It all started last Friday night. The night before Melissa's wedding. I had to get up early (for me) to go pick up Melissa at the hair dresser's. That meant I was going to bed early (for me).
So at 2 (I said early "for me!") I had just gotten everything together for the next day and laid down to sleep when I heard a beep.
"Oh no," I thought
But I hoped I was wrong.
I wasn't. My smoke detector was making one single beep. Every. Darn. Minute.
Now I don't know what I did to make my smoke detector mad. Maybe it just really liked the last tenants of the apartment and I'd never be able to measure up. Maybe it felt I didn't pay it enough attention. Maybe it's been plotting it's revenge since I moved in in March and burned a candle in my bedroom to try and make the place smell more like "me."
All I know is that it had obviously planned to start beeping at the least opportune time possible. I could hear it in every malicious little chirp, perfectly timed so that I would never be able to fall asleep.
I lay there for 5 minutes... thus five "BEEP"s
But I knew something had to be done, so I went and got a chair to stand on and investigated.
New apartment. I had no idea if the smoke detector was hooked up to any sort of alert system. I guessed not, because surely they would have mentioned that at move-in, but I was still afraid. Even more so when I saw that yes, in fact, the smoke detector was hooked up to wires in the ceiling
The problem was that the 9 volt battery was dead, the little blinking red dot told me so.
So I went and searched my battery stash for 9 volts...
Yeah, noone keeps 9 volt battery spares, and I, my friends, am someone.
2 in the morning, remember? I was not going to run out to get a battery. But I was terrified that by just unhooking the smoke detector I was going to cause a passel of firemen to show up at my door.
Someone later pointed out that perhaps having a bevy of uniformed and muscled men showing up on my doorstep wanting to help me was perhaps not the worst of fates, but at the time all I could think was that I didn't have time for firemen- My friend was getting married in the morning!
But it kept beeping unless I unhooked it, so I had to chance the rescuers.
But even after I unhooked it, the thing would not die! Still it chirped it's annoying chirp.
I felt like a character in a Poe story.
Finally I hid the thing under a pillow downstairs and eventually it stopped beeping.
I left the chair in the hallway, to remind me about the battery though.
As you may have gathered from the last post that was perhaps not the most successful of strategies.
But I did remember to grab 9 volt batteries today, so apparently blogging about forgetting *is* a successful strategy-- good to know.
So I come home and I unearth the smoke detector from it's pillow grave, and I put in the battery and I hook the cords in the ceiling back up to it and I try to put it back on it's little base...
and it will. not. go.
Now this is not rocket science and I'm a pretty smart girl, and even relatively handy. I understand how it's supposed to fit and then twist securely... but I can't get it to do it.
and every time I try to twist it on, it comes unhooked from the ceiling wires.
I swear, it's doing this on purpose. It's out to get me.
It's had a taste of the good life, being all snuggled up with pillows and now it doesn't want to go back to the cold and lonely ceiling.
Also it hates me and all I hold dear.
Will I ever be able to get it to return to it's home? I don't know. It's not like it has a nose that I can plug until it opens it's mouth and then I can shove it where it belongs. (Confused? Watch this clip from "Labyrinth")
I may have to find a firefighter after all. I bet smoke detectors like them.... or maybe a pyro... I'm not sure which way smoke detectors swing.
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