They can't be serious?

     Last year, while I was in the hospital and extremely ill, my poor wife was getting exhausted from working at our flower shop, two hour round trips to the hospital, sometimes more than once a day, not getting to eat on time, or often, and still trying to maintain the house, and all those other things.  One night after getting to bed late, and extremely tired, Murphy's Law crept in.  If something can go wrong, at the worst possible time, it will.  As this law is wont to do, (look it up it's a word - and it's used correctly), it chose one of those nights for the smoke alarm to go off.  Ours do that periodically, and only once have they gone off in the daytime, all the other times have been at some ungodly hour in the middle of the night. And folks, ours has a safety feature that means if it's a battery that is causing the problem you need to fix it then, not later, because it won't go away.  If you've ever had an alarm go off in the middle of the night, you know what I'm talking about.  If you haven't, I don't recommend it, but it is one hell of an adrenaline rush. After you determine you are not going to be consumed by a fire, you have to determine which of your wonderful smoke alarms is doing this, they all go off together - it's a law - and then take care of the problem.
     My poor exhausted wife had to get out of bed, determine which alarm it was, get the ladder, climb it, remove the smoke alarm and disconnect the battery.  She figured she would take her chances of dying in a fire that night, so she left it disconnected, put the ladder away and went back to bed. Since I couldn't do anything about it, my son came over and tried to fix it.  Unfortunately it wasn't the battery and the alarm was FUBAR, so my wonderful son ordered one on the internet and said, "Here, Merry Christmas".  That was last year.  It arrived and spent it's time in the box carefully placed on our high tech clothes rack (a treadmill) where it sat until today.  I decided to install it.  It went well, (once I read the instructions).  It was easy, came with the right adaptors and took about ten minutes to install.  That's not why I write this.  It was when I was reading the instructions, I found some things that need set straight.  Actually, two things.
     First, and I quote directly from the instructions, TEST THE ALARM WEEKLY TO ENSURE PROPER INSTALLATION. OK, let's be fair.  Everyone who does that on a weekly basis, please raise your hands.  Now.  Come on, don't be shy.  I didn't think so.  How about once a month?  Now would be good.  I don't see any hands.  How about when the freakin' alarms go off for no reason?  That's what I thought.  Now I see a few hands.  The point is, who's going to grab the ladder, take it around the house into almost every room, and push that little button on a weekly or even monthly basis? We have eight of those things.  I'd be surprised if there are people who do it regularly, as in once a year.  The manufacturers are covering their collective legal butts.  "Your honor, it's written right in our instructions in big letters, to test weekly.  We are not at fault.  Never mind the fact we have them place in locations Andre the Giant couldn't reach. They take them down and never put them back up.  Can't blame us."  Oh and guess what?  66% of all smoke alarms in the United States do not work because they are faulty or the batteries are dead.  FACT.  Check it out. They can't make you fix one or test one.  It's your God given right (and your children's) to die of smoke inhalation, or burn to death,  if you're too doggone lazy to fix one, or test them.
     Second, and this one I really love, there are no smoke alarms in our house in the kitchen and in the garage. Go look........ I'll wait.........told ya! Wanna know why?  And why most homes in the country are like that?  Because those locations create nuisance alarms, especially in the kitchen.  Something burns on the stove and bingo! off goes the alarm, so they don't install them.  Even though the majority of fires in a home are caused in the kitchen.  Yep, in the kitchen, the room without a smoke alarm.  Since your home builder doesn't want you pissed at him, and calling him at three in the morning, he leaves them out of the places most people have nuisance alarms.  He gets to sleep while you die of smoke inhalation.
     "Why don't you install one of your own then?  Why are you making such a big deal about it?" you ask. Because there are federal and state laws that say all smoke alarms have to be tied together electrically and run in the same raceways as your other common household wires. They have to be tied together so the alarms ring in all parts of the house.  One goes off and they all go off.  That's why.  And most folks will probably take their chances and not go to the time and expense of adding these alarms to already built homes.  In fact, we left the one that's 18 feet high in our house disconnected because we've already spent an hour at three o'clock in the morning, on an extension ladder that could barely reach it, while we're standing ABOVE that lettering that says DO NOT STAND ABOVE THIS RUNG, trying to fix it with an 85 decibel alarm screaming in our ears, that's why!
      At least this new one has the battery cover where it's easy to reach.  And it has a "hush" button that will circumvent nuisance alarms.  It will still take a ladder, but I don't have to remove the unit from the wall and try to fix it in the dark, standing on a wobbly ladder while I'm trying to twist it off the ceiling. So, these are things that need to be set straight. Get the ladder now, while you're thinking about it.  Then test your alarms. It might save your life, or more importantly, one of your children.