wendy house

The wendy house has spent 4 years together with wordpress. This is one of the longer technology-service relationships that I’ve participated in. 

Still feels good

Happy valentines day

Jill: do you think he’s handsome?
Gail:  Handsome isn’t quite the word I’d use,  cute, good looking,  cheeky,  maybe.  Those dimples, pale green eyes and tight perky bum are a class above the other boys

Jill: is he your boyfriend?
Gail:  NO! Why d’you think that?

Jill: Well,  I saw you holding hands and you’re always hanging-out together after school
Gail: no,  he’s just a friend, I keep thinking I should fancy him,  what with him being so pretty and all,  but I don’t…  …don’t know why

Jill: are you gay?
Gail: don’t think so, I don’t fancy any girls

Jill: do you fancy any boys?
Gail: no.  It’s really disappointing,  I keep hoping that it’s just because I haven’t met the right boy yet,  but how many boys do you have to meet?  Everyone else seems to find people to go out with and snog in the corridors. 

Jill: what about Andy?  He’s nice, tall, funny and clever, there’s a whole load of girls want to go out with him,  you sit next to him in maths and history and you go round his place after class, some of the girls are really jealous
Gail: Really?!  He’d love to know that,  can I tell him? 

Jill: NO!  way-too embarassin’
Gail: You too?!   Why can’t I see it, whatever it is that he has that you all fancy

I love her. Tears streaming down John’s face.  I know. Liz reassures him

 I didn’t love any of the others. As one of ‘the others’ Liz understands, laugh’s, lowers and softens her tone  I know.

Where is she?  Liz knows that Maria is skinny-dipping with her new lover, John’s friend, on a beach 5 miles west of the camp site.  She can look after herself,  where-ever she is,  she’ll be alright. 

John takes the torch, scrambles out of Maria’s tent and starts stumbling from tent to tent,  peering in, stumbling.  He’s been drinking.  Liz curses the lads for leaving John with the holiday whisky stash.  

Where is she? Liz parries  ‘It doesn’t matter.  Where-ever she is,  it’s none of our business.  John,  ITS OVER, she’s left you, she doesn’t want to see you.  Let her go’  John doesn’t appear to hear.  He makes his way to his aging MG midget and climbs in.  Liz runs to the car and jumps into the passenger seat. 

John,  you’re in no state to drive,  DONT DRIVE.  The car lurches over the field’s uneven ground, Liz wishes she was old enough to drive  Calm down,  where are you going?  As he shifts to second gear he says ‘the pub’.  Liz tries again Can we walk? John is determined  You can walk if you want.  The pub is only 3 miles away,  the roads are deserted,  they could make it.  The lad’s are in the pub,  support,  distraction and warmth.  They swerve down the dry-stone-wall lined winding roads.

John seemed to need to move his relationship loss of control and emotional pain to something physical.   

A wall mangled the Midget

Love crashed

As they strode towards each other through the bed warehouse John’s baritone reassured the young besuited sales assistant

“I’m looking for a bed”
“me too!” Sarah’s soprano sang,  John stopped, turned to face her
“Are you?” his slight Oklahoma drawl,  playfully suggesting a challenge
“No, I’m looking for YER bed misser” Sarah tilted her head and flashed her lashes to take up the challenge. John blushed with a hint of a smile before turning back to the sales assistant. 

The technical bed-purchasing discussions didn’t interest Sarah.  From across the warehous she interrupted their conversation to ask the sales assistant “If I takes me shoes off can I jump on yer beds… …to test em out like?” the young besuited assistant nodded. 

Sarah kicked of her pumps, leapt onto the nearest bed then launched from bed to bed across the store finally stopping by John who was lying on his back.  His body barely moved as she landed beside him. His eyes were closed, his fingers woven together across his chest. If she hadn’t known he was testing sleep she might have thought him dead. Sarah gently kissed Johns serene forehead.  

“Are you dead? Can I wake the dead?!” Sarah started trampolining by John’s side.  With a slow deliberate move he swung his arms round her legs and draggged them to the foot of the bed.  She fell neatly in a giggling bundle beside him.

“I think this one will do,  don’t you?” he said to the sales assistant while holding Sarah’s gaze.

Person At Party In Garden (PAPIG): is [chap] coming to the party?

Wendy:  I don’t know,  I think he might be out of the country,  he was in Australia on Monday

PAPIG:  is he YOUR man?

