Behold, I have The Internets in my home!
Only for today, though. Fred’s taking the modem and router home with him tonight so that he and the spud won’t have to go without internet for two days.
Yes that would suck, going without internet for two days. I don’t know how anyone could possibly do that.
UNFAIR.
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I also have phone lines hooked up here, though because I’m a dummy I didn’t think to hook up the cordless phone and let it charge before the phone guy got here, so I’ll be using the corded phone for the next little while, ’til the cordless phone’s charged.
Also, I need to get a set of those cordless phones that come with an “extension” phone that you only need to plug into an electrical outlet to use, because there are no phone outlets upstairs at all. We talked about having them run a phone line up to the spud’s room, but as we see it, the child will only be living here another three months and once she’s living in Rhode Island we won’t need a phone line up there at all, because Fred doesn’t answer middle-of-the-night phone calls. I do, because he’s a light sleeper who has a hard time going back to sleep when awakened in the middle of the night, whereas I can usually turn over and go right back to sleep.
Speaking of, I am reminded of a story about this past weekend.
Saturday evening, the spud went into Huntsville to a friend’s school to see a play she (the friend) was in. I was coming out of the bathroom late Saturday evening when I heard my cell phone ring. I answered it, and it was the spud in quite a state of distress. She was somewhere in Huntsville, lost, and didn’t know how to get home. She told me the name of the street she was on, and while I’d heard of the street, I had no idea where it was located or how to direct her to get back home.
“Did you call Fred?” I asked.
“Yes, like five times! And he didn’t answer!” she said.
I thought for a moment. “Well, let me try calling him and I’ll tell him to call you.”
I hung up, and dialed the number for the Madison house. No answer. Again. No answer. I tried his cell phone. No answer. Altogether, I called his cell phone three or four times and the Madison phone about seven times.
After the seventh time, I was on the verge of getting dressed, driving to the Madison house and either beginning the mourning process (finding Fred dead in his bed) or the murdering process (finding Fred sound asleep in his bed with the phone ringing merrily down the hall). Although answering the phone in the middle of the night is my job, since I’ve moved to Crooked Acres he sleeps with the phone next to him in case there’s an emergency and I need to get hold of him.
I decided to call one last time, and that’s when he answered the phone. He sounded wide awake.
Apparently the phone was right on the bed next to him, but since it was face-down instead of face-up, he didn’t hear the phone ringing. Despite the fact that – he claimed – he wasn’t even sleeping, just laying there reading.
Eventually he decided that the sound he was hearing – a distant, ringing sound – was the phone, and he answered it.
He got the spud straightened out and on her way home pretty quickly, and then he and I talked until he heard her arrive home.
And I did not kill him.
* * *
Things we are seriously discussing doing here in Crooked Acres:
Creating a worm farm. The worm farm would serve two purposes: (1) Did you know chickens like worms? I did not. Despite the fact that chickens are birds and birds like worms, it still surprised me to find that chickens like worms. They LOVE worms. They think worms are the finest thing on the face of the earth. We’d like to have a ready supply of worms with which to spoil our chickens. (2) The fertilizer. Worm poop is good fertilizer. Fertilizer is a good thing and would come in handy.
Having honey bees. The bees would serve two purposes: (1) Pollination of our fruit trees and bushes. (2) Honey!
Also, we are seriously considering filling in the pond because it’s always too low for fishies, and the pond is taking up prime real estate. I did convince Fred that we should have a much smaller pond (like, a koi pond) to attract frogs.
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It’s very squirrelly in our back yard today. There are two squirrels running back and forth between bird feeders, eating the nuts that have been knocked to the ground (the bird food I have is no-waste bird food I bought online somewhere, because I was tired of seeing all the sunflower seed shells piling up on the ground. This stuff is chock-full of yummy-looking nuts and I think that if we ran out of food, we could eat the bird food. As a bonus, it takes longer for the birds to empty out the bird feeders, which is a very good thing.) and just generally driving our cats crazy.
Mister Boogers briefly escaped when I went out to check on the chicks, but the squirrels were too fast for him, and they ran up a tree and scolded him soundly.
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I love my house.
* * *
“Mutha, can it be time for the brushy-brushy now?”
Miz Poo does not care for the vacuum cleaner.
Happy Newt.
What? It’s clean! I cleaned it not two minutes before Mister Boogers bellied up to the bowl.
Pretty Maxi.
“What?” (Tommy)
* * *
Previously
2006: So they had a baby. BIG FUCKING WOOP-TI-DOO. Now can we give it a freakin’ rest?
