Crazy Night

Tuesday night was crazy.  It was one of those nights that wouldn’t let me go to sleep.

I went to bed around midnight.  At 12:15, one of the neighbor’s dogs starts barking.  Very annoying.  It’s not a constant barking – somewhat intermittent, so I am able to start drifting off to sleep.  At 12:30 however, the dog is joined by a chirp from the smoke detector.  It has decided, just now, that its battery is getting low.

I remember that the smoke detector emits a short chirp every minute when the battery is low, but I also remember that it can be on the edge for a while.  I don’t want to leave my warm bed, so I gamble that the next chirps will not be very regular, and maybe I can fall fast asleep and will miss the next chirp. I win that bet, and am back asleep.

At 1:00 my wife wakes me with a “What was that?”  She then described a chirp-like sound.  I tell her it’s the smoke alarm telling us it thinks its battery is running low.  She asks how often it makes that sound.  I tell her “once a minute”, and the alarm chirps again, and again.  I give up and get out of bed.

I go downstairs and get the step stool, since our bedroom ceiling is at 10 feet.  The step stool is not tall enough – my reach is probably 2 feet shy of the smoke detector.  I try remembering how I did this before.  Then I recall that I use the small ladder from the garage.  But the small ladder isn’t in the garage anymore; it’s in the shed.  There’s no way I’m trudging through the snow to get a ladder just to change a 9V battery.

Ah-ha!  We have tall stools in the kitchen for sitting at the counter.  I bring one upstairs, and now my reach is only 1 foot shy.  Hmm…   I grab an end table from the upstairs landing.  The kitchen stool plus the end table is tall enough, if slightly unsteady. But at this point I don’t care.  Swap the batteries, leave the stack of table and stool, and turn out the lights.  Finally back in bed, heading off to sleep at 1:30.

The kids wake up at 6:30, at least an hour earlier than usual, and they’re hungry for breakfast.  If nothing else, that was a training run for when the new baby arrives.

“Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.”
– Matthew 11:28

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This little article thingy was written by Some Guy sometime around 10:38 pm and has been carefully placed in the Family category.

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