Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Cell phone, potty, rice… need I say more?

“Why aren’t you answering your cell phone?”

If you asked me that question on Wednesday… or if you couldn’t reach me on Wednesday . . . I’m sorry. I was not reachable on my precious cell phone.
We had . . . an incident.
Wednesday started out like any other day. I was showered and dressed before the toddler rolled out of bed. Her awakening is usually followed by a leisurely trip to her Elmo potty, which is still stationed in the kitchen for easy access.
On this particular day, she did her business on the potty and then spied a computer keyboard that she had been playing with the night before – sending e-mails and looking at pictures on her imaginary computer.
She stood up, grabbed it and swept it off the counter. But that’s not all she swept off the counter.
“Oh no, Mommy!”

Oh, yes. My cell phone landed directly in the Elmo potty. SPLASH. In fresh toddler pee.
I shrieked and raced to grab my precious cell phone, pulling it from the potty and not caring that pee was dripping on the floor as I scrambled to take it apart.
RICE! I remembered that you were supposed to put a wet cell phone in rice to wick away the moisture.
I opened the pantry and luckily, found a box of Minute Rice and plopped the phone in a big bowl of it.
But, it only partially did the trick. The battery was shorted out – probably because I kept trying and trying to use it instead of just letting it sit in the rice bowl.
Thankfully, the phone works. I gladly paid $40 for a new battery rather than a few hundred bucks for a replacement phone.
You see, my gadget guru hubby and I like our cool little ‘smart phones,’ but we’re too cheap or maybe just ‘not smart’ enough for phone insurance. I always tell him to refuse it. And this time, I actually regretted it.
Does phone insurance cover accidental drowning in urine?
Oh well, at least rice is cheap.