The ironic thing is I'd call for help.....if I could

I promised the other day I was going to catch up on the events in life and I fully intend to. But there is a pressing matter that must be attended to at the moment so everything else will have to wait.

You see, I can't find our phone.

In order to understand the urgency of the situation, I must give you some back story. And that story will begin with the disclaimer that we are cheap. Very, very cheap.

We've had the same phone for quite a few years. I purchased it at Target and it met all my stringent specifications. It came with 2 handsets, a non-annoying ring and a cheap price tag.

About a year in, one of the handsets died. Since that was the one we used upstairs it had to be quickly replaced. Because I can't think of anyone in this house with opposable thumbs that would run downstairs just to answer the phone. Especially if "The Office" or "Lost" is on. So replace it, we did. With the phone we used in our first house about 10 years ago.

I dug it out of a closet and hooked it up and it seemed to work just fine. Although, it actually has a phone cord (I Know!) so mobility would certainly be limited. But who cares? It sits beside the couch which is the only place anybody would ever be while upstairs at our house. Perfect!

There is one little problem though. The buttons don't work. So you can't dial out. If we want to dial out while upstairs we have to use the handset from the downstairs phone. As tedious as I'm sure this all sounds to my friends with Blackberries and Mobile Headsets, for us it's worked just fine. Until now.

Because 3 days ago our downstairs handset went missing.

The last time I saw it, I had placed it on my nightstand. That was Wednesday night. It has not been seen or heard from since.

Some of you might be wondering why I don't hit the little page button on the answering machine. I assure you, I did. But it doesn't help because the battery's dead.

That's the other problem with our phone. If it stays off the charger for more than and hour it's toast.

So, I've been cleaning house today hoping to locate it but no such luck.

Handiman thinks my Mexican boyfriend took it. Which is another funny story altogether.

Thursday night, sometime around 12:00 am, we were awoken by a really loud bang somewhere in our house. Handiman immediately shot out of bed and began searching each and every room for an intruder. I, of course, realized a few seconds later that it was just our squeegee brush falling off the shower wall and knocking over some shampoo bottles. But I was too sleepy to get up and tell him so I let him continue his search and went back to sleep. The next morning, I told him and he was both annoyed and relieved. It seems he thought it was either a burgalar or I had been hiding my Mexican boyfriend in the closet and he had decided it was time to attack. In either case, we would be doomed because he had no way to call 911. Because we can't find the STINKING PHONE!

I guess what I'm trying to say is, if you want to talk to us, you'll have to call. If we don't answer that means we're either not home, we're downstairs and too lazy to walk upstairs or my Mexican boyfriend has had it with all this nonsense and killed us all.

P.S. For those wondering why we don't just use our cell phones, I refer you back to the beginning of this long tirade. When I told you we are cheap. Very, very cheap.