Wendy: (calmly spills drink over wasp while gatheirng composure)…no, he’s not my man…

PAPIG: I thought that was strange…  …I mean,  your man being out of the country

Wendy: Oh (signifying a brain-stall prompted by the assumption that I possess a man that is averse to leaving the country)

March 15th 1984

It will take several months to read the varied scrawl of miss-spelt ramblings in my early diaries.  Mumzie recently discovered these diaries in a dark corner of her home.  The diaries stop in 1984 when I switched to letter writing…

A second sheet was added to this 1984 entry during my first year at University.   The day went something like this: 

A morning of contemplating whether a fascinating but somewhat screwed-up boy should have the benefit of my influence in his life.  

An afternoon sketching portraits of 2 handsome boys while they supplied me with lots of tea.  The tea taking isn’t explicitly mentioned because it is understood as a part of the ’spending an afternoon with a handsome fellow’ process.  The boys had the afrontary to keep the sketches.  Sadly,  I don’t actually have copies of any of the portraits I used to produce.  I was fairly prolific with my sketch-book as well as in my diaries.  

The evening involved drinking ’side cars’ in a disco and helping a girl-friend disrupt the dancefloor during some of those slow girl-boy cuddling dances by jumping around between the soppy-people.  

A fabulous day indeed.

boys with fancy toys captured my childish attention. 
during my teens fast, animated, talkers arrested this heart. 
moody, anachronistic, lads provoked passion through my 20’s.  
the 30’s found unassuming social facilitators gifting eternal love.
what qualities will seduce this heart through its 40’s? 

Hope desires wisdom

written at 2am on a quiet, sleepless, balmy, summer Seattle night. (Wendy age 42)

1990

While searching my drawers for material to take to this diary reading event I rediscovered way too much ‘poetry’,  uhum.  Below is a piece inspired by Swampthang,  presented in original scrawl.  To read it you need to

START SQUINTING NOW:

Judging by the uneven scrawl it could have been written on a #11 bus.

Wendy:  “How long are your jump leads?”

Guy:  “this long”

Whips them out to demonstrate. Wendy blushes then smiles.  Easily over 10ft of lead.  More than enough to reach LooSea.

Wendy:  “Will you marry me?”

Bouncing and clapping hands with eyes clearly fixed on the jump leads.  Nearly slips on the wet-grass.

Guy: “I don’t think my wife would approve”

eyes focused on his jump leads with no actual jumping.

The rest of the conversation is unpublishable. 

My proposal wasn’t accepted. 

Sigh

Wendy persistently-impulsive

Wendy: ‘…(unpublishable work-related suggestion in email)..”

Potential fiancee:  “Please!! Yes!! Go for it!! Onward!”

Perhaps i should do a few sensible things before I propose like

• wait until I’ve known of the guy for more than 2 days, 
• had more than 1 verbal conversation with him, 
• find out if he’s ‘taken’ or not ‘into’ girls, 
• check his age, height and weight  (meet him)
• fully assess his potential player characteristics

Seems like a more ’sensible’, British reserve, type-thing to do.  Then again I’m not in Britain now.  Maybe I can be ‘racey’?

What do you think?  Advice?

• I get blog design freedom.  Release the Bloggers! I’m seeking categorisation, search, drafting (spelling) facilities.  Visual customisation opportunities are a minimum requirement.
• I learn something.
• readers aren’t required to have a passport.

• Purchased Web Service with subsidised Domain space from GoDaddy:  http://www.wendyhome.com/

GoDaddy tutorials are extremely good.  They are ’Wizard’ step-by-step guides with pictures of what you will see at each step. The difficult bit is working out which tutorial I need!  

• Used Microsoft publisher (first time) to produce and publish a ‘Draft’ webpage on the Domain.  Needs some planning and ’Design’!!!!!  

I hope to ferment creative ways to use web-pages around the Blog…

• Put ‘Wordpress 2′ and “MoveableType” Zip files on the Web Server.  By first downloading it to my computer then ‘moving’ it using FTP to the WendyHome web server.  This did involve CRASHING IE 6.0 4 times. I sent Micorosoft the details of each crash through their ‘Send Error Report’ system.  Hope someone fixes something so others don’t have to deal with that. 

