I Never Wanted The Beeping Thing In The First Place!

I just spent twenty minutes chasing a beeping noise around the house. It started all of a sudden when I was typing at my desk. Two beeps -- loud! I thought it was a truck or something on the street, but then it happened again.

The second time I got up to look around. There was no truck or anything, and so I sat back down. Then it happened again.

This time I was pretty sure it was coming from inside my house. And the only things I know that make beeping noises inside houses are alarms of one sort or another.

Yikes!

Then it happened again.

Without even realizing I was doing it, I started counting after the second beep and kept counting as I wandered around. It happened again on the stroke of sixty.

Two beeps, every sixty seconds. And loud! What could it be?

Because it wasn't happening continually, I could not pinpoint the culprit. I stood under every smoke alarm for sixty seconds waiting to hear the beeping come from somewhere else. I even stood for 45 seconds in front of the junk drawer where the spare smoke alarm is kept, until I remembered there's no battery in that one.

I worried there might be some sort of gas alarm that I don't know about on the new furnace, so I stood in the basement and counted sixty seconds, even though I couldn't smell anything unusual down there.

I worried it might be the CO2 detectors, until I remembered I never got around to installing CO2 detectors. And now I don't have to, because I don't burn oil anymore. Right?

I thought it might be coming from inside Johnny's trunk, so I took everything off it, opened it up, and counted sixty.

I stood on the porch.

I stood in the attic.

I stood on a chair in the back hall.

I'm telling you, I am the all-time, world-wide expert at counting to sixty!

You know where it turned out to be coming from? My stupid cell phone. Because its stupid battery was stupid dead. Which explains why I didn't hear it ring when Johnny called me yesterday for a ride home. Stupid.

I plugged it in and sure enough the stupid beeping stopped. But jeez, that thing was loud. I'm sure glad it didn't happen when I was on the subway yesterday, cuz I'll be damned if I have any idea how else to make it stop.

You think this sort of thing is covered in the owner's manual? You think maybe that would have been a handy thing to keep around?


Whoops. I guess I meant to say CO detectors, not CO2. And I guess I do need them after all. Okay, I'll get them -- at least one, anyway -- before I turn the heat on. I promise. If this house is going to kill me, it's sure as hell going to be more dramatic than just drifting off in my sleep.