This post brought to you by First Alert smoke alarms

I live in a one-bedroom apartment. I have SIX smoke alarms in said apartment. This is not of my doing. Frau Piss-me-off is solely responsible for this. When I moved in, I had two. One in my bedroom and one in the hall. I now have two in my bedroom (believe me, things NEVER get that hot in there), two in the hall, one in the living room, and one on the way down the stairs. (I live on the second floor and the stairs are part of my apartment.) Every time I bake or fry something on the griddle, one of the hall alarms goes off. I don't even have to be burning anything (because I don't. I'm a good cook), it just goes off at the first hint of smoke. Opening a window usually helps.

Last night, after Catherine browbeat me into seeing Children of Men, I came home and made breakfast for dinner. Eggs, sausage, pancakes--the works. Naturally, Mr. Sensitive hall alarm went off. That I expected; I opened the kitchen window and closed the door to the hall. Then, it was joined by the living room smoke alarm, followed soon after by the stairway smoke alarm. It should be noted that these three are all the same brand. The other hall alarm and the two bedroom alarms are a different brand and never go off.

So, I'm running back and forth between the various smoke alarms waving two magazines to create a breeze enough to dissipate the smoke. But I'm still cooking, so I have to run back to the kitchen, flip a pancake, run back to the various alarms waving frantically, when the doorbell joins the chorus. Oh look, my nosey neighbor, the Latina Gladys Kravitz, is wondering if the house is on fire. No, I'm just cooking dinner. Go away now. A pancake is burning. I finally had to turn on a fan and aim it toward the kitchen so it sucked any smoke out the kitchen window. Now my neighbors think I'm a bad cook, and that's worse for me than if I had actually burned down the house. But dinner was delicious.