The Not Ready for HGTV Players
Posted April 24, 2008
There are actual serious things to say, but Thursday night hardly seems like a time to say them, especially since most of you will read this on Friday, not a serious time at all. So until I get around to that, here: enjoy this true tale of my ineptitude creative home repair solution.
My alarm goes off at 6:00. This is so I can snooze a few times and still get up at around within twenty minutes of 6:30. So I mean to go to bed by 10:00 so I can get eight hours of sleep. This never, ever happens.
So, at 10:30 one night last week, I was working on reinstalling my wireless router and getting through the pile of To Be Ironed items that had been living on my ironing board for a while. I heard the smoke detector beep once. Then again. Then it was beeping pretty much once a minute or so. This was going to be problematic for sleeping, seeing as how I can't shut my bedroom door to block out the noise, what with there not being a bedroom door.
Also problematic: my hugely high ceilings. In my first apartment here in Madison, I'm pretty sure I could have reached the smoke detector by standing on tiptoes. This apartment, not so much. Nor could I get within a foot of it by standing on tiptoes on a chair. The tallest movable item in my apartment that seemed sturdy enough for standing on was my kitchen table. I know that it will support my weight (recent Girl Scout Cookie binge notwithstanding) since in that first apartment, it was only by sitting on that table that I could get cell service.
I cleared off the table and carried it over to the smoke detector area. I climbed up. I was still a good six inches short. What to do? There are built-ins on either side of the smoke detector. Sitting on either would get me up high enough to reach the ceiling. Unfortunately, with the smoke detector centered between them, I was going to need some go-go gadget arms to reach it from there.
There's this plastic stepstool I have that my parents bought me for my first apartment lo these many years ago, in large part because the thermostat there was located above eye level, so I couldn't see from the ground what temperature I was requesting. It was getting on 11:00 by this point and the beeping OH MY GOD THE BEEPING so I plunked the stool on top of the table, climbed up on top and angrily clawed at the smoke detector. Ok, I didn't claw but I did pull that sucker off the ceiling and remove the battery posthaste.
Then I climbed down and put in an online maintenance request for some tall men in possession of a ladder to put a new battery in the following day. Which they did.
The End
lissa says:
April 24, 2008 at 11:24 PM
Genius. Also may I suggest earplugs for next time. :)
Pearl says:
April 25, 2008 at 06:48 AM
A similar problem with the smoke detector in my house caused me to spend last summer in a wheelchair. Ladders are a bad BAD idea at 6 o'clock in the morning. I admire your ability to solve the problem without crippling yourself!
(Actually I only broke one foot falling off the ladder. The other one was broken when I walked into my crutches the next day. From that point on it was the wheelchair all the way. High ho.)
Daily Tragedies says:
April 25, 2008 at 10:00 AM
Ahhh, yes. In California I had to climb onto a shelf in my built-in laundry closet in order to reach the smoke detector. Here there's nothing to climb -- I need a ladder. There will be no more scalding hot showers that set off the smoke detector at 7 AM!
Diane says:
April 25, 2008 at 10:34 AM
Reminds me of the Friends episode where Phoebe is up all night trying to get the damn smoke detector to stop beeping. This stuff always happens to me in the middle of the night. It is also when the battery in my husband's work pager seems to die as well. Then I pace around the house banging into things until I find it and stuff it in the couch cushions.