Could we just have a little quiet?

I am very fortunate to live in a quiet neighbourhood. Yes, there are lawn mowers, sirens, kids next door playing on their backyard trampoline but I don't mind. What bothers me the most is how loud my hubby likes the tv when we watch a movie at night.

People with hearing aids and cochlear implants (like me) cannot wear earplugs. I can turn my implant down if it is too loud out but then others sounds that I like (birds, etc) will be quieter too.

We also have a noise bylaw here.
 

We mostly have a quiet block...Except when we had one house always had people going in and out of the house at all hours....
The house was a wreck...When the Dad died, it went really bad there....So 2 years ago they were condemned.....Someone bought
the house...They made it beautiful...It's pending to be bought...It looked like a man and a Woman...they looked young....We are happy
to have the house bought...
 

There is an old Twilight Zone episode where a cowboy is thrust in to the future (our present day) and just the noise of daily life in the city drove him nuts.
 
I lived in Manhattan for years, so noise never bothered me big time. But out in suburbia where it is relatively quiet, noise does irritate me. Go figure.
 
It's funny I was born and raised in the city, until my husband and I moved to a more rural area almost 2 yrs ago. I am shocked at how much noise there is here compared to the city. Constant sounds of lawn mowers .alarms ,and so many other sounds.
 
If your most irritating noise comes from your TV, what can you do to 'tone' it down? Maybe, earphones for your husband? Is there anything comfortable that you can wear, which deadens sound? Would earphones work for you? Instead of amplifying the sound, use them to dampen the louder sound from the TV, while providing just enough sound for you. Or you could get your husband;s ears tested.
 
I wouldn't wear earplugs or any other device that blocks out noise.

Reason: way back when Walkmans first became popular, I bought one; after listening to a couple of cassettes, I removed the little earphones and heard a crash coming from outside the apartment. Opened the door to see one of the managers breaking the glass to get to the fire extinguisher. The apartment down below me was on fire!! If I'd kept the earphones on awhile longer, I may not have been able to get out of the building in time.
 
One of the reasons we sold the house we were living and bought a new house last year was the everlasting noise at the old place. When I moved in with the Spousal Equivalent 10 years ago, the neighborhood was fairly quiet. Then all hell broke loose.

The side of our house was on a heavily-trafficked interior street and all night long, people came and went with their car radios blasting...THUMP THUMP THUMP THUMP THUMP THUMP THUMP THUMP THUMP THUMP THUMP THUMP...….

There were three guys living down the street who HAD to be drug dealers. 24 hours a day, they'd leave the house, drive somewhere very close and return in 10 minutes. Then 15 minutes later, one would leave again and be back in 10 minutes. This would never stop. I figure they were delivering drugs to people at the nearby 7-11 or somewhere like that. The problem was that they'd have their radios BLARING coming and going.

Our new neighborhood is quiet as a graveyard. I LOVE it! The only excitement is when the bears decide to toss a garbage can around. Friday night late I'm sitting at the computer when CRASH-BAM-BOOM, something is hitting the garage door. I get a flashlight and go out and the heavy duty trashcan is on its side. I put it back up and go back inside. Within a couple of minutes, CRASH-BAM, it's hitting the garage door again. Again I go out and this time move the trashcan into the garage. No sooner than I get back into the house than CRASH, the trashcan with nothing but yard waste is being thrown around. So I go back out and put that one in the garage, too. The next morning, I notice the neighbor's can is at the end of his driveway. Normally, it's raccoons who are the culprits, but our raccoons are small and I'm not sure they can drag a big trash can down the driveway. Gotta be the bears. They wander through the neighborhood on occasion. Our back yard abuts a conservation area, so we're in their territory.
 
We live in a really quiet area and I prefer the peacefulness. There aren’t many houses on the country dirt road we live on and even they are quiet considerate neighbours. Since it’s the country sound can really travel and be heard far away so one needs to be extra careful especially early morning and late at night.

Coyotes can sometimes be heard howling at night or the hoot of an owl. On special occasional some folks set off fireworks but our township has public firework displays which we never go to but can hear them. New Year’s Eve we are usually already in bed. That’s how wild and crazy we are.

My husband once asked his father how he could stand all the noise in the city. Once staying over night with us he asked how we could stand the sound of the blue jays 😂 but I’ll admit that the blue jays around here especially during mating seasonal ARE loud.

Listening to the wind and a thunderstorm with the windows open is heavenly though. Right now it’s almost 4:00 on a Sunday afternoon and I can hear someone mowing their lawn in the distance. That’s the type of noise I prefer.

We get the occasional bear but nothing worth worrying about.
 
LindaB said:
Sorry to hear of your anxiety. I think you would have to live in the middle of nowhere to escape it. Everyone's life/sleep cycle is different and when you're younger I don't think you are considering that when you are having a party or friends in your backyard pool.
Believe it or not, I have a similar problem in my very own home. My husband gets up at all hours of the night and Lord knows what he does but our bedroom backs up to the kitchen and believe me, he doesn't think about the noise he's making in there...coffee, cupboards open, shut, microwave, etc . I'm sure he's not thing about the noise he's making. He's just going about his own routine. He thinks everybody should be up, lol.
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Your husband's nocturnal activities are like mine. It's one of the reasons that I don't ever want to share my house with anyone. I know that I would be highly annoying!
 
Although I live in a semI-rural area, noise incursion can still be a problem. Those who sport thumping car stereos may be surprised to find their hearing beginning to peter out when they reach their 30’s. Then there are the motorcycles loud enough to be considered environmental assault weapons that literally rattle the windows, scare the animals, and drown out television or conversation as they pass. Their owners (who don’t care about anyone’s rights but their own) will be long gone before police can arrive in the unlikely event of a noise ordinance complaint being made...
 
Before I moved here I lived on a dirt road in the middle of the state forest. The only houses nearby were hunting camps and nearby means a few miles between them. Sometimes the only noise was birds singing and the gentle sound of my wind turbine spinning. Then again some of the noise, especially at night after I have gone to sleep was ATV's racing, not only on the dirt road but in the forest where they are not supposed to be. Snow mobilers wouldn't show up in the day light hours at all. Around 10:00 PM was their time to gather and go for hours on our dirt road which is a designated "snowmobile trail". So can't complain about them. Kids partying in the woods across the road which has a creek with a waterfall and the Finger Lakes Trail lean-to......getting drunk and shooting off guns (and me praying they know there is a house here and don't shoot us or our horses). Hunting season was the worst........noisy hunters coming from all over. Not quiet hunters like my Daddy was. Driving their cars and trucks fast from one spot to another (I guess if they didn't know I could hear them, they didn't know the deer could too). And coon hunters bring their hunting dogs out at night and let them go........constant barking which made my horses run and race around their paddock the whole time. The hunters trailing the dogs in their trucks making all kinds of noise. Who wants to sleep?

Now living in a city is much more quiet. It may be my building is just so well insulated. I like quiet. So many people have to have a television going "for the noise" they will tell me. I like to watch something and then turn it off. Same with music. I listen to music often but not for hours. Maybe one or two CDs and that is it. My building is super quiet, but of course most of us are older or disabled. There are 3 dogs living on my floor and I never hear them. Two live in the apartment next door and one is big. I have never heard them make a sound. When I moved here I was figuring it would be noisy because I am right in the middle of downtown. It is not.
 

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