Blog fodder, at your local Verizon store.

Yesterday I went to the Verizon store.

Yes, I prayed before I went. I hate that place. The wait is interminable and the explanations are filled with unintelligible phrases like, "eligible for a new phone every two years only it takes effect four months before your two years, but for you it's one year, except that your contract renews in April and this says you're due for a phone in September and that's obviously not four months, but we'll just go with what the computer says."

After catching my spinning head and setting it back on my shoulders in the forward-facing position, I told the woman I just needed a phone for my daughter, Lovely. Hers has been getting more and more rebellious and yesterday morning actually refused to do anything at all. We had to yank the battery from it to beat it into submission.

Lovely had told me which phone she wanted, so I thought this would be pretty easy, and it really wasn't too bad. And it just so happened that the particular phone she wanted was part of a "buy one, get one free" special. So what do you think I did? I took the free one.

See, my phone has been having problems too, but I was waiting for September, when they said I would be eligible for a new phone, except that I'm supposed to get one every year . . . yeah, never mind.

So the girl got us all signed up and took our old phones to the magical back room where she would magically transfer our contacts lists and pictures to our new phones.

She came back a few minutes later looking sad and shaking her head. It seems that our old phones were SO old, the transferring technology wouldn't work on them. I think she felt sorry for me.

Then, while we were standing there lamenting the fact that I would have to transfer my entire phone book to the new phone the hard way (not to mention losing all my pictures of Sticky Bean), Elijah said, "Mom, the crabs are dying of heat exposure."

At that, the girl got a wide-eyed look of horror on her face and looked from one to the other of us. I told Elijah to go get them and bring them inside, and before I could explain that we had hermit crabs in the car, she started backing away from the counter. When Elijah came in with a little plastic container with holes in the lid, I offered to show her the crabs. She was fascinated, and tried, in the nicest way possible, to ask why on earth anyone would want to keep crabs. I told her they were for the pre-school class my daughter teaches. She thinks we're the Addams Family.

Anyway, as we were wrapping up our purchase, the woman being waited on next to me started shouting about how she needed to have her data transferred to her new phone because "I can't lose my texes! There's texes in there I can't do without!"

I wonder if the Verizon people blog all this stuff?

Be thankful ~

Karen