When we were first married, Adam always used the buzzer on his alarm. I HATE buzzers...ever since I was a teenager and my parents made me use this alarm clock from 1979 with a buzzer that sounded like a rabid bird. Needless to say, I quickly won Adam over on the idea of waking up to the gentle sounds of the radio.
This morning I would have even taken the rabid bird over what I got. Adam woke up early and was in the shower, and C and I were snuggled in our beds still sleeping in the cold house. (We left the heat off last night and it got a little chilly.) All of the sudden I heard the smoke alarm start blaring in the hall outside our rooms. So, so loud...I swear I can almost still hear it. I jumped straight out of bed, and if the adrenaline from the alarm wasn't enough then the blast of cold air from throwing off my blankets gave me just what I needed to go racing out of our room.
As soon as I got to the hallway I could see the smoke, but I quickly determined our death wasn't imminent. Apparently, Adam had kindly started the fire in the living room when he got up to warm up the house...not knowing that last night I closed up the flue to keep out the cold air. So instead of the smoke being pulled up the chimney it just made its way through the house.
I started batting at the smoke alarm with a blanket, but being vertically-challenged I wasn't quite making it. After a few jumps I finally got the thing to shut off, but being in my half-asleep stupor it didn't occur to me that if I didn't stop it at the source the problem would continue. After a few off-and-ons of the alarm, I finally clued in to what was going on and went to shut off the fire.
About this time Adam finally heard the alarm in the shower and came out less-than-fully dressed to make sure we were all okay and take a few swats at the smoke alarm himself. C was also obviously awakened by the alarm and was yelling at us from his behind the door in his bedroom, the door I didn't want to open to let smoke in his room...unfortunately a week or two ago was "fire safety" day at school, so he was pretty freaked out.
A few minutes later we finally got ourselves together and got everything shut off, got dressed, and were snuggling on the couch with the doors open sending smoke out and 30-degree air in. Now I think I still smell like smoke and my toes are frozen, but I believe the smell is out of all the rooms in the house. And, as Adam said, at least we know the smoke alarm is working just fine.
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
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