Firetrucks

Last week our smoke alarm started chirping - the type of chirp that a battery operated alarm does when the battery is dying.  Our alarms are connected directly to the electricity though, which the landlords made sure we knew when we had our initial walk through.  Since I can't see the thing on eye level even standing on a stool, I sent Steve a text at work to check it when he got home.  It was doing it as I walked in the door so I knew it wasn't something on a burner or something from fixing dinner.

When Steve got home, he didn't check it.  Why?  Because it wasn't still chirping.  My thought on this was, if it's connected to the electricity and has no battery, why would it chirp unless it was because there was a problem.  The lack of a chirp doesn't mean nothing's wrong - it could just mean it got worse.  But whatever, not much I could do as I'd already tried to check the thing and fell short (pun intended) of that ability. 

The next day, Ethan had a dental appointment so Steve was to meet me at the dental office.  He called me right when it was time to leave (or a little before) and said, I'd need to come get the boys because he had to call the fire department.  Why?  Because the alarm was again chirping (more of a beep than a chirp) and he went upstairs to check the fuse box and smelled smoke.  GREAT! 

He called me back about 10 minutes later.  The fireman were walking through the apartment and wanted to make sure they knew exactly what the alarm was doing the night before.  I explained and Steve agreed that's what had happened to him that day.  As we live in a duplex, they'd also checked on my neighbor.  Turns out the horrendous smoke smell was due to the neighbor cleaning her oven and the smell was being sucked up by her kitchen fan and coming through a vent in our room near the fuse box.  They even used some camera thing to check the walls and nothing hot anywhere so they gave us the all clear.

What I didn't realize was that Steve had put both boys in the car so as not to have them in the house with a potential fire.  Ethan had been excited because this time, the firetrucks came to his house.  He climbed into the front seat for a better look and had the hazard lights on by the time Steve got back to the car.  Thankfully no keys had been left or maybe he'd have either tried to start it or pushed the alarm button until that went off so he'd have sirens, too.

The funniest part of this is that the weekend before, on the way home from Megan's house, Ethan had just been telling me about how he was a fireman and he had saved a boy (his Daddy) from the smoke and he helped people.  Now a fireman came to his house and made sure he was ok so basically saved him, too.  Ethan really thought that was great. 

We then learned from our landlord that our smoke alarm has a battery backup.  They failed to mention this when they told us about it originally - in fact, I think when they told us about the alarm being hooked to the electricity it was to point out that we wouldn't have to worry about changing the battery.  Ummmm - yeah, if there's a battery back-up, you're still supposed to replace it yearly cause it's sort of important for that "back-up" to work.  But the best part of learning that is that if Steve had checked the alarm the night before as I'd suggested, he'd have seen the battery because to check it, he'd have had to take it down fully.  I would have done that but couldn't reach it to find out how to get it down.  So the lesson:  just because the alarm stops chirping, don't ignore your wife - check it anyway.

Ethan's cuteness:  "Mama, the firetrucks were at our house and they saves us like I saved Daddy when I was bigger and I was a fireman."  Gotta love those past lives and time travel :)