Suzy and Jill Chapter 21: New Decisions

Filed: Suzy and Jill @ 5:08am on September 7, 2010 2 responses :)   Word Count: 1,648
Tags:
This entry is part 21 of 39 in the series Suzy and Jill


Breakfast was a lot less tense than the last two days.

Tuesday had the fight with Jill about my rejection of her kiss. Wednesday’s two appointments caused all of the adults to feel stressed which also reflected on our kids.

This morning, the vasectomy wasn’t on our minds yet and our only memories of the previous day was of the blissful way it ended.

My daughter caught on that the mood was rather different and felt lighter, happier. She hugged not only her parents but Jill as well.

The four of us prepared breakfast while my oblivious son simply ate as slowly as he usually did.

Both of my girlfriends had learned to coexist and coordinate their movements but it was nice seeing that my little one seemed to fit just as well into the family.

I wondered what she would learn from our living arrangement. She was still too young to be explained about our new love life but she was slowly getting closer to being mature enough to know a lot more about the facts of life.

Our son was the only one still wearing his pj and soon after finished eating he left to change in his room.

At the moment the door closed, my daughter asked me a very delicate question which abruptly stopped all of the adults.

“Dad, in school, there are two boys I like to hang out with but the other girls said that I can’t. That I can only hang with one at a time and say I am a pervert. Am I ?”

I first looked at Suzy but I also exchanged glances with Jill before answering.

“You know honey, relationships aren’t easy. You are still rather young. Hanging out with boys isn’t the same as going out with one. If you only hang out with them, there is nothing wrong with that.”

“That’s what I thought. Thanks dad.”

She left hugging me but took a long look around the kitchen, making eye contact with both Suzy and Jill.

As soon as we were alone, the three of us briefly shared our concerns that perhaps she was on to us but time was short. Suzy mentioned she would drop by the office to discuss the event.

The rest of the morning routine went on without additional incidents until Jill and I were finally alone in the car, on our way to the office.

“What was that about ?”, asked Jill. “Do you think she suspects something ?”

“You and I were dating. Then, I get back with Suzy while still sharing a single bed with you and now, you are officially our roommate. Any adult would have seen through our lies but I didn’t think she would as she is only 10 year olds.”

“Well, you both raised her well. You make her think, you make her form her own opinions. We should have seen it coming.”

We decided to wait for Suzy to join us and instead talked about our afternoon meeting with a web designer to help us build our new corporate website.

Our old website had been built by John, one of my ex-employees. He wasn’t really a web designer but back then, it worked and satisfied our needs.

Sadly, on the “about us” page, the full list of former employees was still present, clearly telling our new customers we were no longer the company we used to be.

With Jill, we had slightly changed our focus but none of that was reflected on our primary advertising venue, our website.

Jill was amazing at drawing anything so she had made a mock-up of what our website could look like, but we had no ideas were to go from here.

So, we had searched for companies and discovered that most of the firms on the Internet didn’t really impress us. Jill wanted us to be able to manage the website ourselves but it seemed as thought all of the solutions were simply too expensive or severely lacking in features.

Jill and I even had made a comparison of multiple content management systems (CMS) but they were all either too complex or too simple.

I eventually found a man from New York, Michael Kelly, who built his own content management system, MKTWO which contained all of the features we needed.

Notably, unlike systems like Drupal and WordPress, it wasn’t built on themes but rather it was created to manage any website design, allowing complete flexibility.

It even included a module to integrate plugins from other CMS like WordPress allowing us to expend the MKTWO functionalities without additional costs.

But to me, the biggest selling point was that Mr. Kelly was an implicated business man like me. Instead of being an MBA who hired developers to do his bidding, he was the lead developer and the soul of his business, like I was.

Despite having employees, he still took the time to meet clients and even answer support calls. To me, that showed dedication.

The meeting was schedule at 2, this afternoon. Until then, Jill and I had to share our notes for the meeting, expedite a few designs for clients and meet with Suzy whenever she would appear.

Sadly, time went by and the phone kept ringing for last minute changes delaying any talks about the website for minutes prior to Michael’s arrival.

