I have a new co-pilot this time—his name is Robert Fisher. Robert is my beau and he is moving with me to Seattle where we will be taking up residence together in the South Lake Union area. He was the swing vote.

I know some of you are like—um, what?!? So let me tell you about Robert and how we met and ended up where we are now.

Robert and I went to school together. We both grew up in Myrtle Beach and we graduated together from Myrtle Beach High. No, we did not date in high school, nor did we hang out together. We just knew each other, probably had a class or two together, who remembers – LOL. And then 25 years went by—computers…the internet…facebook.

I told you how Tammy got me hooked on facebook. Well when you don’t have a TV, you tend to spend a lot of time online. And I was hooked on what some people refer to as “Crackbook.”

One day in February, I posted something silly about “Time to make the donuts” and Robert made some wisecrack back, followed by a few back and forths about the superior donuts of Macon, GA. Then I got sick and was home for 2 days, and on facebook non-stop. (I must say at this juncture that I am amazed at the amount of people on facebook while at work… LOL). We traded jibes all day and then we were chatting for a couple of hours, followed by a phone call that lasted a couple of hours as well. We found that we had a lot in common, yet were different enough to make it interesting.

We had several marathon phone calls lasting between 4-6 hours, and one saturday we were on the phone basically all day. Then I flew to Atlanta to see him for the first time in 25 years. It was like we had always been together—nothing was awkward. We went out for dinner, wandered around Little 5 Points, hung out at a park all day. We just were, and it was nice. That was followed by trips to Arlington, Myrtle Beach, Orlando, & Seattle. All in we have logged a couple hundred emails, thousands of text messages (thankfully we both have unlimited texting LOL) and 150+ hours on the phone—not to mention commenting on facebook.

Around the end of March-first of April, I started mentioning Seattle and that I was thinking about maybe looking into going back. It really seemed crazy for me to even bring it up when I was blissfully happy in my personal life. But my work life, not so much. Its funny, every move I have made has been a boon to my career, this is the first move that wasn’t. Instead it was a boon to my personal life—FINALLY.

All I kept thinking was “Its going to get costly logging those airline miles,”—is it worth going back to Seattle? I would still have Robert in my life, so maybe Seattle wouldn’t be quite as miserable for me, I would have a different perspective. I just didn’t know. I was on the fence and I couldn’t decide. Making a list of pros and cons was NOT helping either. Then one day Robert said “What if I moved to Seattle too?” I was off the post so fast your head would spin.

I didn’t like that he was so far away in Georgia already, and we both knew eventually we would have to make a decision as to where one of us should move. Seattle was kind of like meeting in the middle—except on the other side of the country.

Who knew I would actually ever find someone. Its funny really, they always say it’ll happen when you aren’t looking for it, well hell, I hadn’t been looking for a long time, so I had kinda given up. LOL My friend Linda Correia said it was about time I stuck my toe in the water again. I told her I didn’t put my toe in the water…. the puddle jumped in front of me before I saw where I was stepping.

Friday morning the movers came and carted off all of my stuff, and that evening the movers took all of Robert’s stuff. Today (Saturday) he is on a one-way flight to Reagan Airport and on Sunday we are ditching this popsicle stand for a cross-country drive to Seattle.

So check back for news from the road and see if we make it across without killing each other. It’ll definitely be a litmus test for how we will make out in the months, and hopefully years, ahead. Personally, I think its going to be fabulous.