Seriously?
SERIOUSLY?! Are you even kidding
me right now?!?!
I wake up at 4:30 a.m.
I think to myself, "It's cold.
Maybe I'll sneak downstairs to turn the heat up then go back to bed
until the alarm goes…"
BWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE…
What the… What the
holy hell is that? There are alarms going off all over the house. I instantly think, "Goddamn furnace on
the blink spewing carbon monoxide must've set off the sensors." Wait. I don't have a headache, and I am
surprisingly alert for having just awakened moments earlier. I grab the sensor from the stairs and carry
it into the kitchen, preparing to surgically remove the battery, if necessary.
BWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE…
It isn't the CO2 sensor.
I head back to the stairs for the back-up battery-operated
smoke detector. This one has tricked me
before. It's so near to the
battery-operated ceiling ones that the landlady and I have wondered why
resetting the fuses didn't stop the noise -- until we realized it wasn't the
hardwired alarms going off. I'm not getting tricked a second time, and I
am not calling my landlady at 4:30 a.m., either. I can do this. I'm an adult … most of the time. I pull the portable smoke detector from
the stairs and haul it to the kitchen table, madly working the back cover.
BWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE…
Nope. It's not the
portable smoke detector, either.
It's the hardwired fire alarms. All three of them -- cellar, center hallway,
and back bedroom -- blaring loud enough to raise the dead in the cemetery
behind the house.
Now that I know I am not being poisoned by my already-faulty
heating system, I sniff the air, which is incredibly difficult with a stuffy
nose. Is the house on fire? It
could be; Lord knows there's enough junk in here. It seems to take an hour, but within seconds
I have determined that my home is not on fire, nor is there a fire next door in
the unit connected to mine, nor has my neighbor six feet away set his house on
fire yet again.
On to the next step:
Re-setting the fuse.
I stumble down the cellar stairs and throw open the fuse
box. I realize that I don't have my
glasses on and can't see what is written for each fuse on the chart. I run back up the stairs and grab one of the
two thousand pairs of reading glasses that I keep hanging around the place and
dash headlong back down into the basement.
My eyes are still
sleeping, and I can't read the fuse box notations even with the added
ophthalmologic assistance.
I start throwing all of the fuses, one by one. I hesitate slightly when I get to the one
marked "Furnace." I suck in a
deep breath. The noise must be stopped. My housemates through the paper-thin walls
must be swearing me up and down right now as their two kids are probably
gripping the walls of their room by tiny fingernails after being awakened so
harshly.
Fuck it. I throw the switch.
BWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE…
I finally happen to the fused marked
"cellar." I throw it. I am now standing in the pitch black with my
hand inside an electrical fuse box.
Mercifully, the sound has stopped.
Assuming the system has been reset, I move the switch back to the left
and…
BWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE…
Goddamnit! I throw it back off again. Ahhhhh,
silence. Throw it back on.
BWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE…
Off. On.
BWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE…
I start hand-wiping crud off the alarms -- gray matter,
musty air, dusty bunnies, moldy particles, errant pieces of insulation -- and
shut off the fuse again. I stand alone
in the dark at 4:45 a.m. on the coldest morning we've had
in two years and begin to think that leaving the fuse off may be my only
solution. This debate rages on for about
ninety minutes … okay, about twenty seconds.
I know I can't leave the fuse off.
It's not right. What if I damage
something? And that means the hot water
heater will be off.
No, no, no; this just isn't good. Shit. I'm going to have to call the landlady. Yup, I'm going to have to wake her at 4:45
and ask for her help because I'm too much of a fucking idiot to reset a fuse
panel on my own. I'm a moron who
recently believed she might be capable of owning her own house. I am a complete and utter failure.
I throw the fuse one more time before admitting defeat, and…
Silence.
That's right, that's what I hear: Nothing.
Not a damn thing. Not the alarms
blaring, not the neighbors swearing at me for waking them up, nothing but the
beautiful hum of the working furnace cranking up the heat into my chilly,
breezy, humble abode.
It's now 5:30 a.m.
Usually the regular, normal, clock-radio alarm goes off at 5:05. I set it for 5:05 so it says SOS when I wake
up at look at it. This morning, SOS
isn't nearly as humorous to me. Time to
get my regular day started, which includes work then a long, frigid walk from
the university parking lot, up the wind tunnel of a sidewalk, and about a half
mile to the nearest building to attend class tonight.
I sure hope the alarm doesn't start whining while I'm at
work, but if it does, I sure hope it's just because there's a speck of
cellar-dirt stuck in the sensor and not because my house is actually on
fire. That would totally suck.
To be blatantly honest, it
would truly be alarming.
