Ah yes, the joy of living in an apartment building.
Actually, most of the time it's not too bad. Some good, some bad but overall my apt life has been on the good side. Take my apartment in San Mateo. There I knew and was friends with everyone in the building. I love/d everyone there. We even get together for parties 1x a month. Even now I try and spend some time down there with them hanging out and making sure they don't forget me.
Today's episode in the new dwelling, however, puts another notch in the 'bad' column.
I've been in my current apartment for about 5 months. It isn't the best place to live (very high up on a hill, no laundry close by, not easy to get to much, fairly dark and small) but so what. I'm making do and have a pretty cute apt no matter what the faults are.
I have new neighbors. They've been in the process of moving in for a few days, painting a month before that. Three nights ago, starting at 22:00, they are loud. Moving stuff, hauling boxes, 22:15, still loud. Grr. It's too late to take a Tylenol PM or a melatonin. Just put in your earplugs, it will be over soon enough. Now, this is the third night of their move-in and after the first couple of nights I'm near to being 'cooked'. But, earplugs.. try and meditate. Something.
But at 22:40 they decide that it's ok to hammer together furniture. Ok, I leapt out of bed at that point. Thats not ok. Not at all. So I knock on their door. I hammer on their door. I pound on it. no reply (they are upstairs and clearly can't hear shit up there, maybe too busy hammering?). I go down to our front door call box. Dial their apt number. It rings and goes to voicemail. Twice I did this.
Sigh. Only one alternative.
I use the fire escape (it's not like those you see in movies in NYC. It's more like a full staircase that goes up to the patio one level up. I use it. Their screen door is open and I announce my presence. "Oh, are we being too loud?" "Uh yes" I said "Hammering nearly at 23:00? Of course thats too loud. I'm trying to sleep and between that and the boxes, it makes it impossible".
The apologized and for the next couple of nights everything was a-ok. Some noise, but nothing a normal person couldn't 'deal with' and move on. I certainly did.
But oh yes, come today.. there's a pissing contest. Let's see how much of this I can remember.
As I'm coming in from running a couple of errands someone comes tromping down the stairs of the new apartment. The door was propped open for the movers so I easily heard "Rayne, is that you?" Then a guy I've already met once before introduces himself again.
"We need to talk. About noise issues and uh.. noise sensitivity."
He says that "There are people here above you, and you will just have to learn to deal with it, thats the price you pay for living in an apartment. We can hear everything from next door, but I'm not complaining about it."
He goes on to give me his phone number, so that if anything ever comes up again I should call him directly, instead of going up the fire escape. "That totally wasn't cool and it trespassed on our property". "Excuse me, hammering at 22:40 at night, what made that acceptable and cool?" I said, only to follow up with "thank you for your number, seeing as how the intercom didn't work, and you don't hear the front door being pounded on, I now have a resource I can use."
His idea was that if there is a problem, we wait until morning to talk about it. Are you kidding me? If I can't sleep, there isn't going to be a "wait-til-morning". We'll solve it RIGHT NOW. Clearly this kid has never had to deal with this before, is grasping for straws, and thinks that by being angry and saying I trespassed, then he has the upper hand. Girlfriend, so aint the case.
By now, me turning his arguments against him has his usually dark complexion going red, and redder. I'm not backing down, his pissy little antics sort of made me laugh after I got over the lashing out.
I told him I didn't appreciate him coming down and attacking me verbally. He said I already attacked them by violating their space. Oh my stars.
I did mention to him that being so new, he's not really making a good impression or friends here. He mentions that he really does want to be friends but we have to resolve it. By now I can smell his insincerity and the fact he knows he's started to blunder into unfamiliar territory.
That's ok, I'm not going to be here for much longer anyway. I need a better environment.
Fun saturday night so far! :)
