Yesterday in the wee hours of the morning we were awakened to a loud chirping sound coming from the carbon monoxide detector in the hallway. I sort of suspected a battery issue, but the “get to fresh air” light was flashing and my problem-solving skills are not that sharp when I am half asleep so I proceeded to unplug the monitor heater, open every window in the house, and turn on all the lights — creating mass chaos as I tried to puzzle out whether we were actually having some sort of emergency or not.

We finally determined that it was indeed a low battery warning, closed all the windows, made a futile attempt to locate some batteries in the house, then just disabled the blasted thing by taking the dead ones out. I was just paranoid enough to leave the monitor heater off for the rest of the night, though, so all we had was the electric fireplace for what little was left of the night. Three hours later we had barely gotten back to sleep when the blare of the alarm clock roused us to a cold house and no coffee to be found. Oh well, as Joy’s mom said, at least we were alive. (and in case Joy’s mom is reading this, we have since replaced the batteries and it’s now operational again! )

It makes me wonder though, why can’t such devices just be designed with a specific light that is labeled “low battery” so that when the alarm sounds you can immediately tell if there is an actual emergency? And for that matter, why do batteries for those type of devices always run out in the middle of the night? Is it like the buttered toast landing upside down rule or something?