Everytime I try to open the zip file’s on the web-server I get a message saying thet are currupted. Sigh. I’m ‘blocked’ from progress here.

• Completed a preliminary evaluation of the free blogging software (QuickBlog V1.1)  provided with the web-server space purchase.  Practical results show on:  http://the.wendyhome.com/

• Excellent categorisation system management system!
• Ability to ‘import’ past blog entries using RSS.  Import constrained by MSN Spaces to last ‘25′ entries and no comments.  Sigh.
• Poor entry editting GUI . For example, no colour palette,  I’d have to LEARN HTML.  No thanks…
• Spell-check on entries.  Hooray!!!!
• Extremely limited visual and modular customization (embedded lists etc) personalization (themed templates) opportunities compared to MSN Spaces.  Oh deary.
• Commenters can leave their email address for me,  rather than ‘pulbished.  Hooray!
• Horrific supplier advertising at the top of the blog-page.  This one persistent visual-yuck feature drives me getting either Wordpress or MoveableType working on the WebServer.

 

 I’ll be moving the Wendyhouse sometime soon.  Soon?  Maybe by August at this rate….

W Doing-it-herself (One-care)

Apparantly my scary boobs were just tooooo much for the youngster.  They seem to have totally undermined his ability to dial or text my phone numbers when I’m likely to answer,  reply-send an email to me then prompted him to re-post his online dating profile and actively use it. 

Who would have guessed?  According to Jennifer throwing my panties at him would have produced better results than pointing the booby-dudes at him.

Never under-estimate the power of the booby-dudes,  insulated or not,  they can have far-reaching effects. 

Affectionately known by the brave, and Amadeus, as

Bill and Ben

Pickles:  <looking directly at Wendy’s boobs>  “I’m not a big boob man,  those are quite big“

Wendy:  “they’re ‘B’ the rest is mainly bra-padding to keep them warm”

Pickles:  <looks relieved> 

A date called Pickles?  A quick glance in his fridge revealed a door almost exclusively filled with A LOT of bottled ketchup-style sauces,  a home made curry and a big US style pickle jar,  full gherkins. 

After minimum instruction he’s mastered making a decent cup of PG tips using a pyramid bag, mug,  water, microwave and milk.  We had to make an excursion to a shop for the milk.  UK people should note that several USians who have risked inviting me into their homes didn’t have

• electric kettles

• stove-top kettles (they use coffee machines)

• milk in thier fridge (because they use cream in their coffee)

Since arriving in the US I’ve learned to carry emergency teabags and improvise on the kettle.  I haven’t found a milk solution other than going to the shop.

W 

<Mawkishness warning>

This letter is to tell you how
I am thinking of you here and now.I was just thinking of you then.
Later.  I will consider you again. 

I cannot miss what I’ve never had.
I can mull over an amusing lad,

Build smiles around anticipation,
Delight in shared appreciation.

<Mawkishness over>

No puking please.

Occassional outbursts of soppiness are a side-effect of being Wendy.

“Where’s your labrador puppy? <snigger>” flatmates, 1983

Teasing me about the puppy I subsequently dated for 3 years.

“He’s just a big labrador puppy” Amadeus Director, 1989

I was cast opposite this puppy’s Amadeus as Constanza Mozart.  I started dating him on closing night.  Lived with him for 5 years.  The director commented that ‘the potential chemistry’ influenced the original casting decision.

“You’ve turned him into a labrador puppy” Lad’s-best-friend, 1995

Comment on how meeting me had impacted the lad’s behaviour.  I subsequently lived with the lad for 5 years .

W looking-for-a-labrador-lad

What’s good about this lad?  

• alive.
• youngster (35yrs – I’m ageist,  prefer ‘healthy’ lads) 
• can get his hands on fire-engines (big, red, warm and shiney,  YUMMY!)
• paramedic skills (useful for when I fall over). 
• Loves his mum and spontaneously offered to lend her to me.
• is cheeky and potentially subversive.
• when warned about my English ‘yellow wonky’ toothipegs he told me his dog’s yellow teeth hadn’t stopped them bonding.  Incidentally,  he has the shiniest white teeth I’ve ever seen.  This is a difficult achievement in teeth-bleaching US. 
• suggested we go to a Kareoke bar hosted by an MC that is proudly living in the 1980s.
• asks me questions,  listens to what I say and then asks more,  pertinent questions (i.e. not arrogant, not self-obsessed).
• can use a cell-phone and email despite mysterious happenings.
• removed his internet dating profile after we’d mailed and chatted.
• No kitty-allergies.

