My mom and I have this sort of mantra when it comes to Mondays, they are only meant to be survived. Yesterday was one of those Mondays, where I knew I’d be lucky to do even that.
Admittedly, I woke up in a bad mood to begin with. I’m still not getting enough sleep thanks to my little teething monster, and I’ve been having to wake up far too early as well. You can imagine the effect it had on my already dismal mood when I looked out the window to see that it was cold, dreary and raining outside. Especially when it had been in the seventies and sunny just this past Friday. What happened to Spring?
Anyway, I’m not exactly sure when it became apparent that my whole day was going to go sour eventually. Maybe when the teething monster refused to take a much-needed nap around nine so that Elijah and I could start school. Or maybe it was when my student decided to write all his numbers backwards on his math worksheet. Possibly it was when the rain turned into snow. But perhaps it was when I managed to set off all three smoke detectors in our building’s stairwell…yeah, that was what it was.
I can explain, really. And I didn’t even burn anything. For one thing, I have set them off before, as have my neighbors. They are really finicky smoke detectors in the hallway outside our back door, if I’m ever cooking anything that might get remotely smoky, I make it a point to never open the back door. Well, yesterday I was baking some little cinnamon knots to take to Bible study this morning. I have some really stupid baking sheets with no edges and some of the extra butter that you dip the knots in before dipping them in cinnamon and sugar runs off the edges and gets burned up in the oven. When I came to take them out of the oven nothing smelled burnt, I didn’t even see any smoke. So I moved on to my second task, taking my laundry out of the dryer. The dryer that is in the basement, which meant I had to open the back door to go down. I’ve nearly made it back upstairs and am about to close the door when it happens; that deafening, panicky chirp of a smoke detector. I can tell it’s just ours so I start looking around for a way to shut if off, trying desperately to remember what I’ve seen Matthew do to shut it off before. I vaguely remember seeing people whack their smoke detector with a broom to get it shut off, so I grab a broom. Only one problem, we have ten foot ceilings, I’m 5’3”, which means not tall enough to whack the alarm. Just then there’s an echo from the stairs of more loud beeping, I’ve set off the alarm on the second floor (nope the neighbors weren’t home, so there was no one to help me.) Then there’s more echoing from the stairwell, and I’m pretty sure I have set off the third floor alarm as well (no one lives up there, so I’m still on my own.)
At this point I’ve gone completely deaf. Sophia is still miraculously napping, even though her bedroom door is close to the racket, Elijah is still nonchalantly eating his lunch and watching cartoons, while I’m freaking out. My first thought, as it almost always is on days like these, is to call my mom. At least she would have some idea as to when and how it might shut off. But for once, she doesn’t answer! Second thought is to call my landlord, but I immediately rule that out. There was just no way I was going to be the helpless short girl from the first floor who couldn’t shut off the smoke alarms, no way. Yes, I think that’s called pride, but you haven’t met my landlord.
So, to make a long story a little bit shorter, I eventually got them to shut off by standing on top of the stepladder with Elijah’s little step stool precariously balanced on top. Yay me.
See, this is why I don’t bake.
And I haven’t even gotten into all the other reasons why Monday sucked! We’ll save those for another day, shall we? But just to add insult to injury, or maybe the other way around, I did manage to hurt myself no less than four times yesterday. Matthew suggested, sarcastically of course, that I should keep a list like Raymond did of all the times I get hurt. Gee thanks honey.
But like I said, at least I survived, barely.
