As the OP asks for something simple that would make my life happier, I think I have at least one answer.
Over in the Pit I just posted about an ice cream truck that was sitting somewhere around the corner for the past fifteen minutes emitting its incredibly irritating repeating jingle. Earlier I had posted about a neighbour’s swimming pool and the associated screeching kidlets.
We now move on to a neighbour deciding that an asphalt-paved driveway was declassé, so he had it torn up and repaved with paving brick. Know what happens when paving brick is being installed? Yes, many bricks are cut, using a gas-powered diamond-tipped masonry saw. Any idea what that sounds like?
And the very next day, someone way over on another street was doing something else. I don’t know what they were doing, but it involved a powerful high-pitched whine that was loud enough to make my windows vibrate a block away, and accompanied by the sound of a big diesel engine.
Then came the next step of the neighbour’s paved-brick driveway, some kind of apparatus that moved around on the driveway, apparently designed to make huge thumping noises specifically to annoy me.
Then we have lawnmowers, but yes, summer is nearing its end as we approach labour day, the season of loud barbecues and the grand entrance of the season of leaf blowers.
I think you can see where I’m going with this. The one simple thing that would make my life happier is moments of peaceful silence like the one I’m enjoying now. My wish is that there would be more of them, and less screeching, sawing, whining, and pounding.