How did you spend your day?

Today is annual torture the tenants day at my condo complex. How so? you ask.

I live in a crazy citadel type of condo complex. It's supposed to look all Spanish style with fountains and crazy gates everywhere, and it's the gates that make the place a citadel because we have doors that lock with gates that lock, and you get inside and you can't get back out, and if you're outside you will never get in. Unless someone doesn't let a gate shut all the way, then you can get in fine, but you might not be able to into the actual building. Yeah, it's nice and confusing.

My building is building 4. And today all the units in building 4 are having their fire alarms tested. And this means I have suffered through alarms going off willy nilly since 9:50 AM.

Did I mention I'm jumpy? Like really jumpy?

Yeah, I am.

So the first time an alarm went off, my heart jumped into my skull and my stomach fell to my knees. It took a good 5 minutes for me to calm down. Then the alarm went off again and scared the crap out of me. I found my ear plugs, stuck them in and hoped I would hear the tester guy knocking at the door.

(Side note: Why do the tester guys always have to be so darn cute???)

I have no cats as pets today. They are currently holed up under our bed. Zoe, the simple one, came out during lunch time and drove me crazy with meows and "please pet me" pleas. Sophia, the crazier of the two, won't be out from under the bed until way past 5pm, I'm guessing.

The first time we heard the alarms go off, it was for a real fire alarm, but since we had never heard it before nor did anyone tell us that if one unit is on fire, all the fire alarms go off in the building (smart, dontcha think?), we didn't know what the horrible sound was and we tried to rip something off the wall that we still don't know what it's for, but there is a sticker on it stating don't take this off the wall or paint over it, so I'm assuming it's where the noise comes from. You'd think we'd be smart and get that the noise was a fire alarm, but it was so jarring and horrible to hear, we just wanted it to end. Like a bad, bad nightmare.

When we finally realized it was a fire alarm (my husband looked out our door into the hallway and saw the fire doors in the hall were closed shut), we somehow grabbed our cat (we only had one at that time), and headed outside. Everyone else was outside already. Like for a 10 minutes.

Anyhoo. So the noise is horrible and I hate it and even though every year I tell my husband that the next year he has to stay home and be tortured, I end up being the one who does it because I work at home and he doesn't and who wants to lose a day off just to be tortured all day?

That was my day. How was yours?