It was truly a dark and stormy night here in Southern California with whipping winds and rain coming down in buckets. The garden was well past saturation point and now I had to start worrying about the tall stately cacti and succulents on my hilltop that tend to fall over under their own weight when things get too soggy. We had gone out to an anniversary (18th) dinner with houseguest Phillip and Kim’s brother Jeff and Lisa. Once again, we went to Vintana, the best Class A restaurant over a Lexus dealership in all of Escondido. We enjoy overpaying for so-so food served with great pretension as the little people below pick up their cars from the shop. It was wet and windy getting to the car from the restaurant and wet and windy getting in the house from the car. We called it an early night all around since Phillip had an early morning flight and Kim and I are not used to so much meteorological excitement.
As we have aged, we have all donned our own particular sleep apparatuses. Kim is a big user of earplugs and occasionally eye masks. I have my CPAP and a recently revived habit of a nose strip, intended to keep my nasal passages as open as possible. I am also this week keeping a pillow between my knees for the benefit of my healing right knee boo-boo. Buddy goes to bed a-cappella, but on alert for any untoward movement so that he can yap when I get up to go to the bathroom before grumbling himself back to sleep in the knowledge that he has protected the household from the bogey man who lurks just beyond the bathroom door.
Buddy sleeps with one eye open. Any budge from Kim or me is grounds for arrousal. If I’m sitting on the edge of the tub as I am right now, he must come in and see that I’m ok before shaking and toddling off back to bed. So, imagine my surprise that when I was awoken tonight by a strange noise, Buddy was not the least bit perturbed by it. It almost made me think I was imagining it since surely Buddy would have none of that without a fuss. Then, after a few minutes, there it was again, a very distinct sound that had nothing to do with the howling wind and pelting rain. I know that wild animals seek unusual shelter in strong storms, but this sound did not seem animalistic. It was a chirp.
Naturally, I wondered from my pillow if one of our mechanical systems was responding to the storm. I chose to ignore it in deference to my sore knee. No such luck. This chirp kept coming. It became abundantly clear that someone had not changed the batteries out on the smoke detector at the six month interval as per neighbor Mike’s exhortation about regularizing household system maintenance. So, what to do? Changing out that hallway ceiling battery involved getting the ladder from the kitchen, finding the right detector that’s chirping, figuring out how to extract the battery from the ladder perch, finding a replacement battery, putting the detector back together, getting down safely from the ladder, and then going back to sleep, all while Buddy is playing alert and noisy watchdog. In other words, this was not an easy undertaking for the middle of the night.
It took another three chirps to convince me that I was up and had no hope of a peaceful night unless I grappled with the beast and changed out that battery. I grabbed my trusty bedside flashlight and went to the kitchen for the three-step ladder. I turned on the hallway light and found a replacement 9v battery exactly where it belonged in the battery case in the laundry room. I set up the ladder, had the foresight to prepare a screwdriver and pliers, and placed one foot on the ladder before remembering just how sore that right knee was. That’s when I realized I needed help. I heard Kim arousing from the commotion and asked her if she was awake and could come and help. I had the gear all set up but needed her to climb the three steps up the ladder. Kim is always game for a challenge and she didn’t hesitate to embrace the task. She got the old battery out with a thud as it hit the floor, and took the new battery from my hand and popped it into the round plastic mechanism. The job was done. While I put away the tools, the battery box and the ladder into the laundry room, she hunted for and retrieved the dead 9v.
It was then, as we both went back into the bedroom by the light of my flashlight (once I had cycled it through its flashing and colored light protocols) that we realized that Buddy, the dog that cannot keep quiet when either of us moves a muscle in bed, had been entirely silent during the whole ordeal. In fact, he had not followed us out of the bedroom into the hallway, which seemed very out of character. As we got to the bed, the flashlight shone on little Buddy, sitting upright in the middle of the bed staring at us silently as we approached. He had that bewildered “What was all that?” look about him. Clearly, his yapping bravado did not extend itself to anything out of the ordinary that went on at night, and certainly not anything involving that scary outer hallway. So much for Buddy the watchdog. I guess 7 pound bravery has its limits.
I lay back in bed and, not surprisingly, found that I was I bit too wound up to fall asleep. Suddenly, every sound of the storm and every shadow in the room had a story behind it. I hate it when that happens. So, now I am back in the dark bathroom sitting on the edge of the tub, pounding out the night’s story in hopes of making myself sleepy again. Buddy has come in to check that I’m ok and has then bravely trotted back out to the bed to fall asleep without a care. It’s 5:35am now, so I may try to get in a cat nap…unless, of course, Buddy has other plans for my early morning storm watch.