Alarming stuff!

Last Thursday in the middle of the night our intruder alarm started blaring. Well.. we have no possessions an intruder would be remotely interested in. In fact K has a joke that if ever there was an off chance of an intruder, the said person might deposit some cash in our cupboard and write a note for us to get better jobs :P But then we have had 3 instances of the alarm going off in our house. Once we had left a window open, which caused the curtain to blow and trigger the alarm (the sensors thought someone was entering through the window ;) ) .  The second and third times we have no idea. But so far it has been nothing serious. (We sleep with a hammer and a rod just in case ;) )

Side note: The intruder alarm system has two motion detectors for the two entrances of the house. There is remote to arm or disarm it. Once armed if any movement is detected or the doors are opened/closed, the alarm sounds a siren which is mounted on top of our house, 15 feet above ground. 

As an aside, don’t worry, we don’t live in a rough area. But you never know ;) We hear stories. The most bizarre one was  from a friend of ours who is a chef. Now one morning, their baker did not turn up. The baker was one with an inclination to get into trouble, so they assumed he must have gotten into a bar fight and knocked himself out. The story was revealed when the baker came back about a week later. He had gone home late that night and on opening his house sensed a stranger in his house. His wife and kids were sleeping upstairs. He snuck upon the intruder who put up a fight. Not one to give up, the baker thrashed the living day lights out of the ruffian but himself ended up being in police custody on assault charges !  God forbid such a scenario to anyone else. Back to my story.

So when the alarm started off on Thursday, we went ahead and did our customary checks downstairs. As expected we found nothing amiss. We guessed that one of the toys must have fallen from the toy box. Now a bit of elaboration on the toy box. We have not one but two toy boxes. The aim was to put all the toys inside the box and close the box at the end of play every day. But!!!!! Expectations are always far from reality aren’t they? So every night, most of the toys are either sprawled across the floor. Or they are dumped on top of one another in the toy box (if either parents have been particular about enforcing some discipline in the house. That fateful night the toys had been dumped on the toy box. Dumped toys tend to fall (gravity you see) and falling objects can have the semblance of movement which can trigger the motion detectors attached to the alarm. That was our theory. So after the check, we went for our beauty sleeps. The same event repeated the next day (also around the same time – 2am!) which made us suspicious that something was wrong with the system.

We tried reaching out the original guy who had done the installation, but to no avail. Guess new installations pay way more than repair works and his decision to avoid us obviously made sense. So we tried reaching out to other people who might remediate our issue, but responses were few and far between. We also had the weekend fast approaching when it would be even more difficult to get hold of a repair man. As our efforts went on to get someone to fix the alarm, we reached Saturday night. The alarm kept going off intermittently and we had to scurry to switch it off. We tried all sorts of tricks to keep it quiet. 

We put a dark cloth over the motion detectors. No motion detection, no alarm activation. That did not work. K had a theory that the “arm” button of the remote seemed pressed, which might be making the connection and arming the alarm. So we took the batteries off the remote so that even if the “arm” button got pressed, it did not end up actually arming it. That seemed to work! Till 2am! When the alarm started blaring. It is a 110 decibels noise – so imagine a shrill  jet taking off in a quiet English suburb! To make matter worse our neighbours are of two types – old retirees, who need their sleep and little kids under 10, who too need their sleep. We are not blessed with neighbours of the glorious 21-31 age group who would be out partying on a Saturday night. So, 2 am and we have a blazing intruder alarm. And remember we have take the battery from the remote which has the powers to shut it off. Now this remote is half the size of a standard female (I am assuming females have smaller palms) human palm in length and width with a teeny battery. K shoved the battery in, the remote did nt work! Damn!! It was about 2 minutes that we had the thing on, but trust me it felt like 20. We kept trying and there was a knock at the door. That’s it! Some one’s kid was awake and he/she had come personally to deliver the death threat. I opened the door and it was a couple of community police officers. Said police officer 1.  “We heard your alarm going off during our patrols, is every thing ok?” I was embarrassed but glad it was just them “ Yeah everything is ok, there is some problem with the remote” Police officer 1. “Oh fine, if you are handling it.” It was very comforting to have them over. But I hope they don’t dismiss us as people who cry wolf!! 

So, at last we somehow managed to shut that banshee down. 

