In Which I Both Do and Do Not Wish My Smoke Alarm Would Go Off

[queerbychoice]

There are very, very few ways in which I find my current apartment inferior to my old one, but here are two closely related ones:

1. I have no idea how to turn off the smoke alarm here. There are no apparent batteries, and no apparent way to disconnect the wires, short of ripping them out permanently. There is a way to unscrew the smoke alarm from the ceiling, but it's still connected to the wires, and the light that shows the power is on remains lit.

2. I've never actually needed to find out how to turn off the smoke alarm here, because no matter how many times I stupidly overcook things, and no matter how much smoke comes billowing out of the microwave, the smoke alarm never actually goes off. Whereas at my old apartment, the smoke alarm would go off anytime I even faintly singed a meal at all, long before the meal had actually ceased to be edible or produced any visible or smellable (to my inferior human senses) smoke at all. This makes me suspect that the smoke alarm at my current apartment is so insensitive to smoke that if there was ever a real, dangerous fire while I wasn't awake to notice, the smoke alarm would probably not get around to warning me of a fire by actually going off until after I had already finished burning to death. Admittedly, the smoke alarm at my current apartment is not three feet from the oven like the smoke alarm at my old apartment was. But it's not that far away.

Tonight's cooking disaster was brought about by trying to make a coffee-free, lactose-free, alcohol-free (I didn't really object to the alcohol since it would have been cooked away anyway, but I couldn't find it at the grocery store and I did object to having to go to a liquor store, because all the liquor stores I know of are surrounded by the sorts of people who hang out at liquor stores all day long) variation of this recipe posted by rampling. And if you're thinking, "But Gayle, there's practically nothing left of that recipe if you remove all the coffee, lactose, and alcohol!" then you're quite right. Which is probably why the cooking instructions did not work well when I drastically changed all the ingredients.

(I did eventually produce a food of some sort, containing pears and chocolate and bearing not much other resemblance to the recipe. It's edible . . . but I think there are far better uses for chocolate than this one.)

Completely unrelatedly: I'm not normally in the habit of recommending books that I haven't actually read myself, but I feel that books written entirely by spelling out the words with eye-blinking merit an exception. Thanks, kejlina (who has read one), for sharing that!

Comments

[post-planomanic.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you recommended this book, since I'm working on a big project (perhaps dissertation!) studying memoirs published in the past decade and a half written by women with disabilities.

Btw, I read your posts regularly and always laugh about your naughty cat. I recently added a kitten to the brood -- what a bad, bad cat! He carries around bags of any sort -- baggies, bags of chips, grocery bags, even dragged his 5-lb bag of kitten food (he was like 2 lbs at the time) across the living room floor. Usually, they calm down once they're over a year old (my first cat did), but I have a friend w/2 older cats that are just as naughty as the day he brought them home. :)

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

Thanks! My cat is 10 months old, and she has gotten less hyperactive than she was at 3 months, but she has also started learning more clever new ways of getting into trouble. I guess I'll find out in two more months what she'll be like at a year old.

[post-planomanic.livejournal.com]

Or you can do what I did -- wear the cat down with lots of stimulation -- friends coming over, moving apartments. Heck, he even flew solo cross country from California to where I am now, in Maryland! *That* mellowed him, and made him friendlier to boot! Do you play with your cat a lot -- I imagine you do, actually. That can help them from being naughty. Also, maybe it sounds mean, but spray bottles full of water actually work wonders. The cat has no idea (really) where it's coming from, and abruptly runs off when you spray near on on her. No harm done, but the message is clear. Now, when the kitten threatens something naughty, I just show him the bottle and make a little hissing noise, and he runs off.

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

My cat is unusually unbothered by water. I've tried spray bottles on her plenty, but she takes very little notice of them. She does react a little mroe to a hissing noise, but it only causes her to leave after she's been caught, rather than to refrain from getting in trouble in exactly the same way 5 seconds later, as soon as I turn away.

I used to play with her more than I do now, because she was more willing when she was littler. Now she's often not that interested in playing with me, yet still very much interested in zooming around in circles and jumping on everything in sight. I guess she's invented her own games that she finds to be more fun than mine are.

[post-planomanic.livejournal.com]

hmm...my dog trainer suggested an aluminum (eg, soda) can full of coins or nails. shake it when the cat's being bad. it was originally for the dog, and then i realized the cats were reacting too. (so i stopped, because it was disruptive to the whole clan.) all in all, sounds like you're in deep with a Very Naughty Cat. :) makes for entertaining reading for the rest of us!

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I've tried that too. She reacts to it more than to the spray bottle, but the same as to a hissing noise. She stops whatever she's doing, and waits 5 seconds until my back is turned, and then starts right up again. I fear my best hope is that she'll just get too old to have so much energy for mischief.