Fire Alarms and Me

Every house has them. Fire alarms. My house has two in the downstairs living room, and one in each bedroom upstairs. Pretty amazing creation. These alarms are meant to alert the homeowner of fire, smoke, or other dangers. Some go to the extent of Carbon Monoxide poisioning and determining the heat within walls to make sure it never reaches a certain temperature. Thankfully I have never had any of these experiences, and I feel blessed to have these amazing alarms all over my house.

I think the creators of these contraptions are testing a new line of alarms. It's undercover, so they can get "real" reactions from "real" people. I so happen to be one of those "lucky" people chosen. I'll be cooking homemade pizza, eggs, french toast, and if the alarm senses the slightest amount of smoke, it goes off! The idea behind this is that you will become a good cook when the alarm never goes off and you have amazing not burnt, great tasting food. Well I must say I know the beginnings of burning food now, but I have a problem with sensing it before the alarm goes off. Instead of worrying about non-burnt food, I have a near heart attack when the alarm goes off. I then open the drawer with my flexible cutting boards and rush over to the alarm. I then proceed to fan the alarm until it stops beeping loudly and resumes it's "normal" state. In order to keep it from going off again, I open doors and windows to air out the house. I even turn on the oven fan to help circulate the apparently smoked filled air. By the time this is all done, I have burnt food and I have to start over.

Well tonight was grilled cheese and soup night. AKA the night I don't want to cook a large meal. I already had a plan of how to cook these yummy sandwiches and not have the alarm go off. I started the first sandwich and amazingly I DID it! No alarm and no burnt food! My confidence about cooking had grown. Finally. So I made the second sandwich. Success again! By now I felt professional. No smoke alarms and no burnt food! On to the third sandwich. "In my defense" (from the words of Taci) Ryan distracted me for a minute with talking. This action not only set off my 1st alarm, but apparently was enough smoke to set off my 2nd alarm tied to ADT. Now, not only could I not smell any smoke, but I couldn't SEE any smoke. I have NO clue why it set off this time and not before. I rush over to grab my cutting board and run to the alarms and fan them until they stop. But now I had the problem of turning off the alarm on my ADT system. I rush over to the key pad and touch the appropriate numbers to turn it off. Or so I thought. It told me the alarm was disarmed, but the light was still on. I figured it needed to have a few minutes to register so I did all the numbers again and it again told me disarmed. Well Ryan and I decided to sit down and eat our not burnt dinner and wait to see if the light would go off or if ADT would call and see if things were ok.

We had just finished our meal when a knock came at the door. Immediately my heart jumped to my throat! I was shaking a little when I went to answer the door. I opened it and not to my surprise I saw a cop standing there. CRAP! But to make it better it was a friend of mine who I hadn't seen for a while. He started laughing when I told him what had happened and continued to walkie talkie his other policeman that everything was ok. I thought that would be it, and he was getting ready to leave when his Police Chief walked to the door! DOUBLE CRAP! Thankfully he was laughing as well when we explained what happened and we continued to joke about making them some! By now I was shaking a little more and I KNOW my face was bright red. Again I thought that would be the end of it, but in the distance I hear SIRENS! OH MY HANNAH!!!!! I looked to my policeman friend and his chief and my now pale white face asking if that was for me. Laughing they shook their heads yes!!! They told me goodbye and I happily made the assumption that they would "take care of telling the fire department." I did see out the front window, with the corner of my eye, the fire truck come up, talk to the police and proceed to turn around. Ryan by now is rolling on the floor laughing and at the same time calling ADT to see how we shut off the alarm.
Well after 15 minutes of talking on the phone WE, not ADT, figured out how to turn it off and get things back to normal. I hope I NEVER have to go through that again, and for those wives who are looking for a way out of cooking, Ryan has now declared himself the "cook" and I am no longer permitted to touch the stove! NO PROBLEM THERE!