‘Twas twenty nights before Christmas…

‘Twas twenty nights before Christmas, when all through the apartment
Not a creature was stirring, except for Riley and Annie
who, if I had to guess, were break dancing on the coffee table and smoking cigarettes;
My socks were hung from the doorknob with care,
In hopes that I could last till weekend in these underwear;

The cats finally nestled all snug in my bed,
While visions of free-range kitty biscuits danced in their heads;
And Elise in my old Adidas t-shirt, and I in my Underoos,
Had just settled down for a long winter’s snooze,

When out from the walls there arose such a shriek,
Elise sprang from the bed to take a peek.
Away to the smoke alarms I flew like a laser,
Tore them out from the ceiling and cussed like a sailor.

Apparently somebody thought it would be funny to pull one of the fire alarms in our apartment building’s breezeway at 1:45 a.m. this morning. I’ve stopped rhyming, by the way. I have to hand it to the fire alarms at the Monterey Ranch apartments, they’ll make damn sure you wake up if there’s a fire – or if there are delinquents who like to wake people up in the wee hours of the morning with what sounds and feels like a full-sized human being sitting just inside your inner ear and laying into a fog horn and a rape whistle at the same time. My ears still hurt.

After five minutes or so, the residents of our building migrated outside. Elise called the fire department and the apartment complex’s call center. After another ten minutes or so, the fire department finally showed up and turned off the alarm.

Firemen sprang to their truck, to the horn gave a whistle,
And away they all drove like the down of a thistle.
But I heard them exclaim, ere they drove out of sight,
“Sorry your ears are bleeding, go back to bed and sleep tight!”

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