I've been asked recently what has happened to my blog. So far, it's fallen to the bottom of the priority list, but I shall try to revive it. Sarah Kearns, this is for you. I'm most certain many eventful things have happened so far since I've been back here in Mississippi. But, I'll just have to tell you of the most recent happenings. We could call it a series of unfortunate events, but that might be too dramatic. So, I'll just tell you the story.
The first owners of this house thought it would be a great idea to install a security system in this house. I don't blame them in the least for wanting to do that. The next owners decided not to continue with the alarm system and just stick with the good ol' locks and deadbolts and we've followed in that pattern. The system is supposed to be disabled and it had been all of last year. Occasionally, being in the downstairs room last year, the keypad would beep at me, but not very often. For over a year (plus however many years the other people lived here before us) nothing has happened with that alarm system.
Well, one morning last week, the alarm system decided it was going to practice going off. Suddenly, at 5:30 in the morning, we hear the loudest, piercing, screeching noise we've ever heard in our lives. I have no idea what's going on cause as we all know, I don't do well in the early morning. The alarm system is "disabled" and so the only other option is fire alarm. I tell my roommate Emilie to get up, (or she would say I was yelling), and then I fling open Paige's door and tell her to get up and go downstairs. The noise box is right outside our bedroom door. So, then we all run downstairs and into Rebecca's room and she's still laying in bed, so I throw her her blanket and tell her to put it on cause I thought we might need to all go outside if it was a fire. Of course, I'm sure I was much more frantic than I am expressing here...
I look all over for a fire and don't find one, so I head upstairs to see where the noise is coming from because surely it can't be from the disabled alarm system. But, by golly, it is. I get on the phone with the company of the system, but it finally stopped going off. I spend some time with the lady trying to figure out the issue. She tells me to look for these different kind of boxes and I eventually find them. I was supposed to unplug a battery, but the battery was already on the ground and the cords are by the ceiling. So she tells me that the alarm shouldn't be going off, and I was like, I understand that, that's why I'm calling you because it is going off and it shouldn't be and I need your help to figure out why this is happening. Anyways, I did everything she said to that I could figure out and she was like, well, call back if it happens again.
8:30am, we're all getting ready for ballet and here comes the loudest siren ever, AGAIN! So, I get on the phone, explain the whole thing all over again. She tells me to look for this little box, either in the basement...we don't have one, in the laundry room...we don't have one, in a closet...it's not in there. I end up being on the phone with her for 40 min and then I was like, "well, I have to go because we have a performance right now, so I'll have to call you back when we're done."
3:00 No more alarm, but I call back because I do not want the thing to go off again. Unfortunately, this is now the 3rd different person I am talking to, so I go over the whole thing again. She tells me that I should unattatch the cords that go to the box where the siren was going off. "You want me to pull them out of the ceiling???" Well, maybe the other end where it connects. "I can't do that, I'll get electrocuted because they're in like the motherboard and I can't cut the wire" I can't figure it out, so just call again if it goes off again because there's no reason it should be going off.
6am following morning. The siren goes off for a third time. I'm quite exhausted by now. So, I give a call again and go over the whole thing. He asks if I've checked this and that and I say yes yes yes. Same questions every time with the same answers. Well, finally he suggests that it could be plugged in in the attic. Ding ding ding!!! I forgot we even had an attic because I've never been up there. But, it's 6 in the morning and who knows what's up there. I was afraid of finding cockroaches or spiders or something. Thankfully, there was nothing of that sort in there. I found where it was plugged in and was like bingo!...but not that easy. It wasn't just plugged in to the outlet, it was screwed in. I climb down the ladder, downstairs, grab a screwdriver, head back up and unscrew and unplug it. Finally done, or so I thought. I climb down the attic ladder and close it all up, only to look up and see that the I left the attic light on. I pull the attic door thing back down, climb up, switch off the light, climb back down and close everything up.
The best new is, that so far we've gone for a week without it going off again. Why it never went off for several years and all the sudden went off 3 times in 2 days at crazy early hours of the morning, we will never know. But, I think we're all good for now. My ears have returned to normal and our house is at peace once again.
I will be doing my best to try and share more of the happenings here in MS because it's always an adventure.
Andrea
