I'm not sure if this story qualifies as comedy or tragedy, but here goes: I love my new apartment. It is, on the inside, a delightful sanctuary! Everything is new and lovely... the floors, carpet, paint, appliances, etc. The morning sun shines through my bedroom window, and the afternoon/evening sun washes through the living and dining room, warms my patio, and even reaches into the kitchen.
In my last 2 nights at my boyfriend's house before moving, I went through a terrible experience that you may be familiar with (many people are). Somewhere in the house, somewhere in that 4 bedroom, 2 bathroom house with garage, a smoke detector was chirping. You know, when the battery is slowly dying, and you get a high-pitched jolt of brain-lightning at unpredictably random intervals? Yeah, that. At night, it really fucks with you. It blasts you annoyingly from your sleep, and you think "that was unfortunate," as you rest your head back onto the pillow and drift back to sleep. No sooner do you slip back out of consciousness than it signals another screech of doom. You quickly realize that this is not something you can ignore (or sleep through), and the battle is on.
On the first night, I simply laid awake in bed from 4:00 am on, thinking about something I needed to do for work the next day. On the second night, I knew my sanity was fully at stake. So I start working my way through the house (again around 4:00 am), trying to identify the location source of the enemy sound, and lobotomizing about 85% of the smoke detectors in the house, feeling pretty confident about my victory before returning to bed. 5:17 am: BEEP!!!!!!! Fuck. Finally, it occurred to me which one I had missed, and that the location almost certainly aligned with the source of noise-dread. Armed with a plastic chair and nimble fingers, I yanked the suffering 9 volt from it's vocal plastic sheath, and smiled.
The next day, I moved into the new apartment with more than just a general sense of relief; I was thoroughly delighted at the idea of living alone again, reigning supreme in my own space. As I was hauling my belongings up to my 3rd floor penthouse suite, I kept hearing a repeating noise from the apartment on the 2nd floor, just below mine: the "chirp" of a dying smoke detector battery. Seriously. I'm not clever enough to make this shit up. It's not quite enough to rouse me from my sleep, but that sound is my Great Dane's only true nemesis. 3 days later, the sound is increasing in frequency and volume, as the battery tries harder to make it's impending doom known to the residents (who must be deaf or already insane?) of that apartment. "Your safety is in danger!" yells the smoke detector. "A few more days, and your children could burn at night, and I ain't even gonna tell you about it," it taunts. By lunch time today, Bentley (my dog) was so paralyzed with fear that he couldn't even greet me at the door. He just stood in the center of my bed, panic-stricken, trembling, and looking to me for guidance. I think on the way home, I may pick up a 9 volt battery, and leave it on their doorstep with a friendly note. I have concerns, though, that these apartments may have "safety-locked" smoke detectors to prevent residents from having the ability to remove the batteries, seeing as each apartment has a fireplace. With Bentley's age and propensity for heart problems, I doubt he will live to the weekend without a resolution.
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