Perhaps it's the time, perhaps it's me drowning in sparse documentation and not being able to wrap my head around the concept of updating in Mongoose :)

Here's the deal:

I have a contact schema and model (shortened properties):

var mongoose = require('mongoose'),
    Schema = mongoose.Schema;

var mongooseTypes = require("mongoose-types"),
    useTimestamps = mongooseTypes.useTimestamps;


var ContactSchema = new Schema({
    phone: {
        type: String,
        index: {
            unique: true,
            dropDups: true
        }
    },
    status: {
        type: String,
        lowercase: true,
        trim: true,
        default: 'on'
    }
});
ContactSchema.plugin(useTimestamps);
var Contact = mongoose.model('Contact', ContactSchema);

I receive a request from the client, containing the fields I need and use my model thusly:

mongoose.connect(connectionString);
var contact = new Contact({
    phone: request.phone,
    status: request.status
});

And now we reach the problem:

1. If I call contact.save(function(err){...}) I'll receive an error if the contact with the same phone number already exists (as expected - unique)
2. I can't call update() on contact, since that method does not exist on a document
3. If I call update on the model:
   Contact.update({phone:request.phone}, contact, {upsert: true}, function(err{...})
   I get into an infinite loop of some sorts, since the Mongoose update implementation clearly doesn't want an object as the second parameter.
4. If I do the same, but in the second parameter I pass an associative array of the request properties {status: request.status, phone: request.phone ...} it works - but then I have no reference to the specific contact and cannot find out its createdAt and updatedAt properties.

So the bottom line, after all I tried: given a document contact, how do I update it if it exists, or add it if it doesn't?

Thanks for your time.