Wednesday 9 December 2015

Deaf Girly and the Baby Monitor

With the madness, the parking wars and the tubes full to the brim, I'm a big fan of online shopping at Christmas. Sure, I support local shops where possible, but sometimes it's all about a glass of mulled wine, a Christmas movie and the endless possibilities of what I can buy for friends and family on the worldwide web.

The only problem with this is the delivery. You see I live in a block of flats. With a buzzer. That I can't hear. I used to be able to hear it with my hearing aids in, but recently I haven't been able to, which means I'm missing deliveries.

Yesterday, after Amazon rang for the third time to say they had been unable to deliver my package – luckily SuperCathyFragileMystic was there to take the call – I finally got confirmation that they would be delivering a package that afternoon. Stressing about the door buzzer, SCFM suggested I download a baby monitor on my iPhone and iPad and set one up opposite the door buzzer to pick up the noise when it went off.

Genius eh?

And so that's what I did. For £2.99 I bought Cloud Baby Monitor and installed it on my tablet, phone and main computer. And it's great. OK, so the flat is so small, it picked up me coughing from the other room, but that also reassured me that it would pick up the tiny bleating noise the buzzer makes that I can just about hear it I press my ear to the intercom system when it's going off.

And so I sat in and waited. I worked on the 2nd draft of my book. I wrapped Christmas presents, drank tea and watched The Gilmore Girls on Netflix. The buzzer didn't go.

I sat in some more. 

And then I decided to check the status of my Amazon order online. 'Delivered to Hall' it had declared, some two hours previously. And while I was happy that after a third attempt, I finally had my Amazon package, I felt a bit cheated that I'd spent hours waiting in for it and rigged up a baby alarm and I didn't get to 'hear' the door buzzer.

The same is not true for my new Nest fire alarm however. I had the pleasure of 'hearing' that – as did my entire building – last week. It's so sensitive to steam that on coming out of the shower, it decided to go off, shouting something intelligible but I presume about the fact it was about to go off and then letting out what I believe must be a piercing alarm. It was so loud that I could feel it. Panicking, I grabbed a chair so I could reach the 'stop going off' button and bashed it repeatedly until the Nest lady stopped talking. It was only then that I looked down and realised that in my panic, my towel had come off and I was stood on a chair, completely naked in front of a big window overlooking a busy street smacking a fire alarm with a shoe.

It's when I think about things like this that I realise there may be another reason Amazon don't want o ring my door buzzer – Fear of the Crazy Lady.

Happy Humpday peeps

DG
x







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