Can't live with them, don't dare live without them

No, it's not men, children, coworkers or the well-meaning jerk in the grocery store who gives unsolicited advice. I'm talking about smoke detectors.

J and I were getting ready for bed about 10:30 last night - all snuggly and happy - when a piercing noise jolts us to full alert. A battery was starting to die in one of the smoke detectors and all of them were beeping in sympathy. Darn empathetic inanimate objects! We rush to take down the offending machinery (they ALL have to come down) and my poor boy was, of course, woken out of a sound sleep and was only consoled in someone's arms for about 45 minutes. I take full responsibility for this. It was my job to get new batteries at the store and replace them and it should have been done weeks ago.

Oh, and my AC went out last week due to a strong surge in electricity during a storm last week. The boy and I were sitting and enjoying Barney for a few minutes and the power flickered. Everything seemed working properly, so I thought nothing more about it. At lunchtime, the boy is eating peanut butter sandwich and I am sweating. Profusely. We are weaning and while I know that my hormones are going nuts, this was really ridiculous. I checked the thermostat. It was set and should have been on so I lowered it a degree and returned the task at hand with a baby who did not seem particularly bothered by the heat.

So it's hotter than ever within ten minutes and I know that the unit hast been running the whole time. How can this be? I check the thermostat. 84 degrees. In the house. 84. It takes me only a moment to realize what has happened. The power surge. Something is fried that was fried before and now the unit is wacky. It was set at 79 and when it reached 81-82 degrees in the house, it correctly determined that the unit should come on. Unfortunately, it was running the heater. The more the unit ran, the hotter the house got, the more it ran trying to cool the house but only made it warmer!

My angel was watching out for me. The local AC/heater repair place we like was about to come out within two and half house and it was fixed (for more money than I wanted to spend, but what are you gonna do?). The real kicker: it happened on the day that the high was a record low for South Texas in August: just 81 degrees.

The heat didn’t bother the boy, especially after I took his clothes off!