Confessions of a Cheapskate

[My husband informs me that I talk too openly about things like poo, pee, vomit, and other personal matters. So, to avoid shocking anybody who has come here to read about cake, triathlon training, or the cutest dog in the universe, I am hereby issuing a TMI warning. If you're easily grossed out by bodily functions, you might want to skip this post. The rest of you sickos, read on.]

I recently posted about my new coffee obsession, and the fact that I am a much nicer person in the morning after I've had a cup or, let's be honest, two. I used to scoff at all the caffeine junkies lining up outside Starbucks for their jolt of java, but I'm sad to say that I'm now one of those addicts. Though Starbucks (yuck!) isn't what did me in. No, I blame Hines Public Market Coffee for initiating the downward spiral. I was always satisfied with green tea until an innocuous looking bag of Hines beans and a French press proved just how delicious coffee can be.

Besides making me perky, coffee drinking has another side effect: it gets things moving, if you know what I mean. And normally I view this as a good thing. It's really quite satisfying to get the daily constitutional over and done with and go on about my day. The one problem is timing. I'm never really quite sure just when nature will call, whether it will be two sips into the first cup or halfway through the second. Because I work from home, this inconsistency isn't normally a problem, except for days like today when I have an early morning meeting on the calendar.

I think you probably know where I'm going with this by now, so I'll just cut to the chase and tell you that during this morning's teleconference I was faced with an extraordinarily urgent need to...drop the kids off at the pool. And not to be crass, but the kids couldn't wait. And I have to say that while you're trying to lower yourself gently so that the sound of the bum hitting the seat remains inaudible to your colleagues is not the ideal time to discover that your cordless telephone lacks, of all things, a mute button.

Oh I tried to do my business quietly, I tried to cover the phone's microphone with my finger, I tried coughing and pencil tapping to disguise any errant sounds. But about halfway through the...evacuation...one of the people on the line paused mid-sentence to say, "Is my audio okay for you guys? Cause I'm using this new headset and I seem to be picking up a lot of...outside noises." Now I don't know about you, but I'm pretty sure I know what he meant. And I'm pretty sure that if he heard "outside noises," everybody else on the telecon heard them too. Despite my desperate attempt at control. Despite my finger across the microphone.

If there is a moral to this story, it must be LISTEN TO YOUR HUSBAND. Because even though you want to cheap out on a basic phone, even if you don't think you will need any of those fancy, over-priced features, your husband is right when he says that someday you might. Someday your coffee might be a little stronger than usual. Someday you might need to release the hounds with a quickness. And, who knows, someday you might just think that little mute button is worth every last penny.