this has been bugging me lately, now that warm weather is approaching and school will be out soon.
I have these neighbors. I've not ever really talked to them or introduced myself, they live catty-corner from me in the back yard, and there is a big shrub in that corner of my yard, making face to face contact kind of difficult.
But i sure can hear them!
there are at least 4 kids, and i think they're all boys. ages ~12 to ~3.
then, the man that lives there, who i believe is the brother of these kids mother, has a race car that he tinkers with---at night. So at 10pm, 11pm, or even 1,2,3,4 or sometimes even 5 in the morning, he is out there firing up this car. And if that's not bad enough, the kids stay out all hours too.
I don't know what to do. I've lived here 5 years, and i think they've been here 3 years. I've never confronted them, though i've called the police once after he fired up a chain saw or some kind of loud piece of machinery and woke me from a dead sleep at 10:30 pm. It got slightly better after that, but if i hear him out there starting up the car, which is a race car so it's louder than a normal car, i just cannot go back to sleep. I'll lay there trying to sleep and block out the noise, but it's like the more i try to ignore it, the more it agitates me. I feel like i shouldn't have to deal with this.
It's the same with the kids. maybe they are slightly quieter than they would be in the day, but not much. There have been times that i've dreamed of a child screaming only to wake up and find that I was really hearing a child screaming!
I'm not sure what to do. I'd like to actually talk to them, maybe in the daytime, not in the middle of the night when i might not be as polite about it. I'm not sure how much noise people are allowed to make. it's a small housing development neighborhood. it's probably 50 yds from my house to theirs.
but what would i say?
Is i too much to expect peace and quiet in the middle of the night?
and it happens often, but it's erratic when it will happen. there's no set schedule, so i never know if it will be a quite night or disturbed sleep. Sometimes it's nightly, all week long.
sometimes it will be quiet till about 1am, then it all starts.
I can deal with the occasional bump or scream as the kids run from the car to the house if they get home late in the evening or something, but it's like these kids have no bedtime in the summer.
I feel like i'm going crazy over this. i loooove summer, but i'm dreading this. It makes me prefer winter and rainy nights, cuz at least i know they won't be out! But i find myself tensing up when i think of it, or look over at there house, if i hear the kids during the day, and that can't be good for my blood pressure.
I don't know if i have a right to complain. for the most part, the kids talk in normal voices, but at night, when the rest of the neighbor hood is asleep, it really carries, same with the car starting up, or saws or hammers etc.
In the daytime, it might bug me, but i'm reasonable and i can accept that other people have their hobbies and kids just make noise, but at what point is it extreme and at what point do i have the right to complain?
And.....at what point do i just become that old nagging hag, who complains about every thing???!!!!
any advise?
thanks
noisy neighbors
