A Morning at Our House

This was a surprise when I woke up this morning.
 

It wasn't forecast. It's cold too, in the teens this morning..

I desperately need to get out of the house this morning -- the smoke alarm has been chirping every minute since 5:30 a.m. and I am going nuts. But there is nowhere to sit outside.

We have to shovel the doorstep to get to the garage to retrieve the ladder to try to reach the smoke alarm that is 15 feet up the wall in the living room. We have impossibly high ceilings and when the smoke alarm malfunctions as it does often, it's a chore.

We've replaced all the smoke alarm units, so they are new. But dust or perversions of some kind get in and the batteries chirp and on a snowy morning . . . I just can't.

    update mid day:

(Ha! it wasn't the smoke alarm. After hauling the giant ladder out and changing the already new batteries again in the smoke alarms near the ceiling, it turned out the chirping was from the carbon monoxide detector plugged into an outlet at ground level in the hallway. I'm going back to bed.)