What fresh hell is this?

That title is a quote from Dorothy Parker, that sassy little minx, who is one of my favorite writers. I find that I use it more and more often these days, especially ones like yesterday.

Yesterday morning, Aisling came up to me and remarked conversationally, "Hey. Did you know that none of the phones work?"

I looked over at one of our telephones, which was sitting innocently on its base, apparently ready and eager to serve me if I should need to place a call. "No, I can honestly say that that is a piece of information of which I had not yet taken possession."

"Huh?"

"I didn't know the phones were out."

"Oh. Well, they are."

I picked one of the three cordless handsets up and looked at it. Maybe its batteries had run down, due to spending two days under the coffee table? But no, that wasn't it. As I took it off its base it lit up and the word "talk" was written obligingly across its little face. I pushed the button to turn it on; no dial tone. Same deal with the other two handsets.

Later on yesterday evening, I mentioned to my husband that the phones didn't seem to be working, accompanied by this burning question: "So did we pay that bill?"

"Yeah, it's paid in full. So whatever's going wrong, we have nothing but love from AT&T. They have no reason to shut us down."

Neither one of us can figure out the phone thing. Electrically, they still work. We can retrieve stored phone numbers; we can listen to old voice mail messages; we can do everything except make an outgoing call. The last outgoing call I made was on Friday morning, when I star-69'ed someone who had called us and hung up. Presumably, no one can call us, either. So phone-ishly, the phones are....broken? Fried by lightning during one of the many thunderstorms plaguing the area? Protesting the two days their comrade spent under the coffee table? What? What?

As if there weren't enough to worry about with all the poor people whose lives have been turned upside down by tornadoes and flooding; with food prices rising; with gas soaring to $4.18 per gallon; with the economy whimpering and dragging itself along on its elbows in a trail of blood...now I have to figure out what to do with our dumb telephones??!!

Sometimes -- no, I take that back -- a LOT of the time I wish it were socially permissible for adults to lie down and flail on the floor while screaming and drumming the heels vigorously into the carpet. I really do.