Fire! Fire! Fire!

It's 2:15 am and Addy is still asleep which is a wonderful thing. She won't be hungry for another 45 minutes or so and as a new mother I count on getting every second of sleep I can during the night. Then suddenly I wake with a start, not because my daughter is crying, but because I hear the horrifyingly loud Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! of the fire alarms. Ohmygosh! Is there a fire!?! I shoot up straight in bed just as Clint comes into the bedroom (he was asleep on the couch because he came home late from work, sound familiar?) He turns on the light; the noise stops.

"What was that?" I ask. "Fire alarm" he says.

My heart is racing and I get out of bed looking for the fire. I take a quick look around downstairs...nothing. No smoke, no flames. I quickly head upstairs to Addy's room and look in. No smoke, no flames. Next I feel the door to the guest room and then the manroom to check for heat...nothing. No smoke, no flames. Just as my pulse starts to slowdown it starts again.

Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep!

Now the baby is crying and Clint's mad because clearly there is no fire, just the fire alarms. We have eight alarms in the house all hard wired together. That means when one goes off, they all go off, and they are not in harmony. This makes for a nice echo effect which only amplifies the noise and aggravation. Neither Clint nor I know what to do so we just stare at each other until the alarm goes off once more.

"How do we make it stop?" I ask. "I don't know" Clint growls.

He trudges out to the garage where the electrical box is and finds the switch that says "masterbed, fire alarms" and cuts it off. Now we have no power in the bedroom but who cares, we should be able to sleep through the night. Addy has settled back down and we go to bed. 10 minutes later...

Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! Fire! Fire! Fire! Fire!

Oh no. Now the fire alarms are going off AND talking to us! Clint is so mad he can't talk. He throws himself down on the floor and puts his hands over his eyes clearly beyond the edge of reason. Apparently we did not cut power to the fire alarms. Or maybe we did and they are working on batteries! How do we make it stop?!! It's 2:45 in the morning and all the lights in the house are on as we listen to the baby cry and the alarms howl. I'm waiting for the neighbors or the Fire Department to come knock on the door and am actually surprised when nobody does. Clint thinks nothing can be done. It's a hopeless case. I tell him that sleeping for 15 minute intervals in between Beep! Beep! Fire! Fire! is not a good way to pass the wee hours of the morning. I start to troubleshoot. What else can we do? Since there is no smoke it's not like waving a broom back and forth will do any good unless a spell comes out while you do it. Likewise you can't indiscriminately start smacking them. Which one would you pick? All eight of them are all Beep! Beeping! Finally I go upstairs to the computer looking to Google for an answer.

During a lull in the chaos I find that the apparent solution is as follows.
Step one: Remove all the alarms from the ceiling
Step two: Remove their batteries
Step three: Replace the batteries with new ones. (We all have eight extra nine volts in the freezer, right?)
Step four: Reset each alarm.
Step five: Screw each alarm back into the ceiling.

Well screw that, we settle for steps 1 and 2 and get to work with the ladder and a chair to take down the offending noise makers. We gather them all in a pile downstairs and Clint rips the battery from each one like a heat and they choke out their last beep beep.... He throws them in a box, then a cooler and shuts them up in the garage.

Silence! I feed Addy and go to bed.