That's a 10-4 Good Buddy, Over and Out

So our plan was to stop texting and start talking.

I am the one with the life more burdened by obligations, so I said I’d call him. On Thursday. During the football playoff game. I’d surely be planted on the sofa with a beer by kickoff. That we could count on. I could make this commitment.

And of course that was the night I returned from a particularly aggravating trip to the grocery store to find that my cable service had gone out without explanation. And my internet. And my phone.

And I spent the better part of the next hour screeching obscenities and insults at the inept customer service people and technicians who were as capable as say, Mr. Magoo, at diagnosing the problems, and who had me plugging and unplugging, connecting and reconnecting and disconnecting, checking and rechecking all manner of things while they ran their little troubleshooting tests.

The thing that really sent me sailing over the edge of reason and well into the pit of indiscriminate language, besides the fact that I was missing my beloved team playing in a game that was critical to the playoffs, was that while I would be on hold, some cheerful voice would encourage me to tune in (to the TV that was not getting service) and scroll to channel whatever to select from a menu of channels (all completely frivolous, and hello, not available to me at the moment) so I can pay even more per month for more channels than anyone could ever possibly watch, that were at best, unreliable if there was a poof of wind, a droplet of rain, a flake of snow, or even just a bad weather forecast.

And so, it was later than I’d expected when I emailed Scott from my phone for his number (again) so I could call him on my cell. And I was crankier than I expected when I had to explain what was happening, and even more self conscious about my phone voice (now ragged from the lengthy stretch of screeching). He’d probably think it was my mother calling. (Yooooo Hoooo!)

But there we were on the phone. Catching up on the details. Or maybe verifying them? Him giving me game updates. We knew each other's statuses. (Divorced) And children (two each). And where we are living (not far from where we were living the last time we bumped into each other), and dug into the good stuff.

Common friends, jobs, family stuff, parents, ways in which our former spouses reach out and stir the pot even post divorce. He was just crossing the finish line with his divorce, and I could feel that he was walking the same path I had when I was racing around the last turn in mine. So unpleasant. So lonely a place. Nothing anyone can do for you but distract you.

Maybe I was the distraction. Fair enough. I could distract with the best of them.

We planned to meet for drinks and spend time distracting each other from the laundry list of disasters life frisbeed our way every day. Not the coming Saturday but the next when his girls were with their mother.

Perfect. And in the mean time, we’d keep talking. And texting.

And figuring out if the new Liza and Scott even remotely resembled the old Liza and Scott from 30 years ago.