The Resident Quacks

Lord help our neighbors and please don’t let them call the looney bin on us. Amen.

So after my neighbors have watched me take the simple act of backing out of our driveway to a whole new level and after the 6am chasing of my dog down the wet street in my pajamas, I thought there was nothing that we could do to make them wonder about us more. Then the fire trucks showed up outside our house at 3am last night.

But let me digress to where the night really started to get fun. Princess Newbie was sick all day.  We gave her some medicine for fever and coughing and put her to bed at her usual bedtime but the coughing just wouldn’t stop. She kept waking up and the cough seemed to be getting worse and worse. So at midnight I headed upstairs to try and get the cough under control while Damion headed to bed. After a humidifier, a few extra pillows and some back rubbing I finally got her sound asleep with no more coughing and headed to my own bed at 1:30am.

It seems like I was only asleep for five minutes, although it was really 3am,  when I heard Damion saying, “Bobbie! Bobbie! the phone is ringing!”. I never heard it ring so I thought he was just dreaming. Then two seconds later I felt something roll over the top of me and saw Damion grab for the phone that was on my nightstand. I still hadn’t heard a single ring so at this point I started to question his sanity. Apparently no one was on the phone because he chose to climb right back over me to get back to his pillow rather than walking around the bed. At this point everything was a little foggy and blurry.

Then Damion’s cell phone started ringing a little louder than a freight train. I was starting to think that if it was someone from his job calling, they were going to have to answer to me the next day. Then I heard the words “medical” come out of his mouth and I freaked. I shot up in bed thinking that one of our families members must be hurt and at some medical center. That is the only reason that I could come up with for this crazy 3am phone call. Then if it just couldn’t get any weirder I heard Damion start shouting this crazy word that only makes sense to us. Apparently I needed to order him that fancy white jacket with extra long sleeves because the dude is loosing it.

He looked over at me and said, ” The medical alarm here at the house is going off, an ambulance will be here any minute.”  Then it hit me that the crazy word happens to also be the security word we have to give when the alarm company calls us.

I hopped out the bed and sprinted to the door because I did not want EMT’s banging on the door and waking sick Princess Newbie up. Damion hung up and was right on my tail saying, “do you think they’ll really send an ambulance”?  But since I reached the door first and could hear a loud grumbling sound, I knew the truth.  Oh no, they weren’t sending a quiet little ambulance. There was a huge red diesel firetruck blazing down the street with lights flashing but thankfully no sirens, thankfully.

You see, we had not pressed the medical emergency button. We were both asleep, the cat was asleep, the dogs were asleep outside and all the kids were asleep. The alarm had somehow malfunctioned.

I had to break the bad news to the four very tired firemen that sprinted up to our front door while I stood there on the porch with mismatched pajamas and wild hair.  Tonight I will think a little harder about my pajama choices because of this.

Finally they were convinced that everyone was alright and it was just a false alarm so they loaded back up and left.

We laid back down in bed but I couldn’t sleep because I was just sure that the second I fell asleep we would get another visitor. The good news is that no one else showed up but the bad news is that I was up until 5am because of the nerves and adrenaline.

Today the alarm company sent someone out to reprogram the alarm. However they can’t guarantee it won’t happen again (soon) and they had to set off the entire house alarm to reprogram it. Which means that any neighbors that were home probably heard it go off.

Seriously they are going to be wondering what kinda of quacks moved into this neighborhood. Seriously, I’m thinking the same thing.

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