LAKE BLUFF, Illinois – February 5, 2026 — The widow who calls herself “Ridiculouswoman” accomplished another risky feat of self-reliance today, removing and replacing a hard-wired combination smoke and carbon monoxide detector.
“I knew when I heard the chirping that the time had come,” she said. Fortunately, Ridiculous added, “the dedicated circuit that supplied electricity to the smoke detector was clearly marked, so making sure the power was off was the easy part.”
Noting that “it’s always a bit dicey when I have to get up on the top step of the stepstool to fix something, but the thing was ceiling-mounted,” Ridiculous described her initial confusion about how to disconnect the old smoke detector and attach the new unit.
“I removed the old mounting bracket, and pulled the wires out of the ceiling. But I couldn’t figure out how to disconnect the old detector from those wires, which were capped with little plastic cones.
“That’s where YouTube came in,” she noted. “Sure was handy. Turns out those little plastic cones on the ends of the wires just unscrew! Good thing I didn’t try yanking the wires out with a wrench, like I almost did.
“The new unit had three wires – black, red, and white — but when I unscrewed the little caps on the wires sticking out of the ceiling, there wasn’t a black wire – only a red one and a white one.”
“So, I stuck the white one in the little cap with the other white one and screwed the little cap back on, and stuffed that back in the ceiling, and then I put the black one from the new detector with the red wire that was coming out of the ceiling, because the instructions said (yes, guys, I ACTUALLY READ THE INSTRUCTIONS) that for my kind of installation I shouldn’t connect the red wire on the new unit to anything.
“So I figured if I wasn’t supposed to connect the red wire on the new unit to anything, that meant I should put the black wire with the old red wire coming out of the ceiling, and just stuff the new red wire that I wasn’t supposed to attach to anything up inside the hole all by itself. So I did that, and I screwed the other little plastic cap on the red and black wire combo, and stuffed them back up in the ceiling too.
“Then I hung the new mounting bracket and screwed that in tight, and put the new detector up there and secured it with a quick quarter turn. It was time to see if the thing would turn on without shooting sparks all over.”
Noting her relief that she didn’t fall off the stepstool in her descent from its top step, Ridiculous then described her sense of fatalism as she approached the electrical panel to turn the smoke detector’s dedicated circuit back on.
“You know, there comes a point where you just resign yourself to whatever’s gonna happen. I cringed a little and ducked away from where I had installed the detector on the ceiling about eight feet away, and flipped the breaker switch back on.
“The only thing that happened was that a voice came on telling me the thing was ready to be connected to WiFi, which I didn’t want to do, so I LOOKED AT THE INSTRUCTIONS AGAIN and discovered that there was a little opt-out button that the instructions called an “enrollment button” that I could just push to get the thing to stop snooping around looking for my WiFi network. So I did that, and the blinking blue light turned green, which it’s supposed to do, and that was that.”
“And the thing came with backup batteries already installed. I’ll just have to set a reminder to replace them every year or so, which I never did with the old one — I guess I shoulda. But the old detector lasted nearly ten years since the Bulgarian installed it, and this new detector is supposed to last ten years too.”
When asked what DIY project she’d tackle next, Ridiculous mused, “welp, the cheap little stick-on makeup lights I put on my vanity mirror about eight years ago gave out a few nights ago, so maybe I’ll use that as an excuse to get that art-deco style vanity I’ve wanted for a decade or so – it’s completely covered in mirrors – and install some higher-class makeup lighting to go with it. Just the thing to complete my boudoir.
Ridiculous said she needed to go cook her salmon and broccoli dinner, and ended our interview with, “Sign me off like this:
‘until my next death-defying DIY project, I remain,
your smoke and carbon-monoxide detected, unshocked, unburned (so far, anyway), and skeletally intact (no broken bones as I didn’t fall off the step stool),’
Ridiculouswoman
CONGRATULATIONS!!!