From The Past: May 25, 2005

There is nothing worse than being awoken early in the morning by a ringing telephone. When school is out and there is no need to get up early, we sleep in. I would think most people do. The kids stay up half the night watching movies, so they sleep in until 11 most days. For this reason, I take the phone off the hook. Trust me, if I left it on, someone would call; they always do.

This morning Kevin and I woke to the sound of my cell phone ringing from the kitchen. It was 6:22 AM. I was tired and it was annoying. It rang repeatedly and seemed exceedingly loud in the quiet house. Thinking something might be wrong, I made my way into the kitchen to grab the maddening thing. It was a man wanting to tell me that someone was going to be late for work. He wanted to know if my husband owned a construction company. I told him he had the wrong number and then he began to repeat my number back to me. “Yes,” I said, “that is the right number, but my husband is a Professor.” That was the end of the conversation.

Unfortunately, after all this, not only were Kevin and I awake, Guido was too. Once he wakes up in the morning, his bladder tells him he must go out. Therefore, Kevin proceeded to get up and take him out. When he came back to bed, it took us an hour to get back to sleep.

This, my friends, is why I take the phone off the hook before I go to bed.

Currently (2021): We no longer have a land-line. We haven’t had one in many years, but I do turn my cell phone on silent before going to bed. If I don’t, I will receive notifications all through the night and never get any sleep. I feel like if there is an emergency, the police will ring the doorbell.