I knew it.

I knew it, I knew it, I knew it. I should not have said that part yesterday about something terrible is going to happen because I’ve been blabbing on about how good life is. Thank goodness that nothing terrible did happen, except the bejesus being scared out of us. FOR SEVEN HOURS.

Hang on. I need some coffee. I can only get one eye pried open and both ears are still ringing.

Ok.

Our smoke alarms started going off a little after midnight last night. Not the chirping sound that lets you know you need to change a battery, but full on sirens. And then they turned off. And then they came back on. And more of the same until about 3 a.m., until Hank finally had the good sense to call 911 and up pulled a fire truck and an ambulance and in piled about a hundred firemen. Some were in full gear, some in partial gear, but all of them looked gigantic. They walked around with contraptions checking for gas and smoke and counting smoke alarms, and then came the question.

“When’s the last time you changed your batteries?”

Jeez. I dunno. Wait, yes. In February.

But the recommendation was to change them all again, right then and there. So we dragged sleepy Ewan out of bed at 3:15 a.m. and they checked his room.

And we walked around a little outside to see the piles of firefighting clothes on our front porch.

By the time we went back inside, all was well and the firemen were ready to leave.

And wouldn’t you know it, but thirty minutes after their departure, those stupid things started going off again. We were so tired that we just piled into bed with Ewan and tried to sleep in between sirens going off until we couldn’t stand it anymore. At 7:45 this morning, Hank went back up to the fire station (which luckily for us is at the entry of our neighborhood), and asked about what else we could do. One trip to Home Depot and about seven new replacement smoke alarms later and an armload of batteries, we’re good.

Exhausted and frazzled, but good.

And thank you to our neighbors who couldn’t wait until morning to make sure that we were ok. We’re still lucky and life is still fantastic, darn it. I probably just tempted fate again, but whatever. Bring it, universe. I’m tired as hell and don’t really care.

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