When a Mummy and a Daddy Love Each Other Very Much
You know when you start out in blogging and people tell you that you shouldn’t check your stats so damn much? In the past I have had a bit of an addiction to checking my Technorati ranking. I used to check on a nearly hourly basis, seeing who linked to me and what they had to say and commenting to say thanks and generally being a big, fat suck up. Those of you who have very kindly been linking to me will have noticed that I kind of suck at this now. Anyway, I came across this one, which I thought you could all benefit from:
“Itty Biz (skin head young woman that somehow got pregnant and opted out of the career life in the office). Hopefully the baby was not part of the marketing plan and got conceived outside of the office. That’s uncalled for and rude! I take it back, sorry.”
Let’s face it, y’all. When you see your name and “skin head” separated by nothing more than a bracket, that’s worth a click. Sadly, the “somehow” is no longer in the copy on the site, but I can explain how it happened if anyone is unclear. (Thanks for the link, Andy. I’m glad to be a part of your carnival.)
Now. On to my post.
The apartment building in which I live was built sometime around the discovery of gravity. There are lights which haven’t worked in the three years we’ve lived here, and the water makes a creaky, clicking noise when it goes through the pipes right behind my head late at night. Perhaps its greatest flaw, though, is the total lack of heating, cooling, and air flow. I pay three times the electricity as people with comparable living spaces, simply because for all but 10 days of the year it is either too hot or too cold.
Anyway, when we stopped cosleeping with Jack and gave him his own room, we needed to give him his own fan. At first we tried giving him ours and sucking it up and living without one yourselves. (Note: Don’t do that.) We had to buy a new one.
Fans these days are not cheap. We bought the Mac Daddy of fans. It has a breeze setting which apparently has the benefits of sound therapy. (Note: To find out if you would like the sound therapy aspect, lay in bed at night and have someone put a hair dryer right beside your head, turning it on and off at random intervals. This is meant to simulate beach breezes.) It has a remote control. It is nearly industrial in its fanning capacity. The base of the fan is soft, so you don’t find yourself screaming “FUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCK!!!!!”, waking both the baby and the neighbour’s dog at 3 o’clock in the morning when you bash your toe on it. (Obviously, this is something I would never do.)
Anyway, my fan and I were all set to have a very loving relationship. We set it up. We looked at it admiringly. We swooned. Then we turned it on.
And it beeped.
Change the speed? Beep. Set the timer? Beep. Turn it on? Beep. Turn it off? Beep.
Why the hell does everything beep these days? My microwave beeps. My heater, my oven, even my toaster. It does not need to beep. I know a button is being pressed. I’m the one pressing it.
Attention: Marketing Departments
It is widely accepted that over 80% of consumer purchase decisions are either made or influenced by women. Women are also often primarily responsible for child care, including putting breastfed babies back to sleep when they have been awakened by TOTALLY FUCKING UNNECESSARY BEEPING. Please stop the beeps.
Hardcore readers who have been here since the beginning will remember we discussed this before here. Home business marketing begins in product development, people. Doesn’t matter how sexy it looks in the package, if it wakes my kid up, it’s going back to the store. End of discussion.
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Overwhelmed? Freaking out? Borderline hysterical? Click here to get your own small business marketing plan. It’s not scary, I promise.
I have lots of pet peeves like this. Had I not had a glass of wine, I could probably list them and have you agree vehemently that yes, they’re annoying. But no, I’m afraid that wine and my brain don’t work very well together, something like wine and your hand not working well together. So, my tales of life’s annoyances minus breastfeeding issues will have to wait for another glorious day.
Oh - hey, beeping? My fucking microwave. I head something up, walk away, and it has the audacity to continue beeping at me at two minute intervals after it’s done warming stuff up. I mean, really. How the hell can I concentrate when my microwave is constantly disrupting me?
And what’s with the bitch at the blog carnival? I won’t even give her the pleasure of a Men with Pens click through.
Ugh. Hate beeping appliances. And toys. Hate beeping toys even more. Hubby had an uncle who took great pleasure in buying loud toys for the kids. I never figured out why he thought it was so funny to cause me suffering…I’m the one home with the kids all day.
The first thing I did when I bought a dryer several years ago was insist that the stupid buzzer get detached. I’ve gotten rather proficient at taking speakers off kids’ toys as well. Too bad that doesn’t work on higher tech items like fans.
Dear God this pissed me off when my microwave died. Our original was a nice, quiet, heat-up-burritos-like-a-ninja-while-spouse-and-baby-sleep model. The new one? ARRGH!!!!! And it’s not like they say on the OUTSIDE of the box if it beeps or not.
Ditto on a space heater for the kids room. The &(*& thing beeps even if you tilt it one degree while moving it.
At the risk of sounding like a whiner, I do most of my money-making side work after 10pm and before 6am. So stuff like that ticks me off.
Add to the list: laptops that frigging beep on bootup even if you’ve muted the sound in Windows.
