This was no April fool's joke......

this was the real deal. And frankly? I can think of a million other things that I would have rather been doing on my morning off.....

You see, today started off like any other day around our house.....chaotic! Teenagers sleeping right through their alarms that everyone ELSE in the house wakes up to, grumpy little boys moving like snails with just a teeny bit of enthusiasm from an excited first grader....because today is a field trip and Daddy is going along!!! (much to Daddy's shagrin)

And me? Well, I'm only working a 1/2 day today, so I had plans of curling up on the couch with my coffee and favorite blanket, and not being in a rush to get out the door.....it was gonna' be perfect. Until............

I heard a very loud chirp coming from one of the 3000 smoke detectors that our house has. (Okay, okay....so there aren't that many, but there are a LOT...I was just sayin'.)

So I hear the chirp, and though the sound is loud and annoying, I had no intentions of it ruining my well thought out plan of doing nothing productive. That is, until I felt the uncontrollable shaking of Angel, our tiny Chihuahua. You see, it seems this noise was foreign to her, and thus scared her half to death. She proceeded to climb on top of me, unconcerned that there was a computer on my lap, and climb my shoulder all the while shaking like a leaf. And every time it would chirp....she would start again. (And this was about every 15 seconds or so....are you getting the visual?)

And did I mention that when she gets scared, she sheds??? Ummm.....yea.....all over my black pajamas.

So I finally decided that since I had no puppy Prozac to give her, I'd better get busy trying to figure out how to change the battery in this thing, or it was going to be a longgggg day.

This is where the story gets ugly.

How was I to know how difficult it would be to replace a stinkin' battery in a smoke detector??? I'm marching in there to determine WHICH detector is making the racket....and proceed to try to take it off the wall.....and then saw the wires and warnings. I proceeded to try to disconnect them to no avail. Was NOT coming off.

Got aggravated, figured Angel was just going to have to live with it.....which reminded me that I hadn't seen her in a while...so maybe she had settled down. Well, apparently not.....because I couldn't find her ANYWHERE. Finally.....after searching all over the house, I walked past my daughter's room (Angel's favorite person in the house), and see a tiny little nose poked out from under her bed!!!

Now as you can clearly see....there are plenty of other things in this room that she should probably be scared of (i.e. that flat iron on the floor!), and there's no TELLING what was under the bed, but for her....it was a safe place....and she was not coming out.

So after exchanging multiple text messages with my husband who was probably having so much fun on a school bus full of first graders......I finally decided that this simply would not do. I had to conquer this.

And I did. But not without the help of my handy dandy ladder, the kitchen chair. And yes, that is a broken spindle and yes the bottom of it IS wired together. It's an antique for goodness sake, and we've had it for 20 years with four kids....cut me some slack here!

And how's a girl suppose to find a battery on top of an old entertainment center??? Can you see why there was a bit of confusion??? Do I need an A? How about a D? No maybe a light bulb....and what's the big family Bible doing up THERE??? Geez.

All for the nerves of a frightened Chihuahua. Angel.....you are loved.....and you can come out now.....I'm just sayin'.