Zann abhors a telephone

Contrary to popular belief I have not fallen off the world.
My telephone, however, is about to.
I have gotten myself into more messes than I can count since the "FunDip Incident" and they can all be traced back to a phone.

I don't know if I have mentioned my irrational fear of making telephone calls in this blog or not. But I have one. I don't know what happened in my childhood that traumatized me from dialing out but something did. I don't even call close friends or family without some amount of anxiety.

But this month, particularly this week and last, telephones seem to be exacting their revenge on me. Either that or the Good Lord is trying to help me conquer my fear. Last weekend a telephone call started it all. I was settling down to watch the season finale of one of my favorite tv shows, when the phone rings. I answer. The lady on the other end tells me she wants me to be the leader of prayer ministry. Leader? Me?! I had a bit of a Moses moment. I told her that I'm really not much of a leader and that I didn't think I'd be right for the job. She talks and gets me to back down from that excuse. She tells me the dates - I look at the calendar looking for some, any excuse to get out of it. There is nothing going on that time of that month. Disarmed of my excuses by Providence, I agreed to take the position. I felt confident that with God's help I could do the job set before me. Praying is second nature right? How hard could meeting with a group of women and praying for a conference be?

Then I got the packet of leadership materials. The prayer team has not even been formed yet.... which means *insert blood curdling shriek here* calling people! Not only that but I'm suppose to get two of those people to attend a model meeting with me this Sunday. For days I put it off. For days I prayed that God would provide me with email addresses or something so I wouldn't have to call. Finally, I forced myself to make calls tonight. I left several messages with answering machines, one with a child, and got a couple of "I'd love to help...but"s which I completely understand... and now I am completely drained.

Between all that, I received a phone call from yet another agency asking for donations. (TELEPHONE MESS EXHIBIT A:) I believe we've been called by every non-profit organization associated with fire, police, or veterans at least once every night since we've been married. Most of the time we politely turn them down. One of these days we are going to get caller ID. DH once made a vet very irate because he politely listened to his whole monologue and then turned him down. I got rather testy with the woman I spoke with tonight because she said we pledged money and then didn't send it. I told her I didn't remember any such thing. She argued that she had my name written down that we had. I took down and address and all, and then come to find out that DH had actually pledged to that one organization at the beginning of the month.

A few weeks ago, we went out for an evening to see a play and the plan was to join friends for dinner following it. We never made it to dinner. It was storming. One of the friends who was calling to see which restaurant we were going to accidentally called our land line. It was busy. She asked me if Sasha was using the phone. I knew that wasn't the case, but we hadn't used the phone either so it definitely wasn't off the hook. My vivid imagination conjured images of our house having burned to the ground due to lightning strike... or someone breaking in and ripping out the phone lines. We reluctantly went home to check on things at my request. And because home was a good 15 minute drive either way we missed dinner. None of those things were true of course, the power board had just accidentally broken our phone line while working on some other utilities up the street. The panic attack I had caused a nasty argument between DH and I, but it was quickly put to rest. But I deem it as yet another (Exhibit B) example of how the phone has gotten me into a mess lately.

Sunday we placed a classified ad to sell a few things that were cluttering up the garage. Monday I got a phone call from a sweet little old lady who was interested in one of the items. (Telephone mess exhibit C:) She says she is sending her son to purchase the item, not to sell it to anyone else. "Yipee! I sold it!" I thought. No...not so much. I stay home for several hours waiting for them to arrive and then what we are selling just isn't the model her son was looking for. On the bright side DH did manage to sell his old snare drum and a broken tv to a guy tonight (he told him up front that it was broken) by using the phone. I still haven't sold my gazelle. *sigh* So I guess phones aren't too bad.

Oh yeah! (Exhibit D:) Saturday, my one day to sleep in since we had yard work planned on Memorial Day... was ended early by someone calling my cell phone by mistake! At 6 AM! I wish I was one of those lucky people who can go back to sleep after being woken up. But I'm not. I tried, but the phone call had caused too much adrenaline to go coursing through my veins (no good phone calls ever come early in the morning or late at night... that seems to be prime time for bad news). So I finally just got up and started the day hours earlier than I had planned.

Give me email and blogs any day. The moral of all this ranting you ask?

You know the old saying "Don't call us, we'll call you."? Well just reverse it in my case. Call me. I will never ever call you, because Zann abhors a telephone.
Give me email or hand written letter any day - heck! I'll even take telegraph, "dit dit dit da da da dit dit dit!" just please... don't make me make telephone calls anymore!

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Ponderment of the Day

Here is something to ponder for you.

Do you "hear" your own voice in your head when you think?

