why did you get a cell?

I'm going to Alabama on Saturday to take care of the nephews for a week. My brother doesn't have a landline. I'm a little scared of being in charge of a 4.5 year old and a 12 week old without some way of calling out in an emergency, or just getting a hold of their parents.

So if you get a call from a 443 area code, it's me seeking adult conversation after D has melted my brain with preschooler logic.

Grace looks so stoic and ticked. Poor noodle.

A landline is one of those things that we don't have at the house, but I think we might need to get. Did you know that if you call 911, it's significantly better to do it from a landline as the response time is much faster since they can locate you?

Where are your SIL and bro going?

Poor Grace indeed.

SIL and bro are working. SIL has been back at La Petite Academy (?) since about a month after T was born. Economics. My brother has an intern, a high school girl (!!!my brother, a mentor? Apparently, he's good and they get along great. Not that much of a surprise, but it is kind of hilarious given his hs career) so he's had to keep a normal 9-5 schedule, which is less than ideal under the circs. Mom was out there for two weeks, several friends and teenage kids of friends of SIL have been filling in in the meantime. I'm sorta the last shift before T can go into the daycare SIL works at at the insanely cheap rates given to employees ( they won't take him till he's 3 mo.)

Whenever I call 911 (uh, done more than a few) I always make a point of giving the address, even though I'm on a landline. I'm kinda horrified that even if you do that, the response is slower. Especially since if you have a landline for that purpose, it is a money suck (as I look at my bill. It's my primary, so it doesn't bug me, but if it was secondary, I'd be irate.) That's nuts.

Did you know that if you call 911, it's significantly better to do it from a landline as the response time is much faster since they can locate you?

Is this still true? At some point all cellphones were supposed to have GPS built-in for such 911 emergencies. I think my new phone has this. Has this 911 GPS feature been implemented?

i'm not sure about GPS so much as they can track the general vicinity by which tower is being used to place the call.

Thanks, everyone, for the kind words! I'm about to hit the hay, but man, what an amazing day.

Oh, and I saw that y'all were talking about the guy who walked a tightrope between the WTC towers in 1974. His name is Philippe Petit and I wrote a chunk of text about him for my yet-unfinished 33 1/3 book.

I thought I read that you can call 911 from a landline even if you don't have service. I know you can do that from a cell phone. But I'm curious about the landline thing. I should find out, since we ditched our.

If it's true, I should also get out our old phone and maybe plug it in somewhere.

It is still true according to the folks at the hospital. It takes longer to backtrace cell calls, I think because they are looking at the tower.

I'm so tired of my life right now that I can barely stand it. As Allyson would quote at me, Can't fix it, gotta stand it. But I don't have much energy to do either right now.

Feh. oh well. I am doing a ton of reading right now. What not to read when you are knee deep in the blues? A Long Way Gone. I'm presenting at a conference in November where he will be the keynote.

Corwood, great catching! Congrats! DH just said, "Whoa! That would have scared the shit out of me!"

Thanks, Kat. I'll have to dig out that old phone, just in case. Sorry about the craptasticness.

Thanks, Cashmere. Craptasticness seems to be par for the course. I do have Harold and Kumar from Netflix which might at least make me laugh.