2005: No entry.
2004: No entry.
2003: No entry.
2002: $65 for that bullshit. Bargain, eh?
2001: Dumbass, take two.
2000: THE MIDDLE OF THE AISLE IS APPARENTLY WHERE YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO COME TO A DEAD STOP AND STARE, WITH GLAZED EYES, AT THE 145 POUND CANS OF KETCHUP]]>
No chickens were being choked at the time of the phone call, so you can all just put that out of your minds right now.
Robyn, I have been reading your blog for about 4-5 years now, but I don’t post much. I just wanted to let you know that this Snood thing is ruining my life! I can’t stop playing! How long did you play before you registered? Also, I was so enthralled by the cup conversation, I ordered the Moon Cup from http://www.keeper.com
No more suggestions! I am way too easily influenced!
There’s an “extention” phone you just plug into an electrical outlet????
I need more info on this, please!
Marilyn in Mobile: I may not have described it right. What I’m talking about is a set of phones, one that you plug into the phone jack and outlet (or at least you do that with the base) and then the other ones, the base just has to be plugged into an outlet – this is an example of one: http://tinyurl.com/3552aj
Leighc: I’m sorry I turned you into a Snoodaholic. 🙂 I think I played for three or four days – long enough and often enough to know that it wasn’t going to die out right away – before I registered. It’s SO worth it!
Fred…Heh!
Robyn, I love that photo of Spot. I have a blog friend that has JUST gotten into honeybees. She took a class on it and made her own bee…houses? Don’t know the word. Anyway, check out her blog here: http://www.birdchick.com/2007/04/bee-day-is-coming.html for more info. (And she has a pet bunny that is cute beyond belief.)
Robyn I’m so glad you keep up to date on all the new technology that’s out there. I went and checked out that link to the phone site and I really am amazed at this product. Gotta get me one 🙂 Love the idea of plugging the one phone into an outlet. How convenient.
We have one of those type of phones and we call it The Mother Ship and the Escape Pods…yes…we are freaks! We love the freedom they provide. Much simpler than running lines through the walls.
Lilred
I think it is time that you packed ol’ Newt up and had him neutered. You may as well, he is now ya’lls outside cat! No protesting, you know it is true!
Bobbie Sue, you silly thing, we had Newt neutered months and months ago, the same time we had Maxi spayed! They might not be our cats, but we won’t abide them running willy-nilly all over the place making packs of kittens and letting them run wild. We are such good pet owners that we take care of pet that are NOT OURS. 🙂
Forgive me for offering unsolicited advice, but we purchased two of those phone systems this year. One of them (Uniden) has 3 extra handsets. The base is on the main floor of the house and we have handsets for upstairs, the basement and my husband has one the garage (don’t ask why)The phones work great. However, we bought another brand with two handsets (AT&T) for my parents and it turned out that you couldn’t talk on more than one handset at a time. We had to return it because my parents like to both talk to me at the same time, each with their own handset. (Don’t you wish you were me?) The thing is, there was no indication on the box the phone system came in that you couldn’t to a party call. It was buried in the manual. Just a warning! We got the Uniden system at Costco; I think it was about $100.
What in the world are you going to do with the boog man? Doesn’t this make twice? Those phones are great. Sams sells some with two, three and four sets. They work fine. And yes Fred, we all caught the choking of the chicken remark….
Purple huh? Never woulda thunk it!
Hi Robyn,
I have just found your site from the Webby voting page (I think it was that page). Nice to find a kindred spirit out there. We have 3 cats and I take more pictures of them then any other thing in my life. Sigh. We have the Uniden phones that work wonderfully. Okay for mutiple talkers too.
Robyn, Fred, look here’s another site with all the cats if you haven’t seen it yet – this one made me drop everything and come here to show you:
http://www.dropline.net/cats/kitty/knock-first-plz
I have the GE version of what you are talking about in my house, love them… but you can’t talk on them at the same time and it makes spying on the teens a lot harder. I have had the phone extender things that you plug into an actual electric outlet and those work great too. We had a great set that I bought for my Mother in law and you could talk on them both at the same time, they had their own pagers, had the speaker phone feature from the handset itself and you could add more phones to it! But it burned up in the fire!! *Wahhh*
i’ve found that the phone systems at costco are waaay cheaper than those found at other home electronics stores. Ours is panasonic. 2 headsets, mute, intercom, stored phone numbers, and speaker phone.
A must have for anyone who attends conference calls from home!
