What the heck is that?

Last night we were awakened by a LOUD alarm outside our bedroom. We thought we had a fire. We took off to find the source of the alarm. We realized there was no fire, no smell of smoke, nothing. We were being bombarded with the shrill sound, nevertheless. I had been sick for a couple of days and was foggy in the brain to begin with. Glenn and I went from smoke detector to smoke detector trying to find the culprit. None seemed to be blaring. Glenn got the ladder and we looked like Laurel and Hardy running aimlessly from one to another. We finally realized the sound might be coming from downstairs and down we went.

This sound increased in intensity as we went downstairs and we were encouraged but still there were no smoke alarms near the sound. I finally looked down and saw that our carbon monoxide detector was blinking. I snatched it out of the wall. I opened the doors to air out the house and turned on fans. I opened up the window to our bedroom. Then I plugged the detector back in. Silence.

We kept the house opened up while I shut off both furnaces. We had noticed on Friday that the downstairs furnace was not working. We changed the filters, climbed up in the attic and took a look but resolved to call the repairman when it was not the weekend since the temp. here is not that cold. We made one mistake, however. We should have shut off the faulty furnace. It continued to try to start up every time it got cool enough to trigger the thermostat.

This is the third time our family has been affected by carbon monoxide. My mother's parakeet kept falling off it's perch one winter and I remembered the parakeet in the mine story and how parakeets are affected by gasses earlier than humans. They came and tested her home and found a leak.

Meg, my daughter-in-law was feeling very ill and sleeping for long periods and we found out that their apartment had a leak a few years ago. Long story short.....get a carbon monoxide detector. The life you save could be your own.

Brand New Start

Don't you just love a new year. This morning I woke up at home after traveling from Utah yesterday. I say yesterday because I started the day before but didn't arrive until 1:30 in the morning (yesterday). I felt like I slept most of yesterday because I fell asleep everytime I stopped moving.

I woke up this morning and cleaned a drawer and dusted off my journal. I got excited about organizing my house. All of my children are married now and even though they've all been out of the house on their own for several years, it feels final now. So, I'm going to clean out the closets and permanently reorganize everything. It just feels like a fun thing to do.
I've been finding funny stuff in the drawers like Cassie's New Years resolutions in a notebook she had when she was in High School. Two of her top ones were: Get organized and don't criticise.
That's a pretty simple start for a new year. So, since I've already started the organization part....I'm going to make a point to not criticise. Glenn will like that.

Oh, and I hope to laugh a lot. Hope you'll laugh along with me. It'll make us all feel younger.
Here's one to start us off.

My mom gave out homemade choke cherry jelly to her friends this year for Christmas. She handed them the jars of jelly telling them it is great on pancakes. When she arrived home, she looked for a jar of pickled beets that she received from a friend the day before. They were not there. She realized that she had given out the beets instead of the jelly. The mystery of who got the beets was solved when her friend called and told her the choke cherry jam mom gave them, looked rather like pickled beets. I wonder how they tasted on pancakes.