Alarm Adventure

These were loud pings, enough to wake me up, and I cowered in bed in the dark, finally timing them – one every two minutes.  And occasionally what sounded like a voice.  Finally got enough courage to get out of bed, turn on a lot of lights,  and investigate the cell phone, the landline phones, the oven timer, dryer, livingroom tv, front door, kitchen tv, computer – you wouldn’t believe how many things in a house can ping.  Ended up watching the smoke alarm – sure enough, not only did it ping every two minutes, every now and then a woman’s voice said – I finally put in my hearing aids to get it right – “low battery.”

Next visit from a grandson is not slated for several weeks, so I figured I’d have to hire a man to reach up there. First, though, it would be efficient to make sure I had the right batteries on hand.  So the next day I called the fire department.  “Probably nine-volt,” said a pleasant woman on the other end.  “But why don’t I just send someone over to do it?  Are you going to be home for the next hour?”

 

I post this as a useful tip for other old folks – though it seems there aren’t too many octogenarians reading blogs.  I suspect most of you can change your own smoke-alarm batteries.