Stop that Beeping!

Some of our experiences in our new home were almost our last. When we moved in, a lot of the work wasn't finished yet. We had nowhere else to stay, so moved in anyway. We had no air conditioning, no running water, and we had to use the restroom at the gas station. It was a nice, hot August 103 degrees, and we were sweaty, tired, and irritable.

What's this have to do with a smoke alarm, you ask? Just hang on, and I'll tell you. We worked through days with the sweat running, and at night we'd fall into the only bed we'd been able to find in the pile of our belongings in the garage. It was only a full-sized bed, and we were used to our king, but, hey, it was a bed!

It was hard getting to sleep in that hot little bed, but finally the exhaustion won out. Sometime after I fell asleep, I vaguely heard Beeeep! Huh? And back to sleep. Beeeep! Noooooo, my mind protested. Asleep again. Beeeep! "Why are you being so noisy?" my husband mumbled. Who? Me noisy? Beeeep! My husband can't hear high-pitched sounds, and he's not impressed as he rolls over and returns to dreamland. Beeeep! Finally my exhaustion won the battle, and I slept until morning.

Morning came. Beeeep! Finally my brain connected and realized, "Smoke alarm!" But why? They were new, just installed, and they'd all worked great the day before. Beeeep! My husband isn't even interested, but I keep pestering him until he goes to the garage for a ladder. We have 9' ceilings, and the big stepladder is very heavy. Beeeep!

He climbs the long climb up to the first one. No problem with that battery. He's tired, he's hot, and he slams that baby back together and climbs down. Beeeep! Then he hauls that ladder all around the house checking the other alarms. Nothing wrong there! Then he realizes that in his haste he could have missed tightening in one of the batteries. Beeeep! Wearily he makes another round with his ladder but finds nothing wrong.

Our all-too-perky carpenter comes in. My irritated husband says, "What'd you do to the smoke alarms? The darn things keep beeping!" Beeeep! "Yeah, they're beepin'!" the carpenter observes. "Mighty dirty around here. Maybe there's a dirty connection."

Shaking his head, my husband picks up his ladder, a roll of paper towels, and a bottle of cleaner and makes the rounds again. Beeeep! He just finishes when the helpful carpenter observes, "Could be the alarm needs reset." I could tell my husband was about to blow, but my sleep that night depended on him finding the problem. Still he patiently lugs the ladder from place to place and climbs to press the reset buttons. Beeeep!

"Wait a minute," our trusty carpenter says. "Seems to me I heard the electrical guy say something about a short…" So, my long-suffering husband finallydrags the ladder out into the garage and climbs through the hole to the attic. It's about 150 degrees up there, and he has to crawl all over to find each smoke alarm and tighten the connections. He finally finishes. And there is silence!