My Life, With All It's Bells and Whistles

If I hear one more buzz, one more "ding," one more alarm tone...well, I might just have appliance rage and beat up the microwave.

My household has become an annoying mix of "do it now's."

I set the microwave to 30-seconds to heat up my very cold cup of coffee, and it continues to "ding" until I stop whatever I started doing to come retrieve it, lest it get cold again. I happened to be in the bathroom at the time, and, at the risk of "too much information," it was not a good moment to be dinging at me. And, besides, the bathroom is a haven of solitude, a peaceful retreat from the busy-ness of the outside world, a private interaction between man (or in this case, woman) and throne.

And yet, there it was. The consistent ding of do-it-now. The two-year-old toddler in the house that is the microwave.

I have a smartphone that relentlessly sends out tones for new e-mails, text messages and even that rarity of the century, the phone call. I can stop that nonsense easily with the heaven that is "settings," but then I think I may miss something important, so I hesitate. I work from home, and one missed e-mail may mean missing out on a commission. I have a "24-hour" policy to return all calls within that time. And, where would I be without the alarm function on the phone? I have an internal body alarm that won't let me sleep past 5:00 a.m. at the latest, primarily because of my hubby's job, but seriously, what would it be like to actually wake up to the sounds of birds? Or, traffic? Or, the sound of the back-up buzzers of the garbage truck (which would be much more likely).

My new washer (and dryer) have tones that let me know when the wash is going into a certain cycle, and when it is done, so that you can dutifully stop whatever important thing it is that you may have been doing at the time (such as, perhaps, bashing the microwave into a million pieces) and run to its side to transfer the washing into the dryer, which also has timed dings for every stage of it's mechanical employment. I can eliminate those, too, but if I don't heed the call, will my clothes be irreparably wrinkled? I have formed a tight bond with Downy Wrinkle Release, and my iron hasn't seen the light of day for weeks now, so I scurry off to make sure I get to those clothes in time. Hell, even my iron has a ding when it is hot and ready to sear the daylights out of my shirts.

When the oven reaches proper temperature for cooking, it dings. When you don't arrive within a certain period of time (to my best guess, 5 minutes and approximately 30 seconds), it dings again. Then again, and again, until you feed it meatloaf or chicken. And, of course, if you set it for a certain cooking time, it goes off again when cooking is complete and it shuts itself off. But, it keeps right on beeping until you come retrieve the contents.

Even my printer has a beep noise when it's out of ink, out of paper or, in general, just wants to say hi.

And I have, like KoKo the Gorilla, learned every single one of these sounds.