We have had this phone number since May of 2000. That is almost 8 years. For the first year we received more calls for the Morris family than ourselves.

After telling numerous friends and family members of Merlin and Colleen that this was no longer their phone number, we assumed the calls would end. We were wrong.

Although they come in spurts, we still receive calls for them. The odd thing is that over the past 8 years the Morris’s have either neglected to tell important contacts their new number or they are purposefully still handing out our number. I’m really unsure which.

When it started, there were odd calls at all hours of the night and when we explained they had the wrong number the conversation went like this:

Us: “Sorry you have the wrong number.”
Them: “What? This isn’t XXX-XXXX?”
Us: “Yes, it is but this is not the Morris’s.”
Them: “Well when in the hell did they change their number?”
Us: “I’m no expert, but since May 2000 this has been our phone number.”
CLICK.

Then, came the phone calls from businesses. They would leave detailed messages on our answering machine and over the years we have learned a lot about the Morris family. For instance, Merlin collects and sells stamps and coins, and Colleen gets her hair done at a local salon every Tuesday (if she remembers her appointment).

They at one time were very late with their car payment (maybe because they never got the message). Merlin bounced a check recently at the dry cleaners and Colleen was offered a part-time job with a grocery store last fall. I wonder if she took it?

Their kids did not visit this past Christmas because they had to work. I wonder what happened when they were expecting them for dinner and they didn’t show? They have a dog named Classy and bought a new Chevy car last year. Merlin is on disability due to a work accident he had a few years ago while employed with K-Mart. His lawyer still believes they can reach a settlement in his case.

What I do not understand is why after so many years, we keep getting phone calls for them. There must come a point when you are updating your contact information or someone new asks for your phone number, so why are they still handing out ours?

My husband was so frustrated at one point he wanted me to start handing out their phone number, because we found it clearly published in the phone book. But I kind of like getting my messages and not someone else’s. In some ways we have found humor in the situation. Every so often we call the Morris’s and ask for us.

I am laying in a hospital bed just down the street from my house. Thursday afternoon my ankle/foot started hurting and by Friday morning I could not put any weight on it.

This is the ankle I had surgery on exactly a month ago and it had gone really well (in comparison to previous surgeries I’ve had). Not to gross you out, but my incision had opened up and there was A LOT of yucky stuff coming out of my body.

I told my husband that we were either going to the ortho surgeon’s office or the ER, because the pain was that unbearable. So off I hobbled on crutches and they worked me right in.

The instructions that followed were not at all what I had expected - go directly to the hospital, admission for 3-4 days, surgery later on tonight to clean out the wound and IV antibiotics to treat it.

After several hours of admission paperwork, signing over my life and giving vials of blood and culture tests I found myself back in that cold operating room, with my arms strapped down and my body in the shape of a cross. I woke up in post-op shaking, crying and hyperventilating.

I didn’t sleep at all last night. My body bounced back and forth between chills and hot flashes. The infection finally caught up with me, as I ran a fever of 102 for a while. I reacted to the germs by throwing up anything that came close to my lips.

The combination of phenergan, percocet and morphine kept the pain minimal, but when they wear off it gets pretty bad. Thankfully, I have my own room, a flat screen TV and my laptop to occupy my jail time.

I’m now under the care of an infectious disease doctor (a new specialist to add to my list). My cultures came back positive for a staph infection and they are waiting to see if it is MRSA - which is methicillin resistant bacteria.

The specific type of infection will determine the course of antibiotics I’ll need. One possible explanation as to why a month later my incision would develop into this type of serious infection, is that I do not have a spleen (from the car accident) and it has left my immune system compromised.

Having internet access from a hospital bed may not be the best idea in the world. I read this about MRSA and started feeling sick to my stomach.

This lovely bed that moves up and down will be my friend for the next few days. At this point I’m thankful for single patient rooms and morphine! It’s the little things that make me happy. But I’m also thankful for a loving husband who is keeping me company and laughing, and my family who has helped care for our son and visited.

Do you all drive around and look at Christmas lights? As a kid we usually did. There were the houses we expected to go all out every year that we traveled past, and then of course we searched for new ones.

My father, who has a unique writing ability, loved to drive around like this. I can remember the hype one year as he talked about a new place he’d found and we were headed to. All the way there he built it up.

It had the biggest light show in the county. Red, white and blue. All lined up perfectly. Some flashed, some stayed on. Most were at ground level, but a few hung in the sky.

By the time we got there I was sure this would be spectacular.

Can you guess where we went? The airport. Oh yes, the runway.

I admit it was as he described, but I was totally disappointed. In a way it was humorous, but it should have been a warning sign of times to come in our relationship.

As I was laying in bed last night trying not to watch the clock, I kept hearing this familiar clicking noise from above. Before you start thinking I’m loosing my mind you should know that we have a very large oak tree in the front yard that hangs over the roof. It also hangs over our bedroom.

Usually what keeps me awake at night is my husband snoring, but for the past few weeks I’ve been woken up by some squirrels who are in need of Ambien. It seems they prefer bowling with acorns on our roof after midnight.

The clicking noise is them scurrying around running laps. The acorns they drop from the tree are more of a ping sound. When you lay there long enough you can differentiate between the two.

As if it’s not bad enough that they bury their treasures in my landscaping and chew on our pumpkins every fall, now they keep me awake. And to be honest they kind of freak me out a little. There is something shady about these creatures.

The more I concentrated on wanting to stand up in bed and bang on our ceiling, I remembered the stories my grandmother would tell about her sister, Edna. Seems Edna had a few loose marbles rolling upstairs. She would call my grandmother and her other sisters and talk about the aliens that were on her roof. A large amount of laughter always followed stories about Edna.

Maybe it all started out with squirrels and acorns and after many sleepless nights of hearing the noise she began to hallucinate?

Probably not. From the stories I’ve heard I think she was just crazy.

I got berated this morning from a clerk at the gas station for no good reason. Big deal if I hand her a $20 for a 74 cent drink! Big deal if she has to count out $19.26 in change!

I’ve had issues at this gas station before. What I thought was quite humorous was this sign on the front door. Yes folks, they are asking that you please not smoke inside near the fireworks. The sad part is that somewhere, at some point, someone was smoking where fireworks are sold and it probably set off a few bottle rockets - which led to this warning sign.

I’m not even sure why they are still selling fireworks, but surely most people would be smart enough not to smoke at a gas station in the first place! Let alone around fireworks.

Most people yes, but apparently there are people who need a warning sign like this. The Parent Bloggers Network is talking about wacky warning labels such as on everyday products we use.

In today’s world do we really need all these warnings to protect ourselves (and companies) from getting sued? There are record numbers of frivolous lawsuits tying up our court system. Check out “Sick of Lawsuits” for more information on lawsuit abuse.

If you have a wacky warning label you can participate too! Go over to PBN for more info.