Smoke Alarms…..and Nolan

A couple of weeks ago, I had been out for the evening, and returned home just after midnight.  I was tired, and got myself ready for bed quickly, and settled off into bed with a book for the few minutes necessary for me to drop off to sleep.  I suppose I had been asleep for 10 minutes, when a beeping noise awoke me.  I wasn’t sure what it was in my sleepiness, and started to drop off again, when there was another beep!  And then Nolan arrived at my bedside!  Even without his arrival I had come to the reluctant conclusion I would have to get out of bed and find out what on earth was making this noise, because I knew I wouldn’t sleep, and his rather large presence wasn’t about to help my grumpiness!  I’m never at my best in the middle of the night to say the least….

So I dragged myself out of the bed and ordered Nolan out of the room.  He didn’t want to go anywhere!  He wanted to stay with his mummy….but his mummy didn’t really need this rather large galoot as a shadow at (by this time) 1 in the morning, when my enfeebled brain was struggling to work out what was happening.  Accompanied by mumbling and interspersed with orders for Nolan to get out my road, I got my step ladder.  I had worked out, with some difficulty that the noise was coming from one of the smoke alarms.  I have two, and why on earth I need two I have no idea.  I suppose I should think myself lucky I haven’t got three…seeing I have three bedrooms!… All they ever seem to do is tell me I have burnt the toast….after I’ve eaten it!

Anyway, I managed to get the ladder under the offending smoke alarm, with great difficulty, because Nolan kept standing right where I wanted to be, or put the ladder.  I kept telling him to leave me alone, because then I could stop the noise quicker!  He wasn’t listening, however, so I just mumbled away, and got up the ladder.  My brain by this stage had kicked in enough for me to know I had to get the battery out, because I knew I didn’t have a replacement, but not enough to remember how to do it.  And of course once I got up there and looked at it carefully, I still couldn’t remember…argh!  So down I came, and moved the ladder to inspect the other one, and of course there was Nolan, my shadow…..

By this time I had given up counting to ten; I was well on my way to a hundred!  But by inspecting the other smoke alarm, and fiddling with it, I remembered how to undo it!  Eureka!  So I removed the battery in the second smoke alarm, just in case it decided it was time to let me know it was running out too, and went back to the first one.  Nolan was there again, but I was in a fractionally better frame of mind now, and didn’t tell him off quite so loudly this time…

At last, both batteries were out, I put the ladder away….and I was awake!  I knew there was no point going to bed, so I turned on the computer to check my emails.  Nolan was still not going to leave my side, so it was probably a good thing I was awake, and he came with me into the back room where the computer is.  He sat near me while I was “winding down”, and eventually went to sleep.  By this time, I also felt tired again, turned off the computer, and went back to bed.  A few minutes with my book and I finally drifted off to sleep.

I slept in the next day….