Make a Joyful Noise!

What I might hope is the last post on the noise problem.

While pursuing the inner calmness and detachment described by the Stoics and by Seneca in particular, I found it necessary to make some noise of my own.  The tall grasses were beginning to be a problem and the string trimmer seemed the perfect tool now that the grasses were pretty dry.  Last month I couldn't find it when I tried to use it.  I've had it for a year or more, but have only used it once, during which experience I discovered that you have to hold it up.  Somehow, I had thought it would be more like using a vacuum cleaner.  This month, when I went to look for it again, there it was, in the shed, hanging right on the wall.  Previously, I hadn't found it because I thought it was in the shed in its box.  Frequently, I find, performing the same act and expecting a different result does not result in schizophrenia but in a different result.

So, the string trimmer in hand and the headphones on my ears, I went out and trimmed for a half hour or so.  What impressed me was how the headphones made it sound, to me, as if I were making almost no noise at all: a gentle buzzing sound, at worst.  Who could object to this sound, even if it were being made at 8 a.m. on a Sunday morning?  My second realization is that headphones are the answer to the dog noise.  I can wear them when I'm in the quilting workshop (where I most directly face the dog noise).  I never have worn them there because I'm usually there alone and just listen to music directly.  But I can wear earphones and it will mightily reduce the dog bark sound.  And I will just assume that the dogs' owner similarly goes about his life with earphones on and thinks, as a result, that his dogs sound like bees.