Incommunicado

We had a torrential downpour last night, and, as always happens, the telephone went out. Or more precisely, when it rains, the line develops a loud buzz, but this time it's so loud that the phone is unusable. People call and it doesn't ring, and we can't make calls out. It's usually better by the next day, but so far, no luck. I've actually had this fixed a few times over the twenty years we've lived here -- they have to replace wires or connections at the pole and at the house -- but it's very hard to make clear to the repair people what's wrong, because they always send someone days after the rain, and then, of course, everything is fine. So this should be fun.

In the meantime, I was feeling very cut off. Here it was, pouring, and I was waiting for a call from R to let me know she was home, and it was over an hour after I expected to hear from her. I was trying to be patient and good, because her train runs late in bad weather, and hey, she could have gone out for a drink with work people. But when I finally picked up the phone to leave her a message and found out we had no phone, I was not happy. Remember, my cell phone -- TMobile, btw -- does not get reception in my own house. It's a great phone and works great everywhere else, however.

I borrowed the Hubs' cell -- Verizon -- and called R, who said she had been trying to get us, had left messages, etc., on the house phone, which never rang. And then I tried my sister.

Well. My sister does not answer her phone, as a rule. If she happens to be near it, and she sees my name or one of her kids' names on the caller I.D., she answers. Maybe there's one or two other people she answers for. Otherwise, she lets it ring. And she never ever ever checks her messages. This makes it extremely difficult to reach her, as you might imagine, especially from an odd phone number. So of course she didn't answer, and although I left a detailed message explaining what was going on, I knew she wouldn't hear it.

So this morning I decided the phone situation was insane, and I went to Verizon and got a new phone that works in my house. I only have two months left on the old phone contract, and I have the cheapest plan on it, so I'll pay it out and then it'll be done. I couldn't keep my phone number because that would have been early termination and would have cost me like $300, instead of the $50 or so the next two months will cost. It's a fine little phone -- purple -- and it turns out that there's a discount o the monthly cost for teachers, so that's all good. Unfortunately, now I have to program my whole phonebook into it, ugh, but it's nice talking on the phone in my house.

On my way home from the phone store, I stopped in a parking lot and called my sister again (on my old cellphone), hoping she would recognize the number and pick up. No luck. When I get home, I emailed her -- she checks that once a week, maybe -- and explained the whole thing and gave her my new number so she would pick up the phone when I call her. Not that I expected anything to come of that, either.

I started working on the phone, but I got very, very tired, and crashed for a nap from about 2 to 4.40. Imagine my surprise when I got up and saw that I had voicemail on the new phone! First I had to set up the voicemail, but then to my delight, there was a message from my sister, and so then I got to call her back -- she answered -- and we caught up. At one point, I thought to ask if she had listened to her messages or checked her email. Oh, she said, her husband had checked her email, and he gave her the message.

Oh, good, thanks .... WHAT? YOUR HUSBAND CHECKS YOUR EMAIL? DO YOU THINK MAYBE YOU COULD TELL PEOPLE THAT?

Am I wrong here? If I send email to someone, shouldn't I have the expectation that that is the person who's going to read it, unless I'm told otherwise? Not that I'm planning to email her and say "You know, your husband's a dick" -- which he's not, just an example -- but I certainly could say a variety of personal things about her or about myself that aren't for anyone else's eyes. Jeez. Now I'm really glad that we don't email that much. I just found that very, very weird.

But I'm back in the world, sort of. House phone still not working; I'll see if I can call the repair people tomorrow on the new cell. The Hubs' parents know that our phone is down and they have his cell number, and my kids and the Sibs know. That should cover us for a couple of days, I think.

WATCHING FRIENDS :: ENTRY #1669