Friday, January 7, 2022

Ten Things of Thankful - Quieting the Chirp

The day began on a very quiet note, too quiet, and too dark, but the noise level very quickly picked up, a lot! Most of my Ten Things of Thankful blog hop post today revolves around this single day. Thank you Dyanne for hosting week after week. (Be sure to check out her blog at Backsies Is What There Is Not.) 

1. At least the temperatures were not as low this morning when we awoke to a power outage as they were when we had the week-long snowstorm recently.


2. Cotton balls in my ears while wearing a headset came in really handy while trying to soften the blaring of the smoke alarm high up in a vaulted ceiling.

Neither of us can safely climb a tall ladder now to change the battery in this particular smoke  alarm. For some reason, the blaring of the smoke alarm began soon after the power outage happened. BTW, I am so thankful this didn’t happen when we were without power for a stretch of  14 days last year.



Cotton balls in the ears
covered by a headset
helped quiet the noise


3. Hearing loss has a lot of disadvantages, sometimes even when wearing hearing aids, but without wearing them the person is at a real advantage in situations such as in #2. What was very painful for me to endure without resorting to the methods described wasn’t in the least to my husband.


4. Having our camp stove and the fuel needed to operate it, plus having weather that didn’t include rain while we were using it was much appreciated.


5. Power packs, charged and ready to use during the power outage was helpful since I hadn’t charged my phone before I went to bed last night.


6. When we reported the outage first thing this morning, we were told it was going to be five hours before power was restored. Later the power company extended the repair time to an additional four hours, so when the power came back on sooner than the first time given, we were very happy. 😊


7. The blaring of the smoke alarm stopped with the return of the power, but has continued with a loud chirp every 18 seconds, and while it is a chirp that doesn’t hurt one’s ears, it just might drive me crazy if this continues for many days.


8. After contacting an electrical business this afternoon, I discovered that they don’t usually have anyone working on Saturdays, but this Saturday they do. The serviceman will take care of our smoke alarm, plus another little job we have put off doing during these past two years. The woman who took my call said that it must be our lucky day. . .that it was a miracle! As for me, I truly was expecting that we would have to wait until later next week for the service to be done. 


9. Walking trails made by others, which in this case is  a path made by deer




10. Family and others who have been able to stay safe in all sorts of circumstances this week


Vic, our family, and all our friends and acquaintances




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6 comments:

  1. Power restored (after an outage)... a TToT all in a second*
    There is also (as your Item 7) the tactile silence when it stops... very cool.
    not a fan of power outages.
    Good to hear that normalcy is being restored.

    *apologies to William Blake

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    1. Your mention of William Blake made me smile.

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  2. Hooray for the electrical service guy! We put our smoke alarms on top of the bookshelf, rather high, but we can reach it with a small stepstool.

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    1. If the smoke alarms were only battery operated, that would work, but these are wired and have batteries in case of an power outage. We ended up getting all of them replaced. We were told that it was way past time for doing that.

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  3. See? You are always prepared for whatever the weather throws at you, especially power outages. That smoke alarm! Our house alarm does things like that when the power goes out. That chirping noise might have given you Havana Syndrome if that lovely workman hadn't been able to get to you on Saturday!

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    1. Dyanne, what we learned is that smoke alarms are only reliable for a certain length of time. We assumed that if we kept good batteries in the alarms, etc. that they were still working properly. Apparently that isn't the case. We were told that after an extended time of usage, they might go off when there wasn't smoke or wasn't a fire, or do the strange thing ours did when we had a power outage. I guess, the moral of the story is even smoke alarms only function properly for a certain length of time before they need to replaced with a newer model.

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