Popsicle stick

You may be asking..."Why are you awake at this awful hour?"

Just kidding. I know you have no idea what time folks posts to their blogs....but seriously it's hecka early and I'm tired. I've been dreaming for the last few hours (or maybe all night) that I was in a huge open room, white everything with a ceiling peppered with dozens, if not hundreds of smoke detectors. One of the detectors was chirping with a low battery. Which one? I had no idea. So I was patiently removing batteries from each and waiting to see if the chirping continued before moving on to the next.

So I woke up and realized that the smoke detector in my room was chirping and it needed to be fixed. I tried to ignore it and go back to sleep but I guess that's the thing about smoke detectors...their job is to wake you up.

So all of this should have been a simple fix except I'm not at my house. While I've been house hunting for my new job I've been mooching a place at some friends of mine who live in a pretty fancy mansion. We could be on cribs fancy. Not wanting to wake them with my silly chirping problem I started scouring the house for a ladder (fancy houses have 10 foot ceilings and chairs just don't cut it) I started in the food storage room (They're LDS), next I tried the downstairs laundry/furnace room, then I the storage/wood workshop room. No luck so I headed upstairs and found the perfect size ladder in the garage. I noiselessly got it downstairs, took out the battery and the unfortunately, just like my dream, the chirping continued.

Next task involved finding another battery. I figured there would be one in the kitchen so I started there. It took me a little while to be brave and just open drawers. I wasn't worried I would find something weird, just that at any moment my hosts would come out of their room and wonder why I was going through everything. With such a large kitchen I noticed that there were enough drawers that most had their own single function. One just held screwdrivers, another coupons. One was full of all kids of glue and Popsicle sticks. I thought this would be handy for many reasons. The last one I opened before I gave up was full of calendars. Like kitten calendars. I think they were used to keep track of birthdays and stuff but it still threw me for a sec.

Eventually I went and woke my host asking her if she had a battery. "I have tons of batteries!" She pulled out a grey plastic tub, pulled off the lid and quickly discovered she had no 9volt batteries. "I'll get some tomorrow" she said as she jotted "9v" down on her yellow grocery shopping sticky note.

She headed off to bed while I contemplated transferring my sleeping head to any number of leather couches in the basement. Or maybe making something out of Popsicle sticks and Elmer's glue.