Not AGAIN!

Just when I was ready to put my nose to the grindstone and get back to work this happens.

I don’t like to have to make this first official Substack article all about me, but I do feel that I owe my readers and viewers a heads up about a new development and what you can expect in terms of content from me over the next little while.

Perhaps you noticed that seemingly out of the blue I put out more videos in February this year than I did in the whole of 2024. In fact, I know many of you did notice the resurgence due to the many emails and letters I received saying as much (thank you to all who wrote or posted about it on X/Twitter.) It felt good. I was back, baby!

And then, just as abruptly, I stopped. And that’s what I want to explain.

Last Saturday morning I was in the middle of writing a long and involved substack article about the history of Andrew Tate when my husband came into my office holding a sheet of paper. He didn’t look happy.

He sat down in the chair where I usually do rug hooking projects and began to read.

“Construction is coming to your neighbourhood.”

As he went through the material I realized that the incredibly disruptive, 4 month long project we’d endured last year was about to begin all over again.

You can see the notice below, complete with the map of streets involved and the added bonus this year of having to have our household water provided by hoses from the local hydrants.

I called the woman in charge of this project for more details and she told me that the project is scheduled to begin March 31 and end July 31 (if all goes to plan.) It turns out that one of the main pits they will dig to do this work is right at the end of our driveway. My husband’s work desk - which is on ground level and in a room with a wall of windows - will have a front row seat to see and hear the heavy machinery (and God forbid port-a-potties) that will be out there from 7:30 a.m to 5 p.m almost every day for 4 months. I was planning to set up at the dining room in order to sew myself a dress for my daughter’s wedding but that space is right in the line of fire, too. Here’s the view. Can you see the spray painted lines indicating where they’ll dig the pit and attach the hoses?

I don’t think it’s unreasonable for me to say that this means neither he nor I will be able to use our current work spaces. The noise will be unbearable and the dust will mean that we won’t be able to open our front windows, perhaps for the entire summer. We don’t live in a mansion. We don’t have much space in which to relocate inside the house (although we’ll try of course.)

Before you get temped to leave us helpful comments about soundproof panels or noise cancelling headphones, please know that we have tried every trick in the book. As I said earlier we dealt with this last summer and as luck would have it we’ve endured several other very large, long lasting construction projects during our work from home lives. No matter what you try for relief it’s the incessant nature of it that will get to you after a while. The vibrating, the unpredictability, the inability to just have a nap in your own bed, read a book on your patio, air out the house, take a telephone call or do a little peaceful gardening. Even if you manage to stay relatively zen about it most of the time the reality is that you had those months of construction essentially stolen from you because all of your own in-home plans had to be put on hold.

Here’s a noise related story from a couple of years back. Our neighbours got their driveway redone (no problem, fairly quick job, right?) but for some reason they absolutely insisted that while they were at it my husband and I should also have our curb replaced. We said no, thank you, we’d really like to minimize the noise and we don’t need a new curb. In a normal world, that would have been the end of it. How did it turn out? Scroll back up and look closely at that photo of my driveway. You can probably see the new, whiter curbs not only in front of the property on the left but also in front of our place. That’s right - our neighbours actually bullied the city into coming back a few weeks after they’d already completed their project and forced us to get the curbs installed against our will! So we went through two rounds of all that noise and mess and now, only 20 months later - it’s all getting torn up anyway!

After the curb fiasco led to hard feelings between us the neighbours had a crew come out to make another week’s worth of noise installing a very high fence to block out the sight of us. Luckily fences work both ways and I’m enjoying not having to look at them ever again.

I laugh so that I don’t do violence.

When my husband first told me the news of the impending catastrophe I spent a day in denial. It sunk in for real on Sunday and I began searching for a short term rental. On day 5 when I still hadn’t found anything I decided to get really, really drunk. Surprising as it is, that did nothing to solve the problem (although being too hung over to care the next day allowed me a day off from non stop spinning out.)

Side Note: searching for a rental apartment or office has opened my eyes to the dire state of the rental market. It’s mayhem. Extremely expensive mayhem which can and might be the topic of a blog post in and of itself.

In the midst of searching for rentals and reading articles and personal experiences of people who have dealt with this stuff before hoping to find a solution that had somehow escaped me all the other times I’ve had to put up with major construction projects I came across one other bit of information I want to share.

Exposure to residential noise increases the onset of Diabetes type 2 by 22%. I developed Type 2 since moving to this home. I gotta wonder if noise played a part in it. There are several published meta-analyses on this topic and I read all I could find. Interestingly, this statistic does not hold at all for people exposed to workplace noise. And the sound of trains doesn’t have the same effect as the sound of traffic, planes or construction. Construction is the worst of all - low frequency having the most insidious effect.

It’s totally shocking stuff, to be honest. It also might explain why, when people have taken to discussion forums to search for sympathy in dealing with construction noise they get insulted and dismissed by the majority of those who take time to reply. It seems to be that there is a policed narrative in play which seeks to intimidate anyone who dares to complain about construction. “What? Do you hate progress??” That sort of thing. Perhaps companies or cities are trying to avoid class actions or any other liability claims? I don’t know.

All right so why am I telling you all of this? Because I’ve been unable to carry on working as normal since I heard this news and depending on how bad this all turns out to be I may not be able to produce anything at all. My blood sugar had been in control since late July last year after a huge struggle to get it under control without medication) but it shot way up last week and has stayed there, bringing with it all the horrid symptoms of blurry vision, sleeplessness, tingling hands and feet, ear infections, etc. As I’m writing this I’m realizing that late July last year is when the last construction project wrapped up! Maybe the reason I couldn’t get it lower before then was not due to lack of effort but due to the circumstance that was beyond my control: the noise.

My husband said to me: “We’ll pay what we have to to find a place. I don’t care if it’s $8,000. You have to think of this like it’s an emergency surgery. A life saving operation.” And maybe he’s right. Maybe it is. Here’s hoping we can find somewhere to go.

Thanks for reading and for understanding. I appreciate all of you very much. As I’ve said many times over the years, I have the best audience on the internet!

Please visit my website if you’d like to see articles and videos I think are interesting or to make a financial gift (which might help me afford some peace and quiet this summer!) Here’s the link: Amazing Polly's Website.

I’ll leave you with a photo from the back yard in 2017, before all the construction started. We used to love to spend time back there. Unfortunately, because we avoid spending too much time in the noisy garden anymore, it looks much different now.

Cheers!