There is no more irritating chore than hunting down the smoke alarm that is chirping because of a low battery. For some this experience hasn’t occurred yet, and for others you know the exact date you last changed the batteries and religiously change them before the battery dies. For the former, just wait. This is so much fun. For the latter, we all don’t like you and you’re I’m-better-than-the-smoke-detector-battery-life attitude. First the battery always dies at night? It just waits all day and into the night until the house is quiet and you’re snuggled into bed. and then you suddenly hear beep. You curse the darn smoke detector and it’s dumb battery and the battery’s existence because there’s no way you can go back to sleep because you know it won’t stop. You throw back the blanket in disgust and stomp out of the room. But who the heck knows where the sound is coming from. You wait. And wait. And wait. And then wait. It’s only probably 45 seconds but at that moment you’re sure it’s about 10 minutes. And then beep. And you dash to where you think you heard it. And wait again. This repeats 4 or 5 (hundred) times as you whip open doors and dash up and down stairs. And then finally you’re standing under an alarm and beep and the noise is deafening. You found it! Hooray! Parade for you in the morning!! You grab the closest chair/bathroom trashcan/recycling bin, climb up, and rip the smoke alarm off the ceiling. You quickly turn it around.

And can’t get the darn battery door open.

Finally you pry it off, pretty sure you won’t be able to get it back on and tear out the battery like your life depended on it. beep It’s the wrong detector. For me that’s usually when the swearing gets kicked up a notch. I usually repeat this process twice, for laughs, and then end up with smoke detectors lying around the house, their battery doors hanging on for dear life and batteries strewn about all amidst a clutter of furniture that looks like someone failed at building a fort. And then in a moment of shining glory the thing beeps while it’s in your hand and you know it’s the offending offender and you get the battery out and triumphantly march to the junk drawer in the kitchen and pull out the package of batteries and. And. AND. It’s empty At that point I toss the alarm on the counter, cross my fingers an electrical fire doesn’t start in the following 24 hours, and go back to bed.

As a freshman in college one of the first things I did was set up an email account. I already had a hotmail account before college (it didn’t get used much[oh, how that has changed, thank you gmail]) but I needed a school account. I went by Liz (still do) and so my email was L and then my last name. Well. Lowercase l looks a lot like uppercase I when written and not typed (or in any sans serif font, those little serifs help out so much with this problem!). I’m always worried when I fill out forms, like say, for a library card, that some 15 year old volunteer will enter it with an I and not l. It’s never happened. Still I worry. I tell you this (highlighting the library) because the Library is struggling. I set up eAlerts instead of getting letters. I could say it was to go green, but really it’s because I hardly open mail because everything else is online (opening an email takes way less energy then opening a paper envelope. duh). Well. I have never gotten an email from the library. And this time it messed things up. A brand new book that I’ve been waiting months for came out in February and I put a hold on it (online of course [which I can finally do because the library computers decided to accept the same 4 digit pin I’ve been trying to feed it for two years{this computer and I are locked in a death battle(am I using these parentheses and brackets and squiggles correctly?)}]). And the book came. And the book went. Because I got no notification. I could go onto my account everyday and check. But the point of the Alert is so that I don’t have to because the window of fulfillment on this hold: Now until October!! I’m not logging through 4 screens everyday for 6 months just for a book. Even a book I really want to read. Plus these alerts are also supposed to be sent when my books are almost overdue so I don’t have to pay a fine (If you added up my lifetime of overdue fines, I think you could pay for a wing in the library. Or at least an encyclopedia). Back to my point. After 5 weeks on the waiting list, I missed my chance at the book. And I only knew this because I logged in to put a hold on another book and saw that the first book was in and had to be picked up by the day before. I yelled at the computer a minute and then put it back on hold. The status updated 6 days ago to “In Transit”. It’s still “In Transit”. It has to come from a central MA library. My guess is it’s coming on the back of a turtle that is traveling from the Galapagos Islands.

The washing machine in the house I live in drains into a basement sink. We’ve ocassionally had water on the floor, but thought that it was the drain hose lifting out of the sink. I weighed down the hose with a container of detergent and the flooding stopped for about 6 months. Then last week the washer didn’t drain completely. The level dropped so we didn’t think anything of it. Except on Saturday the water was back sitting around the bottom of the washer. I ran it again, empty, and then the water was on the floor again. Darn. With my roommate home, we tried running it again. I was sitting on the couch watching tv. Something I don’t do very often without cable and DVR because there are so. many. commercials. but tonight I was sitting there and then I heard water hitting something stone. Sure enough it was from the basement. I went down and a 10 gallon sink was over flowing at a ridiculous rate. I had two options. Let more water pool on the floor where it still hadn’t dried since yesterday. Or stick my hand in the water and see if the drain was clogged. I shoved my hand in the sink. I pulled some stuff out of the sink, including part of a broken headband and the water started to drain. And. Well. No more water in the washer. If only we had kept the drain clean I could have done laundry yesterday when I had the whole day, and not have to cram it in every night after work tonight. Often I hear the voices of my mother and grandmother in my head. Except it’s not voices. It’s them shaking their heads.

I have these really cute shoes that I wear to work on Fridays. They’re light weight and pretty casual so they are great for spring time casual Friday. I would describe them as mock boat shoes. But there’s a problem. They have leather laces that don’t have a purpose and DON’T STAY TIED!!! Really I could super glue them, but do you think I have super glue? I have every ticket stub to every event I’ve ever been to and enough tools to fix almost anything around that house. But super glue is a no. So I’m stuck retying them. All. Day. Long. And I think the more I tie them, the more flexible the lace becomes and the more they come untied. Now I’ve resigned myself to just leaving them untied. Which frees me up to do other things. Like work. But the lace problem has now affected other areas of my life. When leaving the office for lunch today I was at the door. It’s a big wooden door that opens out. While my hand was on the handle and the door was partially open, my peripheral vision pick up the untied lace. And rather than my brain saying “It’s ok, you’ve decided to leave them like that” my brain said “oh look down right now, it might be a life or death moment” so I looked down and BANG! I hit my head on the door. That I was holding open. For myself. How does that even happen? For the rest of the afternoon I’ll have untied shoes and a headache. Bring on the booze.