Home Improvements

Earlier this week we had the AC Specialist visiting our house. It was important, as our AC died toward the end of last summer and our heating bills, this winter, have been painfully large. So we opted to upgrade our whole heating and cooling system to something more efficient and, I believe, environmentally friendly. It’s the first second (the first was the bathroom floor) of a long list of home improvements we’ve been trying to prioritize and categorize (is it worth it or not) since moving into this house almost two years ago.

None-the-less, it doesn’t seem to be the change (so far) that has made the most difference in quality of life at our house. Last week, I broke down and bought a cordless phone system… not just one, but two handheld thingies where you speak and hear others speak (from far away, even!) without being physically tied to any single location in the house. I know it makes it sound like we must live in the dark ages. I mean, even my dad has had a cordless phone for something that can probably be measured in decades now.

Regardless, I finally put away our antiquated phone (okay… honestly, I was prompted to do so after it plunged off the desk to its death when I stepped two steps further from the phone than my spirally cord allowed)… and replaced it with something more modern and, erm... convenient.

In the week or so since living with the cordless phone, I’ve noticed a couple of things.

1 – All life does not cease when the phone rings…. or more aptly in our house, when someone chooses to answer it. Our old phone (due to strategically poor location) ringing resulted in the television having to be muted (if it was on), any activity being shushed or ushered into another room, and long periods of family members sighing and scuffing their feet while waiting for so-and-so to finish their conversation with whoever was on the phone.

2 – My pre-teen does, indeed, have the gift of gab. She’s never been much of a phone talker, and I’ve long suspected it was partly due to the lack of privacy on our centrally located phone. I was actually gone for the event, but I’ve heard more than one reference now to “oh yeah – that was when you were talking on the phone!” and she said to me last night, “Mom, that new phone is awesome!”