False Alarm

Last night our smoke detector went off. Just a friendly, beep, beep, beep. Still, it scared the pants right off of me and had me leaping out of bed like a ton of snakes had suddenly been dumped on me.

Oh lordy, that gives the heart a workout. Freaky thing was that my husband was like, ‘mmmfph?’ and pretty much rolled over and went back to sleep. My daughter? Not even sure if she actually woke up. Meanwhile, I am storming around the house, freaked out, sniffing like a drug dog for hints of smoke.

False alarm. I guess with three little beeps, you kinda know that it is a false alarm. But still.

A few weeks back it went off for a minute or two, which did actually wake up my daughter and did manage to get my husband all the way out of bed.

Still, both nights, I lay frozen in bed afterwards, freaked out and concerned that the house would burn down the moment I closed my eyes. So, to keep myself from falling asleep, I tested various escape scenarios in my head. Easy to get out of our bedroom, but what about my daughter? Would she know what to do? Even so, she wouldn’t be able to get her window open by herself. What if her room door was blocked? Well, let’s see…I could rip the large mirror off the en suite wall and hack away at the drywall until I could get an opening into her room, then we could escape together out her window. Or I could drag her through the hole into my room. If she doesn’t keel over from a heart attack first–you know her mother hacking through her bedroom wall with a shredder or part of her metal lamp. Yeah, that.

Anyway, I checked out the manual online tonight and it says nothing about false alarms or anything. And then I got to thinking, maybe it is humidity? We have been running the dehumidifier as it has been dampish. So maybe? Would that be setting it off?

Hell, I don’t know. I just don’t want more false alarms scaring me to death.

That and I don’t want people prowling through my car.

‘We’ left it unlocked the other weekend and when I went into it a few days later, the glovebox and console cubby were both open and pens and stuff were spread around. Nothing really of value was taken. Oh yeah, because there really wasn’t much of value in there. Except the CDs I lost a few months ago under the seat–which I then found. They even left our change in the ashtray. So, I guess they got scared off or didn’t find the drugs and cash they were looking for.

Still, leaves me paranoid.