to a couple of guys, entered my new office space.

First day on the job for the new girl. I’m a curiosity, despite the fact that I’ve met quite a few of my new co-workers during the post-hurricane volunteer efforts. I do make a concerted effort to let Pete know I’m here.

“John says ‘start the clock’,” I tell him.

“Let me print your new computer login,” he said. I few moments later he passed me a page from his printer. “You have a printer in your office, too,” he said. “But big jobs, odd sizes, copies, that’s in the copier room. You know...”

“Should be listed on the printer dialog box,” I said.

“Yeah...” he smiled. “You’ll figure it out. And that email’s got our local IT guy’s phone numbers if you need ‘im.”

“That’ll work,” I said.

I walked into MY new office which is actually still a lot of Gabby’s office. She’s due in at any time. I know she’ll haul off a few boxes of her stuff, like the pictures of her family and little trinkets and keepsakes and artwork from her kids – things that one, tell me that she brought herself into this place and second, that people around here think that’s a perfectly acceptable thing to do.

I’ll do it as time goes by, I’m sure. First up will be my wedding photo. It’s not a posed shot by a professional photographer of me and John dressed like European royalty, it’s us, parents, friends, the pastor, normally clothed, standing in the yard with the pasture in the background.

The computer logon worked as I expected. Instructions said that I needed to ditch the temporary password and create my own. Makes sense. Passwords are a way of life.

Opened up the email program, happily noted an email shotgunned to the division announcing my position, giving my email, phone numbers, and reminding everyone that there’s a learning curve to the job.

Several of the office denizens stopped by for personal greetings. Friendly bunch. Then Gabby showed up.

Let the games begin.

Not really ‘games’. Gabby knows her stuff and this is not a ‘sit at the front desk and be personable’ job. Tracking this stuff is crucial to the operation of the division.

“Okay, this is your first login to SAP.” Gabby’s gentle.

“John has a longer name,” I said.

She snickered. “I KNOW what John calls it and he’s mostly right, but please don’t take advice on this stuff from John. He’s hopeless.”

“See?!? That’s a side I don’t see, except for his vulnerability to tree branches.”

“Oh, don’t get me wrong. He’s a nice guy and I hear he’s an actual god at what he does, but tracking this stuff isn’t what he does. Not well, anyway.”

So off we went. I scribbled notes, printed screenshots and scribbled notes on them, broke for lunch and took HER to lunch because one should always show respect to a good teacher.

After lunch we dove right back into it. By the end of the day I think my head was visibly pulsing.

I got back home to my one-armed husband who managed to form up a batch of beans and rice.

“I used a plastic bag between my cast and the stuff I was cutting. That’s why it looks like random sizes.”

I kissed his nose in gratitude, submitted to a very workmanlike one-handed back massage, and we caught up on the day’s events.

“Daytime TV sucks,” he opined.

“We already knew that.”

“Job? Are you going to do it?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Gabby’s a good teacher. I have a pile of notes. I can deal with it. And we have this place so I can get out of the ‘office’ state of mind and deal with real, tangible situations.”

While the rice was cooking for dinner, John and I did a quick run through the homestead, checking on the cattle, feed, water, generally just passing an eye on things. It might not be much but it IS a farm and requires daily attention.

Two weeks went by. There were days that when I got home I demanded (and got) a very thorough rubbing and caressing of tired shoulders.

“I close my eyes and a stupid Excel spreadsheet pops up,” I told him.

“That’s scary, love. Those things are a nightmare to me. I can stand in the smoking remains of an electrical catastrophe, orchestrating order from chaos, but those monthly budget reports terrorize me.”

“Honey,” I said, “we’ll fix that together. You’ll have me. Maybe you’ll get the skills by proximity.”

John’s cast came off with the admonishment to not do heavy work with that arm, and with the cast gone, John’s back at work. Now we get to see what normal life is going to look like.

Normal. It really isn’t. Sure, almost six weeks since the storm came though, and many of the important places were back open. Some of them. Like maybe one out of four grocery stores. Less than half the gas stations. A handful of restaurants. Odds and ends.

What businesses WERE open could be an ordeal as returning families are all trying to get lives back together. We were fortunate. John’s generator made sure that we didn’t have to deal with what could happen to a fridge full of food with no electricity for two or three weeks.