I've been hearing the thumm... thumm for months now, after my head hits the pillow and the dark house is nearly silent. My head is next to the outside wall, a bit down in the next room from the front door. There could be many explanations. There just never are.
Several times I've gotten up and looked out the window to see if there was something I could point to, perhaps something needing fixing, to pin the noise on. I'd open the front door, step out, look around, try to pinpoint a noise, a source, some reason. Eventually I'd give up worrying and go to sleep. However, if I woke in the wee hours I could hear it again, or at least until my bad shoulder drove me out of bed to finish sleeping in my recliner where the pressure would be off the shoulder and eventually I could sleep again.
In the middle of the house. No windows next to me. No outside wall by my head.
I wondered if there was a leak somewhere from the roof or in a wall, perhaps even in the plumbing underneath where I slept, or inside a cabinet - any excuse for the noise, any reason for a repair being missed that we could address.
Nothing. When I walk around, it always seems to come from outside, never has a source I can find.
Oddly, it never seemed to depend on the weather. I opened the front door several times to look out, see if something was dripping off the roof, hitting, say, the porch to make the noise. There'd be no drips off our roof, the porch was dry, no snow was thawing, no rain falling. Was it in the walls? Would something ignored be rotting away to fall apart with us inside the home?
Sleep can be a challenge with those thoughts running through your head.
We just had a really good rain the last couple days, with temperatures in the high 30s, and snow melting from all but the most determined banks where shovels and plows have piled it. A look at the lake reveals glass where two days ago it was solid snow white. So far no fishermen are braving the ice, sensibly wary of how thin it may have gotten. Rabbits have been in the yard, piles of droppings sitting where they long munched on missed clumps of green grass formerly hidden by snow. We'd been seeing the tracks where they had passed through, but nothing had looked like them stopping for a buffet, until now. Our trips to the garbage and recycle bins will have to be in daylight for a few days so we can monitor where we step to keep shoes clean, but the rabbits are welcome to the grass. Normally we have to pay for the trimming.
But last night brought the kettle drums into the back yard. It was no longer a steady slow thumm... thumm. It was a percussion masterpiece, an endless performance worthy of Symphony Hall. And no, it didn't emerge from off our roof at all. Or at least not the house roof.
Instead it came from out in the yard, where the shed sits, or to be even more precise, where the sloped shed roof deposits water onto the trash bin, and the recycle bin. Each has a slightly different quality of plastic hinged lid, with different levels of emptiness inside to mellow the sound or accentuate it. Those were our kettle drums! I even called Steve to come and listen to them for a bit, which he did.
While they were loud, the sound soon soothed me to sleep, rather than keeping me awake with imagined cares.
It's going to be dry again tonight, and likely for several more. I'm wondering if the thumm... thumm will return tonite. I'll be sure to poke my head out and search for a cause when it does. This time I'll make sure to check the shed roof to see if it's dripping onto the bins. They have tended to be wet in the mornings, or even iced up when it's cold enough inside a little trough at the hinges. Sometimes I have to whack the lids to get them open. I know it doesn't really make sense that they'd be a source of the nightly dripping, but I do want to be sure. I'd love to settle in to sleep without needing to worry about some missed repair somewhere.
But in a good rain I'll also be alert for the kettle drums to return to the yard. We both love a free concert.
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