Transient Transplant

After traveling I always need a recharge, which usually involves watching some mindless tv and not leaving my apartment unless absolutely necessary for a few days.

And drinking plenty of wine of course.

So a few weeks ago my only past time was counting down the work clock until I could pour a glass of vino and change into sweat pants.  I’m not even complaining about it.

I caught up on the adventures of the Alaskan Bush People, who apparently are no longer in Alaska but have relocated to Washington state close to the Canadian border.  I love watching them try to “make it” living off grid.

I have a weird fascination with tv that has nothing to do with my life or hobbies.  This definitely fits the mold for me since I like the comforts of city living, and I feel outdoorsy going on a walk around Green Lake.

No one wants to watch a reality show about my life called “Surviving in Seattle:  Single Girl with One Income Making End Meet.”

It would really just be a camera in my apartment watching me watch tv and pay bills and fail to cook meals.

I sipped my wine thinking how typical Washingtonian of me that I didn’t even know my neighbors.  The Brown family (from the show–in case not everyone spends their precious free time watching trashy tv) could have rented an apartment next to me, and I wouldn’t know it.

Except I probably would because they always seem to be howling in unison as a family at the end of each episode, so I likely would have filed a noise complaint about them by now.

After a few glasses of wine, I heard a beep in the background.

“Was that on the tv?”  I wondered to myself.

I settled back into the couch, laughing out loud when two of the sons decided to “get to know their neighbor who ran a junk yard,” who I figured would give them a Seattle freeze vibe.  That’s when I heard it again.

Beep beep beep.

Three times in a row, short and fast.

Was I losing my mind?

I walked slowly through the apartment, until I found the right fire detector, and sure enough there it was again.

Beep beep beep.

I love living in an apartment complex because I want someone else to fix everything that goes wrong in my home, and I don’t ever want it to be my issue.

But there are office hours for maintenance…and 9.30pm was past the point where anyone would be around.

Did this qualify as an emergency?  

Maybe in my mind, but I figured I could just take the batteries out.

Very easy…until I realized I couldn’t reach the fire alarm.

So I pulled a chair over and stood on my tiptoes trying to reach the alarm, its taunting triple beep happening every minute or so.

I couldn’t read the instructions, so I hit buttons and nothing happened.  

I figured the chances of me falling off of the chair, hitting my head, and bleeding out were high and I’d have to know people would find my body next to a wine glass on the coffee table and Alaskan Bush People playing in the background.

Not the ideal way to go.

By some miracle I finally knocked something the right way so that it stopped beeping.

I assumed the battery was just dying.  I’d set the fire alarm off several times before (shocking, I know) and that is an ear piercing sound I couldn’t mistake for this little beep.

I sat back down on the couch and curled up under a blanket, hearing the phantom beeps in my head and wondering to myself, “what if that was the carbon monoxide detector?”

After about an hour, I convinced myself one of my other alarms would go off if it was a real emergency.  Worst case scenario, dying in my sleep of carbon monoxide poisoning wasn’t the worst way to go.

I settled into bed and eventually fell asleep after I convinced myself I’d have an easier time dozing off if I was truly slowly inhaling carbon monoxide.

I woke up the next morning feeling like I had cheated death until I told my story to a friend who used to live in my buidling and informed me that I don’t actually have any appliance that would leak carbon monoxide, so it was never really a threat to begin with.

So I wasn’t actually living on the edge after all.