If you have read my blog in the past, you know that I have a special soft spot in my heart for beeping electronics. Particularly those, like smoke detectors, who take it upon themselves to begin beeping at 2:48AM, and will not stop until they are attended to.
Yesterday my love for these devices was confirmed. If you'll allow me to continue with this small break in my otherwise busy day to tell you about it, I will.
At approximately 6:30PM last night, Lauren and I were feeding our little munchkins their dinner of rice cereal and carrots (more on this in a different post...) when, between the screams of our hungry little babies, we began to hear a faint beeping noise.
I tried to ignore it at first, but I knew that soon enough, Lauren was going to catch on and it would start to annoy us both.
About that time she turned to me and said "What IS that NOISE?".
The hunt ensued. First I went to the door of the new apartment that leads to the patio, thinking it might just be outside, out of my control. No such luck. After opening the door and listening, it was clearly inside the apartment somewhere.
I stood in the kitchen and listened. "Beep Beep Beep". Ok, sounds like it's somewhere over here....
So I went and stood in the hall until it came through again, beeping from the back area somewhere of the apartment.
I stood by the back bedrooms. "Beep Beep Beep". Ok, now I've got you. In the storage closet I dove.
I stood there, looking into the big expanse of blackness that is the new apartment's storage closet. Now, let me explain this room. It's about 5 feet in width, but it's probably 20 feet deep, with a slanting ceiling. It's basically the cavity under the stairs that lead to the apartment upstairs, but in this complex they've made use of this space by making it a closet. Brilliant!
Ours is filled to the hilt with boxes, though, from about 4 feet back all the way to the back.
Guess where the beep is coming from.
Yep, on of the boxes.
So I began to painstakingly remove box by box, holding each to my ear to listen for the sound. Box by box I looked, until finally there was only 1 box left to check. The one in the very back. The furthest box from the door and behind all of the other boxes.
After getting the box dislodged from it's far away hiding spot, I cut it open and yanked out the device. A carbon monoxide sensor - telling us to move to fresh air. Apparently it's source of good oxygen in the box had run out.
So, we promptly removed the batteries from the device and I went back to repacking the closet and then back to feeding Natalie.
What did I learn? Two things. 1) apparently you cannot survive in a box for more than a few days without fresh air...the carbon monoxide tester proved that. 2) If a device has a beeper, and batteries, and can be placed in a very hard to reach location, like the ceiling or in the back of a box filled closet, it will choose a very inopportune time to begin making noise and needing attention. There's nothing you can do to stop it. It just will.
