i feel like i'm living the worst day over and over again

so this is a story about how i finally started to hate my apartment that i always refused to move out of even when i think it is too small to breathe in, aka the time i realized how effective torture is, aka why yesterday and the day before were really sucky. (every time i say/think/write "this is a story" i want to finish it with "about a girl named lucky" and if you don't get that reference then i'm not sure we can be friends anymore. except still be my friend, please.)

so the day before yesterday i got on here all quasi-hopeful and talking about sleep and running or something. i was taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly and trying to get out of a funk. i really thought it would work. and then the fire alarm happened. oh, that alarm. you may remember my last real encounter with this fire alarm when i was ripped from sleep and forced to stand outside in the cold with a not-allowed bunny while they tried to figure out why it was screaming. (the alarm, not the bunny.) this time was worse.

i think i should start my story with the email i received a few days ago from my apartment people saying that they would be testing the fire alarms on the seventh, or tuesday. now, i spend my entire tuesday at my parents' house. it's kind of my thing. and last year when they checked the alarms, they turned them on for maybe five seconds, made sure the banshee that lives inside the smoke detectors could still wail, and then turned them off. so of course i didn't give the email a second thought.

tuesday came and passed and then it was wednesday. the eighth. meaning the day after the testing was supposed to happen. i'm sitting in my apartment eating string cheese to spite my stomach that was trying to tell me i was nauseous, feeling nervous for no reason, and trying to work up the will to go out and run the errands that i needed to run. and that's when the wailing started. when you are sitting in a quiet apartment one minute and the next minute it is filled with the cries of the entire world being ripped apart, you freeze for a second to try and process what happened. there's no way around it. after i unfroze, my immediate response was to go and hold a pillow up to the alarm to try and muffle it. (it is still way too loud even when muffled.) my first rational thought was that they were doing the testing and it would turn off in a second.

but it didn't.

could it actually be a real fire? i wondered. on the off chance that it was, i threw on some jeans and went to get darcy in his carrier to flee to safety. of course, to do that, i had to stop muffling the alarm with a pillow. that means that it was once again loud enough that you felt that your bones would shatter from the mere intensity of it. which of course freaked darcy out. he ran into the side of his cage twice before finding the door and raced around his playpen in a panic, barreling through obstacles like they weren't there. (you may remember that last time my husband had to get darcy. this time, my husband was at work.) any time i got near the playpen, he would go crazy. i went back to muffle the alarm and think of my options.

(can i just take a second here to point out that i suck at fire alarms? i remember in school i always knew that if there was a real fire i would be the idiot that stayed behind and burned because i was trying to get all my stuff to safety. apparently, i never grew up.)

as i saw it, there were two possible scenarios: either there was a fire or there wasn't. if there was, i could either try and get darcy in a carrier which would probably result in him being hurt along the way or i could just leave on my own. if there wasn't, well, the alarm would turn off eventually, right? wrong. i decided to stand there with a pillow over the alarm and just hope for the best because i'm really smart. but it. would. not. stop. and you know that anxiety that i was feeling? yeah, it just loved it. so i was standing there trying to muffle the constant keening of the alarm inside as i heard the almost BONG BONG BONG of the alarm outside and i lost it. obviously. i stood there sobbing into the chalkboard that hangs on my wall under the alarm as i had a panic attack on the phone to my sister.

i sounded just hysterical enough that my sister ended up taking a cab from her office to my apartment (even though i told her not to bother). (another brief interruption: i may be a tad biased, but i really do have the best sisters ever.) and the alarm went on. and on. and on. i seriously thought it would never stop. my arms burned from holding them up for so long, but i couldn't let them down or the alarm would kill me, i was sure. it was already too loud, especially since i was standing right under it. after an hour it finally went from the wailing to a staticky gurgle type sound, almost like it was losing its voice. that was when i moved to the couch. after about twenty minutes of that, there was silence. and my nerves were shattered. (that was when my sister showed up, and then we went out for some coffee.)

yesterday i get out of bed after not sleeping most of the night and think, okay today i will pull myself out of my funk. because i'm stupid like that and apparently tempting fate is my favorite thing to do. i was going to run all of the errands i didn't do the day before. i was going to drop something off at my sister's office. i was going to make buttons or something for my brother's sga campaign. but first, i was going to take a shower. i was just stepping into the shower when the effing alarm goes off again. i didn't waste time with any thinking this time. i just started to cry (give me a break, i was tired. and hormones suck.) and went out to hold a pillow over the alarm. i did manage to throw on a shirt first. which was good. because a minute later i hear my front door open and a guy walks in saying, "fire marshal!" (apparently he knocked first but i couldn't hear it because the alarm is loud in case you haven't gotten that yet. my sister found this hilarious and said that it sounded like the start of a really bad porno, so there's that.)

maybe having the fire marshal come into your house when the fire alarm is going off and see you trying to muffle said alarm instead of actually leaving the house is not the best situation to be in, but instead of pulling off the pillow, i just asked, "is this, like, real?" i'm so good with words, and also, i already looked like an idiot so whatever. he probably thought i was on drugs, but he hid it pretty well, and just said, "no ma'am. we're just testing it. it'll be off in a second." only, it wasn't. five minutes later it did turn off, but then a few minutes after that, it turned back on again. and that's how it went for hours: on and off, off and on. and it was so much worse than having it be on for an hour straight. because you never knew when it was going to come back. my nerves were so far past fried. i couldn't stop shaking. i was jumpy. i was tired. if i was being detained i would have confessed to anything just to make it stop. it was awful. and i suppose i could have just taken darcy in a minute of silence and left the house for the day, but what was i going to do with a rabbit in tow? plus, it didn't actually occur to me until later.

anyway, it had been quiet for about an hour and a half, and i was pretty sure that the whole ordeal was over but i couldn't untense myself because what if it wasn't? (it actually was, though.) and then the ups guy came and knocked on my door and i screamed. like way too loud. i think i probably gave him a heart attack. (after which i stuck my head out of the door while he ran down the stairs and called out a thank you.) scaring the ups guy made me laugh, and loosened me up enough for me to finally just shower and leave the house for an hour, but my god it was really the worst.

anyway, it is almost noon now and the fire alarm has not gone off at all so already today is awesome. hope yours is, too!

*Worst Day Ever - Simple Plan