Our good friends the Peperkorns are moving to California and will be stopping by soon. Lloyd and I were trying to spiff the place up, and as he was vacuuming, there was suddenly a terrible, terrible noise.
(Question: If you were driving a vacuum and it suddenly made a terrible, terrible noise, wouldn’t you stop said vacuum immediately? Somebody didn’t, and can’t seem to explain his actions. I maintain that it is because he is so unfamiliar with using a vacuum that he thought the sound was normal. He does the same thing when a spoon is in the disposal.)
Back to the story: I screamed, “Stop!”, then we turned over the vacuum to see all the length of my phone charger cord wrapped around the beater bar. The plug-in part was far, far away from it.
Boooo.
Hmmmmm. This could be a problem. It’s not that I call people very much, but I do use the alarm clock feature (three alarms: The ‘wake up’ one, the ‘you should be out of the shower by now’ one, and the ‘you should be eating breakfast by now’ one). When I go on home visits I set the alarm so I leave in time for the next visit. I can’t lose battery power!
I thought I could just use my car charger, but I don’t drive enough to charge up the phone without wearing out the car battery. I went to buy a replacement charger at Wal-Mart, but they didn’t have the right size. They did have a cool car-charger-to-outlet gadget, though. Perfect!
Guess what? I can’t find my car charger anywhere. Have you seen it?
Not a big deal. We have a U.S. Cellular place in town and I thought I could just stop by every couple of days and switch out the battery, or just break down and buy a new charger. Until then, I’m returning calls from my Google account:
Funny true story: At my last home visit, I sat down at the table and there was my phone’s twin! I told the parents my sob story and asked if I could borrow a cup of electricity as we visited. They very kindly obliged.
So, it’s time to buy a new charger…… or a new phone. 😀
Gretchen says
I am simultaneously laughing and crying because I feel your pain and that SO could happen to me.
Brad says
Your phone is so old they don’t sell charger cords for it any more?
Lauren says
Not in the generic charger section at Wal-Mart. That makes me crazy. It’s like camera cords -- can’t we all just agree to make a standardized port size so we don’t have all these cords clogging up the ocean?
Lloyd says
Your phone is so old, you accidentally butt-dialed a dinosaur!
Peggy says
D’oh! Sorry ’bout that Lauren.
I have to confess that I don’t always stop vacuuming when I hear a noise. It’s usually just a penny clunking around…or a paper clip. But I do always stop when I start to smell that ‘burning’ smell.
AND, I didn’t know you can return calls on a google account! How does that work?
Lauren says
If you have a gmail account, over on the left where your contacts are it says ‘chat’. Click on that and a ‘call’ icon comes up. If you have a microphone and speakers (headphones actually work better), you’re good to go!
Kristi says
Oh, this is not good. So, Lloyd is going to vacuum for eternity now so that he know how a vacuum is supposed to sound, right?