So my home alarm company called me the other day.  It turns out that my system had reported an error and I was instructed to call the company when I was at home and request a test of service.

When I got home that evening I called in and told them I had to test my service.  I asked the lady on the other end of the phone what was going on, that I would have to test my service.  She said that the alarm was no longer sending a signal to the monitoring center.  We tested two ways.  First I tripped a silent alarm for an ambulance.  No message at the monitoring center.  Next I had to set off the not-so-silent alarm for 1 minute.  From this I learned two things.
1.)  60 seconds while your house alarm is going off feels like 45 minutes.
2.)  The neighbors probably hate me, as I was testing around 8.45 at night.

After the not-so-silent alarm was run for a minute there was still no signal to the monitoring center.  I had to have a guy come out and fix it.  To any stalkers out there, my alarm is fixed now so no chance of you exploiting this for your chance at any memorabilia you would want to steal.

This whole situation got me thinking about marriage.  Are there times when an alarm is going off but the signal isn't getting to the proper authorities.  (See what I did there, I know, I'm clever).

How many times have you come home and gotten mad at your spouse for something, when really you were mad at something completely different.  Maybe you had a bad day at work and when you get home you start sounding the alarm about something small, when really you need to get with the people at work who upset you in the first place.

Sounding alarms can be tricky, sometimes you are focused on the right thing, other times you just don't know what you are mad at.  I know what you are thinking, "But TheHusBlog, how do I tell the difference?"  Well, either that or, "Jimbo, how about I call you Jimbo?"  I have a simple test that might help you determine if you are upset at the right thing:

TheHusBlog Definition Pause : Testing Your Anger
(If meet any of the below criteria, then you might be mad at the wrong thing)

• Can you clearly explain the action/thing/situation that made you angry?
• When you explain it out loud does it sound dumb?
• Do you have the uncontrollable urge to listen to Tracy Chapman, The Cure, or Tori Amos (if so you are probably not mad at all just depressed) ?
• When asked about the situation do you clam up and say "I don't want to talk about it (if so you are probably not mad at all just passive aggressive) ?