The sun is shining and not a cloud in the sky, in fact a beautiful day. Damn, I really wanted it to snow. It snowed all around us but not on us, although we had to break the ice for ’73 to get out of the driveway this morning. Yea! he did get home after all. I knew there was a silver lining in there somewhere. Why do I seem grumpy? Well you see at 3:23 am the smoke detector started going off. It would go off for a minute or so and then reset. It continued to do this about every 7 or 8 minutes. When It woke me up I didn’t panic, I’m good in a crisis and never fall apart until it’s all safe again. I think most Moms react this way. Anyway, I calmly got up, checked the house and found nothing amiss except two frightened dogs who wanted me to make it stop. ’73 never even woke up until I woke him up to take the damn thing apart. You see it was a hard-wired detector, not battery operated and I was not sure how to do this. The same thing happened to the upstairs detector about 6 months ago but it was a little more difficult to dismantle because it was on the ceiling above the stairs, 20 feet above the stairs. Nothing like whacking at the smoke detector with a broom at 3 am while precariously perched on the stairs on a ladder that is too short to reach the detector. Have you noticed it is always 3 am when these things happen, why is that?

This one was in the downstairs hallway and easily reached so problem solved. ’73 kept trying to convince me it was the new room freshener I put in setting it off. I think not. Men’s brains just don’t seem to fire on all cylinders when you wake them up unexpectedly, do they. The detectors were 30 years old and it was just time to replace them. Do you think maybe ’73 was being a little sensitive about his age, it was his 55th birthday after all, and didn’t want to admit they were old, decrepit and needed to be replaced. One thing that was not so easily fixed were the dogs nerves. They were whining and kept trying to climb into my lap.  Needless to say I gave up on ever going back to sleep.