#suffered

Cincinnati Mayor Aftab Pureval handily defeated Vice President JD Vance’s half-brother Tuesday, according to the Associated Press.

Pureval, a Democrat, trounced Cory Bowman, securing an early and humiliating lead over the Republican challenger. The final vote tally found that Purevan won 78 percent of the vote, with 51,698 votes, while Bowman seized a meager 14,383 votes, totalling just 22 percent, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer.

Flashback: The night before last, I am woken out of a dead sleep at 5am by the persistently and maddeningly consistent chirp of a low-battery smoke alarm. You know the one: [Thirty seconds of blissful silence] CHIRP. [Thirty seconds of confused but slightly less blissful silence] CHIRP. [Thirty seconds of hopeful silence that maybe it's done n -- ] CHIRP.

Anyway. I tried to ignore it for a bit. This did not work. I hoped it would go away. This also did not work. I finally get out of bed and angrily lumber around the apartment, stick my head out the front door, etc, looking for the source. Finally, I seize upon the hallway smoke alarm and vengefully remove the battery, deciding that if I therefore die in a fire in the next three hours, this is a worthwhile sacrifice. (Sidenote that will become important later: The bedroom smoke alarm is located less than a foot from the hallway smoke alarm. Did I walk right past it? Multiple times? Apparently so.)

Falsely confident that I have solved the problem, I get back in bed. Surely this is now totally --

CHIRP.

I contemplate homicide. I think the noise is surely coming from one of my neighbors' units and wonder why they are so stupid as not to know that there is a frigging alarm going off constantly and disturbing my sleep and probably theirs. I figure that while I might be going crazy and hearing things which are not there, it's probably the case that someone else can hear it too. Finally, I appear to be vindicated in this assumption when the infernal cheeping finally stops and I am able to fall soundly back to sleep for another three hours. When I wake up, it remains quiet. All day, in fact!

Ha! I think. Problem solved.

I am incorrect.

Last night: I get ready for bed. I get in bed, I am awake for a bit, and then lo, it starts again, at literally midnight. Thirty seconds [CHIRP]. Thirty seconds [CHIRP]. Thirty seconds, [CHIRP].

I don't know why it wants to make me suffer in this way. We have established that for whatever reason it decided to hold its fire over the last entire day, it was nothing whatsoever to do with anything I did. I don't know why it decided to resume at LITERALLY MIDNIGHT instead of, you know, any other hour where I would be better equipped to discover the source of this nocturnal demonic howling, but I suspect this is my penance. I once more attempt to ignore it. Turn up the white noise machine and put in the earplugs. Remind myself that I have started meditating lately, maybe I can use that!

It does not work.

I attempt to figure out whether it is coming from the next door neighbors or the upstairs neighbors. GET UP AND TURN IT OFF, I think in great vexation. Nope. Still nothing. It keeps going. I contemplate the folly of all human existence.

Finally, once more driven to extremes, I get up and AGAIN lumber all the way around the apartment, like an angry sleep-deprived zombie, to try and fail to discover the source of this infernal bellowing. As most of you know, I am about to start my fourth graduate degree. Habitually and fondly, I consider myself somewhat smarter than the average potted plant. This however continues to avail me nothing. I compose angry emails in my head to the maintenance department, which said they had fixed a similar problem and then didn't. WHY ARE MY NEIGHBORS SO DUMB, I wonder. THAT IS CLEARLY IN THEIR UNIT AND THEY SHOULD TURN IT OFF.

I get back in bed. I take a sleeping pill. Either that works or the cacophony mysteriously subsides for a while, because I get to sleep for about four hours and have weird, smoke-alarm-inflected dreams. I wake up again this morning. It is still beeping. How bad, I think, could it really be if I burned this place down?

Finally, I give up. I get up. I turn off the white noise machine and take out the earplugs. Wow, I think. This noise truly is so loud. Is it possibly in my apartment after all? I remember that like a true Luddite, my preferred superpower would be to smash all noise-making machines. Yes, I am approximately ninety years old in almost every way. Let's not dwell on it.

I light upon the bedroom smoke detector. I narrow my eyes.

I spring forth and disembowel the culprit of its battery.

At last! For the first time in forty-eight hours! Blessed silence falls upon my abode! I stare at the cursed machine. The inside of the battery compartment reads CAUTION: ALARM IS NONFUNCTIONAL WITH BATTERY REMOVED.

"YES," I bellow, in my angry and confused sleep-deprived caveman haze. "YES, THAT IS PRESENTLY MY EXACT INTENTION."

Silence. Finally. Except for the sound of another alarm chirping somewhere in the distance, as it has done for several weeks now, but quietly enough that I can mostly tune it out. I will purchase a new battery when I am out today, but etc etc if I die in a fire in the next three hours, you may assume the sadistic smoke alarm has taught me its final lesson.

So. There you go. There is no moral to this story except a) the call was indeed coming from inside the house, b) Share O My Toils, Tumblr; and c) sometimes it is indeed you. The angry groggy moron lumbering around at the dead of night and attempting to break things in a vain effort to shut them up, wondering why their neighbors won't get up and turn it off instead, is sometimes just you.