It’s about 3 AM now when I’m writing this piece because I can’t sleep.

It all started about 1:30AM when I mistakenly turned over during a sound sleep.

My wife said to me, “did you hear that?”

“Did I hear what?”

“That beep.”

“What beep?”

“Listen.”

My wife is much like a raccoon, nocturnal.  She is usually awake at this hour, counting sheep or beeps.

We both listened and about 5 minutes later there was a beep.

She said, “You think it’s the fire alarm?”

I said no the fire alarm is hooked up to the electric system and doesn’t have batteries that beep when they are low.

“It’s probably one of your gadgets, like the driveway alert or the front door alert.”

“Why does it always have to be one of my gadgets?  You have gadgets that beep also.  How about the microwave, or the electric range, or the dishwasher, the washing machine or your cell phone.”

“This is like an Erma Bombeck story,” I said to my wife.  She buys old Bombeck books on e-bay.

One of her favorite stories was reading from the ‘bottom of the cage.’  This was when Bombeck’s husband read to her what she already read.  We do this; my wife gets the paper because she’s the first one up.  The paper isn’t much of a paper and doesn’t take long to read . . . it takes about five minutes and she can do this in between beeps.  Then I get up and read to her what she already read . . .  from the bottom of the cage.

“Did you hear that . . . there it goes again?”

“Well it’s annoying.”

“Not as annoying as you waking me up.”

“We’re going away in the morning and I don’t want that thing beeping while we’re gone.”

“You won’t here it in the Virgin Islands,” I said.

Well my wife got up and dressed, as she usually does at this hour, and went downstairs to read Erma Bombeck.

I told her to pull the front door alert from the receptacle to see if that would stop the beeping.

It did and she was right, it was one of my gadgets.

I can’t sleep now, so I’m reading to you from the bottom of the cage.