Kirsten came by yesterday and, while she was here, she delivered my note to the neighbor’s house across the street about the weird persistent noise. (She left it inside their screen door.) She declined to hand the other note to the builders. I can’t really blame her; I wouldn’t have wanted to do it either! I should have just left that alone, and have decided that I will from now on, unless it gets totally out of control.

I didn’t hear back from the neighbor yesterday, although Kirsten said that the note was gone from where she left it within an hour of her leaving it there. So the neighbor received it about 3:30 or so.

I managed to sleep through building noises this morning until about 10:00, and there was also, thankfully, no weird noise from across the street. I got up and went about my day, which means that I made myself a meal and ate it while reading my book, then spent a while going around the house collecting trash to go outside to the porch (Wednesdays are trash days, so my neighbor Phil collects my bags of trash off my porch, puts them in my bins, and wheels the bins to the curb for me). I puttered at this and that for a while, then checked my email and scrolled Facebook and Instagram. At 1:00 I started working on my current painting, and did that until I lost the light at 3:00. I did a little tidying and a few dishes, and then made myself an early supper and ate it, just in time to watch Jeopardy. At no time during the day did I receive a phone call from the neighbor; nor did the sound start up again. That made me think maybe it was something she/they (she has a son and daughter) were doing and they had quit doing it. Sweet relief!

Being exhausted from little to no sleep three nights in a row, I nodded off on the sofa shortly before the end of Jeopardy at 7:30, and slept for about an hour, only to be awakened by, you guessed it, THE SOUND. It was shrill and persistent for about 90 minutes, and at that point I lost it. I went over to the front door, opened it, and screamed “STOP THE NOISE!” out into the street several times in a row. And then, someone shouted back at me! I couldn’t hear what they said, but kept looking around to see if I could spot them, and at that point saw a pulsing orange light coming, not from the house across the street, but from the one next door. I shouted again, and the light went out.

At that point, my phone rang. It was the neighbor lady across the street. She said that she had received my note, and that she hadn’t noticed the sound (!) but that her son had been complaining that it was bothering him. I asked if that was her son who had just shouted at me, and she said yes. She sent him out to make a recording of the sound, and said that it did seem to becoming from their house. She then texted his recording to their landlady. She also gave me the landlady’s number, so I texted her my own sound recording and she replied, asking a bunch of questions. Texting was too much for all the information I had to convey, so I called her, and we had a nice chat.

Her theory coincides with Phil’s; she believes it is the roof fan. She said there are two; one points towards the back of the house, the other out the front towards my house. She thinks that when the temperature rises sufficiently, the fan is coming on automatically and staying on until the temperature goes down again, and that it’s broken or out of alignment. I did tell her about the fact that the noise sometimes started up at a certain time, then stopped at a certain time and recommenced at the same time the next day, and she was intrigued. She wondered if it was possibly something her tenants were doing instead, and remarked that they didn’t like it if she dropped in on them (but that could just be because people don’t, in general, like people dropping in, right?).

While we were on the phone, she texted the tenant and said that she could come over right away (it was about 9:15 at this point) to investigate, but the tenant said no, everything was fine, it could be resolved at another time. The landlady kind of laughed and said, Well, yeah, everything’s fine for YOU, but your neighbor isn’t fine!

I reassured her that as long as I knew that someone now knew about it and would do something about it, I could deal with the noise for another night, as long as she would come soon to look at it, and she promised to come tomorrow. She didn’t know who I was at first, but then realized that I was the person who gave her some herb transplants for her yard one time a few years back, and told me that I could call or text her any time if there was any kind of problem with her property.

So now I have the neighbor’s phone number, and the landlady’s phone number and can do something to resolve this problem! I’m so glad that I sent that note; but I’m also glad that I screamed out my front door tonight to prompt a response from the neighbor, even if it was the act of a deranged person! Who knows how long it would have taken her to get back to me if I hadn’t? Sometimes, maybe it’s okay to be crazy.

Although…I haven’t received responses from Phil to my last three text messages, and he’s not picking up his phone…

Uh-oh.