Thump, Thump, Thump in the Night

I’m a relatively light sleeper.  I have a hard time falling asleep if there is a lot of background noise, which is exactly why I sleep with a fan every night.  The hum of my fan helps to block out a lot of the noises that would normally keep me awake.  Noises like my husbands snoring, the tv being on or rain.   Well, ok, that’s a lie – all of those things would totally keep me from ever falling asleep, but the fan does drown out the noise – a little.  My problem is that I have super sensitive hearing and pick up on background noises that most other people don’t hear.  And unfortunately for me, sometimes there are noises in which I have no control over and they’ve been known to drive me almost to the brink of insanity.

I distinctly remember one night a few summers ago in which a family of cicadas took up residence in my back yard.  In case you didn’t know, cicadas are very noisy insects.  Once I heard them, that’s all I could hear.  I ended up putting on 2 fans (my regular one and one additional one) plus the air conditioner that night and I could still hear them making noise outside over all that noise inside.  I’m pretty sure I didn’t sleep a wink that night.

Rewind to this past Wednesday night.  It was about 9:30 pm and Chris & I were catching up on some of the shows we had on the DVR.  All of the sudden I heard this thumping sound and once I noticed it, that’s all I could focus on.  It completely distracted me from watching the show that was on and I was determined to get to the bottom of where the noise was coming from.  By the way, Chris couldn’t hear the noise at all and basically thinks that my elevator doesn’t quiet make it to the top floor – if ya catch my drift.

Because my house doesn’t have one shred of insulation, I have been known to blame unfamiliar noises on my step-son.  His bedroom is downstairs in our finished basement and he can be loud sometimes.  I figured that he had his radio up a little too loud, so I sent Chris downstairs to investigate.  If you’re wondering why I sent Chris to talk to him instead of going myself, it’s because I didn’t want to walk in on him in his underwear or gasp – worse.  It was 9:30 at night after all and I wasn’t sure if he was getting ready for bed.

Anyway, Chris came back upstairs and said that he didn’t have his radio on and in fact, there was no noise of any kind coming from his room. I walked around the house and heard the noise, but couldn’t pin point it.  I opened the back door and finally figured out that it was music and it was coming from somewhere near by, but I don’t know exactly where.  If I had found out where it was coming from, I would have called the po po.  Yes, it was that loud – to me.

About an hour later, it was time for bed and even though the noise relentlessly thumped for the entire time we watched television, I decided to try to go to sleep.  Our air conditioners are still in the windows, so I told Chris to bundle up because even though it was 25 degree outside, the AC was going on to drown out the noise of the thumping that he thinks was all in my head.

Turns out, the music went off at 11 and I was able to sleep, with my fan on, very contently. Chris never heard the noise.  Even in the silence of our bedroom, he never heard it.  But like I said, he already thinks I’m a screwball, so I wasn’t worried about what he thought.  I know what I heard and I know damn well that if it had continued, I would have been laying there awake for hours.