Do You Hear What I Hear?

beep

I have no idea what time it was or when I even became cognizant of the piercing intermittent tone. All I know is that it was way too early.

beep

The sound wasn't loud enough to wake me outright. It eased me out of my sleep and made me question whether I was dreaming it or actually hearing something.

beep

I definitely was not dreaming it.

beep

Smoke detector. Are you kidding me? I was too tired to even look at the clock and tried in vain to drift back to sleep.

beep

Diane mercifully got up at some point and closed the door. I went back to sleep.

beep

Ha ha...not loud enough to keep me from sleeping. Sometime later our bedroom door opened and the bathroom door slammed shut. Kyra. She hasn't learned the fine art of gently opening and closing doors. The toilet flushed and she emerged from the bathroom. "Daddy?" Oh please, Dear Lord, let it be at least 8:00. "The tooth fairy came last night!" she whispered loudly as she flashed a toothless smile and held up a $5 bill. Five dollars! Holy crap! I think I got a quarter per tooth when I was a kid. I gave her a hug and she walked out of the room...without closing the door.

BEEP

Alright, alright. I summoned the energy to look at the clock. 8:00 am on the nose. Now to find the culprit. There are six smoke detectors in our home: one in each bedroom, one in the hall, and one in the living room. I stumbled out of bed and trudged out to the hallway where I stood under the smoke detector there and waited, the living room to my left, bedrooms to my right.

beep

Of course the beep came from my left, from the only smoke detector I couldn't stand on a chair to fix. The living room has a cathedral ceiling that peaks at roughly fourteen feet off the ground. Guess where the smoke detector is located? I couldn't even get at it with the normal ladder. I needed the big daddy of all ladders: my million-foot collapsible, extendable Gorilla ladder. It also weighs about a million pounds.

beep

BITE ME!! I headed down the hall to see if Kailey was up. I peeked in and found her sitting up in her bed looking frizzy-haired and groggy-eyed. Kyra had apparently woken her up with her $5 bill as well. "What's that sound?" she croaked. I filled her in on what was happening and she told me she wanted to help. So she followed me to the garage.

beep

I haven't rearranged the garage since the plumbers were in there fixing our water main fiasco a couple of months ago. In order for them to get to the main water line, I had to move the contents along one wall of the garage to another wall of the garage. Guess which wall the million-pound Gorilla ladder was on? So instead of sleeping in on this glorious Saturday morning, I cleaned my garage, engaged in a major upper body workout extracting and setting up my Gorilla ladder, as well as a good cardio workout as I scaled the ladder into the upper stratosphere of my living room, all just to pop out a little compartment on the smoke detector and replace a 9 volt battery. How was your morning?

beep

What was that?