You've GOT To Be Kidding Me!!

It appeared as if it would be a normal Thursday morning. But that is where I was wrong. So wrong. I had just settled in to give Sweet and Creamy his morning bottle when I heard some bizarre beeping noises coming from an unknown location....in my house? No, it must be my neighbor's alarm system going off. I don't know. It stopped, but then started up again and this time it became clear that my house was definitely involved somehow. Every time it started going off, it wasn't the same noise. Sometimes it was just a single repeating beep - the sound of a smoke alarm needing a battery change.

A couple seconds later it sounded like two totally different car alarms trying to sing a duet......in different keys, really loudly, with different words and in different tempos. Did I mention that it was REALLY loud? I now had to set S&C down, leaving him crying because his bottle was not finished, and go see what in the hell was going on. Further investigation and some random pressing of buttons on the alarm system keypad (we're not connected to a monitoring system - so the police and/or security company weren't being notified of our loud problem)and the problem had gotten worse. It was not randomly turning off and on now, if was just on.

I called Tall Dark and Handsome and immediately began freaking out. "You've got to calm down!" he said. I couldn't. I got off the phone. I couldn't rest easy until the noise stopped. It was like the time, when I was about eight years old, and I was in the glass elevator in Town Square mall downtown St. Paul and I pressed the alarm button. The alarm exploded like fire works inside the mall and everyone was looking at me because they could see me. For the love of Benji, I was in a glass elevator!! Or the time when I was minding my own business, driving to work one morning and my car's horn just starts honking it's ass off. All by itself, like it had been kept silent for too long and now was the time to let the whole world know it had a voice and will of its own. I kept mouthing to the drivers in the cars around me, holding my hands in the air, "It's not me! I'm sorry!" Or maybe I just sunk down really low in my seat and tried to make it to work not getting behind any motorcycle gangs.

Anyway, TDH told me in between my outbursts of frustration that I needed to unplug the whole system. I had tried that but it wouldn't come out of the outlet. Very quickly I became aware that it was screwed into the outlet and I couldn't unplug it until I unscrewed it. Which I did. And it stopped.

I'm just SO glad Jane (four year-old daughter in a pre OCD phase) was not there because with her latest fear of the smoke alarm beeping, we would have needed to start her in therapy yesterday.

Now that my house is in a vulnerable state - a fire could start without warning or an intruder could intrude, I wonder if it would be worse to be robbed or really, really embarrassed? I guess I should choose safety over my pride, but I might wait until tomorrow to decide.