My bedroom faces the street. Some nights I have a deep sleep. Other nights I toss and turn for hours. If I feel I am going to have a bad night, I will take a pill to help me sleep. Sometimes the pill works, sometimes it is a dud.

A kid that lives down the street must work at a fast-food restaurant that closes at 11 PM. At 11:10 PM he come down my street on his motorcycle. My house is on a curve on the street. When the kid gets to the curve, I believe he wants to see how fast he can take the curve as the motorcycle loudly reeves up.

Then there are the emergency vehicles, the Police cars, the fire engines, the ambulances. Sometimes the noise from the emergency vehicles is off in the distance. Sometimes seems much closer.

Then there are the dogs. One will start barking for whatever reason, a raccoon, a possum, or who knows what. Once one starts barking all the other dogs on my street join in. Now a symphony of dogs that start and stop barkingthrough most of the night.

Occasionally I would hear a cat in heat, screaming for a mate. There used to be all kinds of feral cats on my street. They disappeared? All gone. When the cats left the squirrels took over. Some nights I hear them on my roof playing tag.

The man that lives across from me in the blue house leaves for work at 5:30 in the morning and when he gets in his truck, he reeves up the motor, adding to my irritation over no sleep.

I guess I could wear earplugs. Or sleep on the couch in the living room. Or move to a quieter street but with my luck I would move from the frying pan to the fire. Oh, what I would do for a good nights sleep.

© Robert A Evans