At the end of our cul-de-sac, there is a large tract of property with an adult family home on it. I’d estimate it’s a few acres of mostly grass. Well – at least, it was, until earlier this month, when a crew of construction vehicles rolled in and started work on some new houses.

This work first entailed ripping out a large screen of trees that had been planted on the edge of the property, a noisy and depressing process. The work continues to progress from there, with a great deal of extremely loud rumbling, beeping, crashing, smashing, and general noise and mess you expect from construction sites. Oh, and of course I have to mention the rumbling of trucks up and down our formerly quiet street. It’s like garbage day every day, all day, and especially intrusive and onerous when the weather is nice and we open our windows.

When this all started, I immediately began feeling resentful and angry. It’s going to go on all summer, making having windows open miserable, and even after summer who knows how long it’ll go on; when the trucks are done, we’ll just switch to hammering and banging of the actual home building. And then we’ll have people moving in, and lots more traffic in and out our (as previously stated) formerly quiet dead end street. Oh, and the folks in our HOA voted not to include this development in our HOA, so they don’t have to adhere to our CC & Rs.

Grrrr! Put on my curmudgeon hat, with a NIMBY scarf.

But some of my friends have been helping me see the bright sides:

– Entertainment for a truck-obsessed preschooler within easy walking distance.
– New neighbors means we could meet new friends!
– Better construction here in the ‘burbs than clearing some forest land out in the foothills.

I’m trying to keep these upsides in mind wherever the huge trucks are especially loud. And when I start feeling angry or resentful, I pray. I pray for the construction workers, who do have a very dangerous job; and I pray for our future neighbors, who we don’t know yet but hopefully we’ll get to be friends one day. This helps somewhat.

But, honestly, it’s just going to take time to resign myself to these changes. Development is happening everywhere around here, on any property even remotely suitable. I guess it was only a matter of time.

“If you can’t change something, change the way you think about it.” I’m trying.