Alarmed and Dangerous

(If you are a bad guy, please do not read this post.)

Jim was out of town last night and for maybe the fourth time ever, I decided to set our house alarm.  I always have issues when I set it, hence the reason I don't ever use it.  I quick-armed it for staying in the house and then tried to disarm it to make sure I remembered how to do it.  This is helpful because I will be half asleep in the morning when I set it off while letting the dog out.  And it is much more difficult to remember how to disarm it at the crack of dawn when I am bleary-eyed and children are crying because they've been snatched from dreamland by a shrieking alarm!

I couldn't get it to disarm.  

We were trapped in my house because I couldn't get the stupid alarm to disarm!  I tried everything.  I put the code in fifteen times. (Definition of insanity-continuing to do the exact same thing and expecting different results.)  I tried it with a pound sign in front.  I tried it with a pound sign behind.  I tried it both ways with the asterisk.   I hit cancel, I hit clear, I hit exit.  I tried a different code in all of the above ways in case I was using the wrong one.  No dice.

I called my husband.  His suggestion:  "Did you enter the code?"

Really?  I NEVER would have thought to try that.  Thanks, babe!

I called my neighbor, Kim.  Her suggestion?  (After deciding that she felt claustrophobic on my behalf)  "Did you try entering the code?"  See above response.

I looked in the instruction manual.  I looked on the company website for a help line.

I called Troye.  She laughed WITH me and did NOT ask me if I had entered the code, but had no advice.  

Finally, I tried the default code and the blasted thing disarmed.  Apparently I had never changed the password.

Then I reset the alarm, let the dog out and set the stupid thing off, waking two small children.

Luckily I knew how to turn it off.

And no, I didn't rearm it again!

(If you are a bad guy and you read this post after I told you not to-Don't believe a word of it.  And did you read the part about the dog?  He is big. And vicious.  And bites first and asks questions later.  And I have a gun.  And I know karate.  So don't come get me.)