Stupid Things To Do While You're Uninsured

In the wee hours of yesterday morning, I kept hearing a low beeping noise, which I initially thought was coming from outside and later thought it was my carbon monoxide detector. If the detector gets knocked out of the outlet (or subsequently, back in), it makes this distinctive beeping noise. I figured we were having problems with our power or outlet, or that the cats were being jerks and knocking it out continuously. I was sleepy and I didn't really feel like figuring it out. I was going to the gym before work, so I essentially got dressed and left within ten minutes of waking up. When I got into the hall....

"Beep"

Just outside my door, on the ceiling way out of my reach, is an assy little smoke detector, sassing at me that its battery is dying.

"I'm not the maintenance person," I say.

"Don't fucking care," it responds

"I'll call them and let them know what's going on, but I have to go to work now and I don't have a ladder to reach you."

"Whatever, bitch."

So I call from the gym and get the maintenance person's machine. I leave a message about the smoke detector and wait their call back. To be fair, they usually call back very quickly and have responded to our other problems in a timely manner. Sadly, that did not happen today, because when I got home early from work at about three o'clock, I'm greeted with a chirping...

"Whassup, assface!"

It is then that I just hope that it will die on it's own. Or that a maintenance man is on his way, battery in hand, ready to shut up the jerky detector in the hallway. I let an hour pass before the beeping drives me psychotic. I call the maintenance people again and get a person. I'm initially told that someone will be there to fix it tomorrow. Turns out she misunderstood where the smoke detector was and didn't know we could hear it from inside our apartment. She tells me that we have a caretaker who lives in the building and she'll call him as soon as she hangs up (and as a note, she did in fact leave him a message which he didn't respond to, and now she knows that because I left her a message after the below occurred)

Three hours later, it's still going. "You can't stop me" - "You're not tall enough to reach me" - "Your ass looks huge in those pants".....I cannot take it anymore. My first attack is to grab a broom and poke the hell out of it. I think I'm hoping that I can hit a button or knock the cover off so I can then tape a new battery to the end of the broom handle and put it back in? I think that's what I'm trying to accomplish. But it's no good, and the smoke detector knows it.

So I do what any self-respecting person without health insurance would do. I climb on top of the stair railing, finally making me tall enough to reach the battery. As I pull it out and place a new battery in (thankfully, I managed to have the correct kind of battery) the smoke detector makes this dying cry, like "what a world, what a world".

When I hopped down onto the landing, I took a look at the stairs and realized I probably shouldn't have done that when my health insurance doesn't kick in till the end of the week. Or really shouldn't have done it even with insurance. I'm pretty sure the smoke detector would have just stared down at my mangled body, silent for the first time all day.