5:42am - i'm sleeping soundly.

5:43am - a smoke alarm starts going off.

5:44am - the sound finally registers, wakes me up enough so that my brain
identifies it.  i'm not awake enough to remember all the stuff about what to
do in the event of a fire.  didn't even think about escaping by throwing
something through the big window in my bedroom that isn't a window that can
be opened.  (the small bedroom window can be opened, but only an anorexic
can get through that one.)  instead, i started mentally trying to track down
which smoke alarm is making all the racket and disturbing my sleep.

where is it coming from?  it's not loud enough to be the one between the
downstairs bedrooms.  it's too loud to be the upstairs alarm or the one in
the laundryroom.  i start wondering.  did i ever install the new one for the
laundryroom/office?  was there ever one in the laundryroom?   i meant to
install one in the laundryroom.  did i?   i can't remember.   i get out of
bed and slip my shoes on.

i don't see or smell smoke.  the house feels cold.  so, i start bouncing off
the walls in the dark (i was too groggy to remember there are light switches
on the walls.).   i'm trying to locate the inconsiderate noise machine that
ruined my first good sleep in days.   it was the one on the livingroom
ceiling making all the noise.  the new one i installed a month ago, because
the old one kept going off for no reason, even after i replaced the battery,
countless times in the same day, with new batteries.

i knew the new one has it's quirks, too.  i accidentally filled my
livingroom, hallway and kitchen with smoke the other day, with a zero draft
in the woodstove and had to open all the doors and windows to get the smoke
out.  despite the smoke, so thick i felt like i was back in the haze-filled
club car on the train i took to denver in 1967, the new smoke alarm in the
livingroom didn't sound off.   neither did the hallway smoke alarm between
the bedrooms.  i thought that was weird at the time.  but in a way i was
grateful, because i didn't have to climb on a step stool, risking a fall, to
turn them off.

so, i'm groping around the livingroom, in the dark, watching the little red
light flash.  I'm trying to figure out how to shut it off without climbing
on something.   knocking a couple of framed pictures off the piano and
crunching broken glass into the hardwood floor, i turn on the light over the
spinet keys.  aha!  i spot the swivel sweeper!  i can use the handle to
reach and press the reset button!  brilliant!  (bet you thought i was going
to say i would use the sweeper on the broken glass underfoot, huh?)

by then, my ears were aching and my head throbbed.  i grabbed the sweeper
and approached the noisy bastard from below.  the smoke alarm must have
suddenly felt threatened.  i think it thought i was going to beat it to
death with the sweeper, because it stopped making that insane mind piercing
sound and the little red light turned off.  it innocently blended back into
the ceiling, innocuous, inert.  ok, i thought.  i don't have to use the
sweeper handle.  almost wide awake, i came in here after brooming up the
broken glass.

so, i'm sitting here writing this and guess what?  that same smoke alarm
went off again.  i bet it thought i went back to bed and was just about
ready to fall asleep again.  ha!  i fooled it!  it can't see my bedroom nor
my office from the livingroom.  so, it thought wrong.

honestly, i didn't beat it.  i just poked it, a little, with the tip of the
sweeper handle.  i'm basically a non-violent person.

kate
(thinking . . . new battery, once my headache is gone and i've had my
shower.)