@PooltoyWolf I live under one of the landing flight paths for a major international airport. It was so strange to have that silence in the days after 9/11. You do get used to the planes as background noise, and when it’s not there, you really notice.
Similarly, when I worked in a grocery store, the noise from the cashiers scanning groceries and taking payment was always in the background. When I didn’t hear it, my first reaction was to see what was wrong–Did the system crash? Was it just a coincidence that everyone was quiet at the same time?
@macromeh She’s learned that’s about how long it takes me to respond.
But she is pretty persistent. (When she gets REALLY insistent, I know from my experience, I better not delay much longer.)
@FightingMongoos It is always bad. In your case, a mess. If you have small kids, it is one of them. If you take care of elder parents, ditto. If you live alone, someone has just almost made it to your bedroom.
@tweezak And even if they are at the wrong house, and they admit it, that doesn’t make it any better. If they haven’t already shotarrested you for being the wrong person, you’ll still have one hell of a mess to deal with. (will your boss really accept “the cops showed up and ransacked my house on accident” as an excuse for missing work?)
@unksol My shotgun only holds about seven 2 3/4” shells. Therefore I opt for something with which I’m less likely to run out with multiple home invaders. Home invasions are almost always a handful of guys. I can also get off a bunch of shots way faster than I can with a pump.
@ybmuG That’s the thing that pisses me off the most about Indian scammers. 99% of the calls I receive nowadays are from those pricks. They even call at 2:00am, 5:00am, etc. So for a couple years I was shutting my phone off overnight so I could get uninterrupted sleep. But I hated the thought I might miss an emergency or something.
Thankfully more modern phone software will allow you to filter numbers not in your contact list and will ring if someone calls multiple times in a row (even if your phone is in Do Not Disturb mode).
@ybmuG Years ago, when my grandfather was having health issues, my phone rang in the middle of the night. The call went like this:
Me (groggy): Hello?
Caller (cheerful): Hey, who’s this?
Me (annoyed*): Who’s THIS?
Caller (still cheerful): Bob
Me (really annoyed): Bo-ob? (Stretched into two syllables) Well, Bob, you’ve got the wrong goddamn number! (Slams phone down)
*I really hate when you answer the phone and the person just says “Who’s this?” No hello, just “Who’s this?” It’s so rude.
@Kyeh@lisagd@ybmuG
years ago we had a phone number that had one digit different from a cab company phone line. We got LOTS of late night/early morning calls for cabs to be sent to bars etc. Most of the time I would ask for the client’s name and location and tell them we would have a cab out to get them in 25 minutes or so. Not sure how many folks are still waiting for that cab to show up!!
@lisagd@ybmuG My answer to that is: “no, you called MY phone! You don’t have any right to ask who I am. If there’s someone you are looking for then ask for that person. Hang up.”
@xobzoo I hate to admit that yes, I’ve experienced that too. The phrase “quiet at a mouse” is not accurate in a quiet house overnight. I don’t have a cat at the moment, but would suggest a cat because their hearing and sense of smell is so superior to ours, and they will “camp” for hours at a known mouse location. But after their successful hunt, you will hear the other sound, a cat trying to meow to announce it is bringing you the gift of a partially-eaten mouse, which is in their mouth, so it’s a very odd and disturbing meow to wake up to.
@pmarin@xobzoo When I was about 12 I lived upstairs in our old farmhouse.
At one point, I started hearing a noise like a fairly large object being dragged around on my wooden bedroom floor. I was kinda spooked so I would ignore it and eventually go to sleep.
One night I got brave and turned off the light and waited for the noise (it always started a couple minutes after the light went off). Once the scraping started I turned on my lamp and saw a mouse with its head caught in a trap. It could apparently see light but I’m sure there was no way for him to eat or drink.
I put it out of its misery.
@milstarr@pmarin I don’t, I was just thinking back to when I was in college and the phone rang at 3 am a couple of nights in a row. My roommate and I were so flipped out that the second time it happened, we got a friend to come over to help us calm down.
Kids crying in the middle of the night - either they’ve wet the bed or thrown up. You gotta get out of selfish tired mode and into loving caregiver, clean them up and see where the rest of the morning takes you.
@bayportbob@macromeh The smoke detector in my parents’ house would periodically give one “Brap!” in the middle of the night. Just one. Never during the day. That always got my heart racing.
@bayportbob Despite not having an internal clock, the low battery beeps always begin between 2am and 4am Monday on Tuesday mornings. I would swear they received a synchronizing signal from the atomic clocks.
We have a small dog that loves to bark at stuff. Late at night you have to get up to see if anything is wrong. Usually outside. It is usually something awful, like someone had the nerve to come home and shut their car door! Although I did get to watch a guy across the street try to walk from the car to the house while totally drunk! Not the driver, who by the way, did not help him. It took over 15 minutes to go about 40 feet.
