I answered the phone today.<\/p>\n
Normally I don’t. At the Myers’, Ken or his wife Kate are there to pick it
\nup. Out in the studio, Ken always gets it or I let the answering machine
\ntake a message. It’s more efficient than me jotting something down. At the
\noffice in Charlottesville, Jenna, Jeff, Bart, Florence, or Ken will shout, “I
\ngot it.” At the Wallaces, Doug, Joanne, or Alice answer the phone or else I
\nlet it ring and allow voice mail take care of the messaging.<\/p>\n
But today Ken went to C’ville by himself, leaving me with a room full of
\nbooks to label. He had to leave really early and run around to several
\nappointments, so it made more sense for me to stay behind. Turned out it was
\na good thing I did.<\/p>\n
I was sitting at the electric typewriter, pecking out a Library of Congress
\nnumber when the phone rang. I stopped to listen if someone would leave an
\naudible message on the machine. But the phone kept ringing. I decided it
\nwas the home line, since it wasn’t letting up. Ken had promised to call when
\nhe got a chance, and Kate and the kids were gone, so I went into the studio
\nand picked up the phone with the flashing red light. “Hello?”<\/p>\n
“Hello?” It was Ken. “I guess Kate is gone since you answered?” he
\nsurmised.<\/p>\n
“Yeah, they went to the library.”<\/p>\n
“Ah, well, how are you?”<\/p>\n
“Fine.” One thing about Ken is if he’s ever talked to you before, he’ll ask
\nyou how you are the next time he talks to you. Every morning when I walk
\ninto the office, he asks me how I am. I’ve given up on answering with
\nanything other than the usual.<\/p>\n
“How is everything?” he went on, “Any fires, earthquakes, catastophes of that
\nnature?”<\/p>\n
“No, nothing major,” I answered.<\/p>\n
“How are you?” he asked again.<\/p>\n
“Doing well,” I tried another answer. He went on to give some details about
\nhis schedule for the rest of the day, which I promised to pass on to Kate.
\n I’d hung up and walked back into my area when the phone rang again before I
\ncould sit down. He’s forgotten something, I thought as I returned into the
\nstudio and picked the phone back up. “Hello?”<\/p>\n
It was Kate. “Do you know where Flat Rock is?” she asked.<\/p>\n
“No idea.” She gave me detailed directions even though it was just down the
\nroad right past the first traffic light. The family car had picked that
\nresting spot to die. I was there within five minutes. All the junk that has
\naccumulated in my car in the past couple weeks found its way to the trunk as
\nKate and the two kids piled in.<\/p>\n
“It’s a good thing you answered my call,” Kate smiled. “I was going to let
\nit ring and ring till -somebody- figured out which phone it was and picked it
\nup.”<\/p>\n
In other news, working backward, I got to “C” in the room full of books
\norganized by author last names. Jonathan was sick with a fever, so I’m glad
\nthey didn’t have to walk back in the hot sun after the car died.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I answered the phone today. Normally I don’t. At the Myers’, Ken or his wife Kate are there to pick it up. Out in the studio, Ken always gets it or I let the answering machine take a message. It’s more efficient than me jotting something down. At the office in Charlottesville, Jenna, Jeff, Bart,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nonclassified-nonsense"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nachzen.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nachzen.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nachzen.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nachzen.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nachzen.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=463"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nachzen.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nachzen.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nachzen.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nachzen.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}