Well, that's it. We caved like the soggy house of cards we are. My husband and I, after holding out for as long as we possibly could, now have a cell phone. Sort of. It's one of those pay-as-you-go things. Neither of us being emotionally prepared for a real grown-up version with a contract and a plan and some strange concept called "roaming."

(As far as I knew, buffalos were the only things that roamed, but it appears my phone can now get cabin fever.)

This is probably how people felt when the electric wires started going up. Turned them on, saw that they worked, then immediately turned them off again. We have prided ourselves for so long on being above the constant buzz of pointless, personal and, above all, loud chatter that has made every public place sound like a honey bee hive in stereo. We were smug. We were superior. We were not plugged into the Borg.

Rebels. Renegades. Mountain men amongst the urban masses.

Now we stare at this new contraption with no small amount of distrust and fear. I'm not going to lie to you. I have a little bit of an urge to drown it. That's weird, I know.

Alas, through a series of events largely out of our control, we found that for some period of time in the near future, we were really, really, really going to need the phone. We started out borrowing friends' for short periods of time, but seriously, how annoying is that? So here we are. Plus one cell phone and minus one pair of perfectly good scissors.

(Snapped the handles clean off trying to open the damn blister pack. We can have a rant about that some other time, except to say it's a goddamn $20 phone not plutonium. Maybe the plastic wrapping doesn't need to be a full 3/4 of an inch thick.)

Now if only we can figure out how to use it...

Today: cell phone. Tomorrow: Indoor plumbing. It's a new frontier.