Thursday, March 01, 2012

Rough start

Yesterday morning at 6:45 I woke to a chirping. A very loud, intermittent chirping. Not the natural kind. The kind coming from a sick battery of smoke detector. From the first beep I knew: there was no way I was going to sleep through this beeping. And of course we do not keep 9V batteries on hand (we do now). On the unit it says to "Press here to silence." Thinking "Okay, I'll buy batteries later today. Right now I'll silence this thing so I can go back to sleep." So remove the dead battery and press the button I do. And BEEEEEP goes ALL the detectors in our house. A few deaf seconds later, I put the dying battery back in the unit and it quiets itself back to its previous chirping. So I begrudgingly trudged to Walmart before 7am and before Kevin or Eden were awake to buy 9V batteries. To try to turn the day around, I decided to stop for donuts at the good donut place in Millbrook. By the time I got home, I'm feeling better. I have my 8 extra 9V batteries on hand now for early morning sudden chirping occasions. I asked Kevin why the thing didn't stop chirping after I took the battery out. He said the detectors are hard-wired to the electrical system in the house and the batteries are just back-ups in case of power outages. Ah. Now I know.

Moral of the story: some donuts and a surplus of extra batteries can really make a difference in a good day and a bad one.

4 comments:

kelsey said...

this makes me laugh cause it reminds me of the "friends" episode where phoebe freaks out on her smoke detector and the fact that it won't stop chirping. she tries everything. it's a good one.

Anonymous said...

funny...I don't think I would have made it past the breaker box.

Julia said...

Ugh I know! Why is it that smoke detectors always fail at night? Never during the day? A mystery of life!

Summer said...

So funny this same thing happened to us just last week! I awoke at 5:45 a.m. to the lovely chirping as well. :) On the third one, I woke up Matt, yes, he & Madeline both sleep through them too! We had to figure out which one it was and then search for the two 9V batteries sent to us by our insurance company. I then bought more that afternoon for the others to ensure it not happening again and possibly waking up the child. :) Too funny!