Things That Go Bump In the Night

Have you noticed how much quieter it is at night lately?  I guess it is mostly about traffic, and it is possible that a bunch of the apartments around us are empty.  One of the results of the new normal is that it does seem to be a whole lot quieter at night.  During the day there are still buses and cars and lawn mowers and leaf blowers.  I am sure there's less of all of that but it is enough that the burble of city life still sounds like the burble of city life.  At night though it is definitely, noticeably quieter.

It is possible that I am hearing things differently than other people.  I've for quite some time been what I am learning to call "hyper vigilant" to sounds around me.  I remember long ago commenting to other people about the songs that played on the Muzac in the background at work only to get the response "wait, there's music playing?"

Generally this kind of elevated awareness is not a good thing.  There's a level of anxiety, or at least of irritation that's there pretty much all the time.  Has that sound always been there?  What is that beeping?  Did you hear something?

In the last year I have been served well by this thing at least twice.  I picked up on a clang my car was making that turned out to be a result of the rear spring breaking loose from the axle.  If I hadn't heard it eventually the rear wheels would have fallen off the car while it was moving.  That would have been no fun.  Recently I was folding laundry in the guest room when I heard what I thought was water dripping.  It turned out our brand spanking new shower had a leak in it we hadn't previously noticed and at that moment gallon after gallon of water was flowing through the gap.  If I hadn't heard that we would have lost the dining room ceiling and potentially part of the also brand spanking new basement renovation.  That also would have been no fun.

So there is an upside.  It is also worth noting I guess that this sort of observation is a significant part of my job as a technical director.  Often you hear a problem before you will see one.  Finding problems early keeps small problems from becoming big problems.  "Should that sound like that?" is an important tool in my TD and TD teacher toolbox.

But there is also a tremendous downside.  Knocking and creaking keep me awake.  Any little sound in the car makes me wonder what is wrong with the car.  But mostly it is about pretty much always being on the balls of my feet mentally.  Always waiting for the next indicator and wondering where it will go from there.  Somehow it would be nice to be aware but not concerned.  The two seem to go together for me.  Truth be told it isn't so much limited to hearing, but that's probably another post for another day.

Owning a home brings you a symphony of hard to decipher sounds.  There's the house settling.  There's plumbing and HVAC sounds.  Right now there are sounds of guests living in the house that aren't normally there.  There are alerts from appliances (all of which for some reason have to have sounds that are the same or very close to others such that one can't tell specifically what it is just by listening).  There's the BOSS level sound: dead smoke detector battery - simple in an apartment with one smoke detector, a totally different experience in a house with multiple units on multiple floors.  Also, the pattern of beeps on a smoke detector matters.  For a while one of ours was making three short beeps.  Replacing the battery didn't help.  Did you know that CO/Smoke detectors expire?

Don't get me wrong, I like having a house and I recognize the house did not have a sound designer.  But if it had, that designer did not factor my quality of life into their decisions.