Oh, the things I took for granted before I became a mom hell bent on working from home. I could make a list now that includes showering, going to the bathroom, finishing a meal, uninterrupted sleep and an undisturbed laundry pile, but really I want to talk about phone calls.

Yes. Phone calls.

I knew this was a thing. A child could be sleeping a sleep of a sweet fluffy angel from heaven, or completely enthralled in the drama of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, or distracted by the love and adoration received by her father who just arrived home from work, but as soon as you make the commitment and pick up the phone to place that important call, the one you’ve been waiting to complete for probably a week because, if you’re like me you procrastinate stuff like that, and shit hits the fan.

It’s like dialing the number sets off alarm bells of panic in young children, like they fear the little white box is going to take control of all their mother’s attention until the end of time so they must act to make sure they’re not abandoned. I think it’s some sort of born-in instinct.

Anyway, the phone hasn’t always been my best friend, but now it’s become a sort of nemesis of mine, especially when I finally have to give in and make those annoying calls to  a credit card company or “customer service line,” the kind that sends you through forty-seven options, where you can press “1” for English, “6” for French, enter your card number, speak clearly your reason for calling, and then again because the robot didn’t understand you, and then try to magically recall and type in the mysterious access code you were never given so you can state your hair color, shoe size, reason for living, bank account number, your father’s mother’s grandmother’s maiden name and your thoughts on Donald Trump all the while frantically pressing “0” for the operator hoping that the message will get through the vortex of space and time you’ve been living in since dialing the damn number 45 minutes ago and you might get a shot at talking to an actual human being who will promptly put you on hold thirteen times before they tell you that your name’s not on the account and your husband needs to call to make the changes.

The Lord’s on my side if Edie’s first word is “momma” or “puppy” and not
“*%&$*(#@&!”

Because I don’t have time for this shit. I have a window of five minutes at a time where the baby might have found something other than a magazine or a crusted piece of spaghetti on the floor from last night’s supper to chew on to keep her busy and then it’s over. Surely some of the managers of these customer service centers have children of their own?!

Or maybe I just have more annoying problems than most. Because after my failed half-hour credit card phone call I decided to tackle my UPS situation. See I ordered my husband a custom pocket knife for our anniversary two months ago (hey, that’s as close to on-time as I can get) and I wanted to make sure that they didn’t deliver it to my mom and dad’s place.

Because that’s what UPS has been doing with our other packages. They set it, with the best intentions, on a bench in their garage where it enjoys a safe existence for approximately 5 seconds before dad’s pup Waylon shreds into it, spreading shards of cardboard, plastic and the entire contents of the package across the front lawn and driveway, sending my poor parents on a scavenger hunt for our belongings.

It’s not a pretty sight, especially if I order diapers.

Seriously. Sometimes I feel so alone in my redneck situations.

So long story (sorta) short, I made the dreaded phone call, if only to save me from having to dig through Waylon’s future poop pile for the expensive pocket knife.

It didn’t go well.

It started out with the baby safely in her high chair enjoying strawberry pieces and, by the time I got through the above process, dialing zero while declaring my religion, counting backwards from 100 by fives and offering cash to the robot lady if I could just please, for the love of George Clooney, talk to an actual person, the baby was on my hip trying her damnedest to get that phone in her hands so that maybe she could give them piece of her baby mind, or, more likely, take a bite out of it.

By the time I got to the first operator I found out that she didn’t care about the dog problem. She just wanted a tracking number.

But I didn’t have a tracking number. What I had was a baby who had just pooped her pants.

I was put on hold.

I changed the diaper.

I was put on hold again.

I made a bottle.

I was put on hold again only to be told to call the company and give them the right address.

They had the right address. It took me thirty minutes to get her to misunderstand me.

I hung up.

I called for a tracking number.

I called UPS again. I put the baby down to crawl around and picked up a broom to try to multi-task.

UPS call. House Cleaning. Keeping the baby alive. That’s what my life has come to.

But I nearly failed at it all. While I swept dirt and half-alive boxelder bugs in little piles I tried to explain the dog situation to the UPS lady, pleaded with her to just tell me how to get the message to my local UPS driver, who, according to her, doesn’t have a phone, or a boss, turned around to find the baby playing in the dirt piles and hung up with no delivery solution just in time to watch my baby put a boxelder bug in her mouth and chomp down.

I screeched.

She crawled toward me, her hands slower than her knees, and banged her head on the floor.

She cried.

I picked her up.

I cried.

And that is why I hate the phone.