As of tomorrow, our landline will have a new number! No more annoying doctors, MILs From Hell, or Bogus Bill Collector calls. I guess we will have to put up with some wrong numbers for a while. I tried calling the new number from my cell, just for the hell of it, and the recorded message said that *555-1234 has been changed to a non-published number*. So whoever had that number before was being harassed by people, as well. I hope none of them start harassing us. But it’s less annoying when these are people that you don’t know. When it’s people you DO know, and you tell them to quit calling all the time, and they don’t, that is far worse.

I am already feeling sorry for the poor Directory Assistance operators. No doubt that Mommy will call again tomorrow, and when she gets a recorded message about the number not being in service, she will go batshit insane over it. She will call Directory Assistance and nag the hell out of them for the number. They will not give it to her, because we’ve always paid extra for non-published, unlisted phone numbers, and this is not going to change. So she’ll probably say that it’s an emergency, and that they HAVE to tell her the number. or else someone will die, or something. I know how she gets, which is why I am sick to death of that woman.

And then she will start harassing Mike at work again, and he will have to do something about that. Why he ever gave her that number is beyond me…maybe he thought he could protect me from having to take her calls. Fat lot of good THAT did!

But I made him swear that he would NEVER give the new landline number out to his mother or the doctors. I threatened death or divorce if he did.

If he wants to talk to his mother, he will make a deal with her, in that he will call her every so often, just to shut her up and keep her happy. But it all will be on OUR terms, not hers. She agrees to quit calling him at work and whining. In exchange for that, he will agree to call her every so often, for a brief (under 30 minutes) call. She probably doesn’t have Caller ID, but he’ll use the *67 thing to hide our number, just in case.

If she starts whining for money for the grandbrats, or anything else, he hangs up. One little bit of laying on guilt for any reason, he hangs up. She is NOT to ask to talk to me, because I won’t. If she pushes the issue, he hangs up. If she complains about me and how mean and evil I am for changing the number, or any of the million other bad things I have ever done in my life, he hangs up. If she tries to make the call go over the allotted 30 minutes, he hangs up. I have a digital kitchen timer with a VERY loud beeping sound, and he will be using that to time the calls.

I know that this sounds like a cruel thing to do to an old lady, but we feel we have no choice. It is clear that she cannot conduct a nice, civilized phone call when left to her own devices. She either goes by our terms, or she doesn’t get to talk to Mike at all. The ball is in her court now. Right now, Mike does NOT want to talk to her at all. But should he decide to do so, he will type up this list of rules and mail it to her, just so she knows how it’s going to be.

She brought this all onto herself. One of the reasons why Mike was so excited to go to MIT right out of high school was that it would get him away from Dysfunction Junction, Ohio. Since then, he has tried to be a good son and talk to his mother, but she’s done a lot to drive us both away from her. There is only so much we can take. Guidelines need to be set.

And she will NOT be able to use *69 to call us back…it won’t work if the caller uses *67 first! Hahahahaha!