With my extremely reduced work schedule, I don’t really have to get up early anymore. I could work the 1 hour I work each of the 3 days at any time. And the days I don’t work, I don’t usually have much more than my workout and I could do that whenever. But I am really trying hard to be as close to my regular sleep schedule as possible. This time is temporary and I don’t want to struggle when I’m trying to get things back to normal. I am not perfect, but for the most part, I’m going to sleep close to the time that I normally do. And I’m trying hard not to sleep in at all since that can mess with my sleep schedule as well.
This does sometimes mean I’m not getting as much sleep as I could get, but being tired for a day is probably the better option than completely changing my sleep schedule and then having to spend time to get back on track. Especially since I have no clue how much notice we will have about things starting back up again. But I’m used to occasionally getting very little sleep. When I’m nauseous or having a bad hip night, I usually don’t sleep much. And when I do sleep, they are little naps with lots of awake time in between. I hate when those nights happen, but I usually know before going to bed that they will be that way.
But last week, I had an unexpected bad night of sleep. I was pretty proud of myself because I got to bed pretty early. I was looking forward to a nice long night of sleep and had been asleep for a few hours when I woke up suddenly. I didn’t know why I woke up, but as I tried to go back to sleep I noticed a beeping noise every 30 seconds. I thought maybe it was something next to my house, but when I woke up a bit more I realized that it sounded like it was in my house.
I have 2 smoke detectors in my house, one in my bedroom and one in my dining room. They are actually on the same wall, back to back. So they are pretty close together. I knew it wasn’t the smoke detector in my room, so I went to the one in my dining room and got a magazine to try to fan air at it. For some reason, in my partially awake state, I assumed that my smoke detector was going off. Even though there was no reason for it to be doing that and it wasn’t making the noise that it normally makes when that happens (it will say “fire” if there is smoke and “carbon monoxide” if a leak is detected). So my next guess was that it had a low battery.
I got a step stool so I could reach it and tried to get it off the way and then I discovered that it was hard-wired into my house. I’m sure I knew this at some point, but I didn’t remember it. And getting it down wasn’t easy. I still do not know how I did this, but I managed to disconnect all the wires from the back of the smoke detector while partially asleep without electrocuting myself. And I discovered later that one of the wires wasn’t covered the way it should have (or I might have pulled some of the wire protection off). Once I got it down, I was trying to get the battery out. And I couldn’t figure out how to do it. By this time, it had been beeping every 30 seconds for over 20 minutes and I was starting to go a bit crazy.
I calmed down and found the model number of it on the back so I could look it up and find the owner’s manual. I found it, but it only said to lift the battery cover up to remove the battery. No guidance on how to get it done. I knew where the battery was, so I was determined to get it out. It took several tools, lots of swearing, and probably doing a lot of damage to the smoke detector; but I eventually did it.
If you’ve ever watched “Friends” you might remember the episode where Phoebe breaks a smoke detector that won’t stop. I felt just like that. Except I didn’t take my mallet to it (I was very close).
When I was trying to figure out how to get the battery out, I looked up what the beeping meant and it was a signal that the smoke detector failed. And it typically fails between 7-10 years for safety. And my smoke detector was installed just under 10 years ago, so that seemed right.
I went back to bed (finally) and had a bit of a laugh about how crazy I was acting trying to get the beeping to stop. And the next morning, I had to call my landlord to let them know I needed a new one. I try to be a good tenant and not bother my landlord too much, but I had just called them 6 days earlier because my kitchen flooded (my garbage disposal cracked and all the water was going through it to the floor). But I knew this was a safety issue and I had to tell them.
And as soon as I told the manager in the office that I had another issue, she immediately asked me if my smoke detector failed. I was shocked that she guessed it, and she told me that dozens of tenants have been calling all week saying the same thing. It turns out, they installed all of the smoke detectors in all their different buildings and rental places around the same time, so they all started to fail at the same time too!
I’m not sure if it was the lack of sleep or how crazy it was that everyone had the same problem that I had, but I had a huge fit of giggles after that. The handyman was able to come to my house that day (wearing an N95 mask and wearing gloves) and replace my smoke detector, so everything is fine now. And even though I was tired that day, it was ok because I recovered after I slept the next night.
With having so little happening right now, anything that is outside of my normal routine is interesting. And this one also ended up making me laugh, even if it wasn’t funny when I couldn’t get the beeping to stop. But I did appreciate the moment of silliness to break up everything else happening.
You Might Also Like
Super Productive and Super Lazy (or A Balance Over 2 Days)
Being Socially Anti-Social (or An Observer At Game Night)
Magic Castle Fun (or Girls Night Out)
Taking Time To Laugh At Myself (or Having Some Dumb Moments)
First Day In New York (or How To Do The Most You Can On Less Than 3 Hours Of Sleep)
Adventures On The Red-Eye (or Surviving On Almost No Sleep)
