Michael has taken and evening position at his job, which is great in all kinds of ways because he is home until 1pm every day. He can help out with the four kids, eat lunch with us, and if you do the math, we have more family time together every day than if he worked his usual 9-5. This is all very, very good. Until the sun sets.
Oliver has had some difficulty going to bed without procrastinating in 67 different ways, calling us into his room 94 times, crying, coping an attitude, etc. This usually flares up when he's sick, or when his routine is off. You know, like major life changes, like being at home full time with us and extending our home and, subsequently, parents and toys to two new friends full time. Charlie fought sleep for almost an hour tonight as well. After they were finally tucked in, I settled in for some mindless TV when the smoke detector screeched. It was at a volume similar to the Zumba class I attended earlier today, BEEP BEEP BEEPing every five seconds. Oh, and the awesome part is that it was less than ten feet from Oliver and Charlie's rooms. That would be the same Oliver and Charlie who refused to go to sleep just minutes earlier.
I am five feet small. We're talking broom handle/tippy toes on dining room chair small. I got it to silence and inspected the message. Green steady light on "smoke." Green is good. But the carbon monoxide light was blinking a steady red and indicated for me to "seek fresh air." Like any rational person would do, I called my husband in a panic at 4 minute intervals. That's approximately how long it took for the alarm to start screaming again, my heart racing as I scrambled back up the chair to rrrrrreach up and shut it up.
Here's what we know about our smoke detectors, according to past experience and the wonders of Google. They "talk" to each other. When the batteries are due to be changed, one alarms, then when the battery is changed, every. Single. Detector in the house goes off, one by one, like throwing a ping pong ball onto fifty set mouse traps. While I was glad that didn't happen, it also made me worried. Was there really a carbon monoxide leak? Wobbling on my tiptoes, I reinserted the new battery four times, then tried a second new battery. No luck. I dusted the innards of the detector with a swiffer. Still screamed at me. I dripped with sweat, panicking that my children might wake up, alternating with a panic that they wouldn't wake up. After all, wasn't I feeling a little dizzy? And was that a headache I felt coming on? I walked into their rooms and only after telling Oliver what was going on and watching Charlie breath for a full minute did I walk back out and continue to curse the intermittently screaming alarm. I mean, what the freak, people: would it really be that difficult to manufacture an alarm system with a third light, one that blinks to indicate "change batteries?"
Michael listed off options: call 911, call my brother in law Eric, and/or taking the battery out and shutting off power to the detector. I chose the latter two. It was against everything in my being to cut the power to the alarm, but what was I to do? Punch the button every four minutes for the rest of the night? If it was truly a carbon monoxide leak, it would be constantly alarming, not chirping, and other detectors would be picking it up. Most likely I wouldn't be able to silence it for any period of time. Plus, like I said, I called Eric, who lives three miles down the road. Pretty much I took him up on his offer to come out with a portable carbon monoxide tester though he was ready to go to bed and was suffering from a tremendous cold. Oh, right, and that would be the cold that he had caught from my own children last weekend when Michael called Eric to help him re-route TV cables. And even so, he came, confirmed that there was no trace of carbon monoxide to be found, leaving me to be willing to go to bed in this house tonight without listening to my children on amplified baby monitors. They slept through this because of a miracle, not because of carbon monoxide.
Ode to Eric. Bless that man. Give him some Nyquil and a few tall bottles of good-quality beer. Then we shall all be sleeping soundly on this night.
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