Public Service Announcement

It is recommended that all households have smoke detectors but I believe that for homes with small children there needs be an additional kind of an alarm.

The Quiet Detector.

Tonight Anna had a board meeting and needed to work late. After dinner, I surveyed our living room which looked like a Toys R Us had vomited all over; and, being the super-human husband that I am, I decided that it would great if I cleaned the living room and kitchen. Things went pretty well with the living room, since Sophie only pulled out about 75% percent of everything that I just put away. I like to think of cleaning the house as a war of attrition and I only have to outlast Sophie for another 15 years.

So I started on the kitchen. It was at this point that Sophie informed me that she was going to make a bed for Tiger Lily in the Parlor. I thought "Great! Anything to keep her out of my hair while I clean."

This is where a Quiet Detector would have come in very handy. You see, I managed to clean the kitchen, make my self a drink and then turn on the BBC Nightly News, and I still hadn't heard a peep from my daughter.

Obviously, I was suspicious and went to investigate. Sophie had in fact made a bed for Tiger Lily on the coffee table but at some point decided that the cat wasn't feeling well. So being the caring 3 year old that she is, she went and got the Desitin butt cream and applied a very liberal amount deep into the cat's fur. To "Make her feel better," as Sophie put it. Apparently, Wendy-dog wasn't feeling well either, because she also got a dose of butt cream rubbed into her fur.

I have since cleaned the butt cream from the carpet, couch, pillow, blankets and everywhere else that I could think of (not to mention the poor animals' fur).

The moral of the story is, while peace and quiet is what many of us dream of, the consequences of such quiet usually spells trouble.

Hence why our household needs a Quiet Detector.