Backup

It's days like these that I'm really glad that I have two cell phones. And that most people have completely forgotten the fact that I have two, or never knew that I have two. I also love that most people deleted my old number when I got a new one, not realizing that the old number was still an active line and way to contact me.

Up until the point in the day when whipping out this phone was necessary, I'd had a fairly decent, though very high-pain day. Naps and bubbles and crocheting with Nova. Then this crap happened.

Just in case you don't feel like reading below due to the warning: I hope you're all doing well. Take care, and I love you all.

Warning!: Offensive language and sensitive topics abound.

I had something different planned for today's blip, but this is more relavent to events that've happened today.

So, first and foremost, I'm making an announcement. I'm no longer going to try to be polite and refer to the wretch that birthed me as my biological mother. The use of the word mother seems to leave people feeling comfortable with calling her my 'mom/mum' when replying to my posts. I detest that. She's not my mother. I was raised by her mother. While my gran, the woman that raised me, made many mistakes, and yes, did also contribute to how fucked up I am, for the most part she was extremely loving and very rarely did I ever question it.

I learned at a young age that the one that birthed me wasn't actually capable of loving me.

From now on, I'll be referring to her as Incubator, which is what I refer to her everywhere else when I don't refer to her by name. (I won't be referring to her by name here.)

So, as many people know, B and I have been trying to get back to our hometown, a small suburb of Kansas City Missouri. El Paso is a miserable place for us and we just want to go home. Some of you may or may not know that going home means living with my family for a while.

My family consists of my gran, Incubator, and Step-Dad (SD).

I was talking to Incubator on the phone earlier today, and she decides to bring up a fight that happened over a year ago and try to justify the actions that the fight was over (being condescending and verbally abusive to my gran). Informing me that "that's the way it's gonna be" when we move back there. And that it's necessary for her to be condescending and abusive to my gran.

I told her that there was no reason to have this "conversation" (which it really wasn't, it was her ranting about how it's necessary to treat my gran so poorly) and that I wasn't gonna have it with her. She wouldn't drop it. At all. Kept insisting that that was what we must talk about and just did not care that I just didn't want to hear it. We've had this "discussion" before. It's identical to what it was a year and a half ago. There's no reason for me to hear it again. I even tell her so. She insists that it's not the same and keeps on repeating herself.

This is really the last fucking thing I need right now, so I tell Incubator "calling was a mistake" and I hang up. I just can't take anymore of it. Instantly she calls me back. I ignore it. Then again. I ignore it. Then again. I ignore it.

My phone has a setting I can put on it that'll prevent it from ringing and/or auto-ignore all incoming calls except calls from people I want to hear from. I momentarily considered using that setting, but knew that setting it up would be interrupted by Incubator calling so many times that I'd be very tempted to destroy my phone. Few people can make me want to be as violent as that vile excuse of a human being can.

So I just shut my phone off instead.

Now, something everyone should know about me to know why this is so significant: I don't feel safe without a phone. I'm also absolutely terrified that something will happen to B (like a car accident) if my phone is off and he won't be able to contact me if it does. I'm also scared that I'll suffer a medical emergency and not be able to get help, but really, my fear is more for B getting in a car accident.

(Obligatory-but-Skippable Backstory: When our Focus was totalled on October 27th 2012, B was literally three minutes away from home. The last three minutes of his forty-plus-minute commute. His phone died almost immediately. He was barely able to tell me what happened. I had to find out from the tow-truck driver what hospital he'd been transported to. I heard over the police scanner that the driver of the Focus had severe head trauma. The tow-truck driver confirmed that the driver of the Focus -- which he towed to our house -- was in serious condition. Luckily, it wasn't true. Not even a concussion. But the wreck was so bad they assumed he had severe injuries. FOR THREE HOURS I didn't know a fucking thing about how he was. I finally managed to get hold of one of his coworkers that called his supervisor who came to our house and took me to the hospital and brought him home. I am absolutely terrified beyond reason of either of us being without a working phone.)

So I dug out my old TracFone. It has my first ever cell phone number, that I've had for about as long as B and I have been together. My TracFone was my third ever cell phone. The previous two also being TracFones, and I used them until they simply wore out and couldn't really work anymore.

Anyways. I sent B a text from this phone (the phone pictured in this blip) telling him that I had to turn off my main phone and to call and/or text this one if he needed me.

When he got home he asked, "Do I even want to know?" It turns out that after I turned off my main phone, Incubator decided to call B. Because apparently hanging up after she refused to stop forcing her "conversation" on me, then ignoring the next handful of phone calls, and then turning off my phone just wasn't a clear enough sign that I do not want to talk to her.

So B and I discuss what we want for dinner. Neither of us feels up to cooking, and he wants something we can't make at home. He gets paid tomorrow and can't use his debit card right now, so asked if he could have my wallet so he could go get food. He gets paid at midnight. So okay.

He was gone for half an hour when he shouldn't have taken more than twenty minutes at the most. Traffic wasn't a reason, as he literally ran just up the street to get food.

Nope. Incubator called him again and kept him on the phone for ten minutes. So he just tells her to leave me alone. It's obvious I don't want to talk to her. Leave me alone. You need to leave me alone when I'm mad. (I'm one of those people that needs to walk away and calm down. The more you chase me, the worse you make it, and as a result I care much less about resolving things. It's just the way I am.)

The good news? Incubator completely forgot about me having two cell phones.

So I still had a line to B if anything happened while he was on his way home from work, or on his way home with our dinner.

Yep. That's me. At least four knives on me at all times and three cell phones. (One is deactivated, but in the US it is law that even deactivated cell phones must be allowed to connect to emergency dispatchers so if there's a 911 worthy emergency, that phone isn't useless.)