The Tell-Tale Smoke Alarm

Well, it has been a fun adventure with my household safety appliances over the last few days. On Monday night, after taking my wonderful sleeping magic pill Sonata, I was woken up by a sharp beeping at 2am. It wasn't the piercing beeping of trouble, but a lonesome random beep of my smoke alarm telling me the battery was out. It was then I learned two things: 1) If you get up after three hours asleep via Sonata, you walk like a drunk (and tend to trip and run into things), and 2) you cannot go back to sleep.

The most infuriating thing was that once I came downstairs, the stupid thing beeped once more and stopped.

OK, so a smart person would have gone out the next day and bought batteries, JUST in case. But, no. So, tonight, the beeping started in force about 11pm, and it was driving me bonkers. Even the cats were going nuts. Baxter was pacing, and looking at me like, "are you going to do something about that?"

So, at 1am, I snatched my coat from the coat rack and stomped to my car, drove to the 24 hour CVS and bought TWO 9 volt batteries, huffing and puffing all the while.

I got home, climbed on top of the kitchen counter, put the battery in, and closed the little compartment. There.

I walked back into the den and sat down and then....

BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!

I ran over to the smoke alarm and looked up in disbelief only to then discover that the beeping was coming from...my carbon monoxide detector. (about 2 feet to the right of the smoke alarm).

Now, of course, it doesn't take the same kind of batteries. But, thank GOD I had 3 AA batteries. And yes, I know that means I wouldn't have had to venture out in the first place.

...sigh.

-Kim >^..^<