Big City Living

Siren Frenzy

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Up until this morning, I was convinced that I was slowly losing my marbles, one ambulance at a time. I am here to announce something exciting: I am NOT losing my mind.

Let me set the scene: 9 months ago, I switched apartments, but I stayed in the exact same building. My old apartment had a window in my room that faced a busy street, and I lived on the fourth floor. I heard noises constantly. I heard cars, I heard honking, I heard 3 am food deliveries as the Whole Foods trucks backed into the garage for 10 minutes straight. It was annoying at first, but I became accustomed to the noise. I had, after all, lived in New York City for 6 years.

Fast-forward to February, when I moved up to the ninth floor, and my windows now faced an interior courtyard. When I first tried to sleep in my new apartment, I could barely quiet my mind, because of the lack of background noise! I felt like I was sleeping in a suburban cocoon. I know some of you out there probably think this is a good thing. And it was… eventually. Three months passed, and I became accustomed to the lack of noise, and I was sleeping like a baby.

THEN, all of a sudden there were sirens. Sirens during my TV shows that I wasn’t sure if they were coming from the TV or not. Sirens that were waking me up in the middle of the night. Sirens on the street so loud that I had to turn up my music, or tell the person I was speaking to on the phone (probably my mom), to wait a minute until the ambulance passed. I’m not just talking about the regular, run-of-the-mill siren, I’m talking EPIC noise.

After a few weeks of this, I tested the waters and started to ask a coworker and a friend, here and there, if they were noticing these sirens. Turns out it was only me. I received a few strange looks, and a few comments like, “um yeah, there are sirens, this is New York.” Or, “Yeah, didn’t you notice you live smack in the middle of Mt. Sinai and St. Luke’s? You’ve lived in the same building for 5 years.” I felt like I was in the first scene of Mr. Holland’s Opus when he realizes his son is deaf, except everyone else in NYC was the deaf baby at the parade who couldn’t hear the fire engines.

Anyway, after a month of asking other Upper West Side-ers about the possible siren change, and a lot of fruitless googling, I decided to give up and come to terms with the fact that I was losing my sh*t, and/or maybe my hearing was improving with my old age.

Sidenote: There are a LOT of videos of sirens on YouTube. I do not recommend watching them in succession, it will only make you crazier.

Fast forward to this morning: my coworker (who I had told about my siren anxiety) told me she was listening to WNYC and that the sirens HAVE indeed changed with the times and I am actually a sane person! She linked me to the 2-minute piece, which is aptly named, “No, You’re Not Imagining It: Some NYC Ambulances Sound Different.” Sure enough, the piece specifically talks about how they have switched from a “wail” siren, to a “high-low” siren to penetrate the newer, more sound-proof cars. Both of those siren terms, BTW, I learned from my obsessive YouTubing.

Moral of this story: I am not crazy. Happy Monday.

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Miscellaneous

I Work in a Construction Zone

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As I write this, I have earbuds in my ears and I have air traffic control headphones on over my earbuds. Am I at an airport directing planes to their gates? FALSE. I am sitting at my desk in my office. While 20 construction workers are literally drilling into the wall outside my window. I can see them. In fact, last week, one of them was texting and I could actually read the words in his text. That’s how close they are. One guy left his iced coffee right outside my coworker’s window yesterday and she almost grabbed it for herself.

Was this construction completely unplanned? No. But does that make it any better? ALSO NO. I did not know when I started working at this non-profit in a seminary that I would be dealing with asbestos warnings posted in the lobby. Nor did I know that I would be learning the very important skill of typing on a keyboard that literally vibrates from a drill as I type. So exciting. I’ve never been within centimeters of a blowtorch before. How enthralling. This is all very thick sarcasm. In case you didn’t catch that.

The access to the elevator on our floor has been cut off for 6 weeks and counting. The original warning email they sent said that “work will proceed in the hallway on Wednesday June 7th.” It went on to say that the elevators would not stop on our floor “while this work is in progress.” At first skim, it looks like it will only be for one day. June 7th. Well here I am on July 20th, and there is no sign of it being finished anytime soon. Now, I know I am a fitness instructor and that these stairs should not be a problem. I take the elevator to another floor, then go up a flight. But after teaching 4 spin classes in 2 days, that single flight of stairs may as well be the Mayan ruins. And the last thing I want to do is three flights of stairs every time I have to use the restroom. I almost cut down on my coffee consumption for this reason. ALMOST.

Speaking of teaching fitness classes, I change clothes at work 3-4 time/week to teach at the gym. Sometimes when I am running late, I use our empty conference room as a changing room. I always make sure the door is locked. But of course I sometimes forget that there are now men scaling the exterior walls of the building. Two weeks ago, one of those men got more than he bargained for while walking outside the conference room on newly-erected scaffolding. No pun intended. Good thing they wear harnesses.

The stairs are not even the tip of the iceberg. There is smoke. A lot of it. Here is an actual excerpt of an email I sent the head of Facilities Management:

There is quite a bit of smoke throughout the hallways. It is visible to the eye, it looks like it’s foggy. Also, the fact that the people doing the work are wearing welding masks, and keep walking through the halls, and yet nothing has been done to protect the people working here for 9 hours each day is alarming.

They have repeatedly told us that it is “not dangerous,” but I can’t help but wonder why the workers are wearing masks. And a girl who works on my floor and is pregnant has started to take an alternative stairwell to avoid the smoke. For now, there’s not much I can do, and from what they tell us, it’s only going to get worse. They have barely even broken ground on the new building yet! This is just “prep work.” Kill me. Since I am here for the long haul, I guess I need to get used to wearing air traffic control headgear to the office, and try to be optimistic.

Here are a few positives I can glean from this experience:

  • I know how to work a blowtorch, simply from my extensive observation.
  • My calves are lookin’ GREAT from all the stairs.
  • There’s never a dull moment. The people walking by my office are always carrying fun things: steel beams, piping, insulation, etc. Sometimes all three!
  • I like to think I make some of these guys’ days when they accidentally see me in various stages of undress.
  • If I die from asbestos, I can tell my mom to stop worrying about liver cirrhosis from my drinking.
  • I never have to answer the phone; I can’t hear it ring!
  • There are a lot of cute guys walking around the building. The rabbis weren’t cutting it.
  • It makes me more thankful that I have air conditioning, looking at the guys outside sweating (even though we have been instructed not to use the AC on certain days when welding fumes from the scaffolding will be “too intense”).

If you need me, comment below, and don’t call as I will not be able to hear the phone! I’m well on my way to Career #5: Air traffic controller.

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