Maybe when Dave and I met that first time at the airport he’d been going to Georgia to tell Amy it was over—that after all they had meant to each other, it just couldn’t work long-distance anymore. Maybe he had CDs to give back to her. He could have mailed them, but he’d really wanted to see her in person for the breakup.

Well, whatever it had been, I was going to take care of this now. Turning back to Dave’s laptop, I opened up Amy’s address card and changed the last two digits in her 404 phone number. Then I saved the card so the entry would update into the memory.

After changing her number, I scanned through the rest of Dave’s contacts. For any woman listed that I didn’t know, I changed one digit in her number.

This all made me feel great. Now I was sure that there wouldn’t be any more calls to “old friends” that could possibly rekindle some smoldering feelings.

Content that I’d done well with the address book, I started thinking about cupcakes from Sprinkles in Beverly Hills. Oprah also talked about this kind of urge—the stress of thinking about Dave with this Amy chick was a “trigger.”

Oprah talked a lot about recognizing our triggers, and how if we could recognize our triggers we could help control our choices. I knew it was too early for Sprinkles to be open, so I diverted my attention from sugar to my other addiction: real estate. Dave and I had talked about moving in together, but we really wanted to wait until we could buy a house together and make it a “big” move. Maybe if I could find the perfect place I’d be able to nudge him toward all the “big” stuff.

I grabbed one of Dave’s flannel shirts from his drawer and slid it over my head. The faded plaid barely covered my ass. Opening the front door, I peeked my head out, scoping out the scene to see if anyone would see my slightly bare butt as I rushed out to grab the newspaper from the front step. The coast was clear and I darted out and then rushed quickly back inside the house with my prize.

Because it was Saturday, I knew the week’s big real estate section would be in today’s paper. A few open houses would clear my head of this Amy business.