10 Reasons Why I Can't Come to the Phone

A friend of mine recently suggested I write about our newfound inability to communicate via the phone since becoming moms. While she said it in jest- it’s completely true. Since becoming a mom I have become terrible at the phone. Pre-baby I was all, “Hey (person’s name here), wanna chat for the next like 45 minutes about everything and nothing?” And now, I’m the person who calls you in a rushed voice or a hushed voice because either the baby is up and I have about 5 minutes to be on the phone before she realizes I’m not talking to her, (this is unacceptable BS to her), or she is asleep and I tiptoe around hoping to God it lasts longer than 20 minutes.

But I want to talk. I want to talk to everyone. About everything. I wanna to go through my phonebook and just one after the other call every person in there. I want to ask them how life is, how their day is going, what they had for lunch. But alas, my small toothless friend has other plans.

Here is why I can’t come to the phone right now:

1. I was going to call you and then my baby spit up everywhere, so I had to clean it up. When I went to clean it up, I noticed the floors were super dirty and I can’t have my kid on dirty floors so I mopped them. After I mopped them, the baby started crying because the world didn’t revolve around her for the last ten minutes, so I had to play with her.

2. The baby is napping, so I have anywhere from 30 minutes to one hour to: take a shower, do the laundry, clean up toys, clean up the kitchen, put away laundry, put away dishes, pay bills etc. So, I obviously just sat on the couch for the entirety of the nap, pissed off about how many things I have to do and I can’t even call my friends.

3. It’s nighttime and the baby has gone to sleep and all I want to do is sit and watch something mindless on TV. Even calling you to talk about the mindless things on TV seems like too much work for my brain.

4. I was going to call you… and then I started on my to do list and now it’s 10pm and I have to go to sleep before the baby wakes up to eat.

5. Facebook/Instagram/Celebrity Gossip site/magazine/other blog site happened.

6. I decided to eat in silence instead.

7. Apparently, my husband wants to talk to me too, and I made some sort of lifelong commitment with him to do this (there was jewelry involved, so it’s legit).

8. I have no idea where my phone is.

9. My boss is super demanding. She’s always like, “Play with me! Sing to me! Read to me! Take me for walks! Take me to the park! Let’s go play with other babies!” There’s just no work/life balance around here. The toothless one always gets her way.

10. I have nothing interesting to say. And I’m tired. These two things combined means we will have a conversation like this:

You: Hey! How are you?

Me: Good, you?

You: Great! What’s new?

Me: Nothing much. You?

You: (Insert interesting updates here)

Me: Cool!

You: (More interesting things)

Me: That sounds great

You: Okay I gotta go but I’ll talk to you later.

Me: Okay bye!

You: (Thinking: Has she always been that boring?)

Me: (Thinking: Come on me! You’re not that boring! Step up your game.)

And honestly, I just like you too much to put you through that.

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