My last apartment had time floors in the kitchen and bathroom and hardwood floors everywhere else, except for one little carpeted hallway. I always knew where to find the cat when she was doing her pre-puke howling.
A friend just lost her husband; I told her she could call anytime, because she’s having a really tough time of it. She called that same night at 3:00 am because she’d been awakened by a knock on her window, and saw nobody there! I told her to call 911 and she did but 30 minutes later she hadn’t seen or heard from them (she’d asked them to stop and talk to her.) She called again and was told “Oh, they drove through the neighborhood and didn’t see anything so they didn’t contact you.”
Great to know you can really depend on the police to respond!
@werehatrack
Yep, one of the nice things about having several pecan trees is the ‘self-pruning’ feature!
Our tree (about 40" diameter) actually just “blew over” after suffering thru 3-4 days of rain then getting hit with the winds (Opal was still blowing over 50 mph when it came thru…) unfortunately it blew over onto the house…
Cat preparing to launch a hairball.
Window breaking.
Only one of these things I’m responsible for cleaning up. It’s the puke that’s the worst. All the other options aren’t my problem to clean up.
Your house alarm going off and waking you up
Silence, because I live right between a major international airport and a Class I railroad yard.
@PooltoyWolf I live under one of the landing flight paths for a major international airport. It was so strange to have that silence in the days after 9/11. You do get used to the planes as background noise, and when it’s not there, you really notice.
Similarly, when I worked in a grocery store, the noise from the cashiers scanning groceries and taking payment was always in the background. When I didn’t hear it, my first reaction was to see what was wrong–Did the system crash? Was it just a coincidence that everyone was quiet at the same time?
@lisagd It was weird here, too! Suddenly no planes was very strange…
Drips from the ceiling.
I still maintain that a baby/child throwing up is worse than a cat.
Prevomit from a kid.
And then the vomiting in their bed.
Pre-voment retching from the dog who sleeps in the bed.
Dog waking me and letting me know she absolutely needs to go outside for a walk at 3 a.m.
@phendrick So she gives you a one hour notice?
@macromeh She’s learned that’s about how long it takes me to respond.
But she is pretty persistent. (When she gets REALLY insistent, I know from my experience, I better not delay much longer.)
All the Above!
“Last call for alcohol!!”
The sound of someone falling down the steps.
@ponagathos Back in the day that would be my sister…with a bowl full of milk and cereal.
@FightingMongoos It is always bad. In your case, a mess. If you have small kids, it is one of them. If you take care of elder parents, ditto. If you live alone, someone has just almost made it to your bedroom.
Honestly, someone kicking my front door in. It would probably be the cops at the wrong house but how do you know?
@tweezak you wouldn’t. Hence the shotgun.
@tweezak And even if they are at the wrong house, and they admit it, that doesn’t make it any better. If they haven’t already
shotarrested you for being the wrong person, you’ll still have one hell of a mess to deal with. (will your boss really accept “the cops showed up and ransacked my house on accident” as an excuse for missing work?)@unksol My shotgun only holds about seven 2 3/4” shells. Therefore I opt for something with which I’m less likely to run out with multiple home invaders. Home invasions are almost always a handful of guys. I can also get off a bunch of shots way faster than I can with a pump.
@tweezak who said there can be only one?
@narfcake
The phone when you know something might be wrong
@ybmuG That’s the thing that pisses me off the most about Indian scammers. 99% of the calls I receive nowadays are from those pricks. They even call at 2:00am, 5:00am, etc. So for a couple years I was shutting my phone off overnight so I could get uninterrupted sleep. But I hated the thought I might miss an emergency or something.
Thankfully more modern phone software will allow you to filter numbers not in your contact list and will ring if someone calls multiple times in a row (even if your phone is in Do Not Disturb mode).
@ybmuG Years ago, when my grandfather was having health issues, my phone rang in the middle of the night. The call went like this:
Me (groggy): Hello?
Caller (cheerful): Hey, who’s this?
Me (annoyed*): Who’s THIS?
Caller (still cheerful): Bob
Me (really annoyed): Bo-ob? (Stretched into two syllables) Well, Bob, you’ve got the wrong goddamn number! (Slams phone down)
*I really hate when you answer the phone and the person just says “Who’s this?” No hello, just “Who’s this?” It’s so rude.
@lisagd @ybmuG Yeah, that’s so obnoxious. Maybe answer “this is the {your city} police dispatch, who’s this?”
@Kyeh @lisagd @ybmuG
years ago we had a phone number that had one digit different from a cab company phone line. We got LOTS of late night/early morning calls for cabs to be sent to bars etc. Most of the time I would ask for the client’s name and location and tell them we would have a cab out to get them in 25 minutes or so. Not sure how many folks are still waiting for that cab to show up!!
