The World's Common Tater

I am awaiting the start of the annual Youth Media Awards where they will announce the winners of the Newbery, Caldecott, Printz and other awards. I will likely post here later with thoughts on any of the ones I might have read. In the meantime, here is a dumb little story of my morning yesterday.

Thanks to the dog, I was downstairs early yesterday. I read the newspaper and had some coffee. I did my regular morning word puzzles on my apps. I wrote my “What’s Good” post. I then started my new episode of Blue Bloods I had recorded Friday night. As I was watching I started to notice an intermittent soft beep. At first, it was not very loud and not very often, so I ignored it. Eventually, it got louder and more frequent. I decided I could no longer ignore it, so I went off on my quest to find the culprit and stop it.

The beep was the typical one you hear when a smoke detector battery needs to be replaced. It sounded like it was coming from upstairs, so I headed up to take a listen. I first thought it was coming from the master bedroom, so I started there. I stood under the alarm waiting for the beep to confirm. It sounded too far away to be that one, so I went to my son’s bedroom. Same thing happened. I tried my daughter’s room. Same results. Close, but no cigar. Out of options upstairs, I headed back down. I checked the basement. I checked the kitchen and the office. Still no luck. It had to be upstairs.

I went back up. I got a chair to stand on so I could be closer to the alarms. I was sure it was my daughter’s room but when I went to take it down to replace the battery, the beep sounded again. It was obvious it wasn’t the one in my hand. I was frustrated. I was muttering to myself. I was annoying my wife who was still trying to sleep. I gave up, but the beep was now incessant and driving me crazy. I had to find it.

My wife got up to help so I would shut up and leave her alone. As I walked past her to check another room I noticed the carbon monoxide alarm had been unplugged and went to plug it back in. As I picked it up it beeped in my hand. I couldn’t find the beep because I was looking up the entire time and it was coming from below and an alarm I never even considered. I replaced the batteries and the beep was finally gone.