It was 4 am when I heard the first beep. I’d already been staring at the ceiling of our darkened bedroom for what felt like an eternity, unable to sleep as Crankenstein performed her usual overnight routine beside me. Her movement and murmurs provided just enough distraction that I wasn’t entirely sure if the noise had come from our house, a neighboring house, or possibly the street below.
Ten minutes later it happened again, and then eight minutes after that. I crept into the upstairs hallway for a closer listen and shut the door behind me, not wanting to bother Crankenstein. That roused Muriel, who was immediately alert and eager to help. She demanded breakfast when she wasn’t performing a loud calisthenics routine that made her collar jangle excessively. Eventually I determined the noise was coming from the basement. The culprit seemed to be a carbon monoxide detector in the laundry room.
Our detectors’ batteries were replaced in the fall, minus the Costco units with irreplaceable 10-year batteries. But maybe one was glitchy or drained after a week of the structural crew leaving a door open as they worked. I took the CO detector upstairs, replaced its battery, and reattached it to the wall downstairs. Now it was 5 am, or close to it, and I’d already spent an hour attempting to pinpoint the problem. I was tired, my left hand was uncooperative, and my neck and shoulder ached.
I stood at the kitchen counter for a few minutes and listened expectantly. There it was, another beep, then silence, then a surprise round of high-decibel shrieking. The noise stopped as I walked back downstairs, where I removed the new battery in irritation. At no point during any of this did Crankenstein stir, which I found alarming (no pun intended). It seemed unlikely we had a carbon monoxide leak — Muriel was awfully peppy, I was fine, and the alarms on other floors of the house hadn’t sounded.
As a precaution, I cracked a couple of windows and checked on my slumbering wife. Then I grabbed another CO detector and moved it to the laundry room. It was silent at first, and I was hopeful I could finally crash on the couch or dog bed with Muriel, who wouldn’t allow me to return to my bed so close to breakfast. Within a few minutes, however, there was another burst of shrieking. I woke Crankenstein and explained what was happening, and we agreed to have the fire department investigate. They had a 30-second drive; we’re neighbors who shop at the same Aldi.
She sat in a heated car with Muriel as I showed the firemen inside. They heard a few beeps themselves and also traced it back to the laundry room, but found nothing wrong anywhere in the house. They theorized that two of our alarms went bad at the same time, probably due to the bitter cold. I knew ‘Niles’ would doubt that explanation — the alarms were different models purchased at different times — and dreaded sharing it with Crankenstein. But I trusted their readings and apologetically thanked them for their time.
All was quiet for a few moments after Crankenstein and Muriel returned, but our troubles weren’t quite over. The garage door wouldn’t close, which meant relocating anything vulnerable to theft. I did that solo, in the dark, the wind chill below freezing, even though the overnight and early morning hours aren’t too kind to me physically.** After lugging a bulky electric snow shovel and snowblower into the house, I was ready to sit down. “Can you feed Muriel?” I asked Crankenstein, who couldn’t disguise her irritation at the thought of rising from her chair.^ Then the beeping started again and I trudged downstairs one last time.
Everything I could disable had been disabled — or had it? During a home inspection years prior, we were told that an old, yellowed smoke detector in the finished half of the basement wasn’t operational. It was supposedly left in place to cover wires. So we ignored it — newer detectors had been installed, which I’d dutifully checked earlier. I couldn’t reach it with a ladder; it was blocked by a long workshop bench and a sturdy old dresser, the heaviest objects temporarily displaced from the utility room. Desperate to sleep, I scaled the dresser, hopeful I wouldn’t fall. Removing a battery with a 2017 expiration date restored our tranquility.
Relieved, Crankenstein immediately retired to our bedroom. Muriel wanted company, so I remained in the living room and woke up a couple hours later with a medium-size dog sleeping on top of me as if she were a kitten. The morning’s excitement had pushed some buttons from my past that still have me a little frazzled, and poked at a couple of nagging resentments. It feels like a kick in the teeth when you put so much effort into keeping your wife safe, and letting her sleep, and she repays you by getting pissy about feeding her own dog.
I’ll cool down a bit before I get into why I’m rattled by alarms. Hopefully nothing else beeps in the meantime.
* Elvis Costello has released two albums (so far) that I consider perfect: 1977’s My Aim is True and 1998’s Burt Bacharach collaboration, Painted from Memory. Every song from My Aim is True is a winner, but “Watching the Detectives” is from a different universe. I’m biased, sure, as an angry, sarcastic sort with a thing for icy, cutthroat women who have no problem metaphorically killing others once we’ve served our purpose(s), but this is a ’40s crime thriller in song form as only Costello could do it.
** Overnight and early AM are when my arthritis and YOPD go bananas. I lumber around like Frankenstein’s monster after waking up and then PD rigidity eases as my medication kicks in and my sacroiliac joints loosen once I’ve been up for 90 minutes or so.
^ If you’re familiar with the children’s book If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, you have some idea of why Muriel isn’t fed prior to her official breakfast time. As for why she doesn’t just hop into bed with us, between her dodgy back and poor judgment, it’s best to keep her away from our bed, which is pretty high up. She and Crankenstein are also lousy bedfellows for obvious reasons.