Fire Alarms

My husband and I had quite the evening last night. Dave is currently assistant coach for an 8th grade girls volleyball team at a local junior high here in town and his baseball team is in their Fall league. Every Wednesday, Dave has volleyball practice after the junior high gets out of school and then his baseball team has a game in the evening. Therefore, we don't get to eat dinner together on Wednesday nights.

Well, last night Dave decided to make himself something to eat after he got home and I was reminded once again on why my husband does NOT cook! Dave is a big fan of having breakfast for dinner, he first made himself a bowl of cereal. So I left him alone to eat while I picked up around the house because I mean, how can Cinnamon Toast Crunch be that hard. I was in one of the bedrooms organizing all of our bills when all of a sudden the fire alarm started going off. There was no smoke and it didn't smell like anything was burning so I went to check on my husband to see what was going on. I found him in the kitchen hovering over the stove, attempting to make eggs and bacon. So why was the fire alarm going off? We have a gas stove and he had the heat turned all the way on High and practically burning the eggs! All the upstairs alarms proceeded to go off for 10 minutes, in the mean time our poor dogs couldn't figure out what was going on and were running for their lives ALL over the entire house looking completely spooked!

I grabbed a towel and began running around the upstairs waving it in front of all the alarms to get the smell away and finally got them to stop. Unfortunately this only helped for a total of 5 minutes. While I was running around the house like a mad women with the towel being followed by two frantic puppies, Dave was continuing to cook, causing the kitchen to become a smoke filled mess, spilling eggs onto the stove and the side of the pan in which case they started burning, setting off ALL the alarms once again! I started opening up windows and doors trying to air out the house. The dogs were once again freaking out. They began trying to crawl up my legs for dear life! Their poor little sensitive ears couldn't that this racket anymore so I thought I would take them to the basement and shut the door. Unfortunately this did not work either. ALL the fire alarms in the ENTIRE house were going off, there was no place to go! I tried to put the dogs outside on the deck and close the door so it would be less noise, but they were so scared they just frantically pawed at the door with this terrified look in their eyes. I felt helpless! I was out of options and didn't know what else to do besides hold my little babies and try to comfort them, holding my hands over their ears. Being in this highly stressful situation did not help us, I continued to try and yell over the alarm at Dave to get it to stop and Dave continued to yell over the alarm at me to shut all the doors so the neighbors won't hear the alarms going off. Can you picture this all happening?

Dave then proceeded to put the Hot pan into the sink and turn the water on to cool it off. This did not help the situation. As everyone knows, or at least I though everyone knew, that putting a hot pan under water will just cause it to smoke even more. Dave finally decided to just pull out the battery to one of the alarms that he could reach and put it back in to see if that would work...then there was peace and quite... That is until you learn that when you live in a new house the builders put in fire alarms that beep VERY 30 seconds when the fire alarms either need a new battery or don't have a battery altogether. But he had put the battery back in so he just felt it. So for the next 20 minutes we continued to hear... beep.... beep... beep... beep... beep... beep... beep... beep... beep... beep... beep... beep... beep... beep... beep... beep.... beep... beep... beep... beep. Every time the alarm beeped, my poor little puppies shot be a look of terror like they thought the alarms were going to start going off again. Finally I asked Dave to fix whatever he did to the alarm. Turns out he doesn't know how to the battery back in the alarm the right way!! I think he would have left it keep beeping all night if I wouldn't have told him to fix it.

Finally all chaos has ended as well as all beeping fire alarms!! Although you can image how wonderful my house smells, everything else has returned to normal. My husband and I have now come to the agreement that I will do ALL cooking in the house and he is no longer is allowed to us the stove, Microwave only! After all of this, at least we know now there is no way in hell anyone would be able to sleep through those fire alarms if there ever happens to be a fire in our household!!!