/rant
/commenting while on the treadmill is fun
/ the treadmill ALSO BEEPS
Couldn’t resist checking out the blog carnival. At least he called you a young woman. That’s something. :)
Stop all the beeps; couldn’t agree more! The first thing I do when I buy any electronic gizmonkery is to go into the menu and look for the silent mode. Inevitably, the new-fangled sonic spoon I’ve just purchased doesn’t have such a setting, so it normally stays in a cupboard for 6 months until I notice that there’s battery acid leaking into the knifes and sporks in the drawer below.
My microwave is even more annoying. It beeps on every other key press. The result is a cacophony of shrill staccato beeping, not entirely dislike two lorries reversing into each other.
In fact, I even destroyed a perfectly good poem in the name of beeplessness. I wouldn’t normally pimp my posts so openly in comments like that, but let’s not dilly dally around in the name of unwritten blog etiquette: we’re talking about beeps. The rulebook’s already flown out the window.
Funny, we don’t have anything that beeps now that I think about it. The reason could be that most of our stuff comes from the ice age. When our microwave broke, we never replaced it. It had a dial that would dial though, no fancy digital stuff.
I’m so frugal, I won’t buy anything new unless it’s absolutely necessary. When the toaster broke last year, I made toast every morning in the oven for 6 months until it occurred to me that it was probably costing more money in electricity than just buying a new $10 toaster.
I love looking at gadgets, but I just don’t have much interest in buying them. I’ll probably have some cool beepy stuff 10 years from now or something after it’s out of fashion I’ll be all, “Hey guys, look at my new fancy iPod!”. And they’ll be all, “Dude, where have you been, that is so noughties.”
My new microwave also beeps, and continues to beep if you don’t open the door to get your heated up stuff. I get whined at by kids and grandkids…..bitched at by siters and mother, and hubby is usually such a cheerful person as well…the last thing I need is to be bitched at and nagged at by a fucking appliance!!!!!!!!!
Down with all the beeps.
Appliances are abviously designed by men.
BEEEEEEEP!
@Melanie
Mine does the same as if something is burning inside! The f-ing thing just wants me to open the door!
@Melanie I’m a man and I hate all the beeping appliances. Unless I explicitly set a timer, I wish they’d just stay quiet.
@Dave You’ve hit on one of my few complaints about my Mac. When it starts up, I don’t just get a beep. I get the classic Mac chime. Sounds nice, but not exactly subtle.
You’ll never believe what just happened.. I was reading your post, and when I got to the ‘FUCKING UNNECESSARY BEEPING’ part, my cell phone BEEPED!!! No one called, no message waiting, battery is full, no txt message, nothing… it just beeped… to remind me I have a cell phone? I know I have one, it’s right there on my desk, no need to f*cking beep!
I hate my cell phone!
but I loved your post! :)
Ahhh… beeps… my favorite would be my basal thermometer. The one I was supposed to use to take my temperature as soon as I woke up before moving in the morning in order to get accurate results. The thing beeped to tell you it was taking the temperature. Every single second, beep, beep, beep followed by an ending BEEEEEEEPPPPP!!! I was awake.. but my husband was asleep… and so was my 2 year daughter in the next room. Or at least they were asleep. Nothing like waking a 2 year old at 5:30 am to inspire consumer happiness. The thing was also self sealed so I couldn’t open it and disable/muffle the speaker. I’m so with you on hating beeps.
Btw… for anyone who wants to disable a beep it is possible. It involves putting a piece of tape over the opening on the speaker component on the circuit board. However, I don’t recommend messing with circuit boards unless 1) You don’t mind the chance you will break it 2) You know what you are doing enough not to shock/hurt yourself. (In other words don’t sue me if you do something dumb.)
“(Thanks for the link, Andy. I’m glad to be a part of your carnival.)”
No problem, I was drunk at the time of posting, but thanks to your professionalism it turned out ok despite my overly creative approach to marketing.
I checked out some videos on YouTube about alcoholism and I don’t seem to be as badly addicted as some people, so I think alcohol in my case is a necessary tool for my work, like artists that need drugs. Unfortunately I can’t register it as a business expense.
Anyway, we all need our addictions I think.
Also, thanks for bleeping my site and being cool about it!
Andy
[...] That’s the first thing I saw when I opened IttyBiz’s post When a Mummy and a Daddy Love Each Other Very Much. [...]
All I could think when I read this headline was, “Where Did I Come From.” Some things just stick.
Thanks, Naomi, for being thoroughly entertaining on a regular basis.
Just in case you need a copy for the smallish person in your life wondering about the birds and the bees: http://www.amazon.com/Where-Did-Come-Peter-Mayle/dp/0818402539.
@Elisa - Me too!! I’ve still got that book etched in my mind too. I got in trouble for taking it to school to show the other kids, lol. Those cartoons were pretty scandalous, yep.
I’d become quite accustomed to the “bu-deep, bu-deep” of my TiVo until I rewired the components of all the entertainment stuff and it became the loudest BONG BONG. With mute on, I turned the sound off that yes, lets you know you’re doing something. (Then proceeded to figure out how I messed up the audio.) All devices should have a mute button if they insist on coming with bells anyways.
Stumbled for multiple profanity.