When I took off for my walk this morning, it was just after six and I could not figure out whether it was the trees or the clouds that were raining. Or misting would be a better word. It was a beautiful morning, all in all, but I had not taken an umbrella with me and so my glasses were getting all misted up and since they don’t have veeeeeendsheeeeeld vipers on zem, my ability to see anything was getting rather diminished. I wavered for about a block. Go back and get my umbrella? Or not. I didn’t. It was okay, the weather dried up just a bit.

When I got home, my feet were filthy from walking in the woods and so I ran some water in the Blue Tub and washed them. 30 seconds later, I was sitting at my computer in the Landfill Chitchen and beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeppppppp beeeeeeeeppppp beeeeep beeepp. It was the newfangled hard-waaaarrrred smoke rain alarm that we were mandated to install after the last tree fell on our house. Yes, there have been two tree incidents. I was pretty darn sure there wasn’t a faaarrrrr anywhere. I know faaarrrrs can happen fast but there was NO faaaarrrr anywhere, just a dern stoopid smoke rain alarm that goes off when it’s extra humid outside. Which it was, plus I think I kicked it over the edge by the small act of washing my feet in the bathtub without turning on the bathroom fan. Who knew?

This time it was relatively easy to get the dern thing to shaddap. I reached into the “broom closet” and flipped the big attic fan on. It turned off and didn’t turn back on. But yaknow? These things are an annoyance. I am not trying to say that they aren’t important and don’t save lives. I know they do. I don’t even mind that they are a bit over-sensitive. But can’t we make these things a bit more user-friendly. Eh? Okay, I think I know why we always install them near the ceiling. But whaddya do when they go off in the middle of the night for some random non-faaaarrrr-related reason and you are scrambling to find a stool or chair or something so you can get up there and pull the damn (sorry) thing down so you can get the battery out or whatever. What if you are in a WHEELCHAIR!!!! Or sick. Or whatever.

I’m brainstorming here. First, we have waaarrless technology these days, roight? So. When the blasted battery is about to expire (and even my hard-waaaarrrred smoke rain detector has one of those, which is one reason it’s so damn hard to turn it off), why can’t it be “smart” enough to email or text me? Or at the least, it could be set to not start beeping about the battery until morning! If the battery is just getting low, why not wait until people are awake and relatively sentient. It’s not an emergency, especially if the blasted thing is also hard-waaarrred to the house lucky-shuckial system. And of course we could lose power too but I’m not sure I’m ready to figger that out yet.

Also, for those occasions when the damn thing goes off because of RAIN (or bacon), how about some kind of remote-control system that would allow you to push a button to turn the blasted thing off. I know, I know. What if a little kid grabbed the remote unit and turned it off during a real fire? That possibility would have to be thought through. What I think would happen more often is that the adults in the house would stash the remote control unit in random spots and then not be able to find it when it was needed. Or mix it up with the TV remote control unit(s).

I dunno. These are just ideas. I think smoke rain alarms could be designed to be more user-friendly, especially with today’s technology. Smoke rain alarms have been around for my kids’ entire lives and one of them says that she has heard smoke alarms go off for nothing so many times in her life that she doesn’t much pay attention to them. Whaddya think? How can we make these things more user friendly?

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