The fire alarm in our building went off at 3:17 this morning.
Kerry and I shot out of bed and stumbled through the house looking for smoke. I'll say one thing for these old houses. The fire alarms are efficient. It's like an air raid siren going off in your house. There is a high-pitched fast-paced shrieking noise with an additional slower-paced baritone siren melodiously harmonizing. At the same time little white lights flash off and on at strategic places throughout the house. The noise hurts the dogs ears so they started howling at the first shriek of noise. No one could sleep through a fire around here.
Except for my three kids.
I tried to call the fire department only to discover that the phones had already been disconnected. Thanks, Mr. Telephone Man, for providing that service a day early!
So I grabbed the cell phone, called 911, and discovered that dialing 911 connects me to a fire department in some other land not near me. They had to reroute my call back to the fire station closest to me.
About that time Katie finally staggered in with her fingers in her ears. Kerry woke Ben up and they took the dogs outside to calm them down. Even Emily woke and came to see what was going on. Kerry said when he got outside, the other seven families who live in the building were all outside with their kids and their dogs. He looked up at the building and realized that the rest of his family must be planning to go down with the ship as we weren't coming out.
I was in the house planning how fast I could get all our suitcases outside if it turned out there really was a fire. I'll say one thing - if there was a fire in the building, we each have a suitcase packed with clothes and our most favorite items, and we really would have been in good shape if we could have gotten them outside.
The firemen showed up after about ten minutes. Not too long for most things, but that noise was really earsplitting.
We all finally got back to sleep, except for me. While the rest of my family has the amazing ability to drop right back off, I have trouble sleeping after being jerked wide awake in the middle of the night so I only fell back asleep sometime around 5:00 this morning.
When my alarm went of at 6:30 I nearly jumped out of my skin. Apparently one of the packers adjusted the volume and it went off at fire alarm levels. I adjusted the volume and hit the snooze two times before I could drag myself out of bed.
The movers will be here at 8:30........................................maybe.
Kerry and I shot out of bed and stumbled through the house looking for smoke. I'll say one thing for these old houses. The fire alarms are efficient. It's like an air raid siren going off in your house. There is a high-pitched fast-paced shrieking noise with an additional slower-paced baritone siren melodiously harmonizing. At the same time little white lights flash off and on at strategic places throughout the house. The noise hurts the dogs ears so they started howling at the first shriek of noise. No one could sleep through a fire around here.
Except for my three kids.
I tried to call the fire department only to discover that the phones had already been disconnected. Thanks, Mr. Telephone Man, for providing that service a day early!
So I grabbed the cell phone, called 911, and discovered that dialing 911 connects me to a fire department in some other land not near me. They had to reroute my call back to the fire station closest to me.
About that time Katie finally staggered in with her fingers in her ears. Kerry woke Ben up and they took the dogs outside to calm them down. Even Emily woke and came to see what was going on. Kerry said when he got outside, the other seven families who live in the building were all outside with their kids and their dogs. He looked up at the building and realized that the rest of his family must be planning to go down with the ship as we weren't coming out.
I was in the house planning how fast I could get all our suitcases outside if it turned out there really was a fire. I'll say one thing - if there was a fire in the building, we each have a suitcase packed with clothes and our most favorite items, and we really would have been in good shape if we could have gotten them outside.
The firemen showed up after about ten minutes. Not too long for most things, but that noise was really earsplitting.
We all finally got back to sleep, except for me. While the rest of my family has the amazing ability to drop right back off, I have trouble sleeping after being jerked wide awake in the middle of the night so I only fell back asleep sometime around 5:00 this morning.
When my alarm went of at 6:30 I nearly jumped out of my skin. Apparently one of the packers adjusted the volume and it went off at fire alarm levels. I adjusted the volume and hit the snooze two times before I could drag myself out of bed.
The movers will be here at 8:30........................................maybe.
Can I just revert to my Southern roots (which I don't do very often) and say, "Bless your poor little heart!"?
ReplyDeleteWhy do these things always happen at the worst possible time???- Never during mid-day - GG
ReplyDelete