"So. Your new Fitbit. Didn't you hear it last night?!" A story of false accusation :0

Several nights ago in the home of the Catholic Librarian:

*happily sports new Fitbit Alta HR to bed to track my sleep*

"You love that new Fitbit, don't you?"

"Yes. Her name is Francine."

😇

That night I had a dream that Mike was trying to wake me up, telling me that my Fitbit was beeping incessantly.

Next morning...

"Sweetie, didn't you hear your Fitbit last night?! It was beeping nonstop, it must have an alarm set or something. It was right around midnight."

Oops. I guess that wasn't a dream. 😬

"No, sorry, darling. You know what a deep sleeper I am."

😬😬😬

I spend the next day Googling "phantom Fitbit alarm" and mentally sending sympathy vibes to people in the Fitbit forums reporting that they are in tears over their devices waking them up every single night (and it's ALWAYS overnight, right?! Just like the low battery indicator in your smoke detector?!) despite there being no alarms set. Several odd solutions are offered, all of which I employ. I reset the device, I change the timezone, sync, and change it back. I set an alarm, sync, then cancel the alarm and re-sync. The next night, I am sweating it out a bit that any of these shenanigans actually worked, and hide Francine in the linen closet under a stack of towels.

😀

As would be expected, we hear nothing. The next night, I was too tired to make the trek to the linen closet after getting into bed, so I shove Francine under our mattress. That night at midnight:

I sit bolt upright.

"Why am I awake?"

Mike is snoozing happily beside me as I hear a faint beeping coming from my side of the room.

Well, crap. I lay back down and pray that it doesn't wake Mike. It doesn't, and eventually I drift back to sleep. The next morning, Mike seems to delight in the fact that it woke ME up this time, and not him.

*glares*

At this point, I am mad. I've had kids and suffered through YEARS of sleep deprivation. Now that I am past that, I do not want a freaking rogue fitness tracker waking me up at midnight every night.

I do more online research, and reset Francine yet again. I resolve to keep the Fitbit out in plain sight over the weekend, when the disturbed sleep isn't as catastrophic, so that we know for sure exactly what is going on before calling Fitbit customer support. Otherwise, Francine is going to meet an untimely end.

Snort.

Saturday night, we are at a party until about 11 pm, thus when 11:55 rolls around, we're just getting into bed. Perfect. Midnight strikes.

I look expectantly at my arm. Nothing is happening.

"Look honey! It's midnight, and the Fitbit is quiet. I must have fixed it!"

Then I notice something. There is muffled beeping, but it is clearly NOT coming from Francine. Mike still tries to blame her. 😑I leap out of bed, determined to find the nefarious source of our nighttime trauma.

It seems to be on my side of the room, and I follow it all the way to our door. As I open our bedroom door, the beeping is clearly much louder, and originating on the main floor of our house. I descend the stairs in a run, determined that I will ferret this little *&@!'er out before it stops and we are left in mystery for yet another night. As I get downstairs, the noise becomes downright ear splitting.

I first check the alarm clock in the guest room, because our children seem to delight in setting alarms on that thing for no discernible reason. Nope. I go out into the living room and snap on the light. Could it somehow be the landline phone? Henry's Nintendo Switch? Is one of the remote controls losing it's mind?! I cannot figure out the source of the noise that is now imprinting itself permanently on my brain when I notice something flashing on our fireplace mantle. You know what it was?

Mike's weather station.

!!!

I felt a deep sense of satisfaction as I ripped the batteries out of the weather station and placed it in a heap back onto the mantle. I went upstairs and reported the news to Mike, who was just about to fall asleep in our bed.

😇

"It's your weather station, my love."

He looked dutifully both confused and horrified, as we've had that weather station for years, and never even known that it had an alarm function. I'm certain one of the children was involved in this plot to destroy our lives, but we'll never know for sure.

I've been sleeping like a rock ever since.

*righteous sniff*

Are you reading your Lenten Book Club book?! First post coming on Thursday!