June 18, 2020. Madison, Mississippi. Banging in the Night.

Noise from outside always seems louder at night, especially when it appears that something in banging against the house. The other evening I went to bed just after 11:00. The wind had come up earlier in the evening but we had no thunder or rain. Just lots of loud noisy wind. All was well until I was almost asleep. Then something started banging on the house. I was all of a sudden wide awake trying to figure ot what was making the noise. The banging came intermittently so the wind needed to be especially strong. I tried to figure if the gate was banging. It sounded like a board banging on the side of the house. Two days ago, while Kashina was here, I heard the same sound and asked Kashina to check the deck. I felt sure that furniture was moving and bashing into something but she reported that no chairs were moving. But she did not go outside. Later in the afternoon when I went out for the mail I heard construction from next door so decided that the noise I heard from the neighbors. I was wrong. I finally got up to investigate and decided that the noise was coming from the deck or the lower deck. By then the rain was coming down hard and I decided to wait until the morning to try to find my problem. By now it was 2:00 so I took two ibuprofen, drank a cup of hot milk and went back to bed. And I slept. The first thing in the morning, before breakfast, I went out to the deck. And I found the culprit. The lid of the trashcan had not been clicked closed so if the wind blew from one direction the lid could fly up and hit the wall of the house, which made a loud noise. Sometimes the lid hit the house several times in a row and sometimes it just got lifted up and slammed down on the top of the trash can. I pushed the lid down to secure the latch. The banging in the night will cease. I almost called Chantes, my handyman, before I went exploring. He would have thought I was nuts to call him to fix a trash can lid. I waS wishing Ken was still with me. Listening to banging in the night all by yourself is not good. But everything worked out just fine. Next time during the daytime I will go and look myself.