We’ve spent three nights in our new apartment, and boy, has it been an adventure. We decided to move before the house goes on the market so that some painting and other work could be done without wrangling the dog and the kid or trying to keep things pristine when the home is being shown.

The day the movers brought our stuff, we noticed as we came in that the smoke detectors were chirping – one of the most annoying sounds on Earth if you ask me. So J pressed the “hush” button on both of them, which made them scream the actual alarm for a few seconds, and then they quieted. Sweet relief!

So we continued on moving in, directing the movers where to put the furniture. J made several trips back and forth from the house with boxes and bins filled with all our crap. I did my best to unbox and put away as we went. If you’ve moved at all, you know what an exhausting process this is. And downsizing a 2100 square foot home into a 1300 square foot apartment is like playing Tetris. The whole process, while super exciting, is both mentally and physically draining.

Eventually, the movers left and we got our dog from my daughter – she’d watched him for us while we moved. He was pretty amped up, but we did our best to help him acclimate and stay calm. We spent our first evening trying to make some semblance of order while simultaneously keeping the dog from freaking out. (Thankfully, it was my son’s week with his dad, so he was able to avoid the chaos of the move.)

At 9:00pm, we threw in the towel and headed to bed – all three of us were exhausted. We turned on the white noise machine, pulled our sleep masks over our eyes, and drifted off into blissful, restful sleep. And then…

CHIRP!

Right in our bedroom at 10:00.

CHIRP!

The dog is in the bed with us like a shot.

CHIRP!

“What the literal f*ck?!“ I swear.

CHIRP!

J says, “I don’t wanna push the hush button again for fear of setting off alarms in the whole building.”

CHIRP!

Dog starts hyperventilating.

CHIRP!

We move to the couch and shut the bedroom door.

Chirp.

Dog won’t settle, so we give him his anti-anxiety meds for when he goes to the vet.

Chirp.

I take him into my son’s room (who’s with his dad during our move), and he crawls under the bed.

Chirp.

I try to sleep but can still hear that damn thing. J is now snoring on the couch with a pillow over his head, oblivious.

Chirp.

(Are you getting annoyed by the chirping yet?)

Chirp.

To make a long, chirpy story shorter, I’ll just tell you that the dog eventually settled down around 2:30, and we were all able to sleep some. Maintenance came at NOON the next day and switched out both detectors just to be on the safe side. And yes, that means we listened to the chirp for 14 hours.

Ah, apartment life, you’re going to keep us on our toes, aren’t you?