Happy New Beeeeppppp

One of the things I've always loved about my cookie-cutter townhouse is the way the vaulted ceilings in the master suite soar upwards as the sunlight refracts across the angles.

I loved it until approximately 3:43 this morning as the overzealous smoke detector shocked me from my slumber once again. It's the smoke detector that cried wolf and somehow we have to find a way to reach it to turn it off.

In the almost four years that we've owned this house, we've been roused from bed in this manner no less than eight times. Being the safety-conscious folks we are, we still check for smoke even though we know we won't find it. Once we even called the fire department in the middle of the night so they could check out the whole house and alleviate our worry.

Once we're sure the coast is clear, we enter into the ritual that gets more annoying each time. With the alarm still screaming I grab the phone, awaiting the inevitable call from the alarm monitoring company. Rich grabs the Little Giant ladder.

Then, as we fight off the effects of our sleeping pills, we try to move our bedroom furniture, turn off the ceiling fan, and set up the heavy ladder. I stumble to the top to grab the piece of howling disc.

We've tried to fix it more than once. My dad replaced all of the smoke detectors in the house. We also replaced the batteries. Still, in the middle of the night -- and it's always in the middle of the night -- it goes off.

I think we have to move.