Friday, April 12, 2013

and this is how i ask for help, by pulling the fire alarm

remember those days when i would come on here and blog about how i was woken up by phone calls and construction workers? you may not because it hasn't happened in a blissfully long while. but this morning... oh, this morning was worse than anything.

i was torn from sleep way too early by the screaming wails of a banshee, shrill and ear-splitting and way, way too loud. as soon as my brain registered the fact that it was the inside apartments fire alarm and that i would have to leave, i started groping around my floor in the dark for something to put on. (due to religious reasons i could not just walk out in the shorts and t-shirt that i was sleeping in. i mean, i'm sure i could have if i thought my life was i danger, but i was too busy being confused and angry to think about that.) i go to the tower to get darcy, and he's just sitting frozen in his cage. i grab his carrier and unlatch the cage and he goes crazy. running around in circles in his cage out of fear and pummeling through his wooden house and food bowl and getting caught in his water bottle but not even slowing down. being way too early and way too loud, i freak out and think that his only two options are either snapping his neck/breaking a bone/suffering from some other such injury that looked imminent from the way he was running around not letting me touch him or to potentially burn to death in case it was a real fire. my husband saved him from both and got him in his carrier while i stuck a pillow over the fire alarm to muffle the sound a bit to calm him down so he'd be less terrified.

with fugitive bunny in hand (rabbits are technically not allowed in out apartment so we kind of can't let anyone know that he exists) we head outside. the out of apartments alarm is the deep, booming, bone-rattling alarm from shows that reminds me of pulsing read lights and falling ceilings and heroic running and the world ending. but of course you can also hear the banshee shrieks faintly from inside all of the apartments and it is loud enough to make me very angry. i start wishing horrible things on the person who caused all of this. it's not until i'm almost down to the outside world (third story apartment = stairs) that i realize that neither of us thought to bring our keys. aside from a couple with their dog, some guy that couldn't seem to decide which sidewalk he wanted to stand on, and some kids waiting for the bus (though it was super early and the bus that i always see doesn't come until almost nine so i don't know what school they go to), we were the only ones not warm inside of our cars. rather, we stood shivering on the sidewalk in the wind because it figures that the warm weather would decide to leave today.

anyway, after standing outside for what felt like forever (giving myself half a second to say that i hope it's not a real fire, though i kind of doubted that it was due to the lack of smoke and flames before i went back to my angry muttering), the fire trucks finally decide to grace us with their presence. they go into the middle building (the apartments are grouped in buildings of three for maintenance and fire alarms and stuff) and i decide to direct all of my cussing at the residents of that building. after poking around for a while, they come out and check our building, then they go and check the last building. then they wander around for a while outside, looking for a fire. any fire. they don't find one. they check some secret closet thingie to the side of my building, and i hear one say, "i thought it was a prank, but..." they walk around some more. we all wish that they would hurry up and declare it safe or turn off the alarms or both.

eventually, after realizing that we were all ripped unceremoniously out of dream land (or, at least those of us that didn't have kids or jobs or dogs that required us to be awake before the sun, which judging by people's faces and pajamas were most of us) for no good reason, they turned off the alarm and told us all to go home.

so basically, i hope that if a kid pulled the stupid thing or did something to set it off, s/he fails every single test s/he takes for the rest of the year and never gets another good night's sleep for the rest of their life. if it wasn't a kid, then i wish a lifetime of restless nights on whoever caused it.

only good thing: five minutes after we got inside it started pouring rain. i was calmed down enough to feel grateful that we weren't stuck in it.

*Flying Upside Down - Cold War Kids

6 comments:

  1. anonymous hippopotamusApril 12, 2013 at 12:22 PM

    OH GOD! That was what I hated most about Arlington and Crianza Place....the freaking fire alarms! It's RIDICULOUS how loud they are. Arlington was annoying but Crianza I wanted to freaking kill them...because it wouldn't only wake me up..it would jar awake both boys and leave me with two frightened screaming boys.

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  2. i mean, i get that they have to have it loud enough to wake everyone up so no one can sue them for not waking them up, but goodness gracious do they have to make them so annoying? and crianza was the same company as mine so it was probably the same alarms. it never happened at night before to me. worst. thing. ever.

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  3. anonymous hippopotamusApril 12, 2013 at 2:00 PM

    It happened more than once...in the middle of the night because we lost electricity. :| do we really need the alarm to go off just because we lost electricity?! REALLY?!

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    1. wait did it go off because the electricity came back on? (you remember how our house alarm used to do that?) if they did it on purpose to let you guys know... well, if it was me, i would probably be in prison for murder.

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  4. anonymous hippopotamusApril 14, 2013 at 3:03 AM

    no it went off because the electricity went off. and for some reason they could not turn it off due to the fact that the electricity was out. it was very confusing and very annoying

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