Honey ? Can you get the phone ?

About once every three or four months some member of my family or one of my friends will decide to phone us and they always call our home phone. Invariably we are out when they phone; they never get us directly so they leave us peevish (but usually funny) messages enquiring as to the state of our mental and physical health . If they are very lucky, we'll remember to listen to our home phone messages that week (not kidding) and at some time in the next six months we might respond with a call of our own. The problem with our home phone is that we're never inside the house to answer it and when we *are* in the house we never think to pick up the receiver to check for messages. I have wondered out loud several times why we continue with the bother and expense of having a home phone.

We do a little better than this with our cell phones, but only a little. It's hard to answer the phone or have a conversation when one is engaged in farm work or feeding horses, so we usually set our phones down somewhere and then spend the remainder of the day trying to remember where we set the damn things. I've thought about getting a blue tooth to wear around the farm so I could just keep my cell phone in my pocket (set to vibrate rather than ring), but in addition to being a hazard I think they just look dorky, and I KNOW I'd forget to take it off when I went to the store, etc. Melissa won't entertain the bluetooth at all !

One of the greatest things about living in 2010 as opposed to say 1987 (which was also pretty great for a whole variety of reasons) is the technological revolution that has resulted in internet/email and text messaging communications and devices. While I absolutely abhor the poor spelling and grammatical short forms that text messaging has brought about, I LOVE the medium itself !

In 1987 we had just moved from a party line (our ring was one long and one short) to a private telephone line, which cut down on our phone ringing by half (which my parents..who weren't phone people either...thought was great) ! We had one black, bakelite rotary dial phone in our house and it was located on the wall in the middle of the kitchen....not exactly designed for privacy so conversations were kept to a minimum.

Fast forward twenty-three years and who hears the phone ring any more even if there's twelve of them in the house ?

Need to communicate with the Webbs ? If you want an short and to the point answer immediately, text us. If it can wait a few hours and/or you need more detail, email us. If you aren't in a hurry for a return call and/or want to chat, call our cell phones and pray a lot. If you never want to hear from us again, call our home phone and leave a message.

Hope you are all having a good day !