It was quite through Sunday when we continued to find a person to fix in vain. Then as if it has a personal vendetta it started blaring at 2130! K shut it off. Then it went again. Every. 2. Minutes. God! What were we going to do ?!! I had a backup plan if everything failed. We had 4 adults in the house and all of us could have a shift to stay awake and turn the alarm off. Huh. Well…. Not a brilliant plan, but beggars cant be choosers right? While I was thinking all this, luckily K managed to get hold of a guy who was willing to come and do the work. But for the moment, he started sending v-e-r-y d-e-t-a-i-l-e-d messages to K to resolve the issue at hand. His text messages would have filled A4 sheets of paper. K went ahead to disable the alarm with a flimsy ladder and papa for additional human support. They braved the 4 degrees temp to get it all sorted. And we managed to have a very peaceful Sunday night’s sleep. 

Come Monday, the guy turned up in person and the thing is all sorted :) Phew!

Sisterly love

I recently finished a book called “Before we were yours” which is about sisterly love along with other things. The book is supremely rubbish and very juvenile. But I know a thing or two about it. Mummy has 2 sisters and I have one. I am mom to 2 sisters J I get loads of display of the love between my kids which also includes a healthy dose of pinching, scratching and shouting (most of which is done by Pumpki) . But one incident stands out. I had taken the girls to an indoor play area. They were happily running around. There was a covered slide in the course. It was a bit long. It must have been a bit dark inside. Chiyaa went through it easily. Done with that, she ran over to the next part of the course. 2 seconds later, she realized her sister was not with her. She turned back and waited for Pumpki to come through. Pumpki was not visible at the beginning of the slide, which means she had started her downward journey. But it should not take her that long to get to the bottom. Chiyaa stood all worried and concerned about her little sis. Pumpki is a bit scared of heights, of fast moving slides or rides and darkness too. Since nearly a minute was done, I started to get worried too. I was about to take my shoes off and make way to the play area. That’s when I saw Pumpki emerge from the other end. As soon as she came, she hugged her sister in the warmest embrace. That moment, when they both hugged each other and look of love in their eyes - stole my heart. Then they went on to play again. When they came back to that bit of the course again, Chiyaa made Pumpki sit down with proper cross legs at the beginning of the slide. She slid through and she emerged, she screamed to Pumpki “don’t come. I am coming to you”.

I felt supremely proud. I hope no force on earth corrodes this bond. J

First post :)

As I was reading my book yesterday, I suddenly realised that I had to turn the alarm on! It had been 8 days since I had turned it off.

It seems like yesterday being Christmas eve. Last year our office closed at noon. I expected the same this year too. So I did not get my lunch from home. There was no email from the super boss about early closure. On the contrary I got an email from K that his office would close at 1400!! His work place is the stricter one. It came to noon, still no email. Well, I waited, but as noon turned to 1300, I got impatient. And hungry too. I was toying with the idea of going out and buying lunch. But what if they closed immediately after!? I would miss eating delicious mom made food! So I waited, and waited and waited. The 4 other people in the office waited too. Two lost patience and wrapped up. I was going to make a move anyways, when bam!! the email came!"

If you are still in the building please feel free to take the afternoon off (if your manager confirms) to get on the road early and avoid the rush should you need it. If you are working from home, please disconnect and relax!" 

Woo hoo!! Holidays were officially on!!

I dashed to the bus and asked K where he was. That bugger was on his way home!! But we timed ourselves and reached home around the same time. The kids were uber excited to have both papa and mummy with them! Christmas was made up of good food and a movies. Boxing day was the same. I can say the same about 27th as well :) ;) On 28th which was Pumpki's birthday, we made a trip to the city centre and wonderful meal. We came back loaded with loads of art and crafts stuff. 29th and 30th were blessed sunny days and hence deemed playtime in the sunshine. 31st we hosted a dinner with a few friends and ushered in the new year. And 1st was as usual full of sumptuous food:) 

The theme across the 8 days was food and food. Also there was reading late into the night. One night I was up till 2am reading a book which felt just awesome. There was a lot of reading to the kids as well and they loved it. A lot of art work was created and a lot of games played. It was really the most magical time. And I woke up right depressed this morning. Literally cannot wait for the same time again this year.