I woke to that all too familiar low-battery beep. You know the one, high-pitched and piercing, the scree of beeps that’s like a fat-fingered flick directly to your eardrum.
The sound seems to bounce off the walls and echo through the hallways making it nearly impossible to locate.

I wander from room to room, awaiting the warning that always seems to elude me—beeping constantly until I’m standing beneath an alarm then taking its sweet time to release the next yelp. Nope, not this one. The chirp-search continues.

When we had the construction done, we had to comply with new construction laws throughout the house, not just the new addition; we have a LOT of smoke detectors now.

Once you find the offender, you have to replace the 9 volt.
9 volt!
Like I just happen to have those on hand, geesh.
But it’s okay, got to go to the store and load up, right, because if one is going off, it’s just a matter of time until they all go off.

Did you see the episode of Modern Family with this same problem? Spoiler alert: after removing and replacing every battery in every smoke alarm throughout the house–including the hard to reach ones, and even taking a whack or twelve at the plastic casings to shut them up, the elusive cry was finally detected to be coming from the bag of old alarms stashed in the attic.

Funny stuff.

Until it’s you it wakes.
Until it’s you that can’t locate the errant detector and a replacement battery.

Which brings me to wonder why, after having our smoke alarms hard-wired with the construction, the batteries would be low. They shouldn’t be doing anything but waiting around for a power outage AND a simultaneous overload of candles on a cake.
What are the chances that both of those things would happen at the same time?

Yes, 47 is a lot of candles and my birthday is tomorrow (nice plug, eh), but there have been no indications that a power-outage is imminent. If the alarm is hardwired, connected directly to the electrical of the house, and the battery is there for emergency back-up, why is the battery out of juice?! I don’t mean to downplay the importance of smoke alarms, but there has to be a better system.

Meantime, cupcakes and a single celebratory candle are in order, just in case.