Suzy of course arrive while Jill and I were both on a phone conference with an angry client who felt it was unjustified for us to charge for a 5th revision on his ergonomic chair design despite him having only paid for up to 3 revisions.

Suzy was patient enough and took the time to browse the Internet on one of the unused computers while Jill and I were unjustly yelled at.

We eventually agreed to cancel the invoice in exchange for a promise from the client to pay for future revisions, regardless of whether he thought it was our fault or not.

Exhausted from the phone call, we greeted Suzy almost with apathy but she passionately kissed both of us, never letting her smile falter.

It did lighten the mood for the moment even if we knew that we had to solve my daughter’s problem. Or rather, our problem with my daughter.

We all decided that it wouldn’t be the end of the world if she found out about our living arrangement, but agreed we should minimize exposure.

Suzy proposed that perhaps she was able to hear our love-making from her bedroom and Jill proposed to switch room with her.

That way, my daughter would be across the hall leaving the next door bedroom empty when Jill joined us.

“I have an idea”, suggested Jill. “Why not add a door between my future room and the master bedroom’s bathroom. We could justify sharing a bathroom for the adults and if the kids come knocking while I am with you too, instead of just hiding in the bathroom, I could go back to my room.”

Suzy objected at the cost but we soon realized that with three adults working in a mortgage-free house meant a lot of disposable income and that a one time renovation wouldn’t set us back much.

“How will you convince my daughter to switch room with you ?”, I asked Jill.

“I’ll propose to paint her a mural in my room. Both bedrooms are roughly the same size, but I think she’d like a new
bedroom decoration…”

That way, a plan was slowly put in motion. We also agreed to monitor the girl’s comments and behaviour to spot if she suspects anything.

The three of us ate a light meal but because of the seriousness of the previous discussion, there was no flirting or sensual moves. It was just three adults sharing a meal in good company.

Suzy left a little part at 1h00 PM, leaving us less than an hour to prepare for the meeting with Michael. Sadly, he arrived 15 minutes early leaving us scrambling to make sure we were ready, but he agreed to patiently wait for us in our conference room.

His presentation was incredible. He was professional, courteous and easy to understand. We managed to get a great tour of MKTWO and Jill even asked why it was called “TWO”.

A little ashamed, he explained that MKONE was an old application used to manage photo and video galleries he had written back when he was mostly designing porn websites.

Each of his clients, he explained, needed completely different templates and looks so he built it to be easily customizable. Many of his clients also had WordPress websites and that’ s why MKONE included a WordPress installation.

When he decided to branch out and cover more traditional websites, he wrote a better system and got rid of the embedded WordPress, writing his own replacement code to enable its plugins.

The features we needed worked perfectly, allowing notably a version tracking system on files which would allows our customers to review the various revisions of a design from the extranet portion of the website.

A payment gateway would allow us to more easily deal with clients from across the country and the various customer relationship management modules would allow us to track our customers, quotes, contracts and invoices from a single point, allowing our customers to review our work directly online.

For the cost of only a few months of salary of my old project manager, we would have the equivalent of 3 employees working for us full time: a project manager, an account manager and a support engineer .

We would still need to do a lot of tasks ourselves but as we would grow, our customers would take less efforts on our part while letting us do what we do best, design.

For only 6000$ more, he would consult with us in a few months and build a custom quote and contract builder which would replace my multiple Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Word templates, saving me countless of hours.

Jill and I came back home forgetting that it was my last day of the week in the office, a detail our home answering machine didn’t miss.

Tomorrow morning, I would become sterile via a vasectomy.

Series Navigation«Suzy and Jill Chapter 20: NakedSuzy and Jill Chapter 22: Caught»

2 Responses to “Suzy and Jill Chapter 21: New Decisions”

  1. The Author Says:

    I can already confirm that Michael Kelly is the same Michael from Lindsey Chapter 1: Misery.

  2. POV Chapter 1: Michael, Notification | NSFW Author Says:

    […] single has its advantages. I can work on my MKTWO CMS software anytime I want to without having to conform to the schedule of a nagging girlfriend who complains […]

Leave a Reply

FireStats icon Powered by FireStats