Can you hear me NOW???

Here it comes, people.  Another rant.  I can't help it, I am on a roll. With the rants.

You know how Carly Simon sang "You're So Vain" and everyone who was anyone thought it really WAS all about them??  I am sure there are going to be various people who will assume I am talking about them with this particular rant.

And to that I say "If the shoe fits, maybe so".

When society changes, etiquette has to change and catch up or try to hurry and get ahead of the game to keep everyone doing the right thing so that there aren't hurt feelings all around.  And with all these changes to technology, we have to adapt our behaviors accordingly.  With that said, I have to start my rant on idiots with cell phones who INSIST  on talking on them at all times.  It doesn't matter where they are, who they are with, what they are doing, who they are inconveniencing, they are yammering loudly into their fucking phones.  OH MY LORD!  Stop it already!!!

There is a time and a place for everything.  And sometimes that time is later and the place is NOT HERE!

Since the invention of the telephone they have been a demanding interruption to whatever it is you are currently engaged in.  Then came the answering machine, which in the words of Miss Manners was the equivalent to a butler in the old days, he would screen the calls and take the messages for you to return those calls at your convenience.


But then came the mobile phone.  And for some stupid reason people think they have to be in touch with every single person they have ever met at all times.  WTF?

So here are some cell phone etiquette rules to follow.  I am sure you will all come up with some I haven't thought up yet, so please feel free to share them.

1. If you are in a public place, and by public I mean standing in a room with more than one person and feel the need to yell into your phone, there is a problem.  If you are alone, yell all you want.  If there is another person within 10 feet (I have checked all sorts of etiquette sites and they all agree to the 10 feet rule) you need to make yourself mobile and move.  Or you need to examine why you feel the need to yell into your phone at all.  Think of it this way, if you didn't have a phone in your hand would standing there there yelling be appropriate?  If not, you have your answer regarding the phone situation.

2. Your phone should be considered a means for people to communicate with you in case of an emergency.  If I am talking with you and your phone rings, the only polite response is to silence it and apologize for the interruption.  If you and I are talking and you are expecting an emergency call, you should have told me beforehand so that I could choose to continue with a potentially interrupted conversation or not.  It's rude in the extreme to take calls when you are in a face-to-face with someone else.  And don't get me started on those who choose to make a call when with a group of people!!!  Seriously?  Are the people with you not entertaining enough?  Do you need even more stimulation than your current group provides?  Shame on you.

3. In a restaurant setting - there are restaurants that do not allow cell phone conversations.  You should check before making calls while seated.  Just as you should check with your guests (see rule 2 above). Not to mention that restaurants have you seated in close proximity to other diners who did not come out to listen to you jabber on your phone (see rule 1 above).  The only call to take at a restaurant is from your dining companion who is calling to let you know he/she is stuck in traffic and will be arriving shortly or from your babysitter with an important question about your kids and knives.

4. Theater, concert, meetings - really?  It blows my mind that people have to be told over and over again to turn the damn phones OFF while attending any of these events.  And yet, even after being told, you will hear the T-Mobile jingle coming from some jackass' pocket or purse.  Turn them off or leave them at home.

5. Any other person's home or office - see rule 4 above.  Turn your phone off before you go inside.

6. Places of worship - Heee!  The rule I read said "leave your phone in the car.  God may call you but most likely it won't be via Verizon".  No phone necessary in church, temple, or wherever you are communing with your Higher Power.

7. Face to face with another - Have you seen these morons in line at Starbucks yammering away on their phones and they won't say "Hold the line a minute while I place my order"?  Have you ever seen anything ruder than expecting the barista to stand there cooling their heels while they go on with whatever was so fucking important they have the staff waiting and all the people in line behind them as well?  These people must be sooooo much more important than the rest of us peons.  Dickheads.  Shame on them for using such condescending behavior.  I bet they don't tip well either.  Obnoxious self-important wieners.

Your phone is a tool to communicate.  One of many tools you may employ throughout your day.  It is no substitute for face to face. And it should be used with discretion.

p.s. Mr. Big Ed just read this and said his biggest pet peeve regarding cell phones is idiots who use them in public restroom stalls.

