My Sunken Treasure 

"We're taking on water!"

That sounds much worse at sea than when your in a fire or at a wrestling match.

"I'll take water in the fifth round."

Ok, yeah sorry. I may be taking on water, but Monday coffee hasn't breached my hull, and my veins are all but begging now. So where was I? Oh, deep water, in a sea of kimchi, and taking on more.

The Pirate Queen and I hit the reef this weekend. The ship lurched as reality's crags ripped a hole in the Pacific Princess. Captain Stubing fell overboard and Julie and Vicki are pillow fighting Hobbits in Gopher's cabin. Yeah, it was chaos.

"My Cell bill was $500!"

"And you called to tell me this from your cell?"

"Yeah! Oh--Gotta go!"

Click.

And that was all she wrote. Ok, not all--in fact not even close, cuz now she's doing a lot more writing, cuz I'm not accepting her calls. Ok, I know, yes I am. How can I resist her pirate smile. I still take her calls…on both Saturdays and Sundays.

As most of you know, my pirate and I have been talking for 4 months. Most of that's been phone time. Before that, I think was alone, because for the first three months of conversation, I survived on rollover minutes. Apparently they do last forever--until you use them.

I rolled over the last minutes last month. This month I took a bath. All the rope and rigging of our happy voyage is coming down on our heads. Five hundred bucks, and I have no reason to expect this month's talk time will be any easier to navigate. It's a crisis on the cellular level!

So far, this is the worst crisis we've faced. For most people this is nothing, but for two post divorced people with itchy trigger fingers on the "eject" button it's the difference between going down with the ship and jumping to safety.

And yet maybe not. See, I've grown used to the sound of the pirate's voice. I find comfort in the time we talk late at night, catching up on each other's days. PQ has a distinctive voice and it's one that replays in my head even when she's not around. I'd miss that.

I miss having the money to afford a $500 phone bill too. I'm not sure I ever had that, but I assure you, I miss it. Give it to me. I'll prove it to you.

So what do people do when they've set their mind to something? They find a way to move forward. We may be romantic fools, but neither of us is blind or stupid. We can't afford to bleed that much money for too long. So what's our other option?

I spent the next hour analyzing my bill, and my payment options. For an extra $60 a month I could say screw it, and go unlimited minutes. I don't need unlimited though, and in the long run $60 not much better for my cash flow than $500.

I found some interesting things out examining my bill. Most of my calls to the PQ start after 7pm. According to my cell company, nights don't start until 9pm. 9pm? Really? I always thought night started sooner.

I thought I should ask a vampire if nights really did come that late. Who better than a bloodsucker to know, right? Unfortunately, when I called my cell company's help desk, I discovered that those bloodsuckers left around 6. What happens during that 3 hour void? Happy hour?

The other thing I discovered, is that the cell company rates calls on whatever day part my call starts in. If Icall at 8:59 and talk for an hour, that's 60 minutes charged against my daytime minutes.

I did find that my cell company can magically extend "nights." that's right. For 10 bucks a month, night can fall at 7 instead of 9. That's gracious. How can they afford that kind of kindness? Oh yeah, I pay for it.

Still, that's cheaper than $60 for unlimited calls, and by taking the time to research our call patterns, I was able to tell that that would work for us--at least this half of us. Her half of us was receiving calls in a different time zone. Here nights could afford to start later.

The other thing that works is to only call after 7pm, or if one of us does call early, we should hang up and call back to get charged the appropriate rate.

"So my mom said--"

Click.

See? That's the thing about long distance. It does suck, but there are ways of making it work. Things you can do to compromise or just avoid the reef. Next week the pirate and I can put down our phones and talk to each other face to face. Yeah, that's scary.

"We're taking on water!"

"No, I just peed myself."

"Oh…"

I hope we can survive that barrier as well as we survived this one. Maybe we should bring our phones just in case.