Never thought I'd be the person whose life goes totally sideways without my cellphone....

...but holy heck I just had a tricky couple of weeks here.

Long story short, we are now a FOUR iGADGET FAMILY and I have a brand spankin' new, not hand-me-down, all mine iGadget.

Long story long, I am officially one of those people: useless without my damn phone.

I held off on having one until two years ago, when I no longer had a land line.  It's taken me this long to really get the hang of it.  I have finally figured out how the "contact" section works and how to copy things in email and how not to text a message meant for the husband to the farrier instead.  (Good thing it was just boring stuff like what came in the mail today...)

As of two weeks ago, the family situation was like this:

Jethro - newish iPhone 4 with a sticky home button that sometimes worked right.

Me - his previous iPhone 3GS (whatever the heck that stands for) which I really liked even though there was a little dark spot in all the pictures it took.

Bucky & Annyong - his first iPhone, 3G I believe, which I thought was totally adequate in the first place but apparently not bell- and-whistly enough.

He'd given Bucky the old Gadget to use as an iPod, since Annyong already had a nice iPod.

Then the two teenagers landed a babysitting gig which they traded days... and the family has no land line.  I had awful thoughts about a kid breaking an arm or something and one of my kids out there beside a corn field needing to cross a busy highway to use a neighbour's phone to call for help.  So after a long discussion about responsibility usage and blah blah blah we activated the old Gadget.  No data, no email, just text messaging and calls on weekends and after 9pm.  Bucky gives the Gadget to Annyong when she goes to work.  And they'd have to each come up with some cash for the phone bill, what with them being employed and all.

It was working halfway decently, this system.

About two weeks ago this thing started.  My phone didn't work.  I missed a call from a student and wasn't here when she showed up for a lesson.  OOPS.  She was cool about it but I was getting worried. I wasn't getting calls, I wasn't getting messages, I was afraid I'd lose all three of my riding students!!!

Turns out it had to do with Jethro getting really sick of that wonky home button.  So he went out and got a new iPhone 4GS SS R/T whatever the heck acronym that phone's hauling around.

Everybody moved down a phone.

He spent a whole afternoon talking to the phone company to get us all four set up, get a number for each kid's phone, set up the data plan, bitch about the astronomical amount they're charging us and getting a better plan and oh man it was hardcore boring.

I walked away from that with two teenagers packing cellphones, something I'd vowed wouldn't darn well happen for a long time yet, and a newish iPhone 4 with a wonky home button.  I spent a couple hours setting up all the apps - which I find amusing because in my world the Apps are out in the field grazing and swishing their tails over their spotted rumps - making sure everything had moved over to the newish phone and recording a new voicemail greeting.

I also had to do some damage control with my students.

At least I had some peace of mind knowing that if one of the kids missed the bus or something, I wouldn't be driving all over the county and the town looking for a lost teenager.

Well one night Bucky decided to upgrade my iGadget to OS 10 or 10.5 or man I am not good with numbers.

THINGS LOOKED DIFFERENT.  AGAIN.

Like, I'm easily confused.  If it looks different it's like I've never seen the damn thing before.  Every time Google changes the email page I almost cry.  I'm lost.

I'm like a horse who walks into the barn one day and there's a DIFFERENT COLOUR BUCKET IN THE STALL and I cannot go in there because clearly, that is not my stall.

But Bucky 'splained it all and I was getting hip to the whole thing.


About a week into my new relationship with Newish iGadget, that sticky wonky home button just gave up.  I was on email and I had to turn the damn thing off and turn it back on again to use the phone.

Know what I hate more than trying to figure out something new?  I hate when things don't work.  I just want things to work, dammit.

I found myself at the Apple store 40 minutes away from home, relieved that it wasn't further away than that, with a young fella in a blue T shirt telling me I'd be getting a new phone.

Which resulted in a frenzied discussion with the teenagers about whether or not Daddy backed up all the crap on my gadget with the computer.

A couple hours later, I was in my bed, calling Bucky over to my room because... EVERYTHING WAS BACK TO MY OLD KIND OF DIFFERENT AGAIN AND ALL THAT STUFF I PUT ON THE DEFECTIVE PHONE WAS GONE OR SOMETHING.

I don't remember what happened next.  I think it involved recording a new voicemail greeting that might end with me giggling because Bucky tickled my foot on his way out of my room.

I'm liking my new gadget, I must say.  It's NEW new.  I got a bright pink bumper to put on it.  The screen is perfectly clear, even to my 40 year old eyeballs.  It doesn't dim enough for those eyeballs but I just look at it sideways and it's ok.  I've got all my favourite head banging tunes on it.  At some point I will again organize the pictures into albums like I did on one of the other iterations of this thing.

All's well, right?  We can put the techno-drama to rest for a time now?

Nope.

Last night the computer got upgraded from Liger to Lion.

LOOKS DIFFERENT DIOFWEHFSOIDJ.  Really slick and awesome, but different.  And of course in the morning my gadget and computer are all like, "Dude, who?  Man I don't even know you."

I try to scroll down the computer screen and it doesn't move.  Ohhhhh.... turns out it scrolls the same way the gadget does.  Backwards.  Ok.  Sigh.  I'll get used to it.

I've got all my little pictures (icons?) on the iGadget screen in the right order again.  Some time I'll reorganize the photo albums for the third time.  And delete duplicate contacts out of the phone list again.

I am pretty sure all my students can reach me if they need to.  But then, how would I know if they couldn't????????


When I go out to the pasture to visit Phoenix 1.0 and Oakie 1.0 and Copper 1.0  I'll be quietly pleased that all I need to do to upgrade them is go at them with a brush and a bottle of ShowSheen.