I was shopping for a new dress. I know, that's pretty unusual, but that is not the funny thing that happened. I went to my favorite thrift store that is 10 miles to the east, only to find a whole lot of frayed, faded, and buttonless nothing. So I drove to the thrift store that is 10 miles to the west.
On the way, I stopped at Walmart to buy a spool of thread. When I got back to the Little Red(neck) Truck, I started hearing a funny high-pitched noise.
Little Red is in what my mother would call "interesting" condition. So my first thought was that there was something a little off with something in the truck. But I couldn't pin it down and it kept on quietly making weird noises. It would do several quick little clicks and then a high pitched tone, almost as if it were trying to communicate via Morse Code. It wasn't terribly loud but it was peculiar.
I had an episode of Flashpoint running before I set off, so of course I wondered what terrorist had planted a bomb in the truck.....!
I held the phone up to my ear, but it was not coming from the phone.
I have a new insulin pump with continuous glucose monitoring (that is making me a little nutso and has cost me several nights' sleep). It was not the pump. I couldn't check the sensor for the glucose monitoring system, as that is firmly attached to my lower belly (and I am not nearly flexible enough to get my ear down there, especially in the Walmart parking lot), but I did not think that was the problem.
I drove on to the thrift store and when I turned off the car, the noise stopped. Aha! That must be what is causing the.....oh wait, never mind....it started up again. There are not many people who visit that thrift store (for a number of good reasons), but I'm sure that the few who were there were frightened off by my behaviour as I sat there trying to get to the bottom of the mystery.
I played with the headlight switch. No.
I tried the windshield wiper switch. No.
I fiddled with the switch that controls the air conditioning; it is down under where the radio used to be once upon a time. No
I looked in the glove compartment. Nothing
I looked in the little compartment between the seats. Nothing again.
I got out and looked under the seats. Still nothing.
I was at my wits' end (some people say I was past it, but never mind that).
Finally I figured it out. It was Mr. Marvelous' spare van key!
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| No, it really does not look like a key, but apparently it is |
Whew! What a relief to have that figured out!
I called Mr. Marvelous; perhaps he was in the vicinity and it was reacting to the van being close by...?
No, he was in Scottsboro (where they were having snow flurries!).
He was in the middle of work, but kindly suggested that the battery was possibly dying and needing replacement and we would take care of it when he came home. We quickly laughed about how crazy it was that a KEY would be the culprit of the noise and went on our individual ways.
When I walked into the thrift store, something was not quite right. The noise was still annoyingly going on, but it just did not seem to be coming from the key. The key was in my right pocket, and the noise seemed to be coming from my left, and was not muffled from being in a pocket.
What in the world??
I stood there for a moment (confirming everyone's suspicions about my sanity). Finally I looked down and saw my pedometer. I held it up to my ear. Yup! That was it!
I looked at the display and noticed that it said "Alarm". You got that right, buddy!
I tried to scroll through and turn it off, but it absolutely refused; it was alarmed and everyone else needed to be as well!
After standing in the middle of the aisle figuring this out, I realized that I was impeding traffic. I thought about explaining but figured it was best just to pretend that I was responding to an urgent, life-or-death page (does anyone even carry pagers anymore?)
I was able to get the battery out and guess what?
The noise stopped!
I am hoping that I have a spare battery squirreled away somewhere.
Personally, I think that the exposure to the Walmart environment was just too alarming for the poor thing.
That or it was sending Morse Code signals to the Mother Ship.
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