Always Be Prepared

I had a shock the other night. I was woken up from a dead sleep by the smoke alarm chirping- about once a minute! I went downstairs to get some new batteries and found there weren’t any! Actually there were batteries-just not the size I needed (of course).

Why oh why does this always happen in the middle of the night? WHY are we out of batteries in the MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT?

So I got dressed and debated on waking Jake before I left. I was shocked that he wasn’t up already. He is a very light sleeper and usually I sleep through things and he wakes up to take care of them. He is really great that way.

I debated for a few minutes (or few chirps!!) and then woke him- I will be honest I was hoping he would just go to get the batteries- I’m not proud of it but we are being honest here. I told him I didn’t want him to worry because I was going to the store for batteries.

He rolled over and went back to sleep. I went to Wal.mart and got the batteries. I came home and started to change them. The chirping DIDN'T stop!! I changed all the batteries (I am so glad I got more than just two batteries!) I checked to see if all the connections were clean. They were. I checked the internet. One place suggested vacuuming the smoke alarms. So I did that. IT DIDN'T HELP! I checked the internet again and it suggested cutting the power (our smoke alarms have both batteries and electricity). So I went to the breaker box and looked for the breaker and none of them were labeled smoke alarms.

By this time it has been a couple hours and I was really frustrated. I didn’t know what else to try so since Jake was still sleeping (and the internet was out of ideas); I went down stairs to try and get a bit more sleep hoping that eventually the chirping would stop –you know by magic or something. Just as I was settling in; I heard Jake get up. Suddenly the chirping stopped. I went up to see what happened. I thought the batteries had FINALLY connected.

Jake had the Carbon Monoxide monitor in his hand. THAT IS WHAT WAS MAKING THE NOISE! I spent all this time working on the wrong problem!!!!!

Luckily the rest of the weekend was much better and I got a great story!