Do you see that tiny little dot on the ceiling just above the stairs? That's one of our smoke alarms. It is also the star of this show. This wouldn't be the first time I've blogged about a noise emanating from our ceiling. I need to show you this awkward picture in order for you to better understand what's at the crux of this story. Let me begin:
Sometime in the middle of the night a couple nights ago, I wake up to a beeping sound. At first I thought it was a bird with a very regular, mechanical chirp at one minute intervals. But to my half-asleep mind, even that didn't make sense. As I'm be pulled into consciousness, I thought it would be a good idea to find out if Chuck also heard the same noise, so I ask him, "Are you awake? Do you hear that noise?" To my surprise, he is awake and he hears the same noise as me. He says he thinks it's one of the smoke detectors. Ah, yes, that would make sense. I check the clock, it's 5:14 am.
I ask him, "What are you going to do about it? I won't be able to sleep for the next 45 minutes with that sound blaring." (yes, I was being a little dramatic and selfish) He responds, "I guess I'll go see which one it is." Apparently, I feel it is important that I offer helpful advice in my semi-awake state of mind so I tell him, "Look for the one that has a blinking red light and then you'll know which one it is. All the working ones have green lights." Where I pulled that type of wisdom from at 5:14 in the morning is beyond me, but I felt compelled to share it with him and he felt obligated to follow it.
So he gets out of bed. As he tells it, since his eyes are still glued shut, he's relying on his echolocation skills to help pinpoint the nefarious smoke detector. He pokes his head in each of the kids' rooms upstairs, but doesn't hear the sound coming from either of them. He stumbles back into our room to get his phone to help light his path. He goes back into the hallway, disengages echolocation, peels his eyes open and using the light from his phone, shines it upon every smoke detector within earshot: the hallway, our room and both the kids' rooms. None of them have a blinking red light.
Then he looks up at the smoke detector at the bottom of the stairs. He instinctually knows that is the one. However, he's confused because it doesn't have a blinking red light like I said it would. He felt the need to come back and tell me which one was the culprit. Thanks for that.
There is no easy way to get to it. It is 20+ feet up in the air attached to the roof/ceiling. It requires one to stand on the very tip top of an 8 foot ladder (the part that says, "Don't stand here") that one has to drag in from the garage in a semi-awake state of mind. I was a little worried for Chuck, but not worried enough to get out of bed to help. However, I desperately wanted to give him more helpful advice that I was thinking about: when bringing the ladder in, remember to put the door stop in front of the door so it's easier to bring the ladder in all by yourself. Unfortunately for him, I never was able to articulate that thought out loud.
I heard a lot of noise downstairs and then finally the dreaded beeping ceased and I eased back into a fit-full sleep only to be awakened by Chuck telling me he was just going to stay up now. Ok. Thanks for that. I love his need to communicate early in the morning. I remember mumbling something like, "I'm glad you're the Dad and get to do all the hard stuff in the middle of the night."
Later that day, I found out that he did indeed have a hard time bringing the 8 foot ladder into the house from the garage. No, he didn't use the door stop. But he did see it sitting on the window ledge as he was contorting himself between the door and ladder and thought how useful that would have been instead of the predicament he currently found himself in.
We asked the kids who heard the noise. Not surprisingly, Gavin didn't (being that he lives in the cave beneath us). Bennett didn't either, even though it was right outside his door. Chloe heard it, but she thought it was Daddy being noisy downstairs making pancakes for her.
I just love how Chuck is ready at all times for any challenge thrown at him, morning, day or night. He's the GOAT.*
* I just learned what that meant and wanted to incorporate it into my writing somehow to prove to the kids that I'm hip and know how to use the new lingo. I used to understand GOAT to mean 'scapegoat'. However, that would be a faulty, old-fashioned way to interpret the word. It now means: Greatest Of All Time.
