Okay, my day yesterday wasn't really
bad, but it sure had its moments. It started out well enough - no problems getting to work or being at work - and I knew that the roughest part was going to be the drive home from the train station halfway into the biggest snowstorm of the year. I knew it was coming, and I knew I'd have to deal with it, so I was prepared for the challenge. (Not much else you can do but accept it, right?) Even the fact that the train was 25 minutes late arriving at the station wasn't that big a deal. Irksome, but no more than that. And when the windshield wiper came off my car as I was brushing the snow off it, and I had to stand outside in the freezing blizzarding dark trying to fix it for 10 minutes, even that was little more than a severe annoyance. All part of what it takes to get home, and home is where you can relax and let it all wash away.
Except not last night. Admittedly, the drive itself really wasn't a big deal. A couple of stupid drivers tailgating people, an SUV owner peeling out of a side street and almost biting it after sliding sideways for a good 30 yards, and the remains of what looked like a car that got into an ugly fight with a telephone pole (the car lost), but I myself made it home fine. That's when the fun
really began.
I pulled into my garage, turned the car off, and heard this... beeping. Pretty loud, but it could have been some kind of truck doing something, somewhere nearby. I walked out of the garage to try to pinpoint the sound, and it got farther away... Picked up my mail from the mailbox, walked back into the garage, and yes - the noise was definitely getting louder. Almost like it was coming from my house.... why on earth is my house beeping? I don't have a burglar alarm... Are pipes freezing? Is that the sound of some ice detector somewhere I don't know about?? Annoyed and intrigued, I go in the house to discover - yes, it IS my house beeping. In fact, it's every
room in my house beeping. Every room with a smoke alarm, that is. I've apparently just walked into a house that thinks it's completely on fire.
Okay, time to not-quite-panic. No smoke. No excess heat, flames, bad smells, or anything out of the ordinary. (Other than the approximately 3,124 blaring alarms, that is.) Cats looking at me like "hey, it's loud in here, but can you feed us? We're really hungry..." Cats okay, in other words - so probably not a carbon monoxide emergency. By all appearances, my house doesn't seem to be in any immediate danger. And I don't care anymore - I just want to make the noise stop! So what do I do? Call Dad! (Dad spent a couple of decades volunteering as a firefighter - I figured he could tell me if it was a false alarm or not...)
My very patient father then spends the next 45 minutes on the phone with me (alarms ringing all the way) walking me through the little details like calming down, breathing and looking for the smoke alarm system manual, before we decide the only way to make the alarms shut up is to rip them off the ceiling and pull their batteries. Naturally, I can't reach the ones downstairs, even with a ladder... so I start upstairs. I get it down to a science after the 3rd one - position the ladder, grab the alarm, twist, pull, yank the cable, pop the battery lid, pull the battery, yank its connector, get down, drop everything, repeat (with Tumble meowing at me every time I step on the ladder - no, I don't know why). When I pull the last alarm left upstairs, the entire system mercifully goes silent. Dad helps with the post-mortem a bit (he tracks down a troubleshooting phone number for the alarm system company, and we discuss whether or not I need an electrician immediately for the water that is apparently seeping into my house's fuse box(!) - but that's for later), and then leaves me to sit down for a minute and enjoy the silence (during which I call the still-not-home-yet K and make sure he's still alive -- which he was, thank goodness). At this point our best guess was that the water in the fuse box tripped something electrically and the alarms (hard-wired into the electrical system) detected it and freaked out. At any rate, the noise has stopped. Hallelujah.
K gets home a few minutes later and I - adrenaline still very much surging - head out the door to burn off some energy by shoveling. After about 45 minutes of that, I notice a neighbor next door and decide to say hi - first person I've met in the new 'hood. She's nice, I tell her what happened and she said "Oh well we did have a big power surge this evening and it knocked out the cable...". (Hmmmm, we did, did we?) We chat a bit and go back to shoveling. Another half hour goes by (still shoveling!) and another neighbor emerges across the street - I go introduce myself, we chat, I bring up the alarms, and he says "Oh, mine did that today too!" AHA! He said his daughter called him at work to tell him all the alarms were going off, and it had happened to him once before, about 18 months ago. He thought the batteries were going again, but had also noticed the cable was out. I am not alone!!! We chat for a little while longer about the neighbors and water softeners, and go back to our respective driveways.
At this point I've been shoveling snow (and chatting) for close to 2 hours and the driveway is only marginally better than when I started. (It was really snowing...!) I have ice an inch deep in my hair, my gloves are soaked, and I can barely lift my arms. So I wrap it up, put away the shovel, close the garage, and walk inside...
... to find K in the kitchen cooking me a nice hot dinner. Ahhhhhh! :) Everything's going to be all right after all.
See, not a bad day, just some bad moments!
Happy holidays!
-J