What’s less good about this lad?: 

• 45mins drive between us (no direct bus service). 
• limited meeting opportunites because of respective work commitments.
• slips into espousing his life philosophy in small monologues (I guess I can catch 20 winks when this happens).

 The less good stuff is all relatively trivial...

W

• Digging-up Anglo-Saxon graves.  Getting hot and sweaty down in the dirt,  researching people’s lives through their deaths and artifacts.  Hey that skull was placed on the skeleton’s feet!  Evidently this was common pre-christian practice to stop the ‘dead’ from coming back to life and walking away.  Not sure if someone’s dead?  Then decapitate them.  That removes uncertainty!  I DID this date and I’ve been digging-up skinny old bodies ever since….
• High-diving.  oOOoOOoo! Wet,  adrenaline rush, challenge, skill and the obvious visual attractions.  There’s even time for Tea between dives.
• Small dinghy sailing (Lasers, Hoby-cats and the like).  I do luurrve wriggling into my wet-suit,  holding the jib in a force 3 or more and balancing the boat for speeeeeeeed with a guy who can skipper while wearing his wet-suit with aplomb.  Calm down.  More TEA!
• Hospital accident and emergency room.  Date demonstrated calm collectedness and caring responsibility in a high-stress context.  Very appealing to a fall-over artist such as myself.  I’ll be on-call for Tea duties to help everyone stay calm.
• Setting-up Moveable-type blogging software on my home wireless network.  Oh,  I neeeeeeeeeed that…   …I lurrrve a man who gives me what I need….  
• Clairvoyant.  A novel way to work out whether we should have a second date.  Ask clairvoyant for a short and long term forcast.
• Roller-coaster rides.  B-b-B-b-B-b-Bouncing!  Need to keep the thermosflask of Tea lid tightly screwed to avoid it flying up your substantial nose.
• Gardening.  Hands and knees in the mud,  communing with nature.  Hmmmm… …natural appeal and a shower requirement… 
• Beer Festival: Close to this girl’s heart,  flavours,  people to meet and listen to, a relaxed atmosphere and a personal interest.
• Interactive Show:  I’m thinking of Theatro Zinzani.  Sensual,  engaging, an opportunity to dress-up and feel special, an opportunity to join in and much to talk about.
• Tom Waits concert.  Spluuuuuusssssshhhhh… …OH OH!…  was that good for you?  It was AMAZING for me.  I feel all dizzy.  Careful, high-fall-over risk zone (Tea wont help here).

 

 

 

• BonfireNight.  5th November. Warm UK memories <Sigh>
• ThanksGiving Dinner.  All those fabulous family members and wierdy special guests of all ages, shapes, and fortune.  Love the generosity and the group dynamics. 
• Wedding: think 4 weddings and a funeral,  these events are so special.  To be invited to share in someone’s special day is an exceptional wonderful gift.  Oh,  crumbs, I’m ‘gushing’.
• Kite flying over lake union from Gasworks park…..

• Cycle-ride to a local brewery.  I like working-up a sweat & downing a beer.  No need for Tea if the other brew’s on tap.
• Restaurant dinner.  Certainly reveals if the date is ‘conversationally challenged’.  US restaurants may present their Tea in a visually pleasing fashion but they haven’t mastered the necessary brewing skills.
• Mariners game.  I might get to see some passion along with the conversation.  No risk of spilling any Tea from the thermosflask. 
• Meet the parents.  See what he might turn-out to be like in 20 years time… …without asking the Clairvoyant.
• Day-trip with fabulous views.  Pleasing the visual senses,  taking in nature.  In the Northwest this is an ‘easy’ option because there is just SO much.
• Shopping-by-proxy.  Where the date absolutely has a deadline on purchasing something (home, bed, wedding-outfit, pet, major household appliance etc).  Date should beg,  and I mean BEG, me to come along and give my EXPERT opinion.  Date must be prepared to LISTEN and act on that expert opinion.

• Coffee in Starbucks.  Extremely poor Tea options.
• Walk around a suburb.  For example, Greenlake park.  Careful,  I might get over-excited…  …Uh,  I don’t think so!
• Mountain hike.  Leave cellular-service range with a potential wacko for company?????  Give me credit,  I’m not COMPLETELY bonkers.

