How did we live before cell phones?

I was enjoying my sister's post about her vacation in Florida and the things that went wrong. I was thinking about her comments regarding her tendency to freak out quickly when things go wrong. We have always been opposites in this area and I was particularly thinking about it yesterday when something went wrong, day 2, in our life and I was just sitting back relaxing. I wonder what will go wrong today.

Monday evening I had planned to meet 3 girlfriends for coffee at a Barnes and Noble at 6:30. These are dear wonderful girlfriends but not exactly prompt, on time girlfriends. I arrived at Barnes and Noble around 6:40 and was the first one there. I usually call the next most prompt friend to determine her arrival but discovered I didn't have my cell phone. After a brief moment of panic I decided it wasn't a big deal not to know the exact moment she would walk in the door and I could just relax and check out the books while I waited. After all I didn't have a cell phone for years as a child and early adult and yet somehow managed to meet friends and navigate through my life. Around 7pm I decided to order a drink and flip through a magazine while I waited. At this point I thought it was a bit strange that I was still the only one there and started wondering if I had gone to the wrong Barnes and Noble. At 7:30 I finally asked someone to call the other store and see if my friends were in the cafe there. Initially the woman said there was someone looking for a friend but then she couldn't find anyone looking for me. I decided that an hour was long enough to wait and it was time to go home. John, Jake and Isabelle were all at scouts so I would have the house to myself for a little while. I got home and walked directly to my phone where there were multiple messages from all 3 girlfriends. Turns out they probably were the ones looking for me at Barnes and Noble but had decided to drive across the street to Cheesecake factory instead and were all panicked about what had happened to me. Well since the location I was supposed to meet at was 2 miles from my home rather than the 7 miles I decided to drive, I hopped back in the car to arrive 1-1/2 hours late for our night out. When I arrived I told the hostess, "there are 3 women here who probably think I am dead on the side of the road.". We laughed about my mistake and stayed til closing. Apparently I can no longer navigate my life without a cell phone. Also, apparently I don't listen very closely when people tell me where to meet them.

Well that was an adventure, they happen, now back to regular life. So yesterday I am reading the very blog post from my sister that I mentioned at the top when my husband calls. After asking me what I am doing and making some brief chit chat he says, "well since you aren't doing anything can you come get my van started?" Apparently he had left something charging in his work van all day and killed the battery. I left Isabelle home with Jake and hopped in the car for a drive through early rush hour traffic to find him at the home of his client and give him a jump. I pull up, he opens the hood of my van and I say, "so you have the cables right?" He looks at me and says he was going to use the pair in my van. Interesting, I don't have any in my van. I had briefly looked around our garage but didn't see them so assumed he had them already. Turns out they are in our car. So we each make a few phone calls to people we know living in that area and find nobody home to loan us cables. So into my van John goes and we drive off in a strange part of town in search of jumper cables. We find a $10 pair at a Superamerica about a mile away and back we go. Now since I likely have a mainly female readership and since you all are unlikely jumper cable experts I will tell you that a $10 pair of jumper cables are not of the highest quality. After getting back to the car John spent about 30 minutes connecting and unconnecting, wiggling and banging the cables while I reved up my van trying to get them to make a good enough connection so that the juice from my van could push through small and weak wiring to give John's van and little spark. I did get to go in and check out the bathroom remodel he is working on while we waited and since it was nice and sunny I relaxed with my foot out the window soaking up that vitamin D that is so lacking here in the winter. Finally John unhooks the whole thing and tosses the cables on the ground. I suggested he jump up and down on them but he just picked them up and put them in the back of his van. I then pull my van out of the driveway and watch him roll his van out of their driveway and then push it over to the side of the road. I watched as he huffed and puffed and drove the van over his foot. I asked him if he needed any help but he said he was fine. It turns out that we really can't get along without cell phones any more as John was able to look up the location of a car parts store on his phone and then get turn by turn directions with the built in navigation system on his phone. I managed to hit every red light on the drive there. We finally arrive back at the house with a brand new battery and John was able to install it while I continued to relax and listen to the radio. Finally 2 hours after I left the house John started up his van and was able to finish up his final work errand of the day. Of course I now have just over an hour until a meeting at church and absolutely no dinner happening so off I went to pick up Chinese

I think the reason I found the experience to be so relaxing is because it was a throw back to our poor and childless days when I would spend hours sitting around watching John work on our vehicles trying to keep them running yet another day. We quickly found our rhythm again as I was able to rev the engine on his hand signals and I think he has mellowed over the years as his frustration was kept in check and we kept a sense of humor about the whole thing.

So what will happen today? Well at the moment I think it might be related to me being late for work if I don't finish up this post and get dressed! I am off to discover the days great unknown.