A story about a hijacking ...

My time was hijacked. More than once this week. An unplanned hair appointment, a 1 hour turned 3 hour excursion to the dentist. The kids have half days this week. Each day a different school is dismissed and I have one in each school. One of my college girls is here on spring break and we've been trying to "Clean Sweep" her room. (Take everything out, and only put back what you really want after you purge.) It's not a normal week for me by any definition.

One thing I've learned in my old age is to be flexible. I had big plans this week. Here is the long story about why some of my time was hijacked at least a couple of days this week. What I don't say in the story, is that I spent an hour or more waiting to see the middle school vice principal and needless to say the run around was very time consuming. This was written after a friend asked me about the stolen cell phone. I thought I'd share it here too. I'm not complaining, just explaining.

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So The Boy put the phone in his gym locker ( the lock is broken, but he didn't think to report it). When he came back to get it after PE, it was gone.
He immediately became "Sherlock Holmes".
After doing some investigating he got in touch with me and I went to the school. When he still didn't have the phone when he got home from school, I deactivated the phone. Deactivated isn't the right word but you know what I mean.
Friends told him the next day that the "thief", for lack of a better/nicer word, asked around for a charger for the phone on the bus that day. He claimed he'd already lost the charger to the new phone he'd gotten the day before. He'd changed the background picture and was trying to use it as his own. By Wednesday he was still carrying it around, but he wasn't able to use it because the service was suspended ( that's the word). He showed it to The Boy when asked. My son knew immediately that it was his because he identified the scratches and the sharpie mark he'd already put on it.( it was barely a week old) The Boy went to the office and the vice principal called me. I went to the school with serial numbers etc... to prove/claim it. At this point the VP believed it was The Boy's because the other kid's story changed a couple of times already. He was trying to get evidence that it had been stolen and not "found". He was hoping that if I brought the charger he's find evidence on the phone (ie calls or pictures belonging to the other kid etc.) When we plugged it in, we realized that the battery was gone. The VP believes he took the battery so that he wouldn't be incriminated (which is incriminating in my opinion).

This kid is not good at stealing, obviously(that's good right?). I'm hoping that he'll get in just enough trouble that it will deter him from a life of crime. In fact, I'm praying for him still.

The Boy's phone will be left at home from now on. The battery is on order because I couldn't find it locally after going to a hundred places.

Insert funny/not funny side story: I went to the AT&T store first. They told me that there's no way they can keep batteries for all the phones they sell in stock. Check online or one of the Kiosks in the mall. At the mall, I checked every Kiosk there, and I didn't realize there were so many. They all told me basically the same thing. Check online or the AT&T store (are you laughing yet?). When I got home and checked the website I couldn't find it so I got the live chat help person thingy who told me to check the AT &T store (what the heck?) and kindly offered to locate the closest one to me. When I told her I'd been to all 729 stores in my area, she told me to call the AT&T "over the phone" sales people. Wait if you're still with me, you're ready for the funny part... The over the phone sales people said, " We don't carry batteries for all of our phones you have to go to the AT&T store." I was,for about 10 seconds, speechless.. Of course I told her as I laughed to keep from screaming,"You aren't going to believe this, but that's exactly what they told me at the store!!" Yeah, actually it was the not funny side of the story. She eventually found the battery under a different category and for a small fee of $41.99 plus $ 9.99 shipping I could have the battery in 3-8 business days. Or I could choose expedited shipping for a small fee of $20 and have it in 2 days. I thought about it for maybe 30 seconds and while she was typing I searched Ebay and Amazon and found it for around $12.00( including shipping). It's en route. I'm exhausted all over again telling that story.

The phone will not be going back to school. Basketball season is over so he really doesn't need to carry the phone anymore ( They technically aren't allowed to have them at school anyway.)

So that's the long story. And it was just one of the things that hijacked my time this week. I had some major plans. But I don't know why I even bother making plans anymore... So goodnight or morning, whatever time it is for you. I'm going to bed.