Never talk on two phones at the same time

Parent Cafe
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<p>Especially if one of them is a call from a college student. Mine lives in off campus housing governed by a nice, honest, responsive (comes running the second D calls) and very well meaning but hopelessly incompetent landlord. </p>

<p>The problems lately have been almost daily, and the results hilarious. Water appearing on the floor and no leaks, fuses blowing for no reason, a stove that beeps in the middle of the night when it’s completely turned off, and so on. It isn’t D’s imagination - I’ve been there quite a bit the last several months and have observed a lot of it first hand. He cannot even cash my checks correctly - he loses them, forgets he has them, etc. So I put him on ACH but somehow he tangles that up too. </p>

<p>The latest was the toilet broke - wouldn’t flush. D tried to fix it herself and it broke some more, so she called the landlord. </p>

<p>I’m on a conference call at my office, the business contact - who doesn’t know me very well - put me on hold. A minute or two went by, so when my cell phone rang, I saw it was D, so I answered. </p>

<p>She’s just in from class and says “nothing is fixed”, meaning, the toilet and again with the stove. I said “nothing - he fixed nothing”??? (I’m still hearing the hold music from my business call in my other ear.)</p>

<p>D then said “the toilet is missing”. I’m like, “hmroo??? it’s missing?” D said “yeah I can’t find it”. Me: “you cannot find the toilet”??? - and I can hear her over the cell connection, moving things around. I start laughing, of course, it’s hilarious, the vision of my D rummaging around looking for a toilet as if it’s a lost pencil or something. Why would anyone disappear a toilet? </p>

<p>At that exact moment, naturally, my business call goes live again, this time with their technical team conferenced in, and they apologized profusely for wasting my time. </p>

<p>At which point I started laughing even harder, trying to explain that a toilet was missing. They were speechless. I tried to cover by saying, “um, do any of you have children - in college” - they didn’t, so I just repeated “well, a toilet got misplaced and my child cannot find it”, tried to explain but I was laughing so hard I couldn’t really form sentences, anyway, somehow we all recovered and had a normal phone call. </p>

<p>When I got back to D finally, the toilet LID was missing, not the entire appliance, and, she found it in the shower (???).</p>

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<p>What a great story!</p>

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<p>Latetoschool:</p>

<p>This one goes with your story of getting lost between hotel, restaurant, etc…, leaving your key in the rented car whose color you could not even remember and having to call your D to find out. I thought your D was your lifeline to sanity, but it seems it goes both ways. :)</p>

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<p>was on a conf call with many people including a pompous executive. He thinks he had put us on hold, gets out his cell phone and proceeds to take the next half hour ordering his new Mercedes! We worked the conference call around his deliberations concerning paint color, vanity plate, features and “rich Corinthian leather.”</p>

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<p>I have a hands-free car phone. (I don’t care what the study says, I’m much safer with the hands free model, where I can keep my hands on the wheel, eyes on the road, etc. I’ve got good concentration and will “drop” a conversation if I need to suddenly deal with a driving situation…and everyone understands when I explain a few seconds later.) But once I was leaving a message on a client’s cell phone and had just finished but hadn’t had time to turn the phone off, ending the call, when someone suddenly cut in front of me and I said, “You son of a rhymes-with-witch!” Had to explain to the client I wasn’t talking to <em>him</em>!</p>