Crazy Dog Lady goes to the cell phone store

Is it a bad sign when the trendy 20 something saleswoman at the cell phone store is in awe of how old your phone is?  'I used to have this exact same phone years ago, I think it was blue but I can't remember' is how she puts it.  I like my old phone.  It's pink and has nice big buttons that I can read and folds down smaller than my new phone.

Pinky vs my new fancy pants smart ass phone.  Aren't the gizmos supposed to get smaller? At least the new one is purple which is almost as good.

See the nice buttons?  Great for middle aged dog lady eyes and fingers.  I am not a cell phone person.

For the once every few months that I use it to order Indian food take out on the way home from a dog trial it works o.k.  Or at least it did until I got my first ever call from an actual live client and it kept cutting in and out.  I kept having to ask her to repeat herself, very embarrassing and unprofessional and kind of threw me off my game.  So I tell my tale of woe to the trendy sales girl with the cool blue sparkly perfectly manicured fingernails and funky in  a good way bracelets.  She explains that it's the phone and I'm obviously due an upgrade, she doesn't even have to check, and once I get a fancypants new gizmo all will be right in the world again and I can deal with my clients with confidence and aplomb.  They will be busting down my door.  'Hurrah!', I think, 'that was easy enough'.  I explain to her the very few things I need it to do and she comes up with a couple of options.  I go for the one that has a display that you can make bigger.  I'm already to the point of needing 2 pairs of glasses and I almost never have the pair with me that lets me read teensy little letters.  Plus it's purple and it will only cost me $20.

I'm thinking this process has been fairly painless, trendy girl has done a great job of explaining things and pointing me in the right direction and not making fun of my cluelessness.  'I know you'll figure your phone out no problem', she tells me in an encouraging voice.  I shamelessly tell her I set up my own website, I can figure out this phone.  She's duly impressed.  However it takes forever and a day to set the phone up.  She has to call over a trendy looking guy to give it the magic touch because something is not working right.  It takes about 20 minutes or so to get the stubborn thing up and running.  There is some nice trendy generic alternative music playing in the store to amuse me and I pass the time by asking what must seem like the most ridiculous questions.  'Does it have a speakerphone?  Can I plug headphones into it?  Can I copy pictures I take with it to my computer?'  Somehow they both manage to keep a straight face.  I refrain from asking her if I can change the wallpaper to a picture of my dog jumping through a hoop.  Once they finally get the thing up and running and she explains to me all the ridiculous things it can do I feel silly about the speakerphone question.  Do you know that I can speak into the phone and tell it, 'Facebook' and it will go to Facebook?  How cool is that?  Except I hardly ever go to Facebook and I can't ever imagine a need to go there on my phone.  I wonder if I can make it bring up the Indian restaurant on the phone?  Now that would be useful.  Or if it could tell me where I left my keys?

I finally get out of there 1 1/2 hours later.  I play around with it a bit then decide to set my voicemail greetings.  At which point I realize that the cell phone service seems even worse than it was before.  One teensy weensy little bar.  Actually it looks like half a bar.  It takes me about 12 tries to say just my name for my voicemail greeting because it keeps cutting in and out.  I'm already nauseous about how much money I have to pay now on a monthly basis for my fancypants phone with internet service even with a discount Jonny gets from work.  And it still doesn't work??!!  I may be the first person in history to cut my cell phone in favor of my land line.  But I need a cell phone to use at my office which I'm only renting part-time.  There is no land line there, only wifi's.  And I need the internet if I want to accept credit cards.  So today I call Sprint and explain my dilemma.  I'm pleasantly surprised to speak to an actual person almost right away and they tell me they can send me a gizmo to boost my signal and turn my house into a cell phone tower.  For free!  Who knows what sort of weirdo radiation waves I'll be exposing us all to but at least we will have fancypants cell phone service.  I hope.

Now to figure out how to get Cody's picture on the wallpaper.