We all get unwanted phone calls, but lately I seem to be getting more than my share. My mortgage company calls regularly, trying to give me money. But I think that requires my paying it back on a monthly basis, so I ask them not to call me anymore . . . but of course, they do. I also get telemarketers calling from India, The Philippines, Burma(Myanmar now, I guess) and even Texas which is no big surprise. They always start with a long silence before a foreign voice comes on at which time I immediately hang up . . . sometimes even before I hear the voice. Sometimes the same people will call me over and over again, and I completely lose it, screaming and ranting and then hanging up. I may have chased some away by doing that. The other day I received a call from a very nice-sounding man who asked if I had been a victim of mail fraud. I told him I hadn’t to which he answered that was good. Then he asked if I had a locked mailbox and did I take my outgoing mail to the post office. It was then that I hung up on the nice man.

Yesterday my phone rang and I answered it as I occasionally do. A woman asked, “Is this hot lips?” I laughed and told her I really couldn’t answer that. So then she laughed and said, “Oh, I see – I hit 59 and I wanted 69.” So then I laughed again – quite a bit, in fact. She then said she had been calling Hot Lips Pizza! And I replied, “Wow! So I’m Hot Lips 69?”

I think I can live with that.