It’s 80 degrees this week in Pennsylvania. We pulled out the summer clothing and are ready to turn on the sprinklers and play play play. This morning while getting ready for school, one of the kids offered a classic Spring weather line: “homework? Oops!” While his brother responded, “teachers shouldn’t be allowed to give homework on summer-weather days in winter!” (He is so right. I’m going to pass his opinion on to my pre-teacher undergrads.)
It’s a little early for a summer celebration, but we’re not complaining. In fact, last night at dinner, we discussed the merits of a way-too-early summer, which included: more time to practice baseball, extra time on our bikes, a greater excuse to shop for summer shoes early (that last one was my contribution to the conversation.) Obviously, this summer-in-winter thing is exactly what I’ve been craving.
Except I’ve been a bit perplexed over dinner. Loyal Julieverse readers know I love cooking on the grill. But with dinner at 7:00, I can’t actually see the food on the grill to know if it’s undercooked, overcooked or just right (thus far, my trials of cooking in the dark haven’t been “just right.”) So I added to the list of merits: Daylight savings time officially begins Sunday at 2 am.
And with that half-yearly celebration of a government-developed time change, I followed with a command to my Amazon Echo: Alexa order 9-volt batteries.
Why? Because fire safety experts are urging homeowners to check alarm batteries at the same time they change their clocks. It’s a habit to form: DST weekend stands as the reminder to change and test the batteries in your fire alarms. That’s pretty well-known, but here’s your official Julieverse reminder:
Lesser-known: you’re supposed to purchase a new fire alarm every 10 years. So if you’ve been in your home 13 years, as we have, you’re now learning this three years late and, oops. Get on that.
It’s a pretty small task to save your family’s home: According to a recent report issued by the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), three out of five U.S. home fire fatalities occurred in homes with no smoke alarms or no working alarms, mainly due to dead or missing batteries.
For added protection and no more late-night battery chirps, homeowners can install smoke alarms with 10-year, sealed-in lithium batteries, like Kidde’s Worry-Free alarms, which I am totally ordering to replace my 13-year-old alarms as soon as I publish this post. (And canceling the order for 9-Volt batteries because I won’t need those for another 10 years.)
