Battery Battle, Part II

I need a nap.

Between work and play and lots of shit going on in my life, I've not been sleeping much lately. Those are stories for another time, but last night, somewhere around 3:30 or 4 am, I finally shook off some of my worries and captured that elusive butterfly known as sleep.

Not for long.

Around 6 am, I started hearing a chirping sound. For a while, it worked itself into my dream...until it got louder and more annoying. I pulled a pillow over my head and tried to sleep through it, but I knew exactly what it was...my smoke alarm.

I'm a conscientious person, and I change the batteries every year when we fall back in the fall. And, it's not the first time I've had this problem, so I quit fighting it, crawled out of bed, got the ladder, and changed ALL 5 batteries AGAIN!

Silence. Beautiful silence....briefly.

About 8 a-m, the chirping starts again. WTF?

I climbed up on the ladder yet again, checked each battery to make sure they worked. Instead of stopping, the chirping got more frequent. I needed a sanity break - so I made some coffee and sat outside reading the paper.

Chirp....

Chirp....

And it wasn't a bird.

Back inside I went and called the 1-800 number for help. They suggested that I take them down, clean them, and if that didn't work, to buy new batteries. A half hour later, I think I had the cleanest smoke detectors this side of a vacuum-pack, and still the chirp-chirp-chirping at my bedroom door....Quoth the raven, "Nevermore."

Oh...sorry... a bit distracted there. Back to the story.

So out I went, to buy batteries, but when I tried those, they didn't stop it either. So I called the help desk again. After an hour on the phone with customer support and more moving of my ladder than I've done since the day I hung the pictures in my house, I have five brand new smoke detectors coming to me.

So much for all the cleaning I wanted to get done today...I'll be happy with some rest!