Phoning Ireland

It is going to be a very busy weekend, but here is the story I promised in my last post...

When Noel arrived on Monday afternoon he started to sneeze. A lot. I was quite nervous that he might be allergic to the cats. In typical Irish fashion he gave me the, "Ah, no I'm grand" line, but I was worried. SO, I sent Morgan with him to Target for some allergy medicine.

While they were at Target, the guest room was empty and I could use the computer to check my e-mail and read blogs and such. I feel a bit like a junkie that I have to send my guests to the store to have the time to catch up on these things, but so be it!

Then Morgan calls from his cell phone. You must remember that the Irishman has not been driving for that long. I think we have just passed the one year mark on the driver's license. When the phone rings, I fear the worst. It turns out this time his brother had sent him a text message asking Morgan to call him. Wanting Morgan to focus on driving and getting medicine for Noel, I agreed to call Robert. (Especially after my darling husband tells me he almost crashed the car when the text message came in...I didn't want details!)

Robert is just out of college and still lives at home, so I dialed the family home in Blackrock and waited for the familiar, "Hu-lo" of my brother-in-law. I was starting to get worried when it was a female voice that answered. Panicked, I started to do the math. My mother-in-law was doing the same. "Paul, Paul what time it is here?"

It was 2:30 IN THE MORNING!

I called my mother-in-law at 2:30 IN THE MORNING!!!!

Robert forgot to mention in his text message that he is in Dublin at the moment and NOT at the family home in Cork.

I tried to explain this to my mother-in-law, who I woke up in the middle of the night. I was telling her how Morgan was at the store but got a text from Robert. She told me that Robert was in Dublin and then kept saying, "but I don't know how to send text messages." Poor thing. I tried to convince her that it was all okay. I am not sure I would be able to get back to sleep though if I were her.

Anyway, I called Morgan back and he tried to get me to then call Robert's mobile number. (Thanks to Vonage, we can call Irish landlines free of charge and cell phones at a nice reasonable rate so we try to always use that first.) I told him to call from his cell phone. I didn't care what it would cost, I was NOT making any other calls to Ireland at 2:30 in the morning.

In case you were wondering, Robert wanted to tell Morgan that he had just booked flights. He gets in Monday night at 10pm. The night before school starts. Morgan promised to look into the price of a taxi from there today for me. If not I'll do it.

Morgan's sister called on Tuesday and she'd heard about my phone call in the middle of the night. I'll never live this down!