Any good-bad date stories YOU (it’s not all about me) would like to anonymously share? 

W seeing-reasons-for-a-good-brew-up

Quick recap:

• trouble getting photographs through internet dating service censors.
• inbox explosion from unfiltered potential dates.
• post-hoc rationale for writing to potential hotties serially rather than consecutively.
• first phonecall from current hottie.
• Splushy e-mails.

MSN Spaces categories could have helped me here,  but they didn’t.

Was the first date a success?

• I wasn’t inolved in a major pile-up.  I took the bus to by-pass the challenge of driving Loo Sea (1995 Honda Civic).
• I got off at the wrong bus-stop.  Luckily, hotty has a mobile phone and knows how to use it.
• Half way through the evening I felt deep empathy with Jackson Pollock canvases.
• hottie is confirmed as party animal.  I didn’t get home until 3am.  Though it’s difficult to tell the exact time because all the clocks in my home are being creative about what they publish and I was nearly asleep.
• I slipped on the side-walk.  Completion of this accidental fall-over maneuver avoided by hottie’s quick reactions.
• second date arranged for after I’ve cleaned my canvas.

W

You know how some people have the kind of smile that could melt a chocolate bar at 20 paces?  

Hold that thought.

Today I discovered that some people have the kind of email-writing that can melt a Wendy irrespective of distance. 

All the cute kiddies wandering around in costume today are making a eutectic mixture of me.

* the sound of Wendy reading an email as a cute kiddie walks by

W

My internet dating profile is more bouncy than a girl-scout with a yoyo on a trampoline! 

This is how it works:

• I start emailing with a potential hottie, so I ‘hide’ my profile to focus attention on said hottie
• Said hottie says they’ll write tonight,  I don’t receive an email,  my profile goes back up
• Said hottie writes that he sent an email and demonstrates both irritation and cutie-ness
• I reply and my profile gets hidden again
• Add to that the previous relationship uncertainty:  dumped,  not dumped.  Relationship over. Which went with profile posting-removing.

And you’ve got the full girl-scout with a yoyo on a trampoline picture*!

(*not literally a picture,  apologies to the people sent here by search engines looking for pictures of girl scouts on trampolines. This site might help.  It has more ‘raunchy’ dating and a great video of the world YoYo champion 2005: http://www.m90.org/view_image.php?image_id=8230)

Why do I bother bouncing the profile?  Why not leave the profile totally posted until I’m ‘in’ a relationship?  Good question,  you guys are on the ball.  Here’s a long explanation why.

To me it looks like there are two main potential strategies for establishing the beginning of a fulfilling-have-fun-with-boy-man relationship using the service I’ve subscribed to:

Maximising statistical probability

If I keep email threads going with all the hotties I can find I’m bound to have a hit with one of them. This ignores that HOW we engage in relationships significantly impacts their quality.    The service charges on a time-based model (per month),  not per-person-contacted.  A capitalistic,  mechanistical, individualistic science oriented value set would suggest that maximising probablity is both a pragmatic and profitable approach to securing the start of a fulfilling relationship. 

Maximising mutual engagement

If I know what I want and explore that within any exchange with one hottie I can work out whether this hottie really ‘works well’ with me.  Mutuality.  This ignores that ‘there are plenty more fish in the sea’, the abundance of choice… ..so prevalent in wealthy societies like the US…  …even people can experience being treated as a replaceable commodity.

What do people do? 

Based on personal experience I’m guessing that within this dating service the majority of users are applying a statistical approach. ’Daters’ can expect their hotties to be using a statistical approach,  keeping a profile visible until absolutely sure of a decision which had to be negotiated,  or ‘given’ as part of the relationship development process.  Nothing wrong with that.  Culturally ‘acceptable’.  Agreed.  Agreed?    

What does Wendy do?

I’m opting for mutual engagement on a ’serial’ basis.  Potentially more Expensive, time consuming and open to being misunderstood because its not the Norm.    Urgh.  

Why?

Is fulfillment really a statistical concept? 

I don’t think so! 

