…is R’s birthday. Apparently Mom isn’t dealing too well with it. I wouldn’t have known if my sister L. hadn’t called me yesterday and told me.

I totally and completely suck at remembering birthdays. My Mom’s is sometime in August. L. is a scorpio, like me, but I can’t remember if hers is the 20th or the 21st. I always screw that up. K. is September. I think the 16th. I obviously know the immediate family here in the house. I know my Uncle Ed’s, because he was born on April Fools Day and we always joke the he was God’s April Fools joke on my Grandmother (who was also a Scorpio, but that’s all I remember of that). Couldn’t even begin to tell you when my nieces and nephews were born. I might get the month right but other than that? Forget it.

Yet another thing I rely on LJ for. Birthday reminders. Huzzah.

Of course, that only works if you’re on my friends list.

Lazy much? Oh yeah, baby.

The recent post I made about friendship made me sit back and look and take an honest look at part of my psyche. The subject of phone calls was brought up, and the ease in which a person could make one in order to keep in touch with a friend.

Guess what else I suck at? More to the point – guess what else I just don’t do any more.

I’ve never really liked the phone, but in recent years I’ve come to hate it. I think it has to do with the time I spent trying to get everything straightened out during the debt consolidation fiasco. The phone became an arbiter of bad news and harassment during that time period. Every time it rang I would jump and my stomach would knot up. Now? I can’t stand it. I talk to exactly one person on a regular basis on the phone, and that is my sister L. As a general rule I don’t even call my Mom or my other sister K. unless there is a reason. Hell, even in my long distance relationships I really only got on the phone when communicating online wasn’t an option.

I’m also a call screener. There, I said it. I admit it. Caller ID is, as far as I’m concerned, one of the greatest inventions ever created. There are many, many times when I am home but will not answer if a friend calls. It’s nothing against the person calling. It’s just that at that point I don’t feel like talking on the phone and if I am in that state of mind a phone conversation is a bad idea.

Does this excuse not calling? I suppose not, if you are the type to take offense if I don’t. It explains it, though. To me, if noboby else.

/thought dump