Day 127: 2.5 million dollar project (2)

My Project: 365 Creative Writing Prompts

Day 127: 2.5 million dollar project (2)

There was a time when I woke up to the sound of silence, or birdsong, depending on the time of day. When I wake up at 8:00 or 9:00 a.m. I hear nothing at all, but when waking up around 6:00 a.m. (which doesn’t happen very often) I get greeted by a cacophony of birds all competing with each other with tweets, chirps, and songs.

Nowadays I wake up to a different loudness. With the parking project in full swing, the construction workers create their own kind of noise. A jackhammer, a type of mini bulldozer and two other machines all fight with one another over who can create the biggest racket.

Then there are the men. Most of the time they go about their job in ‘silence’ but every now and then they need to communicate with each other which is not as easy as you might think. When Marcel is having fun with the jackhammer, Renee has to shout and whistle quite a few times to get his attention.

When they talk to each other, they don’t really talk as such, they shout. Understandable as one man is on one side of the parking lot and the other is on the other side. So, communication goes in the form of yells, screams, and hollers.

How the men manage to work in this heat is beyond me. Yesterday's temperature was 28 deg C (82.4 deg F) but they don’t seem to be bothered. Dressed in jeans, T-shirts and a helmet, they sit in the tiny cabins of their machinery and tirelessly scoop up the soil and deposited it in the container. Judging by the mountain of soil it’s going to take them days if not weeks to get through it.

Someone asked me the other day if I was a construction worker, which job I would prefer. Would I want to be a builder, a glazer, or did I have something else in mind? I didn’t have to think long. If I was to be in construction, I would want to be a crane man, okay to be correct a crane woman. I quite fancy the idea of sitting high and dry in my own little cabin, several meters above the ground. There’s a problem though … I have a fear of heights.

Anyway, back to ‘my’ construction workers. Around 12:00 the noise usually stops when the workers kill their machinery for lunchtime. They eat, they have a cup of coffee or tea, followed by a well-deserved rest. From the looks of it, the one on the left is contemplating life, the middle one is busy with some stretch exercises, while the one of the right is conked out. For his sake, let’s hope there are no birds in those trees.

I can’t wait to see what they get up to in week three.

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Day 47: Cats and their quirks

My Project: 365 Creative Writing Prompts

Day 47: Cats and their quirks

Today is one of those rare days that I have nothing to do. No articles to write, no emails to answer, no research to do, and the prompt I’m supposed to write about doesn’t appeal to me. So, I’ll do what I always do when I’m short on inspiration … I write about my cat family, you could call them my four muses.

Right this moment, the fire alarm is being tested in my condo building. A series of sharp peep, peep, peep, sounds amounting to several decibels fit to pierce an eardrum.

While this is merely annoying for me, my cats are terrified of this noise. Charlotte is hiding under the duvet of my bed, Mickey is under the bed, Holly is more annoyed than scared that she can’t go to sleep, and Gabriel … well, Gabriel is Gabriel, he couldn’t care less. As far as Gabe is concerned, the fire alarm could be accompanied by an earthquake and a tornado and he wouldn’t care. As long as he has his basket it’s alright with him.

On the subject of sleeping … last night I came close to waking up Dieter. He was snoring again. Before I go any further, let me explain.

There was a time that Dieter snored every night, and by snoring, I mean SNORING. Several times a night, I had to get out of bed to go and wake him up because even with the door of his bedroom closed, the noise came through the walls to the point that it woke me out of a sound sleep.

He tried nose strips, I tried earplugs … nothing helped. Then I read that snoring is often caused by dry air in the bedroom. When I mentioned this to Dieter, he went and bought a humidifier. And low and behold, it worked. From day one, no more snoring. So, from then on, night after night Dieter switched on his humidifier and we were both able to get a good night sleep.

Until last night that is. Shortly after he’d gone to bed, I heard snoring. This surprised me because all these months he’d been so quiet. Did he perhaps forget to switch on his humidifier?

I was about to get up when I noticed that the snoring noise didn’t come from Dieter’s bedroom but from the armchair in the living room. Upon closer inspection, it wasn’t Dieter who was snoring, it was Charlotte. Yes, believe it or not, Charlottes' snores resembled a chainsaw!

When I mentioned this to Dieter he nodded in agreement. He knows all too well that Charlotte snores. When she sleeps with him on the foot end of his bed, he frequently has to give her a nudge when her snoring gets too loud.

As for Mickey … Mick is a fairly relaxed cat. He's clearly tired today, but he hasn’t forgotten yesterday’s drama, so he’s a little hesitant about putting his head down. 

That leaves Holly … Holly’s pose says it all. As far as she’s concerned, yesterday's fire alarm testing technicians can kiss her butt.

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Day 34: What do you hear when you go outside?

My Project: 365 Creative Writing Prompts

Day 34: What do you hear when you go outside?

What do I hear when I go outside? Well, that all depends on the time of day.

If I go outside at the crack of dawn, I hear a cacophony of birdsong. As you can see from the picture, there’s a large field behind the building where I live with lots of trees. Those trees are home to a variety of birds and first thing in the mornings they all have something to say. I sometimes wonder what they are twittering about. They could be discussing the dreams they had, debating what to have for breakfast, or simply making plans for the day.

