We moved into our new house about four months ago, and, as with every new thing, we always understood there would be a fair share of kinks we’d encounter in the process. From the very beginning, we knew that our house seemed to have more than its fair share of ladybugs, a phenomenon that completely baffled me because I spent my entire life believing that they really didn’t belong in the insect family since they were actually fairly cute and seemingly harmless.
Apparently I was wrong.
Last night, precisely nine minutes after putting my daughter to bed, our smoke alarm went off. Loudly. And repeatedly.
We rushed upstairs, grabbed my sobbing child, and thankfully had the foresight to bust out a set of earmuffs that I had bought years ago for fireworks. While it helped quiet the noise, it did not help quiet her screams, which I heard at full volume next to my un-earmuffed head.
After ten minutes of this, my husband and I finally figured out how to “hush” the alarms, which required one of us running from room to room in true Olympic fashion, hurdling over construction materials and standing on chairs to reach each device.
About 7 smoke alarms into this process, we finally picked the right one, which brought an eerie peace that replaced the hellish “FIRE!” robotic voice that I will likely have nightmares about for the rest of my life. Thinking that it was probably a fluke, we brought B back upstairs, said goodnight, and – just for good measure – casually left her earmuffs next to her bed in case of anymore unexpected situations.
That came exactly 8 minutes later, which reinvigorated the screams, the sobs and the realization that nobody was going to be sleeping tonight.
At this point, I started wondering if maybe there really WAS a problem – like, maybe the reason I’ve had a headache for the past three months may actually be caused by, I don’t know, carbon monoxide or something…
Thankfully, my parents live only a few minutes away, so my husband packed my daughter up and took her there while I pulled together some semblance of a lunchbox for the following morning (I wouldn’t be at all surprised if she comes home from school today telling me there was a sock in her thermos, honestly).
While he was gone, just like clockwork, our entire house would resume its horror movie scene precisely 8 minutes after having reset itself. Oh, and in case you ever wondered, most smoke and CO2 alarms these days are NOT connected to your local fire department, so you have to actually call them because nobody’s coming to save you if you don’t… did not know that…
The one benefit of this being so predictable, however, was that, while he was gone, I was able to confirm that the alarm that was responsible for this debacle only detected smoke and thankfully not carbon monoxide. It was ironically in our office, which is where I sit right now writing this blog entry.
That was good news, because there is literally NOTHING IN HERE except for a desk, computer and chair, which meant that clearly whatever issue was happening wasn’t originating from down below.
For some reason, I remembered my parents complaining about THEIR alarm going off in the middle of the night before, and I thought I had read something about spiders potentially confusing your devices into thinking their webs were smoke. So when my husband came back, I charged him with opening up the office smoke detector.
Boy am I glad it was him and not me because three dead ladybugs fell right out, narrowly missing his eye and forever embedding themselves into the recesses of my memory. Sure enough, that was it. Freakin’ ladybugs. Pretty little things. Harmless. And now they all must die because we’ve become sworn enemies forever.
So now we just add “exterminator” to our list of people to call in the morning. And while I’m not sure I’ll ever fully regain my hearing, I guess we should consider ourselves pretty lucky that it wasn’t anything worse.