What the beep?

Dear apartment full of things, things with batteries and things without,
Why do you beep?

For two weeks now, you've tormented me with your chime.
A single tone, just higher in pitch than a microwave oven, that sounds every fourteen minutes and fifty-three seconds.
Yes, I've timed you. You are remarkably consistent.
Sometimes you seem loud, and sometimes not, and sometimes--only sometimes--I forget that I've heard you at all. Sometimes you seem to live in the living room. Then the kitchen. Then the laundry room. But I can't find you anywhere.


Dear apartment full of things,
Because of you, I have spent fourteen minutes and fifty-three seconds with nearly every appliance and electronic device in this house:
The smoke detector, the carbon-monoxide detector, the thermostat. The oven, the washing machine, and the toaster. The kitchen timer, the microwave, the alarm clock, the wristwatch, the laptop, the telephone, the refrigerator, the hair dryer, the cable box, the bathroom scale.
No one should ever have to spend fourteen minutes and fifty-three seconds with a bathroom scale.

Where else could you be?


Dear apartment full of things,
You have made many friends. People at work ask about you all the time. They ask how we're doing, and if you still beep. You do.
This is a relief to me, by the way, because it means there are many, many people who don't think I'm crazy. Because I hear you beep. Sometimes, when people come over, they don't hear you for forty-four minutes and thirty-nine seconds or more, and then I worry. But you always make yourself known; they eventually hear you loud and clear. And then they wonder, too, as I do,

Why do you beep?