Getting To Know You

Okay, so it hasn't been a good week. . . continuing pain from the tooth extraction, awful medical tests, so I was looking forward to sitting down and watching the season premiere of The Closer on TNT tonight. Well, my carbon monoxide detector had other ideas for this evening! The darn thing started going off like crazy. It is plugged into the wall, so I knew the battery wasn't dead. After a call to 911, a quick change into clothes and out of comfy pj's and a call upstairs to my neighbor, we were all standing outside in the freezing cold getting to know the local fire and police departments.

My upstairs neighbor has always been very secretive about her age. She simply refuses to tell how old she is. I laugh at her, because she looks to be about my age, and I just can't see guarding something like that as if it were a state secret. Well tonight we were all asked our names, birth dates and phone numbers and out came the information!! I laughed so hard because she is actually a year OLDER than me!

Thankfully it turned out to be a false alarm. Our carbon monoxide detector decided that even though it had power from being plugged into the wall, it would go off anyway since the backup battery in it was dead. Does anyone else out there remember the episode from Friends where Phoebe's smoke detector goes off in the middle of the night and she can't get it to stop? She removes the battery and it still goes off and finally she beats it with her shoe. It stops momentarily and then goes off again driving her crazy. She wraps it in a blanket and puts it down the garbage shoot. Well, no one could get this thing open to take the battery out and as soon as the police and fire departments had cleared out, the thing decided to go ballistic and not just beep occasionally but to wail, loudly and continuously! I tried putting it outside in the car, but even out there it was so loud it would have kept the neighbors up all night. I finally threw it down on the slate patio hoping to break it. All that did was open the back so I could get the battery out. For a moment I thought all was well. But don't you know the sucker had a charge from having been plugged into the wall and was still emitting a wail, albeit a lower and less piercing one. Finally I tossed the darn thing into the trash. God help us all! Oh well, we met some cute firemen and policemen and had a laugh so I guess it wasn't a total loss, plus I found out my neighbor's age!