Another nice Sunday morning sleep-in interrupted around eight. I noticed when I went into the bathroom that it was raining quite hard outside. As I crawled back into bed, thunder went off like tympani overhead, but we slept on.

James was still getting dressed, but I was heading out to walk Tucker when the smoke alarm went off. It sounded two long shrills and was silent, but it galvanized me into action. I uncovered Snowy, but left Tucker in his crate. I yelled to James to check upstairs and in the attic, and I ran downstairs and opened all the closets and checked the rooms and even the garage. As I was checking and James was on the ladder to the attic, there were two long shrills again, and then, when I ran outside to check the roof, because of the thunder and presumed accompanying lightning earlier, I heard it shrill again, but as with the first time, it was only two quick shrills; it wasn't prolonged and it certainly wasn't the "chirp" of a dead battery. James found nothing and smelled nothing, not even in the attic.

With no idea what to do, I called 911 and the nice dispatcher asked me a couple of questions, which I could barely answer because I could hardly breathe, and then said she would send someone over to check it out. A few minutes later we had four nice firemen walking through the house—and you could tell they'd been through fires; they smelled of fire, especially the one in the coveralls. They went in the attic, walked through the house, checked the garage and downstairs, and the breaker box. They found no sign of smoke or carbon monoxide. They told us that smoke detectors have a shelf life of ten years, and ours are over nine, and that when they start going bad they do start going off intermittently, so it looks like we are in the market for some new smoke detectors.

The question: why this morning? And why just at that time? Odd.

So I went back to taking Tucker for a walk, and we had breakfast and then went to the big Publix near Kaiser, because they are across the street from a Rite Aid. (Hold on, this makes sense in a minute.) The "big Publix" usually has items we can't find in the one near us, things like the rice linguine. We were there to replenish James' -salads (ham salad, etc. that he has for a snack instead of sweets), get bananas for my lunch, and buy salad to have with the teriyaki chicken I got yesterday. Then we stopped by the deli and found out they had chicken and wild rice soup; I love theirs, so we got that for supper instead. We also are trying a Publix pork roast bits (like the Hormel dinners) dinner. We also bought some magazines, and, yeah, we never bought the salad. Did have to get those damn bananas for work, though. :-)

On the way back we stopped at Rite Aid drugs. I've been looking for a powder puff for months and can't find one, for use with cornstarch on hot days. A search yesterday online reminded me that Jean Nate powder came with a powder puff—and Rite Aid carries Jean Nate. So now I have a powder puff, but had to buy the Jean Nate alone with it. Ah, well, as the Duke of Rudling says at the end of Lassie Come-Home, perhaps that's not the worst part of the bargain.

We took the groceries home, had a little lunch, then went out to Lowes to look for new smoke detectors. We wandered about a little first, looking at light bulbs (still trying to find ceiling fan size LEDs) and dishwashers. Their $500 Bosch was on sale for $450.

We did find the smoke detectors, and then realized, although we thought ours were hardwired in, we weren't really certain. We also thought they were carbon monoxide detectors, and they aren't. We ended up buying one which has a lithium ion battery which will last ten years.

And then we went back and bought the dishwasher. There are a lot fancier ones, with extra trays, but this one just washes dishes, and that's what we need. It has a filter you can remove and clean, unlike the old one and its clog of black ick. And we loved our last Bosch with the stainless steel interior. They'll call us Tuesday to make an appointment to install it.

(I really don't want to see what's under the old one, but I must. I remember Scott having to put all that powder to get rid of the roaches we got from the bags of bird seed at Fred's discount store. There may be little bodies back there. Ugh.)

Had the chicken and wild rice soup for supper, watched America's Funniest Home Videos, then found a marathon of To Tell the Truth on Buzzr.

Labels: appliances, food, shopping, television

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 9:46:00 PM

Comments:

Glad to learn you're getting a new dishwasher, I've been worried about you. I hope the weather starts cooling down, so you'll start feeling better.

# posted by  Unknown : 9:23:00 AM

 

Between the heat and end of fiscal year summer is usually a hard season. James isn't heat tolerant either, and very sensitive to the sun with all his meds. Sometimes all he does is drive to work and drive home or drive us out to a store on weekends, and he comes back with sunburn.

# posted by  Linda : 7:32:00 AM

 

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