Oh, don’t mind that ear-piercing beeping sound. It’s just my *rain* alarm.
GRRRrrrrrrroooooaaarrrrrrr!!!!! When I was a kid, we didn’t have smoke alarms in our houses. I know, I know. Fires kill people. I am terrified of them. Don’t get mad at my parents, that was umpteen million years ago when smoke alarms didn’t exist. When I went to kindergarten, I was all excited when Mrs. Ryan told us we were going to have a fire grill and we would all have to go outside! My parents grilled hamburgers and things sometimes. Outside. It was fun and I liked hamburgers and I thought that grilling hamburgers would be a wonderful school activity. But when the fire grill actually happened, we definitely did not get to eat. Instead, a horribly loud buzzer permeated every corner of our sprawling elementary school, Stinkin’ Linkin’. enh enh enh enh! [small-pause] enh enh enh enh. [repeat ad nauseam]
I didn’t get used to fire “grills” the whole time I went to school and living through a couple of minor dorm fires did not help me get over my fear. And then. We started to have to have those dern things AT HOME! Now, do not get me wrong. I know, I know. Fires kill people. I am terrified of them. Smoke alarms with working batteries save lives. When my kids were small, I was adamant that smoke alarms were in place wherever we stayed and we carefully changed the batteries whenever we needed to. Even though I was the only person who ever woke up when the smoke alarms went off, which never happened except for burned toast or dead batteries. Go figger.
There are no kids here any more and we got a little lax. I know, I know. Fires kill people. I am terrified of them. But y’know. We are careful. We don’t smoke. In bed or anywhere else. We don’t leave the stove on. Or leave candles burning. Etc., etc., etc. I know that stuff still happens. Yes, I was risking my life with randomly working smoke alarms.
But then. A tree fell on the house. Again. It fell on Mouse’s *bedroom*. (Don’t worry, Mouse was in her apartment in Kalamazoo at the time.) The work on the *bedroom* set off all kinds of paperwork alarms down at City Planet Hall. “Yap yap yap yap [small pause] yap yap yap yap, if you are doing work on bedrooms, you have to install hard-wired smoke alarms. yip yap yip.” We had no choice, so we did.
Fine. Except. That. It has been raining for two days here. That’s all fine with me. We needed the rain. Everything and everybody was getting a bit parched here in the southeast corner of the Great Lake State, which is nowhere near any desert. But now we have humidity! And the blasted smoke alarm is apparently being set off — repeatedly — by humidity. We have unplugged the circuit it’s connected to and torn out the batteries and it seems to still be happening. I am ready to take the blasted thing to the back of the back yard and throw it over the fence into the woods! Who knows. Maybe it’ll save a few young skunks and raccoons and things.
Sorry, you guys. Y’know. I know why we have those things. Fires kill people. I am terrified of them. But I will NOT be able to sleep tonight if that g-d thing keeps going off every 10 minutes because it’s RAINING!!!!!
September 13th, 2008 at 9:36 pm
You said it, KW!!! Ernie & Alfred have both been conditioned to be scared s***less whenever I start the oven (not the stove, but the *oven*) because every stinkin’ time I have broiled anything (even with a freshly-cleaning-cycled oven), the kitchen smoke alarm goes berserk! So, the oven goes on, Ernie heads for the back door, and Alfred gets even smaller than he already is, his eyes bug out and become huge, and he hides under a kitchen chair starts shaking. Why? Because *someone* (when this house got rebuilt *after* it nearly burned down – LOOOONG before we had any idea we’d ever move into it – oh, about the year that Nook was born), The Code stated that hard-wired smoke alarms yadda-yadda-yadda and this Someone decided the best place to put it is where broiler smoke will collect. Right over an “archway”, near a corner. ‘Course, that means that that’s the LAST place the smoke will clear from, too. *sigh* I don’t broil but rarely these days….if at all.
September 14th, 2008 at 1:16 am
Yup, one of our smoke detectors is right outside the first floor bedroom (ours). Of course, that means it is also right next door to the kitchen. “Gotta hang up, mom, dinner must be ready b/c the smoke detector is going off!” However, when we did a short circuit in the bathroom wiring, resulting in flames coming out of the bathroom electrical socket, did the smoke detector go off? No. Maybe the smoke detector hadn’t been put back up after disconnecting it for some cooking non-emergency. Maybe it wasn’t generating smoke, yet, just flames. Hmm, maybe I should test it, but not now, since it’s close to midnight.
September 14th, 2008 at 9:20 am
ooh, boy, I *was* tired when I wrote that comment last night! Re-reading it this morning, and even *I’m* curious how I came up with some of those completely non-structured sentences going off in 15 different directions. Wow – I knew it was a *loooong, wet day*, but that’s crazy…. O_O
September 14th, 2008 at 9:20 am
[didn’t help that I had Alfred trying to help me type, too….]
September 14th, 2008 at 10:01 am
Me too, it should read “when we did HAVE a short circuit…”
September 14th, 2008 at 11:19 am
Grok grok! Ol’ Baggy has gotcha both beat. grok grok. She left a comment on Ol’ Pengy’s blahg las’ nite ‘n’ she didden evin rememb’r writin’ it this mornin! grok grok grok frgok!