Phone Harrassment

I'm being harrassed over the phone, and there's nothing I can do about it.
More than seven years ago, I got my own apartment and phone number. Since then, this number has moved with me three times as I've gotten married, bought a house, and had a child. Not once in seven years has this phone number of mine been disconnected, been someone else's, or even been under a different name. But still, the phone calls come, and always for the same person. It is SO aggravating!! And even a little embarassing when company is over.

Somehow, the telephone company thought they would be funny and give me the old phone number of someone they must have taken it away from because she didn't pay her bills. And the phone company isn't the only company to which she owes money.

I've never met this woman, but I have a phone book, so anytime one of those wonderful collection companies actually puts a real person on the line, I pull it out, look her up and give them a more recent number. I think she knows that I hate getting these calls, so everytime that she borrows money or buys something on credit, I think she puts my phone number on the application ON PURPOSE!!

One day, we got six phone calls in the span of four hours, all from the same collection agency. Five times we told them the same thing I've been saying for seven years, "I'm sorry, I don't know that person, this has been MY phone number for the last seven years! Take this number out of her file and please stop calling me." And everytime, they promise they will but then we got that sixth phone call and all heck broke loose. My husband's face turns red, his eyes get big, his blood pressure starts rising and he starts using his "cop voice," (You know, the really authoritative one) and saying the phrase, "No, that's not enough. Here's what you're gonna do, or else I 'm gonna file phone harrassment charges on you and your company!" But when he says this, he knows he can't back that up because that's not how the law was written.

Anyway, these calls have been coming in spurts every couple of months for the past seven years, and I am just plain tired of it. We've even called this woman to tell her to quit using our number as a reference, and she swears she never even knew that number. LIAR!!

It's just so annoying! It's not always the same number, so I can't block the calls, and I ignore them all the time using my Caller ID, but they always call back, and it's ALWAYS at dinner time. Any other suggestions?

I just wish I had been cursed with someone else's old phone number, and not someone who owed the whole town money.

Is he right?

I wore a brand new skirt to work today. Like, cut the tags off and put it on.

When I got home, I told my husband that I got a lot of comments on my new skirt today, and he said, "Why, 'cause you didn't wash it first?"

I replied that I never wash skirts or shirts of this material before I wear them, because then they wouldn't fit the right way afterward, and you have to at least get one wearing out of it if it's new!

He didn't agree. Who do you agree with? Do you wash EVERYTHING before you wear it? What about for your kids? I used to wash it all, but now if I can get away with my husband not seeing the tags come off, then I can "fib" and tell him that it has been washed already. Am I wrong? Could he be right? Say it ain't so!

Never Too Early

It's never too early to train him to do the jobs that I don't like to do, is it?

Don't worry, I had already cleaned it before he put his hands on it...

Sure looks like he's having fun, huh?

Don't you wish you could think cleaning the toilets was fun again?

Back In Session

School's back in, kids started back yesterday, and already, I feel like I'm way behind. I feel like there is so much that I need to do, and I don't know when I'll find the time to do it all. I have a nice conference period right in the middle of the day, so you'd think that would be a good time to get things going, right? Wrong. I have no room during my conference period. There is another teacher that has a class in my room during that period. It's really frustrating. So, I have to pick up all my stuff and get out when the other teacher comes in, and then I have fifty minutes to hang out somewhere else. It's kind of hard to get myself into anything when I know that I only have a short amount of time before I need to pick up all my stuff again and go back to my room.
And the worst part? The computer censor on my school's server has blocked all my blog reads. So, I really do have to find work or something to do during that time. I used to use the last twenty minutes of my day when the kids have gone to catch up on my "reading" but now I can't. I guess I could use that time to do the things I didn't get to do during my conference period. Man! I don't like having to actually WORK at work!

Follower I Be

Today I had to drive to a different school district for a county-wide inservice thing. Ugh. Anyway. I live out in the middle of nowhere, and this district is in another part of the woods, with no road that just plain connects the two. So, my husband tells me to go the shorter way, along a few county roads, which would keep me away from having to go all the way into town and then back out into the woods again the other way.
This wasn't so bad, except that as I turned onto the road, another car turned in behind me, and then my stress began.
I didn't know the road very well, and then to have someone behind me, I felt pressured to go faster than I felt comfortable doing, I didn't know waht the heck I was doing, and I just wanted to pull over and let him go around me so that I didn't seem like that stupid woman driver that men always joke about. Luckily, he wasn't behind me on all the roads, just one of them, and then it wasn't so bad.
On the way home, I got to follow someone who knew the roads a little better, and I felt much more relaxed about it. I never really thought that I was a follower, but apparently, I am. Oh well.