Hey Robyn–we totally use the ‘plug in one phone to the phone jack’ and plug in the rest to power outlet phones in this archaic house we rent. They work awesome. I highly recommend them.
Glad to hear the new house hasn’t lost its charm! Enjoy it!
Crooked Acres is a great name.
Yes, those cordless phones with the extra handsets are the only way to go with a teenager in the house.
If by “laying there thinking about the chickens” Fred meant that he was thinking about his cock in particular, I’d believe him! 🙂
We have the Uniden – and just as Rose mentioned, the AT&T we first bought did not allow more than one hand set to be used at a time. Also, it was a piece of sh*t as far as quality went; when we went back to Circuit City to return it, the salesguy told us all the AT&T sets were inferior. We love the Uniden – have the main set plugged into the phone jack in the kitchen(and we call it the “mothership” too) and the other three scattered amongst the other rooms in our house. They all work well. It has an answering machine built into the mothership, as well, but you can check messages from any of the sets. Good stuff.
Robyn, that picture of Miz Poo just CRACKS me up!! We have those same phones that you gave the URL for. They’re fabulous! You can use them at the same time, so that’s not a problem, and you can intercom each other between them!
Re: worm farms. We totally did that growing up – my mom was very into the whole organic gardening thing, so she built a big box and filled it with home-grown compost and dumped in a bunch of worms. We’d feed them with the choicer veggie table scraps (most of that stuff and the yard waste went into the compost piles.) The chickens did love it. She gave it up after a little while, when it became obvious that there were easily as many worms under the actual compost pile. When we’d turn that (frequently) the chickens would all come running and get in the way and perch on the shovels and what not.
Yeah, I had a fun childhood, for being a suburban kid!
Sorry, the Alzheimer’s has taken hold. After my ringing endorsement of the Uniden set, Husband reminds me that ours is a V-tech. heh heh. Our OLD set was a Uniden and it had only 1 extra handset, although the newer models come with more. Also, it only lastest for 4 years until the buttons stopped responding unless you hit them with a sledgehammer. But that could be because I routinely dropped them on the floor, causing them to explode so that, in the end, they were held together with duct tape. The V-techs are great, though. I love the lighted buttons so I can see what I’m dialing with my geriatric eyes.
Funny you should mention honeybees. Poor things are disappearing all over the country. It especially sucks for us human types, since we depend on them to pollinate all our crops. There’s an article about it in today’s New York Times (online). I’ve spent the past two days worrying about honeybees. The smallest thing in the world can make the world itself go around, it seems.
Hope you get some and then I hope they stick around! for everybody’s sake. 🙂
when I get home tonight I’ll tell you what phones to get. they’re good ones, and the battery doesn’t get flaky.
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/195/471994066_e0987f31aa.jpg
Picture of my favorite plant. I couldn’t tell you for the life of me what the hell the name is, but I got it from Lowes last year. It survived all but one month out of the winter, it went that dead brown and then came right back on its own. I hadn’t even clipped the old dead leaves off of it yet, it seems to be absorbing them or something. The plant is a fabulous purply color and gets full and gorgeous with no effort. I am horrible with plants and stuff and this one always stayed so pretty. I am getting more of them this summer to put out instead of a lot of flowers, these stay nice forever and don’t drop blooms.
Is that a can of whipped cream on your bedside table? 😉
We have those phones and love them, but we are going to have to replace them now because my daughter left one outside in the rain.
Ditto what Apex said…Research the biz,ha the beebiz before shelling out the money for supplies.
At least fifty percent of some beekeepers bees have disappeared or died. They think it could be a fungus or mite. If you wanna be a conspiracy theorist,the GM crops or the declining state of the environment could have a hand in the disappearances and deaths.
Bees deaths,like canaries in mine shafts,are supposed to be the first indicators of the environment becoming toxic.
A cool way to get worms to come to the surface of your soil is to deeply push a shovel blade into soil and then pull the handle and let go so you get a guitar string effect. Traaaaannnwwwwgggggg. The vibrations magically bring the worms to the surface.
I missed Miz Poo the first three times I looked at that picture and was wondering what you meant by your comment when I finally found her. Too cute!
Robyn, Bird Chick filled her hives yesterday and wrote about it: http://www.birdchick.com/2007/04/hiving-part-1-panic-at-bee-hive.html
I remember that you were talking about it, I just never saw that you actually took them to get fixed. They do not seem to have held it against you. Maxi is probably thanking you!
Y’know, I didn’t like the purple bedroom when Fred first posted pictures of it empty, but I think I do like it now that I see it with furniture. Kudos, Fred!