Thursday, November 13, 2008

The Scarecrow in Me

Jeezy peezy! Sometimes I think I have straw for brains! I woke up Tuesday morning to a loud, persistent chirping. One of my smoke detectors, somewhere in my house, had a bad battery. But, which one? I knew it wasn’t the one in my bedroom because it would have been way louder. It sounded like it was definitely one of the ones upstairs. So, I got a 9 volt out of my battery box and dragged my ladder upstairs. I stood in the hallway at the top of the stairs to figure out which direction to go and figured out it was coming from the one in the hallway. I changed the battery and went to take a shower. After my shower, there was another daggoned chirp! It was definitely coming from the hallway still. I had bought those Eveready batteries in the $1.00 section of Target thinking that for no more drain a smoke detector would put on it, it was the best battery bet ever. Obviously not, since it didn’t work for even the time it took for me to shower!

So, I meant to go out at lunch Tuesday to get some real batteries, but I totally forgot. It’s a busy week at work, so I didn’t make it home until it was way too late to go back out to any other store than the 24-hour CVS and it kind of creeps me out to go there by myself so late, so I just turned on the fan in my room to drown out the chirping noise. It drove me crazy yesterday morning, so I thought I’d try moving the batteries around from room to room so that at least the loud chirping would be behind a closed door. But, even though I put a non-dead battery in the stupid detector, it STILL CHIRPED AT ME!

The first thing I did when I got home last night was put in one of the batteries I bought at lunch yesterday. I got off the ladder and went to put on my hang-around-the-house clothes, and I’ll give you 3 guesses what happened. The damnable thing chirped a-freakin’-gain! Seriously, what the hell?!

Guess why. Just guess. The reason the smoke detector wouldn’t stop chirping was that it wasn’t the smoke detector chirping in the first place. It was the stupid carbon monoxide detector that had the bad battery!

Straw. For. Brains. Chirping. Stopped.

7 comments:

Heather said...

Hahah :) Thanks for making me laugh this morning. That sounds so much like something I would do.
Glad you finally got the chirping to stop!!

Diane said...

Oh, I wish I had a brain...

Dork.

I bought those $1 batteries at Target once. Never again. I replaced them all within about a week, no matter what I put them in. $1 batteries cost a dollar for a reason. They suck.

Hilary said...

Sounds like something I would do, except if I'd thought the battery was low and causing the chirping, and I wasn't able to replace it at the time, I'd have just removed it for the peace and quiet. You'd have figured it out really quickly after that. :)

Anonymous said...

LOL we've SO been there! When we moved in our smoke detector wouldn't stop chirping even after we had the batteries changed. So the maintenance guy came and replaced the unit itself. Still chirpped! So we had to put a new battery in the new unit and then guess what? Another one started in! BAH! Pretty sure it's finally under control...

Anonymous said...

I think Miss Rumphius and Lola could do some serious damage! ;)

Zuzana said...

Mel, something similar happened to me too.;)))
The battery in my smoke detector run out and it started to make a very high-pitched noise that came on something like every minute. This happened in the middle of the night and I had no idea what it as, when it woke me up. As the irritating noise came on only every 60seconds, it took me almost 30 minutes to figure out where it came from and what it was; I was imagining anything from a big rat to a malfunction in my electrical system.;))
There is an award waiting for you at my place. One more not from Diane.;)

Diane said...

I tagged you for a cool meme.