Losing your marbles and flipping your lid

Crap.  It has been way over a week since I have posted.  I was so busy (here's the losing your marbles part of the title) planning and taking care of the big 80th birthday party for my father-in-law that took place last weekend.  The party and all the family stuff was so much fun.  And unbelievably, all of us, and I mean every last one, were all in attendance.  Isn't that wonderful?

I don't know about you, but in our family, whether it be my side or Mr. Big Ed's side, there is always a conflict with someone's schedule and it just leaves a hole in the dynamics.  So anyhoo, it was wonderful that we were all here and that we got loads of pictures.

Rachel Pie and I worked hard on a project for this that we called "When Dad was my age".  I wrote down every child and grandchild in age order, then calculated what the year would have been when Dad was their current age.  For example, the youngest grandchild is five, so his part (read by his older brother) was this:  "When Grandpa was my age, the year was 1937.  FDR was president. The price of gas was, the price of a loaf of bread, and some fact pertinent to Grandpa's life".

You get the picture, right?  It was really fun taking those little strolls down through what was life like at each of those stages.  So, I sent all the info to Rachel Pie who took it all and put it on little pages for a scrapbook.  We skipped every other page and left the facing page blank to then put in a picture we took of Grandpa with each of the participants.  Then we ran off to CVS and printed up those photos and stuck them in and gifted him with the book.

I gotta tell y'all, it was a HIT!  Everyone loved hearing what each other had to read and Grandpa loved it. But for some reason, neither Rachel Pie nor I expected it to become a touching, emotional event and it turned that way really quickly.  Lots of tearing up and dabbing of the eyes.  Then we had cake and ice cream and everyone was happy again.  : )

Last night Sparky and I were up really late and sitting in the family room in our respective "spots" and we heard this loud, and I mean really LOUD, BANG!!!!  We looked all over and Sparky looked outside but we didn't see anything.  So he wanders off to go to bed and I started hearing sirens.

Not hearing sirens off in the distance, like I normally hear when they are headed to the hospital nearby, but like right in front of the house.  So first I peeked out the peephole and there were flashing red, amber and blue lights aplenty!  Holy Shitballs!  Something major was happening on our street!

So I yelled at Sparky to come back down and look.  We looked again and for some reason I don't understand, he went back to bed!!!!


Not me!  I grabbed my cel phone and went trotting out there to see what was what.  It took my eyes a bit to process what was actually going on.  There were 2 huge fire trucks, and 5 cop cars all with lights blazing.  There were neighbors out there in all sorts of pajamas and hurried-on garb.  And in the midst of all this there were 2 cars in the street.

One was a parked car that had been not only side-swiped but shoved down the street.  And the other one?

Upside down and had been spinning on its top and come to rest facing perpendicular to the street.

Holy Shitballs, indeed!

Seems that the very young looking girl who crawled out of the red upside down car was loaded on something.  Whether it was booze or drugs remains to be seen.  She was barrelling down our street and managed to hit the parked car (of the neighbor's girlfriend) and careened into a free-flying upside down spinning disaster.  I have no idea how she got out of that car and was still all in one piece.  If anyone had been in her backseat they would be toast.  That car was fucked up bad.

Another cop car joined the light brigade and then 2 tow trucks came, one from each direction.  We were all wondering how on earth they would get an upside down car onto the bed of the tow truck.  You know how they do that?

THEY FLIP IT!

Here are some crappy cel phone pics of that whole process:

Amazing, right?

So after they flipped the car and all sorts of crap went flying out of the car, loose cds, cel phones, her purse, etc. They put all the valuable things in a plastic bag, gave the arresting officer the purse and took a huge push broom and swept up the remaining parts o'car and put them inside the car!!!


For some reason, that struck me as funny.  "Yeah, here's the REST of your car for safe keeping".

While all this was going on, we went back and forth between commiserating with the poor girl who will probably get her car totalled just by parking it on a quiet neighborhood street at 2 a.m. and watching the officer try to get a field sobriety test completed by the driver of the red spinning top car.  It was not pretty.  She was not present enough to know that her life had just taken a screeching wrong turn and there's no coming back from that.  Thankfully, no one was killed and she herself didn't appear to be hurt.  She is going to be sore as hell today when she wakes up in jail, that is a given.

It got me to thinking about how they always say that you get a lesson over and over again, stronger each time till you get that lesson and learn it and are able to move forward.  Wonder what her lesson might have been?  Sure hope she got it, because she might not live through another more forceful lesson.

