If you don't insert the smoke detector battery correctly the smoke detector will let off a series of beeps at intervals of approximately 3.5 to 7 minutes.
It will not do this immediately having been changed. No. That would be far too convenient. It will wait. For hours. Sometimes days. Who knows. Whenever it is, it will make sure that there is nobody tall enough to fix it in the house at the time said beeping commences.
So I heard it go off. And my first instinct was to do what I always do when it goes off, and I grabbed a tea towel, went into the foyer and started fanning it.
And then I realised. There was no smoke.
Fabulous.
And so I did what every short person in the world does. I got a chair and stood on it, reaching madly for the ceiling, knowing full well that last time I did that I couldn't reach it, and then questioning myself as to why I thought that I may have grown an extra 6 inches or so in the last 6 months.
So down I hopped. And looked up. And sighed.
And then I went back into the kitchen, hung up the tea towel, became distracted by goodness knows what and then approximately 4 minutes later it went off again. Two beeps. Enough to make me deer in headlights it. Then it stopped. So I relaxed. And then it beeped again. Three times.
So I did what I usually do, and grabbed the tea towel, hightailed it into the foyer, and started madly waggling the tea towel in the air.
Woah. Déjà vu.
No. Smoke.
So then I said it out loud, as if that would then reaffirm in my mind that there was, in fact, no smoke. Which there wasn't. There was a teeny tiny moth. And I don't like moths at all. But that's another story. But with regards to the smoke, there was, actually, no smoke.
Smoke detector. Go home. You're drunk.
And so I decided I would look at the old battery. The one that had been removed from the smoke detector to be replaced with the new, improved, apparently malfunctioning battery.
It was bent. The little prong things on the battery were bent. My heart just about stopped. What if this meant that the smoke detector was broken. Like on the inside. And what if it meant that even if I DID manage to prise the mongrel battery out of the smoke detector, it STILL went off? I didn't even know if that was possible but I was going through all sorts of scenarios when the smoke detector started beeping again. Wherein I said to it "Stop. Stop doing that." and waggled my arms around like someone who has just walked into a spiderweb.
Seriously. The night was not going well.
So I drew out the big guns. I texted my friend and asked to borrow her husband.
Then I went and got a chair, put it underneath the bastard randomly screaming smoke detector, and stood there looking at it, clutching my phone in one hand and the bent old battery in the other, willing the smoke detector not to go off again, and when it did nearly fell off the chair and recommenced telling the smoke detector to stop it.
When my friend's husband arrived, ladder in hand (and Woolies stickers in his pocket, thanks very much to his gorgeous wife), he was as welcome as a souvlaki after a big night out.
Battery was ill-inserted it would seem. Problem solved. Thanks very much. And I really mean that. I owe you a bottle of wine……
So the air is now quiet. No beeps. No squawks from children (who went to bed nearly 1.5 hours later than usual due to the outing this evening, about which I haven't spoken but I daresay I may at some stage in the very near future).
Calm.
So calm that I am able to become acutely aware of the fact that tomorrow my darling Miss 4 becomes Miss 5.
The time does fly. Except when there is a malfunctioning smoke detector. Then my God does it drag. In case you wondered….
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