This Public Service Announcement is being brought to you by the fine folks at Princess in Boyland. That would be me.
Seriously, this is a reminder for all my interpeeps to change the batteries in your smoke detectors. Most of us have never experienced a house fire so we don't believe it could ever happen to us. And you're probably right. I certainly hope you are. I don't have any statistics about the incidence of home fires because I'm much too busy (Read: too lazy) to look that up.
But there's something that I guarantee you will experience at least once in your lifetime if you don't remember to change your batteries--and I speak from experience.
I was awakened at 4:13 AM by the obnoxious chirp of the smoke detector in my bedroom, politely (snort!) reminding me that I had not changed the batteries a couple of weeks ago when I changed the clocks in my house to "spring forward" for daylight savings time. OR in autumn when we "fell back." Or, heck, when was the last time I changed those batteries?
WHY do those things always chirp in the middle of the night? Why can't they realize that the batteries are low at, say, four in the afternoon instead of morning? Luckily I could immediately tell that it was the one in my bedroom. Have you ever done the "tip-toe through the house trying to figure out which detector is chirping" thing? You stand there waiting for the chirp and then try to figure out which room it came from. Then you stand under the next one, waiting for another chirp, give up, get back in bed, start to doze off, only to hear it chirp again from some unknown location in the house.
There was no question that this one came from a few feet to the left of my head. I pulled myself out from under the extremely cozy down comforter, ripped the stupid thing (sorry, potentially lifesaving device) off the wall, yanked the big square battery out of it, and burrowed back under the duvet. Only to have the dog start barking because she knew I was awake and thought it was play time.
So, change your batteries people--every time you change your clocks (or every time I change MY clocks for all you weirdos in states that don't honor daylight savings time).
It could not only save your life, it could save your sleep!
5 comments:
I have no idea why they alsways have to remind us in the middle of the night. This is not an American thing. Must be some unwritten scientific rule or somewhat similar. Same over here.
Check my blog!
Love, Sanna
Amen!! They always go off at that miserable hour that you want to just ignore but the sound is so annoying you have to get up and handle it.
It is definitely time to check ours! Thanks for the reminder. (Sorry that you were woke up by yours.) :-(
Actually, I live in a high rise apartment building. Our smoke detectors are hard wired into the building complex so we don't have any batteries to replace. This is good and bad. It's good that we don't need to remember to replace them, but it's bad because the stupid thing goes off every time we cook anything or especially when we broil. AND it's right outside the baby's room. Of course, our apartment is small so it's pretty central to all 3 rooms. :)
Good PSA!
We used to have one at the top of the basement stairs. Which was apparently too close to the oven, because every time I opened the oven it went off and your Dad would yell, "Is dinner ready?". If you remember correctly I also had a needlepoint the read "Dinner will be ready when you hear the smoke detector".
Post a Comment