At 12:45 this afternoon, I checked the porch to see if my package had been delivered. When it wasn’t there, I clicked on the tracking number and learned that it had been delivered at 12:08 pm. So I checked again, and sure enough, there it was. UPS had dumped it in the middle of the driveway. It’s a good thing this wasn’t the day my bottled water delivery guy comes. He’s the one who ran over a water pipe and flooded my yard a couple of months back. I’m sure he wouldn’t have missed a package in the drive.

So now I have the new cordless phone that I didn’t really need, and it has features I might never use. But it’s so much fun to get new toys that I’ll find a way to explain to the Boss why I spent his money so recklessly. Maybe I’ll invite him to take it out of my nonexistent Christmas bonus.

The hard part was waiting six hours while the battery charged before I could play with it. I spent that time reading the manual and marking the pages. The phone has a 50-number phonebook memory, so I made a list of phone numbers that I wanted to program into it. Sadly, I could only come up with 26 numbers, and some people are listed more than once. Folks that I probably will never call are on it, but I suppose if I expire someone might call all them all to let them know. I’ve certainly made it easy enough to do that.

Was that too morbid? I don’t want to bring down the room, because I’m having so much fun. The phone has a built-in answering machine, so now I can get rid of one device that’s been cluttering my nightstand. And I’ll put away the old corded phone, but I’ll keep it for those times when the power goes out. It’s good to have something so old it’s still reliable. People used to build things to last, and I’ll have that old phone long after the new one has been replaced.

I probably don’t need caller ID on this phone, but it’s programmed for it so I ordered the feature from the phone company. And call waiting, I ordered that too, so that I could also order something called “call waiting ID,” so I’ll know who’s trying to phone me when I’m talking to someone else. This will be useful when I’m talking to the Boss. I can tell him, “Sorry, I have to take a call from my niece.” Or, you know, maybe the other way around.