Bette Davis was right!!!

That Bette Davis, now she was a woman you didn't mess with! Talk about feisty and gutsy. I bet her middle name was Feisty. Bette Feiste Davis. That looks about right.

Anyhoo, so Bette Davis is famously quoted as saying "Getting old is not for the faint of heart, or wimps, or wussies, or something". It has become crystal clear to me what she meant by this. I turned the big 5 - 0 in December, so that makes me 50 years and 5 months give or take a day or two. And since that time menopause has kicked my memory's ass. Kicked it down the street, around the block, up in the air and slam-dunked it into the trash. That is how bad things are getting. If I was faint of heart, or a wimp, or a big fat wussie I might be considering getting in bed, pulling the covers up over my wimpy head and staying there.

You might be asking yourself, "Self, what the hell is Lisa Pie going on about". The answer to that is this: Wednesday I loaded all sorts of crap in my car to take to Goodwill. I got in the car and drove off realizing I had my cel phone in my pocket and reached in to put it in the cup holder that doubles as my cel phone holder. This is when I found NOT my cel phone, but my house phone! Which was by the by, searching desperately for the base. I did say to myself at that time, Lisa Pie you Gomer, what the hell are you doing? After successfully giving the items to the Goodwill guy and not giving him all the rest of the stuff in my car, I went around front of the store and thought I might just go in and see if they have anything that is on my "wish list". I reached for my purse and it dawned on me that I had grabbed the wrong purse. This purse was a cute, small purse that I had used on my last roadtrip but had nothing in it but some change. No license. No credit cards. No $$$$$. Nothing. Zip.

I was driving around without a license! I have not done that before. Ever. So I very, very carefully went back home to leave the house phone and pick up the right purse before I headed over to Super Target to do my regular shopping and not bothering with Goodwill Wish List shopping.

Yesterday, I kept running around like a hummingbird flitting from one thing to another, never staying on task or finishing a damn thing. At some point I got something on my pants and decided to just take them off and find a few like-colored things and wash them. So I dropped my pants and tossed them in the sink and then hit them with the Stain Stick and ran a load of light colors. Later on I was at the computer, like I am now while typing this, and looked down to my right where I always have my cel phone, house phone and a cup of tea and there was the tea and the house phone. No cel phone. Where the hell did I leave my cel phone? Immediately I remembered going to my closet to change and thought "Oh, I bet I left in the closet for the 1,423,456th time". It wasn't there! So I got the house phone and started calling it so I could hear it ring. Straight to voice mail, but the caller tune wasn't playing. That's very odd. Why would that not be working? Shit, on top of everything else I am going to have to call T-mobile and ask what is up with the damn caller tunes. Then a horrible thought occurred to me, and it wasn't a bolt of lightening thought, it was more like a slow oozing molasses in winter thought that washed down from the top recesses of my brain. Holy Moley, I bet the cel phone was in my pants pocket when I doused it in the sink and threw it in the washer!! O. M. G.

This was not a happy thought for me. This is something I would make fun of other (cough, Rachel Pie, cough) people for doing. I opened the washer and there it was on the bottom underneath all the damp clothes. Washed, rinsed and spun-dried. Can you believe that? I couldn't.

I do know that I have read that if your phone ever gets wet, damp, excess moisture you are supposed to take the back off, remove SIM card, battery and let everything dry out really well. So that is what I did. Except every hour or 2 I would put it all back together to check it and see if it was working. It wasn't. Are you surprised? I wasn't.

Today, I put it back together and guess what? It is working again! The screen is not as clear as it was, but if you didn't know this story and looked at it I am willing to wager you might not know the difference either. This phone is 4 years old and I have been thinking seriously about upgrading for a long time now. But now, I am not so sure. If a phone can go through what this one did, and still have the ummpphh to keep working, this might be a phone to stick with!

So, I am thinking I may have to go see some sort of doctor, accupuncturist, herbalist, something to help manage my hormones so I don't keep losing my marbles. Or purse. Or house phone. Or cel phone. Or whatever else I have misplaced and just can't remember yet!!

I think this is why older women act like they don't give a shit about what other people think. They have already got too much on their minds as it is without having to be concerned with whether their shoes match, or the young cute girls in the store think they are laughable, or whether they picked up the right purse.

Raise a glass and toast Bette Davis. Now, she is a woman worth emulating!