Spoiler alert: The smoke detector is winning.

Nothing like seeing the husband off for a couple days out of town, and suddenly being given a household problem that you can’t deal with. Really makes you feel like a girl.

If you’ve ever had the chirping smoke alarm experience, you know it’s hell. I know I’m not the only one, because I’ve found message boards and seen an episode of Modern Family that proves others have experienced this despair of trying to get the damn thing to STOP MAKING THAT BLASTED NOISE. It is a little bit like being in a sitcom. Smoke alarm is chirping, gotta figure out which one. Someone’s battery is dead. Must be this one. Nope. Maybe it’s that one. Nope. So you’re changing batteries and resetting them (which is very loud) and the chirping just keeps going.

We’re going on 30 hours of chirping. Mostly due to my ineptitude. And since I’m a girl (and pregnant) and we have no ladder and I don’t know how to fix smoke alarms… well, let’s just say it’s not ideal.

I’m certain I’ve isolated the source of the chirping to the hallway. My husband will insist it’s one of the other ones. But I can’t reach the other ones anyway, so there’s not really anything I can do to test them. And either way, I’m sure I’m correct that the chirping is coming from the hallway.

This has happened to us before. I think it was about 5am that time. After frantically changing ALL the smoke alarms to no avail, we realized it was a carbon monoxide detector we had plugged into the wall. It’s definitely not the carbon monoxide detector this time. I’m telling you, it’s the one in the hallway.

Slight catch — we have two in the hallway. One is an ADT smoke alarm. The more I reset the regular unit, the more I think it might be that ADT alarm. Wouldn’t you know, I can’t figure out how to call ADT to check. I can figure out how to call ADT to buy ADT, and yet when I’m a current customer and need help with my system, I can’t find anything. No troubleshooting, no helpful phone numbers, nothing. Their website only wants to sell me ADT. Also can’t find much information as to whether or not their detectors actually even make that noise. But I’ve replaced the battery and reset the other one according to instructions about a million times.

And it’s not the ones in the bedrooms. It’s in the hallway.

Honsetly, it’s just not that big of deal after a while. Dealing with it was so much more frustrating than not dealing with it. Last night I said, “I’m done!,” and I went downstairs and watched Parks and Rec on my DVR. Then I tried a few more things and again gave up. Eventually I decided just to sleep in the downstairs guest room with the bathroom exhaust fan. It was 2am by then, but I slept like a baby. I wished I had given up about two or three hours sooner.

Ruby’s not thrilled. This morning she tried to get in my shower.

Mike is going to arrive home at about 12:15 am and I know he’s going to be bustling about the house trying to fix it. I was really hoping to have it fixed before now.

I considered a baseball bat solution, but even then I knew it wouldn’t help! … That, and I don’t have a baseball bat. Damn these extra-safe, hard-wired smoke detectors. They are such a pain in the arse! The battery operated ones just need new batteries. These things are so darn fickle to reset, we’ve had a hard time before getting them to let go of their low battery warning.

We really need to never let the battery get remotely low ever again. If that’s even why its going off, I really have no idea! At least it only chirps every 45 seconds. Yeah, I timed it. I also measured the decibels in each of the rooms, if you’re curious. Not every home-alone wife would think of that.

But, I’m sure he’ll arrive home and go change another battery and it will stop. And I’ll feel like such a girl!

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