The Lawsons did Dallas!

Fave 5
August 2, 2007

For the past several months Jared and I have either gone over our cell phone minutes or come really, really close to the limit. Based on the fact that I'm extraordinarily cheap and we're extraordinarily broke, the very idea of paying 40 cents a minute to talk on the phone makes me sweat like a fat man salsa dancing.

Not pretty.

In an effort to avoid this unneeded source of stress in our lives, Jared and I decided to switch to a new phone plan, T-Mobile's Fave 5. I'm sure you've all seen the commercials for this revolutionary new cell phone product. You pick five of your closest friends and the plan allows you to call them as much as you want without using up your minutes.

The plan seemed great, until I actually had to select my Fave 5. Unfortunately, T-Mobile never thought to warn me that this would be the most self-esteem-crushing experience I've had since that computer club keg party at UMaine.

Embarrassingly enough, I learned that I don't really have five "friends." Based on this discovery, this was the route I decided to take:

• Friend one was Jared because we're married, and we talk from time to time.
• Friend two was my sister. We talk on the phone sometimes, but she's my sister and I love her, so she was in.
• Friend three was my mom. She has like 20 minutes a month on her cell phone, so we don't talk at length--we email more often--but she's the woman who brought me into this world, so she was in too.
• Friend four was my best friend from high school, Maureen. We're both stay-at-home-moms and we complain to each other a couple times a week, so she made the cut.
• And friend five was my sister-in-law Rebecca. We only talk when something excruciatingly embarrassing happens, but I really want to get to know her better, so on she went.

When I got my first Fave 5 bill, I wasn't looking nearly as happy as those schmuckers on the commercial. The bill was for $90. After combing through the charges, I had a bit of a revelation: it doesn't make sense to pick the five people you wished you talked to most often...in order to save any money you've got to pick the five people that you actually call the most. So this is what my new Fave 5 looks like:

• Friend one is still Jared's cell phone, because I'm naggy.
• Friend two is Jared at home, because I wasn't joking when I said I'm naggy.
• Friend three is the weather hotline, because I'm awesome.
• Friend four is the woman I work for--she likes to check in on me during the day, and occasionally we'll chat for a minute.
• And friend five is my downstairs neighbor. She doesn't speak any English, and I can never remember her name, but I *think* I ordered some pillows from her--and I totally don't want her to use up my minutes when my order comes in. Between her English and my Spanish, it's gonna take a while to iron out those details.

So that's that. My self-esteem is completely shot, I'm not saving any money, and I have no idea why those pillows haven't come in yet. All I have to say is thank goodness for my neat, new phone--because my 'Charles in Charge' ringtone makes the pain seem totally, totally worth it.