I had never really thought about it before until I lost my voice this week. Another round of sinus/ear infections and drainage caused by those has left me voiceless. I only just became voiceless as of yesterday. And I noticed as I stood cooking spaghetti and thinking to myself that I was "hearing" my voice in my head. Not my normal voice - no the icky, scratchy, squeaky voice that I currently have. I thought it was odd. And wondered if I always hear my current voice in my head, and of course then I wondered if other people "hear" their own voice in their heads when they think. I'm pretty sure I wasn't talking out loud to myself - I would have felt it if I was because at the moment speaking is quite an effort.

So now I'm curious do you think in your own voice?
Have you ever thought about it?

A bird in hand is worth one in the bush

You know how you've always heard that if you touch a baby bird, it's mother will abandon it? Well apparently that isn't true. Or at least not when the bird is covered with dog spit first.

The other day we were out in the back yard playing with the dog when she suddenly got distracted and headed around the side of the house. She was gone for a little bit and there was a Mama Robin squawking and going crazy on the fence nearby. DH and I looked at each other and as if in tandom said - oh no! she's got a baby bird! DH being the big strong man that he is and me being the crier over all creatures big and small... he got a head start on heading around the house to get the bird away from the dog. When I got around the corner fearing the worst (pile o feathers or limp little body) what I found instead was my husband cupping a baby bird in his hand. "It's okay he said, a little wet, but okay."

"Put it in the bush!" I exclaimed. We figured that was probably where it had come from in the first place, as there were no nests within eye-site and he was just at "trying to fly" stage. After he had put it in the bush and we discussed our hopes that the mother would not abandon it as we had so oft been told in childhood and how we hoped he would have no more run-ins with neighborhood dogs or cats, DH went on to tell me that the baby bird was not in our dog's mouth or anything when he found her. Instead the dog was just standing there staring at it. And had apparently given it a lick because it's little back was wet. Don't you get this mental picture of Selvester and Tweety bird. Where Selvester hears the little old lady coming and spits tweetie out real quick?

I then made Jay wash his hand thoroughly. They hypocondriac in me couldn't get past all the nasty little germ (bird flu!!!) that little guy could have been carrying. Pitty my future children people, if my hypochondria gets worse as I age.

Anyway, that was probably Thursday. Today (Sunday) I went out with the dog and she went straight to the fence, excitedly whining and running up and down, and looking over the fence like this:

She looks as though she is thinking "Come back baby robin... you need another bath!"

That's when I saw Winston sitting on our neighbor's back steps. I have decided to call our baby robin, Winston. I call him that because he looks like Winston Churchill to me. It is a blurry picture because I was unable to get close enough without climbing the fence for my less than wonderul digital camera's depth of field.

But here is little Winston - we assume it is the same bird. It certainly looks like it, and I'm going to tell myself that it is anyway. We do have other evidence that the "touch a bird the mother will abandon it" myth is untrue. My sister and her family had a family of cardinals nest outside their window. I do believe that her husband rescued a baby bird in the same manner and it's mother continued feeding it, right before their eyes. I think that's how the story went, and DH vaguely remembers it the same way... so I'm going to go with it. In my world that myth is busted. :P

In other bird news, I witnessed the most beautiful thing while I was outside today too. It was a bit of a bird ballet. I think they were swallows or marlins.. I'm not sure. I'm not much of a bird person. But I sincerely enjoyed watching them swoop and sore in and out of the field behind our house in beautiful synchranization sometimes and randomly at other times. It was breath taking. "Consider the birds"... my mind when directly to that bible passage when I saw it. I knew they were feeding on bugs and what not in the field, but it was almost as if they were dancing in praise as well. These are my dancing birds, though you can't really tell. They are the black spots over the field.

Which reminded me of my youngest neice. Last week I went home for a quick visit. While there, I went to church with my parents. My sister and her family came too. Her youngest goes to pre-school there, even though they attend a different church. Bug (I think that's what I've nick-named her for this blog) will be 5 in July. Her pre-school was singing for the church that day. After she finished her song she came back to sit with our family. She made me smile during the hymns. She has been taking ballet. And each hymn that we sang she was doing what I would call interpretive dance in the space between her mother and I. She used the pew in front of us as a ballet bar, and did pirouettes and pleaes for the Lord (pardon my spelling of the ballet terms, I'm spelling them like they sound). It was adorable. She had done that at Christmas too, while we sang carols around the tree, she got up and danced.

Is it any wonder that my mother called us "birds" when my sister and I were little and that she continues the tradition with my neices. As in "Come here my little birds and get your face washed" or whatever. I think for us it was because we always had our mouths open like little birds, but for my neice it seems likely that it is because she flits and dances around.

Of course, mom also called us "beans" and I've on occasion heard her call my neices that...but that just doesn't have the same imagery as birds, now does it?