A little further down in the picture you’ll see a pond. This pond is home to a number of ducks and geese. They too are quite the conversationalists. They can be heard when they’re coming in for landing as if the leader is giving instructions. Once on the ground, it often sounds like he’s giving feedback.

With them too I have no idea what they’re saying, but it sounds like every now and then these ducks and geese dissolve in peals of laughter.

Then there are the trains. Every 5 minutes during peak hours and every 10 minutes during the rest of the day, the SRT (Scarborough Rapid Transit) train passes by. 

Contrary to what you might think, the passing trains don’t bother me at all. In fact, I’m so used to them, I don’t hear them at all.

To GO-train, on the other hand, can't be missed. That train can be heard from quite a distance away and when it thunders past, anybody and everybody knows about it.

Micky loves that train. When he hears the train coming he rushes outside and sits on the ledge, or he jumps on a windowsill to watch the big green machine go by.

Other than that, there are all kinds of noises during the day. Cars coming and going, with quiet or not so quiet passengers.

In the distance, cars can be heard, along with the wail of ambulances or firetrucks. And every so often there is a loud bang. These bangs can be a car backfiring, an electric transformer blowing (as there is a power station nearby), or a gunshot. Who knows.

Late at night, when all should be quiet, a group of youngsters uses the parking lot behind the building as their personal playground. One car after another park in a dark corner and what happens next depends on that particular evening. Sometimes they play music, loud music, talk, and laugh.

Other nights they drink, and the more they drink, the louder they get. When they’re done, they smash the bottles leaving the glass and other debris behind. In the course of the evening, more cars come and go. It’s hard to see what goes on, but sometimes packages get exchanged.

Usually, after 2:00 a.m. all goes quiet.

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From the frying pan into the fire

A month or two ago, the building where we live installed a new fire alarm. 

Residents complained that the old fire alarm made too much noise.  They had a point, the alarm sounded like an old-fashioned coffee grinder.  On and on and on it went until we were all half deaf.

Was there ever a fire?  Of course not, the alarm was tripped because someone let dinner burn or by obnoxious kids.  Regardless, when the alarm was set off, the fire brigade visited the building and $500 had to be paid.

After yet another false alarm, the fire marshal suggested that a new fire alarm system was installed.  And so it was.

The new alarm was different from the old one.  Instead of one alarm box in the corridor, every single condo unit was fitted with its own alarm system.

Just what exactly that meant became apparent the first time the alarm went off … OMG the thing was so loud we had to yell at each other to be heard.  The thing went peep, peep, peep, on and on and on.

While annoying during the day, at night it was absolutely unbearable.  Nobody, but absolutely nobody, got another wink of sleep.  I tried to block out the noise by putting my fingers in my ears and by putting a pillow over my head, nothing helped.

Tonight the alarm was yet again set off and when the peep, peep, peep, started I nearly jumped out of my skin.

We got creative though, to block out the noise, Dieter held a pillow against the ceiling speaker.

This position was not the most comfortable one though, so he had to come up with a better system that was not as strenuous on the arm muscles.  He found it in the form of a broom.

Of course, it’s not much fun just standing there, one has to have some form of entertainment.  As it turns out, Dieter can block the noise with a broom stick pushed against a pillow and read a book at the same time.

Yep, we Maneros are multi taskers …

Am I too violent?

There are days that all is right with the world and you feel perfectly happy and content, and then there are days that you could kill someone with your bare hands.  Take a guess what kind of day it is today …

It started last night.  One moment I was sound asleep, with Gabriel next to me and Charlotte by my feet, the next I thought WWIII had started.  A high pitched sound screeched  “PEEP, PEEP, PEEP …. PEEP, PEEP, PEEP …. PEEP, PEEP, PEEP!”  It was the newly installed fire alarm and I hate it with a passion. 

The old fire alarm only sounded in the building’s hallways.  It was loud and sounded like a coffee grinder, but it was bearable.  This new system, that the local fire brigade decided upon is not only MUCH LOUDER but installed in every unit.

Gabriel and Charlotte flew off the bed and went into hiding underneath it, while I tried to drown out the noise by holding a pillow over my head.  The pillow somewhat softened the noise, but it was still too loud to go back to sleep with.

From 3:00 until 3:20 the peeping sound went on, and on, and on.  Finally it stopped and I think everyone in the building let out a collective sigh of relief.

Not for long though, at 3:30 the peeping started again.  If I had had a gun, I would have shot the alarm; if I had a baseball bat, I would have smashed it to pieces; if I had strong muscles I would have ripped the alarm out of the ceiling and thrown it out the window.

Once again I covered my ears, tried to drown out the sound, but it didn’t work.  To distract myself I started counting the series of “PEEP, PEEP, PEEP’s”.  I got to 172.

Finally, the peeping stopped and a voice came over the intercom announcing that the fire alarm was faulty and that the mechanic was on his way. 

If I had my way with the fire brigade whose bright idea this was, and the man who installed this devious device, none of them would be breathing today.

I know, I’m a violent person, but can you blame me?