The 'Life is Crap' badge is now mine

...and I worked very hard for it yesterday.  Here's the background on it.  The 'Life is Crap' badge is actually a magnet that each one of us get whenever we do the following:  drop our cell phone or blackberry in the toilet, drop it in the pool, run over it with our cars, have it stolen or maybe we have an energy glitch in our bodies that just kills everything electronic that we touch (yes, we know a person like this.)

The 'badge of honor' is in response to the 'life is good' bumper stickers and the like that we see all over Sonoma County.  They are cute and all that, but not when your cell phone dies a horrible death.  So, this badge/magnet for our cubies or desks or fridges at home says "Life is Crap" and features a toilet view with a cell phone swimming in the middle (see above.)

There are many other variations - and funny ones too, but this is our badge of honor we give to those many employees who ruin their cell phones in interesting ways. 

I have always been quite proud of myself for always keeping my phone water and damage free.  I do lose my phone - all the time and in weird places - but eventually, it's found and I get screamed at by the 25 people who needed me yesterday, the day before that and, well, you get the picture.

So, last night, after running around like a chicken with my head totally cut off at work and doing errand after errand after workie poo, I was out of gas.  Literally.  Done.  Of course, my son was ready to go to the pool with his friends and they all like ME to go with them due to the huge cooler on wheels that I bring with ice that's always action packed with drinks, snacks and fruits.  I couldn't do it.  Just couldn't last night.  I flopped on the couch and stared out the window for a few minutes trying to think of nothing in particular.  I still had my work clothes on and managed to flip my 3 inch heels off my feet and heard them 'clunk clunk' on the floor.

As I stared out the window I noticed that my new tomato garden of heirloom and different sized red tomatoes were being attacked by snails or something - there were round bite marks in the lush, velvety leaves.  Noticing that made me get off the couch and get outside so that I could attend to my precious produce.  I hate snails unless they are baked in salt, oil and butter.  Hey, I'm French, go figure.

After attending to the needs of my beautiful garden, I looked down and noticed that my pristine creme stretch jeans that I so stylishly wore today to work were full of DIRT!  Not just any kind of dirt, but REAL dirt - the organic mix dirt that's BLACK and has worms in it, etc.  OMG!  I ran into the house, tore them off (don't worry, I didn't traumatize anyone - I was alone) and put them in the wash - on the SOAK cycle.

Finally got 're dressed' for the couch in my yoga pants and matching top and flopped on the couch again.

Twenty minutes later my hubby shows up saying "HEY, I've been calling you - we're late!"

"Huh?  Calling me?  No you haven't - my phone hasn't even beeped at me."

"Look, I've called you."  As he showed me his phone log, I realized what I did with my phone.  I had left it in my pocket when I tossed my jeans into the wash - OMG, THE WASH!

I darted over to the washing machine, which was all sudsy and waiting for the RINSE cycle.  Where is my PHONE???  I practically was in the machine when I found it, at the bottom of the blades, soaken and full of suds.

"Life is Crap" I immediately said as I showed my hubby the phone with water dripping from it and suds all over me, the phone and the floor.

My, my, how the mighty have fallen!  Now I was a part of the "Life is Crap" club at work.  Never thought this day would happen.  Then I sprang into action - okay, where's the bag of rice to put it in and did the water get to my SIM card? 

Well, after that fiasco last night, I went out for a drink across the way at the local golf bar and restaurant.  A few other patrons understood what I went through and even the waitress shared her story of running over her phone backing into her parking space (she just had a baby, so that was the reason - baby brain!) and gave me a free dessert for my induction into the special phone losers club.

Thankfully for me, the SIM card may work due to it not being too wet and it's a company phone, so they are sending me a new one that I'll get tomorrow.

In the meantime, my hubby is finding me some contraption that glues the phone to my person at all times so this doesn't happen again and that losing my phone isn't a weekly issue.  I must say, it's nice NOT to hear the ringing of the phone every 5 minutes...but this mini vacation will only last so long.