2004-04-26, 11:04 a.m.

phone trauma

Here he is, the smiling baby. Although he still tends to smile more at his own jokes than at us. But he was definitely grinning while breast feeding yesterday.

I have real phone problems at the moment. My cell phone service - T-Mobile - is a total disaster these days. I can't make calls. I don't receive messages. When I actually do get a connection to someone else's phone, they can't hear me. It all really sucks, and makes the whole point of having a cell phone totally... not. SO I'm going to switch services. My big plan for today was to walk downtown with Leon, to one of the very few actual Verizon cell phone stores in Brooklyn (Sprint and T-Mobile are EVERYWHERE) and go through all the anticipated chaos of 1.setting up an account, 2.linking that to our current Verizon account, 3.buying a new phone, and 4.closing my old account. But it's raining. And little babies do no do so well in the rain, so instead I'm languishing at home, with no phone.

Oh yes, I do have an actual home phone. But it's currently a disaster too. Not less than 5 minutes ago, my brother called from China - CHINA - and I couldn't answer the phone because the battery in the handset had died, and I'd forgotten to hang it back up to recharge. This has been the situation for a while - I really need to buy a new battery - but I've been putting it off because, after all, I have a cell phone. So there's my brother, calling me from the other side of the planet to talk to his older sister, and all I can do is listen to him while I futiley punch the talk button, hoping maybe he'll vamp long enough for the phone to build up enough charge just for me to answer and say, "hey wait, I'll call you back!" But no.

Argh.