Last night I was starting to doubt my sanity. I could hear voices – a woman’s voice. It was too low for me to understand but I could hear it. At first I thought it was my weather radio and I was really starting to wonder why in the world I had ever bought it and how could something that was plugged into the wall be low on batteries. I was convinced it was defective. Then I started thinking it was one of my smoke detectors or maybe my carbon monoxide detector. I mean, really, I had changed all my batteries when the time changed just like we were told to do. Why was this conspiracy to drive me crazy happening?

I have lived in my parsonage for two years. I was convinced I knew where all the possible locations for a smoke detector were installed in my house. And it make matters worse, the fire department had just come earlier in the evening to talk to my church’s neighborhood association about them. I was going nuts, right?

I started role playing the phone call to my daughter. “Sweetie, I’m hearing a woman talking to me and I can’t find her.”

At 11:29 pm, I had enough. I was tired and ready for bed but I could still hear the mystery woman speaking to me. I started staking out different locations around my house and I finally was standing at the right place at the right time. Apparently, I had a carbon monoxide detector packed in a box from a previous home that hadn’t been unpacked. (Oh, the hidden joy of multiple moves.)

I dug through a hidden closet and found the annoying and quite loyal detector, put new batteries in, as it had been begging me to do for hours, and now I have a new carbon monoxide detector at the proper knee high level.