@lisagd @ybmuG My answer to that is: “no, you called MY phone! You don’t have any right to ask who I am. If there’s someone you are looking for then ask for that person. Hang up.”
@lisagd @tweezak “I can’t talk right now. Give me your home number and I’ll call you back tonight about 10:00.”
The sound of mice (or rats) chewing on something vaguely under your bed.
@xobzoo I hate to admit that yes, I’ve experienced that too. The phrase “quiet at a mouse” is not accurate in a quiet house overnight. I don’t have a cat at the moment, but would suggest a cat because their hearing and sense of smell is so superior to ours, and they will “camp” for hours at a known mouse location. But after their successful hunt, you will hear the other sound, a cat trying to meow to announce it is bringing you the gift of a partially-eaten mouse, which is in their mouth, so it’s a very odd and disturbing meow to wake up to.
@pmarin @xobzoo When I was about 12 I lived upstairs in our old farmhouse.
At one point, I started hearing a noise like a fairly large object being dragged around on my wooden bedroom floor. I was kinda spooked so I would ignore it and eventually go to sleep.
One night I got brave and turned off the light and waited for the noise (it always started a couple minutes after the light went off). Once the scraping started I turned on my lamp and saw a mouse with its head caught in a trap. It could apparently see light but I’m sure there was no way for him to eat or drink.
I put it out of its misery.
Why does the cat always go for a corner on carpet? There’s plenty of perfectly good tile and hardwood.
My girlfriend/wife saying that she’s too tired to have sex… I currently don’t personally experience this but have in the past…
Sounds like a train
But not in Kansas anymore.
My wife yelling at me for something I did to her in her dream…
@Oldelvis my real life punishments for things that happen in my wife’s dreams never fail to amaze me. I’m just wired different.
A knock on the door. Terrifying at 2am.
@milstarr Yup, or the doorbell ringing. Ahang-up phone call is almost as bad.
@ahacksaw @milstarr you still have phones that ring at all hours? I stopped all that #$@ years ago.
@milstarr @pmarin I don’t, I was just thinking back to when I was in college and the phone rang at 3 am a couple of nights in a row. My roommate and I were so flipped out that the second time it happened, we got a friend to come over to help us calm down.
A child laughing.
And you live alone.
The invisible pet you keep telling me I have.
The sound of someone softly knocking on my bedroom window.
@sheaman123 ugh yes! So this!! I would not be able to handle it.
@sheaman123 Especially true if you live on an upper floor of a highrise with no balcony.
@sheaman123 Happened to a friend of mine just a few days ago!
Kids crying in the middle of the night - either they’ve wet the bed or thrown up. You gotta get out of selfish tired mode and into loving caregiver, clean them up and see where the rest of the morning takes you.
the damn smoke detector going off…
@bayportbob Especially when it’s not a false alarm.
@bayportbob @macromeh The smoke detector in my parents’ house would periodically give one “Brap!” in the middle of the night. Just one. Never during the day. That always got my heart racing.
@bayportbob Despite not having an internal clock, the low battery beeps always begin between 2am and 4am Monday on Tuesday mornings. I would swear they received a synchronizing signal from the atomic clocks.
KuoH
We have a small dog that loves to bark at stuff. Late at night you have to get up to see if anything is wrong. Usually outside. It is usually something awful, like someone had the nerve to come home and shut their car door! Although I did get to watch a guy across the street try to walk from the car to the house while totally drunk! Not the driver, who by the way, did not help him. It took over 15 minutes to go about 40 feet.
Rushing water.
My last apartment had time floors in the kitchen and bathroom and hardwood floors everywhere else, except for one little carpeted hallway. I always knew where to find the cat when she was doing her pre-puke howling.
@craigthom Time floors?
A shotgun racking…it’s just the most terrifying sound awake or asleep.
@BelleGunness
The front door opening.
A friend just lost her husband; I told her she could call anytime, because she’s having a really tough time of it. She called that same night at 3:00 am because she’d been awakened by a knock on her window, and saw nobody there! I told her to call 911 and she did but 30 minutes later she hadn’t seen or heard from them (she’d asked them to stop and talk to her.) She called again and was told “Oh, they drove through the neighborhood and didn’t see anything so they didn’t contact you.”
Great to know you can really depend on the police to respond!
The sound of the top half of an oak tree coming through the roof and poking through the ceiling directly over your bedroom, during a hurricane.
@werehatrack
Yep, but ours was a pecan during Opal… and we are 200 miles from the Gulf!!
@chienfou At least you had some decent wood to feed to the smoker afterwards.
@werehatrack
Yep, one of the nice things about having several pecan trees is the ‘self-pruning’ feature!
Our tree (about 40" diameter) actually just “blew over” after suffering thru 3-4 days of rain then getting hit with the winds (Opal was still blowing over 50 mph when it came thru…) unfortunately it blew over onto the house…