All Quiet on the Western Front...

A day without alarms is a day without...well, without me running around like the proverbial chicken.

Okay, we did have a near miss when I forgot (duh) that I had set the durned thing when we left and would have to turn it off as soon as we returned. After we pulled into the garage, I told The Boy to go on inside, la-di-da, hmmm, what's that beeping noise...HOLY CRAP! Fortunately, I was able to lunge across the back seat (from whence I was extricating The Girl), grab the keys from the front seat, and push the Off button before the countdown finished and launched us into Armageddon.

To be honest, our "alarming" adventures have been more amusing than annoying. The charm of opening all the doors just to hear the notification chimes wore off for The Boy after about 5 minutes, and The Girl spent most of yesterday morning running up to me, looking wildly at me, and declaring, "Mama! NO. TOUCH. YO. KEETH!!!" Oh, and yes, within the 30 seconds that it took me to shut off the alarm and call up the alarm station, the police had already been notified. I have to say, although it was embarrassing, it was also a nice little test and reassured me that hey! The dang thing really works! Furthermore, the alarm has key combos that alert the company to send over an ambulance or the fire department. This is comforting, because there was a case not long ago in which a woman called 911 when her infant went into respiratory distress, and the phone company (I believe it was) had screwed up her address listing, so the 911 call was put through to the wrong station, emergency services were delayed, and her baby died. In case you're immune to the painfully obvious--sh** like that freaks me out. I used to be a borderline hypochondriac, but you know, now that I have kids, I've traded in my very specific psychosis for a much broader, wide-ranging paranoia. You know, two kids, so little time--I cover more neurotic ground that way. It's all about efficiency, baby!