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Thursday, May 10, 2012

Why I'm awake

It's not early, certainly not early to many people's standards.  I woke up at exactly 7:04 on a Thursday.  It's not that I'm awake that annoys me, it's how I was woken.  Now I like sleep.  A lot.  Many people would think that this would have deterred me from having a second and especially a third but for some reason I enjoy torture, that and I've been fortunate and my kids are generally late sleepers.


This morning though I was woken by something far more annoying than my lovely, beloved offspring.  No, this was the obnoxious sound of the smoke alarm detector.  Not to worry, it wasn't going off.  It was announcing, "BEEP! LOW BATTERY!"  The smoke/carbon monoxide detector was announcing that I was living in a dangerous situation and I needed to fix it.  Right now.


It wouldn't be so bad except that this always happens on my watch.  Always.  Hubby is never home to change the batteries when the darn thing goes off.  This is strange because it always goes off at night/early morning.  A couple of times it's gone off when he's been out of town at about 3am but usually it goes off around 6am.  It's too early to get up yet for my kids but it's late enough that they (mostly Bug) most likely won't fall back to sleep.  It's also late enough that Hubby has already left for work.


This means that I have to change it.  Now I hate changing the batteries on it.  I'm 5'0", this means that I have to get a step stool or a chair to be able to barely reach the the detector. - I know I'm short!  I don't need some stupid CO detector telling me that. -  So I climb up on the stool, this is awful, it is in the hallway right next to the banister to the stairs, if I fell I'd be falling down to the first floor (not to worry though, the railing would break my fall).  So there I am standing precariously in the hallway and I make the mistake of looking down.  I then remember the saying, "Never look down."  This is because when you're scared of heights it will only make the situation worse (go ahead and laugh that I'm short and scared of heights).  You are also working on limited time before she loudly re-announces that you have a low battery.  Usually this happens as you are climbing up the stool so your ears are right there.  Then you have to get it down.  In order to get it down, you have to push a button.  This is the tester button.  The tester button will then announce, "BEEP! LOW BATTERY! WARNING FIRE! WARNING CARBON MONOXIDE! BEEP!"  Even while muffling if in your stomach it still hurts your ears.  To make matters worse, the hallway is an "L" shape with a large opening where the stairs come up, this means that the detector is virtually in front of every child's room.


I suppose I should be happy, it didn't wake up the kids. 


I would also like to add that we have 3 other detectors in the house.  These have never gone off and we change all of the batteries twice a year.  Maybe it's the higher altitude.


Vicky

2 comments:

  1. You obviously must be near neighbors to a family named Murphy.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Lol, come to think of it we DID just have new neighbors move in.

    ReplyDelete