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-ss)n. pl. nem·e·ses (-s
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) 1. A source of harm or ruinIf you would rather skip the whining, let me sum this post up for you....
change out your back up batteries in your smoke alarms!!
Did you get that?
Why the large type you ask? Well because I am driving home the point that laziness and/or cheapness may cost you sleep.
Two "mornings" ago, at 0400 (and having gone to bed late the night before) my bedroom smoke alarm decides NOW is the time to let me know the back up 9volt is dead. How does it do this? With a chirp every 60 seconds.
"change it out you say", if I kept 9 volts, I would. So once I kicked the dancing unicorns ridden by lucky leprechauns in fields of cotton candy dreams from my brain housing group and figured out what may be the cause of the incessant chirp I began to root through the house for a 9volt. I have a lifetime supply of AA, but I have been reduced to scrounging through my son's toys for a 9volt. I found one.....but it was dead as well.
The chirping continues.
I know! I will swap it out with the basement. 5 minutes later, success! except I can hear that damned chirping all the way into my bedroom creating a blockade to sleep and dreams of unicorns.
Exasperated, my wife decided to halt my quest to just disconnect the alarm (or shoot it) and headed out to Walgreens. Twenty minutes later, we had some new, expensive as shit, 9volt batteries.
Crisis averted....at 0505.
Back to bed for about 40 minutes before the day started.
Having lived in the house for 1.5years, I have every intention to mark and replace back up smoke alarm 9volt batteries every 12 months.....as long as cheapness doesn't take hold and I wait for the next one to chirp; I mean hell, them 9volts must be filled with rare diamonds to cost $15 for 4!
LOL, this post is great, and has inspired me to fire up Amazon and order a box of batteries for just this purpose. I suspect our new house will need lots of little things like that as time roles on.
ReplyDeleteThere is a public service campaign from the firefighters to change your smoke detector batteries when you change your clocks every 6 months.
ReplyDeleteWe shop at Costco and have a plastic shoe box full of batteries in every size I might need. AA,AAA,C,D,9 volt and different button batteries.
I remember hunting for that chirping sound in the middle of the night in our last home that had tons of smoke detectors. I tried sleeping through it, but it got the best of me. Thankfully, I had extra batteries on hand from my son's toys.
ReplyDeleteI grabbed a pack of them at Sam's Club months ago. They are in the buffet. Will we install them before one of them becomes too annoying to let us ignore it? Probably not.
ReplyDelete