pieces and ponderings

We had a thunderstorm last Sunday, which I am very grateful for because our area is under drought conditions…it may be under “extreme drought” conditions officially…I don’t remember exactly what the 6 o’clock news said.  Anyway, we got some much needed rain, and along with the rain came thunder and lightening.  All of this…the rain, the thunder, the lightening came while I was away from home for a short time.  When I arrived home Sunday afternoon, child number 5 asked me, “Did you hear that lightening?”  (Lightening is not the part that can be heard, but you know what he meant.)  “It was REALLY LOUD,” he continued.

And right after the REALLY LOUD lightening, we began having a REALLY LOUD buzzing sound on our phone line.  It was REALLY LOUD and annoying and kept me from hearing any conversations for a few days.  Phone conversations with the REALLY LOUD buzzing sound went something like this:

“Hello.  Hey, ________.  Sorry about my phone and this REALLY LOUD buzzing noise.  I can’t really hear you because of this REALLY LOUD buzzing noise, so can I call you back on my cell?”

End of conversation.

So yesterday, I spent time talking to a really nice person from our phone company trying to diagnose our phone problem.  As we spoke on the phone, she would have me unplug phones and modems and plug them back in to see if we could discover if the REALLY LOUD buzzing noise was an in-the-house phone equipment problem or an outside-of-the-house phone problem.  After the indoor plug testing, she told me that I would need to go outside and check the phone line box.

“Have you ever checked your line from the phone box?” she inquired.

“No,” I replied.

She instructed me to get a flat-head screwdriver and a corded phone for this task.  The screwdriver was to open the box.  The corded phone was to plug into the box to check the clarity of the line.

“You will need a phone with a cord, not a cordless phone,” the nice phone lady instructed.  “Do you have a phone with a cord?”

“Yes,” I answered, and wondered how people without phones with cords test their phone boxes.  I was then very thankful for our green wall phone that we have had for eons.  We rarely use this phone, but now it was just what we needed.

Child number 3 fetched a flat-head screwdriver and child number 4 retrieved the green wall phone with a cord.  The three of us tromped around the back of our house to the gray phone box.  I felt like a phone-company-worker-man…make that phone-company-worker-woman.

Child number 3 opened the box door with the handy dandy flat-head screwdriver and then I tried to plug in the phone…except there was no visible place to plug in the little phone pluggy thingy…I ceased feeling like a phone-company-worker-woman and just felt kinda stupid.

Child number 3 discovered that you can press down on this little place in the box and a cover swings away from a plug-in place.  There are actually two little gray doors that can swing open to the great plug-in phone box territory.

So I plugged in the plug connected to the green corded wall phone and found the connection that provided a dial tone.  I dialed the 800 number that the nice phone lady had given me…feeling a little like a phone-company-worker-woman again…and after a couple of conversations another nice phone person told me that a repair man would be stopping by within the next 24 hours.  He did and found the source of the problem…Yay!…the promise of no more REALLY LOUD buzzing noise was becoming a reality.

So after the nice phone repair man drove off in his big white phone company truck, I was doing some stuff in the house, and when I came in our kitchen/breakfast nook area, I found child number 4 jumping rope with a green jump rope.  I wondered to myself, “Where did we get that green jump rope?” and then realized that child number 4 was jumping rope with the green corded wall phone…holding the receiver in one hand and the wall unit in the other, with the long green cord bouncing up and down in between.  I yelled his name in humorous astonishment and he laughed and said that the phone cord was a great jump rope.  I removed the phone pieces from his hands, the cord in between following right along and placed the phone on the counter.

I left the room and re-entered a few minutes later to find child number 4 holding the wall unit part of the phone and child number 2 holding the receiver end, with the cord stretched way out in between them.  They were pretending to carry on a phone conversation…again humorous astonishment on my part and smiles on theirs.

I left the room again, to get my camera.  They both dropped the phone pieces away from their ears and put the phone back on the counter, as they ran away screaming something about not wanting their pictures on my blog.

They came back though and I did get a couple of pictures.

Child number 4 and child number 2 were thoroughly entertained by this “old” phone.  “Vintage” was a word I heard used.  Child number 2 said that she might even try having conversations on the green corded wall phone because it might be fun.  I no longer felt like a phone-company-worker-woman…I just felt old.