I believe that, unlike the statistical approach, a mutual engagement approach affords the basis for clear,  open,  honest communications.  For example,  if I was using a statistical approach would I discuss any single hottie with the others that I was writting to?  This might reduce my chances of quickly establishing an intimate relationship with them.  I believe that omission of pertinent,  known, chance-reducing,  information can be sufficiently misleading to be experienced as dishonest or at minimum unduely induce paranoia (promote the need for therapy?).   

As an extreme fictional example,  Married man omits to tell his wife he’s having an affair. He hasn’t lied.  She may get paranoid,  why is he working late so often?  I can’t keep questioning him about where he is etc.  The key thing here is pertinent information,  stuff where knowledge is being withheld BECAUSE it will have an impact on a specific relationship.  I wonder how ‘open’ the dating service users feel able to be if they are employing a high numbers approach?

If the hottie using the statistical approach is honest and decides to provide this information the recipient is given a clear indicator that they are not (yet?) special.  As an egotist this is not a message I like to receive too often!  As someone who aspires to being a caring person this is not a message I want to feel obliged to give to people who have flatteringly shown an interest in me.  To illustrate,  here’s a fictional, potential open honest conversation between two statistical approach users based on actual convesations I had with service users:

Left-hander:I am having some fun email threads with 5 people through this dating service at the moment,  what about you?

Right-hander:  Just the 20,  I normally have about 34 going,  I’m a fast thinker and typer.

Left-hander: Oh,  how do I rate in the 20,  is it worth my considering this relationship as anything other than friendship?

Right hander:  Can’t tell at the moment,  well over half of the 20 will just drop-out over the next week,  and I’m only really sure I’m interested in 4.  The others are just entertainment value.  You’re one of the 4.  Lets start with friends and just see how it goes,  I dont want to rush into anything.  How do you feel about your 5 people?

Left hander: well,  foot-fetishist is fun but wont go out on hikes for fear of blisters.  Hand-fetishist is a bit too tactile but really tickles my sense of humour.  Obviously,  you’re gorgeous but I’m not confident we have potential because you dont seem really interested in me,  the other two I haven’t met yet so its early days.

Right hander:  sounds fun,  why all the fetishists?etc…

There is also a perceived time-based anxiety for all statistical approach users.  People can easily believe that if they don’t establish intimacy quickly then the other person will easily find someone else,  particularly if they are attractive.  This creates a perceived need to establish intimacy quickly to legitimately reduce competition by asking for the new-partners profile to be removed. 

From a finance perspective the mutual engagement method sets the expectation of not finding a right person ‘quickly’ together with longer subscription to the service (service profit).  I’ve actually had people write  asking me to reply quickly before their subscription runs-out.  These people were honest,  but hey babe,  I’m worth more than the subscription!

I suspect that a statistical approach promotes ‘insecurity’,  lack of perceived self-value,  and lots of social interactional experiences that are highly negative (paranoia, deception).  Consequently,  it aligns with a profit principle through the supply of ongoing services (dating, counselling). For these reasons I believe using a statistical approach would be a morally irresponsible act from anyone who see’s this dating services affordances as I see them.  

 In maximising mutual engagement,  I can say honestly,  i’m only mailing with you.  The hottie can indepedently verify this by checking my profile availability (not there).  He can feel re-assured.  I can be fully open and comfortably convey all relationship pertinent information.  Trust grows quickly.  This suits my conscience and sense of self as a responsible society member.  It also promotes trust, comfort, confidence and happiness.  It has the Wendy-pleasing by-product of scaring-off people that might not feel easy with open, honest and fairly focussed Wendy-communications.  Hooray!

However,  I can still be paranoid because the person I’m mailing is likely to be using a statistical approach.  Their choice.  I can respect the logic that promotes this strategy and self-treat myself for any paranoid outbursts,  or blog them. 

The challenge is how to maintian mutual engagement approach when the social and business system heavily promotes a statistical model?  Here’s my plan:

• Errr…  …be stubborn based on principle.
• Suggest to the service providers that they seriously consider revamping their charging model to a per ’start-contact’ basis.  This would encourage a mutual-engagement model over a statistical model and could be constructed to be profitable using the specifics of the pricing model. 

W believes-that-individual-emotional-responsibility-makes-a-difference-everywhere

I’m free!

Insensitivity criminal on the streets again!

W 

The suddenly-single judgement was overuled last night.  Judge commented that he’s ‘cautiously optimistic’.  We’re on relationship parole. 

All of your good wishes helped,  good team effort

W