There Is No Silence In Suburbia

Greetings once again from north of the 49th parallel.

As the days slowly grow shorter and dark actually falls before we go to bed, I am reminded of just how little I get done in a given week. It saddens me in a way, but it’s the how things are at the moment.

The big observation this morning is in the title of this post: there is no silence in suburbia. After almost four years it is still the difference I notice most.

Where we lived in California it was quiet. And by quiet I mean really quiet. If we noted more than a couple of cars on the road in a day we joked about needing to move. At night all you could hear were the insects and the frogs unless a plane flew over. And the bugs & frogs could be deafening.

That much silence will teach you that the idea that all the quiet forest creatures hide from the stumbling, noisy humans is a myth. Deer make a huge racket just walking around, and when the bucks are cleaning the velvet from their antlers by repeatedly thrashing young trees with them, well, you can track that noise a long way. Coyotes sing for each other and the sound carries for miles. Crickets can drive you mad if you let them. Great horned owls are loud. And even the flora make noise. A gentle breeze causes the trees to rustle, or worse. And certain plants make an audible pop when their seed pods burst open.

“Quiet” is a relative term.

But moving to the suburbs throws it all into perspective. Here, not a day goes by without a huge amount of human caused noise that puts natural sources to shame.

Our street is not that busy, but it’s a main drive through the neighbourhood, and there is a fair amount of traffic. And because the street is long and relatively straight — and humans are stupid — speeds are higher than they should be. The noise from people coming and going still bugs me, particularly at night. Our bedroom overlooks the street, so when it is warm enough to have the windows open, we get to hear the various vehicles as they go by.

During the day things are worse. Someone is always power washing part of their home, or construction is going on and dirt must be compacted. Today, two dead cedar trees are being removed down the block. I’ve listened to the chainsaw and the shredder for an hour and a half so far. I checked. They’re probably about half done with removing the limbs at this point.

I used to joke that I could only move into a place with shared walls — think condo or townhouse — when I was deaf enough that I wouldn’t be bothered by the neighbours. Well, four years into moving back to suburbia sometimes makes me think I need to go deaf sooner.

There are, of course, advantages to living where we do. Not managing our own well, for example, is huge. Others include emergency services that can get here relatively quickly, a reliable power grid, and public transit just a few feet from the house. And fire hydrants. Those are big.

I love it here, but I mourn the loss of silence. Even with my tinnitus I could always count on a level of quiet at our California home that never happens here. I miss that.

On to other things.

First, a couple of weeks ago I asked what related the movies Arrival and Stranger than Fiction. I still have only one answer from a reader. I assume the rest of you don’t know or (more likely) have not seen both movies.

The answer I was looking for is the song The Nature Of Daylight by Max Richter appears in both movies. It’s a lovely piece of music.

When I was younger I loved Pachelbel’s Canon in D. I am well aware that cellists despise that piece — I am married to a cellist — and are bored with it before it even starts. The Nature of Daylight is a bit like Canon, but more emotive. And while the cellists out there will probably be sick of it after playing it only once, I think it’s a fantastic work.

Here it is:

Technical Side Note: I apologize for any ads that might show up in that. They will definitely ruin the mood. If you’re on a computer using Chrome or Firefox, you can install a good ad blocker to avoid them. I recommend ublock Origin. If you’re using an Android phone things are trickier. I use the Opera web browser, which comes with built in ad blocking that stops all ads in YouTube, but you have to watch your videos in the browser and not the YouTube app to avoid the ads. I get no kickback from those. I just use them and the internet is a much better place when I do. If you’re on an iPhone or using Safari on a Mac I can’t offer any advice as I don’t use those. Sorry.

Thanks again to Lori for submitting her answer, and I hope the rest of you consider watching both those movies if you have not done so. Highly recommended.

A big concern for me lately is the rise in Covid cases here in BC and elsewhere. We hit just over 400 new cases in the province on Thursday, and the curve is rising quickly. It looks exponential (or at least geometric) to me. Not good. And of course it’s nearly all the Delta variant, and mostly affecting the unvaccinated. Those of us who are fully vaccinated have less to fear, but we can still catch it, and still spread it around.

And everyone who catches it is yet another Petri dish in which mutations can occur and create the next — even worse — variant.

Our local public health people are claiming things are fine, and that we don’t have rapid, unexpected spread of the disease, but I don’t understand that point of view given the numbers. I am worried, and I suspect things are going to get worse before they get better, if they get better. Lock downs are probably coming again, though I hope I am wrong.

My, that’s cheerful. Sorry.

As for the rest of life, as I said at the start, things have been slow. Or at least it must look that way from the outside.

I did a lot more work on the new website for the community association. That accounts for several full days, in fact. Lots of new pages created, many others edited, and plenty of organizational work done. I am building contacts with others in the group to get more information, and we are approaching the launch of the website in a week or three, I hope.

There is one page outstanding that I want to finish before we launch. It’s about one of the programs the association runs, and I need those who organize it to tell me more about it. They’ve been asked.

Then the entire site needs a final review.

There are lots of other things still to be done after launch, of course. We’re not a big company with a PR department that can create a whole new website and launch it all at once. Instead I will add more content in the coming weeks and months, clean up and revise the rest of what is there, and do some maintenance of various kinds to the back end system (WordPress) that I suspect is long overdue.

Oh, and I am documenting all the maintenance (of both the content and the software) that needs to be done to keep the website up to date and working smoothly. That’s for my successor. Someday.

I will be busy with this for quite some time.

Disappointingly, I just looked at my photos app to see what pictures I have taken in the last week. None at all.

I’ve remedied that, but don’t expect miracles.

The painting of doors continues, as we slowly get rid of the ugly brownish grey the previous owners used. Here’s the door to our bedroom primed and waiting for the top coat on the first side:

At this point I have moved on to the upstairs doors. Anne’s office door (which is downstairs) still needs painting, but she has asked me to make that one the last flat door I paint for various reasons. The door to the laundry room — also downstairs — needs painting too, but it might have to be a different colour. Not sure yet.

Additional progress, of a sort, was also made in our bedroom. Anne and I agreed that curtains over the closets would work, and we decided to remove the door to the bathroom and replace it with a curtain as well. The architect who designed the second floor addition did a reasonable job overall, but he missed a key issue with that door. It should have been a pocket door to get it out of the way when it is open. But that didn’t happen, and the combination of plumbing in the wall on one side and electrical in the wall on the other side mean there is no possibility of retrofitting a pocket door in there without serious work.

In any case, the curtains are purchased and the door is removed. Soon I get to figure out how to hang the curtain rods and finish that up.

I also found a Decora style nightlight that I will insert into the three gang switch box I discussed a while ago, and I have plans to replace one light outdoors and remove another. These are minor things, but I hate the exterior floodlights that we have. One we never use — it’s pointless — and the motion sensor on the other means it is entirely wrong for the job it is supposed to do. I’ll take photos and share the details of all that soon. Maybe next week.

This weekend are actually under threat of rain. Not much rain, mind you, but some. The last prediction I saw was for 10 mm — not even half an inch — but even that will be welcome. That said, a trace of rainfall was predicted last night and it never happened. I’ll believe the forecast only when I can stand outside and get wet.

Finally, I give you the canine contingent:

It’s a busy day, as you can see. Tinkerbelle (first photo) is not even all that interested in being on the deck and barking at everyone that walks by. In the second photo, Skookie sleeps downstairs by the front door, as seen from above. That is her favourite sleeping spot for reasons known only to her. And in the last photo you see Cruzer, stretched out on the floor in my office because that is where I am.

Highly energetic creatures, eh?

I can relate.

Take care, and keep safe.