If a phone rings in the woods, and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

Boo!

Are you scared?

You should be. I am.

I turn 30 in two days. 30. Weird.

So, in honor of my upcoming birthday, I hired the neighbor-girl to come babysit three afternoons a week for an hour so I can exercise. (At this point, the only exercise I have been getting is lifting kids into carseats and tossing dirty diapers toward the trashcan.) This started a couple of weeks ago. It took a couple of weeks for me to blog about it cause nothing interesting happened till yesterday.

In some fit of rebellion, I threw out all of my old workout pants sometime last summer. (What kind of incentive is that? "Oh, yeah??? I'll show YOU! I'm never working out AGAIN!!!!! BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!") So I bought some new ones the other day. Pink. Green. Cute ones. That I can look cute in. While I am working out. You know, three times a week.

Yesterday I put the new cute green pants on, peeled out of the driveway when the sitter got there, and headed to my walking spot. I parked, turned my iPod up loud and started that big-steppin', arm-swingin' grandma-athlete walk that will throw your hips out of socket. But guess what? That wasn't good enough.

I thought I should probably give it a little jog. Just a little bit. Well, I actually said in my brain, "Jog until you can't jog another step, then turn around and power walk back to the car."

That is what I did! In my cute green pants. With my cute pink iPod and cute pink Nikes. I got really far for someone who hasn't moved that fast since the last century. I petered out after about a mile. My head was pounding with the quarts of extra blood that was being supplied to my brain by my panicking body. My face was bright red. You could visually count the pulse in my neck if you drove by me at 30 miles an hour.

So I slowed down, then started walking. Got ready to turn around and head back to my car. Gripped my keys in one hand and brushed my pants pocket to check on my phone.

My cute, green pants pocket. My cute, green, shallow, empty pants pocket.

Seriously? Yes.

Remember the almost-thirty-year-old who had just run as far as she possibly could run, and was now ready to power walk? She had to run more. Like a maniac. Like Phoebe.

All the way back to my car. With my head down and my eyes on the road. Looking for, and praying for, my phone. Not because I love my phone so much, but because my husband wants me to not lose things. Not small things, like pens. And certainly not big, expensive things like cell phones.

I didn't find it.

I got back home, super-annoyed. Neighbor babysitter greeted me at the door with this breathless, teenage method of communicating that I am sure I used to be good at, but now I just stare blankly. Cause I am almost thirty. In two days. Twice her age. Seriously???

"Amanda? Your phone? Did you find it? Cause some guy called! And he found it. And he didn't know what to do with it? So he buried it at the intersection of Pine and Raguet? By a fire hydrant? And I told him to cover it with some leaves. So no one else would get it? You know? Go! Go get it!"

So I drove back to that intersection. I looked for newly disturbed dirt. I looked under leaves. I stopped random people in the area and asked them to call my phone so I might hear it ring. I kicked some more leaves. And finally, I wasn't kicking leaves to look, I was kicking leaves because WHO BURIES A CELL PHONE THAT YOU FIND????? This isn't Treasure Island, and I am not a pirate.

Even if it is Halloween.

And almost my birthday. In two days. So much for Botox. Guess what I want for my birthday?