Random Thought #4: My beef with cement trucks

I have to preface this post with a few thoughts before I get to the actual incident which spurred it on, so bear with me.

First off, as the mom of a toddler, I am quite protective of my sleep. Unfortunately, I have never been a sound sleeper and usually get woken up at the slightest noise. So when this happens, if I'm not able to role over and return to my slumber reasonably quickly, I usually morph into somewhat of a bear the next morning. Anyone else out there who can relate to this also knows that after kids come along, this problem gets magnified about a thousand times because you can't just take a nap whenever you feel like it. Thus on top of feeling tired to begin with, you become even more run down at the end of day just from trying to keep up with the demands of one or more children. So knowing this weakness I have, I do everything in my power to get a decent night's sleep each night and become easily agitated when I don't meet that goal.

Now switching gears for a minute, the second thing I wanted to mention was that our small group from church met last night and watched one of Rob Bell's NOOMA series videos titled "Luggage", which in a nutshell is about forgiveness and leaving revenge to God. In it Rob mentions this friend of his who used to keep a bucket of golf balls in the car so he could chuck them out the sunroof at people who cut him off in traffic (which reminded me of a certain friend of mine who preferred using milkshakes instead). We all could relate to this message and agreed that while hard to do in practice, that nonetheless we should of course strive to do it.

Ok, so what do these things have in common? Two words: cement trucks. The area behind our subdivision is currently being developed with new houses, which Bob and I knew going into purchasing our house. I fully expected some occasional noise during the day, but we've gotten a little more than we bargained for on a few different occasions now, both of which have happened well after a reasonable hour. We were woken up last night by a herd of cement trucks on the street behind us pouring a slab at 3AM this morning. I mean 3AM? Come on! I can understand an early start of 7AM or maybe even 6AM, but 3 rapidly approaches ridiculous. Bob figured it must have been saving the home builder money somehow to do it at such an odd hour.

I hadn't really paid attention to them before, but cement trucks are pretty noisy, especially multiple trucks in the dead of night. So after about 30 minutes of the racket behind us, it became quite obvious that the commotion was NOT going to settle down anytime soon. I saw my good night's sleep going right out the window and became increasingly annoyed (because of the reasons given above) with each passing minute that the noise continued. Pretty soon that whole revenge thing was put to the test when I began thinking of ways to express my frustration, like chucking some golf balls in the wet cement or leaving a nice big footprint there, which would have solved nothing.

Of course I did none of the above, but that didn't stop my frustration. My husband took the dignified approach of constructively emailing the home builder and letting them know that pouring slabs in the wee hours of the morning to save money wasn't doing their reputation any good in our community, while I took the more immediately satisfying route of calling the constable. I didn't know if he could/would do anything about it, but apparently there is a noise ordinance in place to limit noise from construction projects until after 6AM. He mentioned if we noticed the problem again to let him know and he would ticket the appropriate people. That was a relief to hear!

Sometime around 4:30-5:00AM the noise did subside enough for a brief "nap" until it was time to get up. Through this experience I learned I have some work to do in the revenge department, like not dwelling on ridiculous ways to get back at people over something that in the grand scheme of things is pretty insignificant. Of course the biggest irony is that both sites where the slabs were poured have been virtually silent since about 7AM this morning because the workers are now smoothing out the concrete. Go figure...