Why is it Always at 5:30am?

Have you noticed that if anything unusual is going to happen, it more often than not happens about an hour before the alarm is set to go off, when you are in a deep sleep.

Yesterday for me was a prime example of this, where I was having some vivid weird dream, and I suddenly woke to this "chirp", followed about 10 seconds later by another "chirp".

Rapidly coming out of my dream state, I realized that one of the smoke detectors was telling me that the battery was low, and although the noise was not that loud, it was loud enough so that sticking your head under the pillow wasn't going to drown it out, and besides that, I knew it was there.

So I did the only thing that I could, and that was to get up out of bed, and go out in the upstairs hallway and check the alarm.

That I did, with the dog, who sleeps on the landing, thinking it was time to get up and go outside, excitedly moving around and threatening to knock me over in the process. Max is a full sized German Shepherd, and therefore no lightweight when he is wandering around with you in a small hallway in the dark.

I realized that it wasn't the upstairs alarm, which I could just reach without standing on anything, but it was the downstairs alarm that was chirping, and so I headed downstairs, the dog trying to come down at the same time, and pacing about thinking he was going to be let out.

Of course the smoke alarm in the hallway downstairs was too high for me to be able to fiddle with unless I stood on something, and so I had to go into the kitchen and get the steps, managed to pull the flap down on the smoke alarm, and thought it would be best to take it down.

Struggling to see properly, I then had to go into the living room and get my glasses so I could see what I was doing, and into the kitchen to get a screwdriver, and quickly unscrewed the thing from the ceiling.

The label on the smoke alarm said that the battery was not replaceable, which I thought was dumb, especially since it looked like a standard rectangular 9v battery in there, but there didn't appear to be any way to get it out, but without smashing the casing to pieces, which I wasn't quite up to at 5:30am.

It's not much fun when you would rather be in a deep sleep, and the nighttime chill in the house soon has an effect on your naked body, making you have to pee like a racehorse.

Realizing that the smoke alarm had stopped chirping by this time, I sat it on the dresser in the dining room, and headed back up to bed, competing with the dog for the stairs of course.

I lay in bed and tossed and turned, but all I did was to keep waking my wife up, and so at 6:15am I turned off the alarm clock, which was set to go off 15 minutes later, and headed downstairs, much to the delight of the dog.

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Fast forward to this morning at 5:30am, when I heard this by now familiar "chirping" sound coming from outside the bedroom.

It wasn't quite as loud as yesterday morning, but it was loud enough for me to hear it, and again I got up out of bed to try and fix it.

I thought at first that it was maybe it's twin upstairs that was now low on battery, but no, the sound was definitely coming from downstairs.

So off I went, being challenged by the dog yet again to see who could get downstairs first, and I found the source of the noise to be the same frickin smoke alarm that was sitting on the dresser in the dining room, flashing it's robotic red light at me every 10 seconds and calling out "chirp".

Well I tried to see if I could break the case open, and I know you aren't supposed to just throw them out, so I did the next best thing, I stuck it on the couch and smothered it with a blanket that my wife uses to put over her when she gets cold.

Well that did the trick, and I headed back to bed for a while, but same as yesterday, I just couldn't go back to sleep, and so at 6:15am I was up and downstairs, much to the delight of the dog.

It's my mid morning break at work while I am writing this, and I just remembered that I left the alarm under the blanket, but I didn't say anything. No doubt someone will get a shock when they get chilly this afternoon!