Imagine, if you will, pulling into your driveway and discovering that your garage door is open. It's been ten hours since you left. It's possible that you forgot to close it as you pulled out this morning, but really unlikely. As you cautiously enter the house, you hear a sound. It sounds a whole lot like an alarm. It sounds far from where you are standing, so you leave the Toddler in the basement to venture upstairs. You worry that the Toddler may mistake a cat litter box as a sandbox, but that loud, shrill sound sounds distinctly like a fire alarm. Even at this distance, the Toddler is covering her ears and yelling, "Stop," so you know she's better off playing in kitty-kitty-doo-dooland than she would be in any smoke-filled domain.

You reach the first floor of your home and the alarm sound is deafening. You momentarily think it would be best to just leave and wait in the car until your husband arrives. Then you realize that he won't be any more helpful than the dog sleeping on the couch, so you need to investigate. You notice that the voicemail light on the phone is blinking - blinking - blinking. Is there a message that would exlain the noise? Has someone been in the house? Where's the fire? Good grief, the noise does sound exactly like the fire alarm. But it seems to be coming from the front of the house. There are no fire alarms there.

You wander into the kitchen, trying to find the source of the noise while fearing that your eardrums may rupture. You reach the far end and the sound is deafening. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA. There doesn't seem to be a fire anywhere, but there is a peculiar odor. You look at the microwave. It proudly displays the time. You open the door. Clearly it's not the source. You turn around and try the fridge. You wonder what the heck it would take for a fridge to make that kind of noise. Complete mechanical failure? But it's only a few years old. You realize it's not the fridge. You turn around again. The coffee pot? No. Then you look down and see it. The water bowl.

As fast as you can, you rip the cord out of the wall.

Silence.

At last.

The fancy shmancy water bowl that you bought to satisfy the cat who will most certainly fall over dead if he is ever forced to drink water that has been sitting in a bowl for even a millisecond is bone dry. And clearly not happy about it.

Crisis averted. Let's play!

(A leaf also shares the blame for my ridiculously bizarre return home. It was responsible for triggering the garage door sensor and making it go back up after I had closed it.)