PRIVACY MANAGER ROCKS!!!

So the Holidays are once again upon us and, uh, well, not surprisingly my mom is going through one of her, oh, let's be generous and call them EPISODES.

She's having one. Not as bad as the one that caused her to try to ruin my wedding (to the point my father removed every phone from their house but one and then took that one with him whenever he left. The few times he forgot I’d receive insane escalating messages on my answering machine until the tape reached the end… good times...) but still attempting to drive me nuts via the phone.

I only recently was able to convince her, while we were visiting her in lovely Bakersfield last weekend, that when she leaves me VOICEMAIL I cannot hear her, “Laurel if you’re there pick up the phone… Laurel? Pick up the phone. Fine” messages as she’s leaving them. I had to argue with her about this. Explain voicemail. Explain I have to call in with a password to hear it. I’m still not sure she fully believed me.

So now she has a new pattern…It goes something like this:

The phone rings, I pick it up, see that it is “Private Name, Private Number”, and carefully put it back down.
I check back a few minutes later.
No Message.
15 minutes pass.
The phone rings, I pick it up, see that it is “Private Name, Private Number”, and carefully put it
Back down.
 I check back a few minutes later.
No Message.
22 minutes pass.
The phone rings, I pick it up, see that it is “Private Name, Private Number”, and carefully put it
back down.
I check back a few minutes later.
No Message.
I say a few bad words.
8 minutes pass.
The phone rings, I don't even bother picking up the phone because I assume it is my mother.
I check back an hour or two later
There is a message!
A message from someone I actually DID want to talk to.
I say more bad words.

REPEAT endlessly, sometimes several times in one day, with the occasional alternate ending of it being someone else who goes by the alias “Private Name, Private Number” that I did want to talk to.

This problem has been exacerbated by the fact that sometime in the last month my call waiting ID just sort of stopped being there (thus tricking me into clicking over, expecting someone else and finding my mother) and our regular caller ID wasn’t a terribly effective screening tool since MANY people we know show up as “Private Name, Private Number.”

So I called SBC (and for the record I HATE SBC, in the last year they screwed up my installation leaving me without phone or Internet for a week and a half, made our DSL act like it was on heroin and flat out eaten my voicemail so that I only got the first seven seconds [remember that band… ah punk, I miss it… and I digress] of my messages and had to try to deduce from that snippet who was calling and what they wanted) they apologized about the call waiting ID problem, fixed that immediately and then hooked me up with PRIVACY MANAGER the “you paid for your number to be blocked but I paid MORE to see who you are anyway so you can either unblock your number or you can go away” service. For only $3.50 more a month.

So Saturday morning the phone rings at 9:00 am and it is a computerized computer courtesy call letting me know my new service is in place. 18 minutes later the phone rings again… I lean over, look at the phone and yep… there is my mother’s name and phone number.

Worth every penny. SBC, I almost forgive you for everything you’ve ever done to me. Almost.