Living In Hillmomba Is NOT As Easy As Pie

You can get there from here, but it's not all that easy. Wherever we're going lately, there is road construction to deal with. Many routes, many projects.

Yesterday, down by the low water bridge, we encountered those flimsy yellow diamond MEN WORKING signs. It was the county road department, with dump trucks and a backhoe, digging at the silt accumulated beside the bridge. The silt where people park so they can stand on the middle if the bridge and fish. On the way home, because I forgot about this work detail, we had to wait farther down, at the entrance to the Best compound (home of speeding drivers) to be waved through by a man brandishing his trucker cap.

This morning I knew better. I had to meet up with my sister the ex-mayor's wife at 9:30. So I took an alternate route. I hoped she wasn't running late. I got up EARLY for her, you know. There was no text on my cell phone. But the land line was out of order! I know that, because I tried to use it to call the bank automated line to balance my checkbook. That phone was deader than a doornail. Not even a dial tone. And in the window, it said, "Check phone line."

Ain't that a fine how-do-you-do. "Check phone line." As if. The last time this happened, our phone came back after a couple of days. I know that we have a handset gone bad downstairs, because we are unable to find a battery for it. But it has not affected the other three. Still, I made sure to go to each one and jostle them on their charging stands. Same message. "Check phone line."

Then, on the way to town by alternate route, I wondered, "Did that county road crew dig up a phone line? Is that affecting our service?" Because, you see, although the main lines are up on the DUH telephone poles, the lines from the poles to homes are sometimes buried. Like ours. It comes in off the pole over in the BARn field, runs under the dirt down to the BARn area, then across (in a shallow grave) to the house. I know that, because one year Farmer H gave his then-unemployed Number One Son some busywork to earn money, and he cut through it with a weed witch. I was hoping that Puppy Jack had not gotten too gnawy over a dug-up wire.

When I got back from town, the phone said, "Line in use." I suppose that was an improvement. I picked it up. Still no dial tone. And then, after taking my attention off it for a couple of hours, I glanced at the one on the desk in my dark basement lair, and it said, "Charging." With a sweet hum when I turned it on.

So...our phone is fully functioning again. Pity that little intermission could not have happened last week, when those political candidates had me on speed dial.

I guess that's how the cookie crumbles out here in the land of Not-Easy as Pie.