Well, who needs a balcony - or sleep - really?

Oh, the pounding in my head. Oh, wait. That's actually the pounding outside my head. When we lived in Vancouver, everywhere you turned, there was construction. Houses were bought, torn down and new monster homes - usually du- or triplexes - were built in their place. It happened to the house across the street from us, the house next door, the house behind us and the house diagonally across from us. Every. single. day we would wake up to the crashing noises of timber being ripped off its foundation, bulldozers razing walls. Then it began next to us. The house next door was so close, we were convinced the bulldozer was knocking into us. Every few minutes, we'd hear a crashing noise and our house would vibrate. Since we had already decided to make aliyah, we couldn't wait to get out of there and get some peace and quiet!

Well, our peace and quiet lasted about a year or so. Over the course of the last year, construction - which has been in the planning stages for years - began in earnest on the apartment complex and park on our street. Right across the street from us. Like, directly across the street.

The hill across the street - before

For months, we've been waking up to the sound of breaker machines tearing apart the boulders that make up the lovely hillside across the street from us. They finally stopped a few weeks ago, and we thought, "At last!" They were ready to pour concrete.

No dice. They stopped long enough to throw down some rebar, and put up some construction walls, then started completely decimating the hill right outside our patio. The machines are now right outside our bedroom window, at the same height as our 3rd floor apartment.

This was a couple of weeks ago. There's even less of the hill now.

Which means not only are we hearing the noise (the volume has necessitated sleeping with earplugs, because the construction starts at 6:30am), but we are now enjoying the vibration of the d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d. Any thoughts of dining on our balcony have been quashed under the layers of dirt and dust tossed about by the construction.

I couldn't transfer the video I took of the actual machines, but this is the exact same melody. Just multiply by two and take less breaks.

To top this off, work has now started in the field behind our apartment. The field is already flat, so the breaker machines aren't necessary. The machines that pour concrete for the foundation aren't quite as loud as the breakers, but that's not saying much.

So now we're left with dust and noise in the front, and noise in the back. We haven't been able to open our windows in over a month, and I'm going through dust rags (even through closed windows!) like crazy. Which, of course, means that the air conditioner has to be on far more than it would otherwise. Which also means, of course, we're going to have one nasty electric bill.

When our landlord first told us he was not renewing our lease (he wants more money for the apartment. Or to sell it. Good luck with either one right now), we were disappointed. We like our neighbourhood, and our neighbours, and really love our apartment. The development companies are conspiring to make us really look forward to a change of environment. We even considered moving to a settlement, if only because there's a construction freeze.

I may be forced to go to the beach tomorrow, just to get some peace and quiet.

Update: our landlord must have come around the neighbourhood, or he called his agent who said, "are you effin kidding?!" because he called us asking if we wanted to stay. So to save expenses and the pain of moving, we're staying. The electric bill will be cheaper than paying for movers.