In the first episode, Terry was out of town and I was considering wearing a scorpion anklet for approximately 4 seconds. The saga continues as Terry left town on Tuesday…
On Thursday, two days later, I came home from work and the smoke detector was chirping. It just so happens, I have experience with smoke detectors as in October, I disabled one which was chirping outside my bedroom. That took a lot of doing since our ceilings are high, but with ladder and reacher in hand, I had yanked it apart. I knew I could handle this challenge! At least I thought so.
I climbed the ladder after my 14 hour nursing shift with ease and was able to stretch and pop the battery out without the assistance of a reacher! I climbed down, headed towards the kitchen and to my amazement, I heard a “chirp”! This was puzzling, but since this alarm was hard wired to the ceiling, I thought maybe I had to climb back up and replace the battery. Fortunately, I had not put the ladder away, so I climbed up and stretched AND stretched and finally, popped in a new battery and climbed back down the ladder with a sigh of relief. Finally–I could relax, but was once again bewildered by a loud “CHIRP”!
This again was puzzling, but I was thankful for modern technology, (not necessarily smoke detectors at this time), and googled “How to stop your smoke detector from chirping”.
I found a great video about how to disconnect the thing from the wiring; soooo, I proceeded back up the ladder, stretched AND stretched AND stretched and took the thing clear off! Just wires remained hanging from the ceiling!
I headed back toward the kitchen, but before I got there, AGAIN, I heard “CHIRP”!
Now I couldn’t believe it. I searched the Internet some more and finally decided to look up a handyman and messaged him. I was now at the mercy of the callback from the handy man! I went to bed in the bedroom farthest from the noise. Even so Mollie, Maisie and I were lulled to sleep by the not so sweet chirping of the alarm….
This morning, I turned on Christmas carols and pretended that the chirp was a sweet sounding triangle in a symphony. I had to use my imagination, but it was better than going nuts!
I ran errands in the morning, leaving Mollie and Maisie subject to the sound of chirping. When I returned in the afternoon, I had not heard anything from the handyman and the chirping continued. I started working on projects and soon the chirping kind of faded into the background. I went down the hallway and there was a sudden loud CHIRP, piercing my left ear, leaving it “ringing”! I turned and there was, at nose level, a carbon monoxide detector! I quickly grabbed it, yanked out the batteries and promptly stomped on it until it was dead! In our first episode with the scorpion, I had too much fear to stomp on the pest, but used a ceramic pot to smash it to smithereens. I had no fear today, however, but rage at this instrument of insanity!
All is well now. Heels up. Hallmark channel on. Hot tea on hand. Christmas tree is sparkling. Dogs snoozing.
Silence is golden!