Inimitable Irony

When Daniel and I got married, I had just started the transition off of night shifts. He had no idea that he was marrying into 4:45 a.m. wake-up calls...that repeated themselves nine minutes later once the snooze wore off. Nor did he realize that my ten year old alarm clock would decide that "OFF" and "SNOOZE" are the same function. This is what happens when you give an appliance a two year vacation: it loses the ability to do its one job.

To keep the peace, Daniel recently purchased a replacement clock for me. I was skeptical but he was determined to prove that I did, in fact, need a new alarm. Well we were sitting on the couch when there was a strange, phantom beep. We looked at each other and then began our search.

To give this story some context, I'll just mention here that nearly all of our electronic appliances beep or play music of some sort to signal the beginning and end of tasks. This ranges from the dishwasher to the Roomba to the washer and the dryer. Daniel isn't a fan of the disruption, but it lets his multitasking wife know when things are done. So he lives with it. The alternative is a house full of half-done chores while I'm obsessing over paint colors for the living room.

So there were were, sleuthing our way through the house in search of this mysterious beeping. We checked the obvious places first: the laundry room, the front door, the back door, and the balcony. Next we checked the security cameras just to make sure that we didn't miss something. After that we rummaged around in the kitchen. We unplugged the hot water pot, the Instant Pot, and the rice cooker. We made sure that the tea kettle was put away and confirmed that refrigerator doors were all closed tightly. I even took a second trip into the garage to see if the noise was coming from the deep freezer. As I came back into the house, the beeping stopped. We shrugged and continued on with our evening. Then it started again. And stopped. And started. And stopped.

As we got ready to go to sleep, it started up once again, louder this time. I realized that I was sitting right next to the culprit: my new alarm clock that my husband had so thoughtfully purchased. After a nice, long laugh, we took out its power source and went to bed.

In the end, however, he does have a point. I'm using a different new alarm clock now. It went off for the first time this morning. Nine minutes later, it went off again. Daniel's reaction: "Noooooooooooo!"

I suspect that my hand skimmed the "snooze" button on its way to "off", though there's no way of knowing...yet. We'll find out when I get up for work tomorrow.

(Please excuse the roughness of the sketches--first time using a drawing tablet!)