Perfect timing

This time last night I posted an entry about being driven nearly to insomnia during my first year of college by nocturnal noises I was powerless to stop. And at the end of the entry, I expressed my gratitude for my own apartment, in which I can sleep soundly with no annoying noises to keep me awake all night.

Well, tonight as I was sitting on the couch, winding down after work, I heard a loud, high-pitched chirp come from the hall. It scared the shit out of me.

It was my smoke detector, screeching for a battery replacement.

And now I can’t sleep because that thing is beeping every 90 seconds and it is so loud and I can’t reach it to take the battery out because it is so high up on these confounded walls. I have one chair to stand on — my desk chair — and it’s not nearly tall enough for me to be able to reach the ceiling, practically where the detector is positioned. I tried bashing the stupid thing with a broom but nothing happened.

Of course it’s 2 in the morning so I can’t call my maintenance guy to get him to come over.

So, yeah.

The universe sure does have a funny sense of humor sometimes.

Update, 3:30 a.m.: I win.

I laid in bed for a while, fantasizing about smashing the smoke detector, then about Sacha Baron Cohen coming over to help me smash the smoke detector. I had my iPod blaring to drown out the chirping, then I realized that I was lying there trying to fall asleep but my heart was racing and my face was all cramped up and tense. So I darted out of bed and got the broom again, thinking I could really try to smash the damn thing, but you’d be surprised how resilient those little plastic bastards are when confronted by cheap-ass Dollar Tree brooms.

So I sat on the floor and tried to go all MacGyver and shit, looking around at my possessions to see what could be stacked to boost me up to the smoke detector’s level. I saw potential only in my desk chair (with wheels, which is tough to use as a ladder when you have hardwood floors) and my little tiger foot stool. (I find it oddly coincidental that I’ve been getting into Le Tigre lately.)

So I pulled a rug close for traction, and built my little makeshift ladder:

I’m so happy about my victory that I spelled “incessant” wrong and I don’t even care.

Below the chair is a rug for traction and a flip-flop beneath two of the chair’s wheels for extra non-slip protection.

The ladder boosted me up so that I could at least reach the bottom edge of the smoke detector. I pushed and pulled and prodded and cussed and feared for my life as the stool and chair wobbled below me with every ounce of pressure I placed on the detector to try and pry it from the wall.

But finally! It popped off with a satisfying crack and I held my breath as I stood tippy-toed on the tiny tiger (heh, sorry) and plucked the sapped nine-volt from its cradle. And, once the battery was removed, the damn thing chirped at me again. So I took a big swipe at it and the whole thing came crashing down off the wall with an impolite clatter on the floor, which I hope my downstairs neighbors didn’t mind too much.

And as the victory swelled in my throat and I tried to ease down off my Perch of Necessary Danger, all I could think was, I gotta get the camera and remember this bullshit FOREVER.

So there ya go. An inspirational story we can all enjoy. Or just me. Whatever.

The moral of the story is: You don’t want to fuck with a face like this.