Sound the Alarms

4:09 am bright blue flash, bright enough to wake me up to the power going off; power on one second another bright blue flash in the sky; lightening? Power off.

5 minutes go by, I can hear an alarm going off in my basement. Uhho, the water alarm for my sometimes flooding window well. I thought, I’d better investigate, but no electricity, dark basement, creeped me out. I got the dog, flashlight, cell phone, and pepper sparay; then set off the security alarm. Ok I got that turned off and was heading down stairs when the phone rings, lucily I have one that works without power in the kitchen. It was the alarm company wanting to make sure everything is ok, it’s nice. So, I’m asking if an alarm will sound in the basement the whole time the power is out. She said yes. However, the power has gone out before without that happening. So, I thought I’d better check the window and the alarm wasn’t coming from the window but inside my furnace room.

So, now I’m thinking that it’s a backup security alarm letting me know the power is out, even though it has cell phone technologie for just such cases. I decided to go back to bed and hope the alarm quit.

I can’t sleep with a steady alarm going off in my furnace room, so I’m thinking about that and then wonder if it’s a CO¹ detector. I don’t want to open the door, but the detector isn’t going off upstairs. I don’t have a way to double check CO¹. Thus, a “non-emergency” call to 911 get someone with a dector in the house.

2 minutes before the firemen arrive the power comes back on and I think that the alarm will go off. So, I reset the security alarm no luck.

Yay, firemen here and I open the door and set off the security alarm again as they head downstairs. I get that turned off and they call me downstairs. One is standing in the furnace room looking at the ceiling, we can’t find the alarm until he kicks it. It IS a water alarm. In just perfect timing my water conditioner was recycling and we have a sump pump for the basement, which doesn’t work without electricity. I’ll have to remember not to flush a toilet down there with no power. So, the brine water flooded the furnace room and I still haven’t gone down to see how badly or how much soaked carpet I have. I just can’t face it.

So, the nice firemen leave and I reset my security alarm go to bed and now I have a smoke alarm chirping away because it thinks it needs a new battery.

Now, wake-up alarms go off on radios and clocks. We all have a backup alarm set on our phones, so 3 phone alarms go off to wake me up; it’s not necessary because I’ve been awake since 4:09.

I’m really tired of alarms going off, but there’s a reminder bell then the door bell; I have to go now.

Spider nest the size of a gum ball!

Last night I looked above the door casing to my bedroom and noticed a white ball atop the casing the size of a gum ball.

Now, I don’t know what size of spider would make a nest sac that huge, but it freaked me out. I got the Raid and sprayed until it was dripping on to the carpet (paper towels now catching what I could). I watched, waited … nothing.

I decided that the Raid had to have done it’s job and an hour later, I took tissue and picked it up and quickly flushed it. I didn’t want to squeeze it, but it felt a bit “rubbery”. I wondered; does Raid do something to spider silk and make it rubbery?

I went to bed imagining a mad mother spider after me, or a thousand little babies walking on my ceiling and then dropping onto my bed. I tossed and turned and didn’t sleep well.

This morning, my 10 year old say’s; “so Mom, was the spider nest pink?” No, it was white, why? His reply; “I was catching gum in my mouth and one time I tossed it up, but it never came down.”

Okay.