The World's Tallest Writing Coach

Night time is a freelancer’s Fortress of Solitude. All the setbacks and delays that came during the day can be rectified with few hours on the computer after everyone else has gone to bed – and let’s face it, those days happen all too often.

One night last week , I figured I’d have about three extra hours to put some time in and really log some quality time. So there I was, using two computers at once while my golden retriever and beagle snored blissfully away on the floor of the office when tranquility base was interrupted by

BEEP BEEP BEEP!!!!!!!

The dogs both jumped, I almost spilled my coffee and 55 seconds later, and tranquility was no more.

Turns out our front of the house smoke alarm was on its last legs and requiring a battery change. Of course, the geniuses who built our house put it as far up on the ceiling as possible, and with the alarm continuing to alert me to its presence every 60 seconds, swift action had to be taken.

So at 10:45 p.m., with the rest of the house asleep, Freelancing Dad secure the dogs (the beagle’s a runner), opened the garage, opened the front door and dragged the giant ladder into the house. And even at my full height, which is considerable, I had to stand on the second-to-highest rung of the ladder just to reach the smoke alarm, which continued to blare its warning every 60 seconds.

After almost falling no more than 15 or 17 times, I managed to replace the batteries and silence the damn thing. Satisfied that I had stepped outside my liberal arts realm to be a handyman. Ten minutes later, I was back to work when suddenly …

BEEP!

I thought I was certainly hearing things, but a minute later it was back, not as loud, and just one beep instead of three, but defiantly, mockingly it was there. A trip down Google Lane led me to find that this was a common error in smoke detectors – their little computers don’t reset and they still think the battery is low. The site I visited said I could fix this in “3 easy steps” – the first of which was turning off the power to that part of the house; followed by removing the detector completely from its socket.

Hmm, turning off power to that part of the house and then climbing the ladder of death up to the ceiling again in pitch darkness … sounds like a job for Morning Dad.