Caught in the Briars

I packed my cell phone with me to India.  I'm sure I did.  I have this very vivid memory of the night before I left:  I turned off the phone, told Eric I probably wouldn't call him on it until the return flight because I didn't have an international card for making calls, and I tucked it into my carry-on. 

At which point it promptly disappeared, and has not been heard from since.

A year ago, we bought a ton of brightly colored, thin plastic plates from Target for Addie's 3rd birthday party.  My idea was that we could just re-use them for future parties, and the kids could eat their meals on them (they're lightweight and unbreakable).

I was cleaning up the house this morning when I caught Nolie throwing all twenty-five of them in the trash.

Perhaps this is the missing piece to the mystery of the missing phone.  Who knows what all ends up in our trash cans these days?

All of this by very long way of getting to the fact that I....

that I....

that I....


bought a Blackberry.

There.  I said it.  I feel a little nauseous.

Why do I feel so guilty about it, so ashamed?  Is it the idea of the thing, that I've joined the masses of small-technology-addicts, after resisting so long (swear to God, I almost never used my old cell phone.  For reals).  I feel as if I've just bought stock in a child pornography company.  I walked into that t-mobile store, saw all those pretty little phones with their cameras and their keypads and their internet access, and I swooned, I crumbled, I forgot myself.

It's not that it was particularly expensive.  We renewed our contract, and after the mail-in rebates, it ended up being just over $100.00.

That's a lie. 

It was $150.00.

Plus $20 more a month in billing for the internet access.

But I haven't been sneaking peeks at my inbox, which I can now access on that little phone.  I haven't been perfecting my texting skills.  I haven't been letting work creep into every spare moment of extra time I have.

All lies.

All is lost.

Save me.