Tags
annoying, baby, booty call, courtesy, doberman, dog, dogs, friendly, humor, insomnia, karma, manners, misadventures, neighbor, sarcasm, sleep, war
Why the skeleton Hello Kitties? Well… I’m still in a slightly murderous mood from this weekend’s activities – and these seemed to fit the bill. Plus HELLOOOOO Halloween around the corner AND these are just too frigging cute.
We live in a building with 3 apartments in it total. So far, we’ve loved it, the neighbor that used to live next door to us was an incense burning, gospel singing, feng shui, 2 purse-sized dogs owning girl who was out most of the day and in bed by 10:30 at night. Next door to her are two guys who again, are professional something or the others and usually out of the house. A few months ago, the girl next door decided to move and break her lease. The store beneath her apartment had finally been rented out and it was messing with her feng shui (apparently she couldn’t live anywhere where someone lived/worked beneath her) (i know… craaaaaaaaaazy).
So she moved and two sisters moved in. Over the last couple of months we’ve discovered that they both love LOVE their clip cloppy heels/boots and we can always tell when one of them is home or leaving. Clip clop clip clop. I’m always reminded of that Monty python skit from Holy Grail.
Clippity clop clippity clop.
Anyways, we’ve met the one sister a number of times. Sweet girl, very friendly. Again no issues.
This past saturday, the older sister (the one we’ve met a few times) was away and the younger one was here for the weekend. Lobster and I got Behbeh to bed at her usual time and we went to bed around midnight. Because I’m one of those neurotic moms, I have a baby video monitor in our room that has a wifi connection to a camera in behbeh’s room. I can hear and see EEEEEVERYTHING. Big bad big brother right here! 
Around 3:30 am I woke up to hear : thud… thud thud thud… thud…. THUD THUD THUD. THUD… thud… coming from behbeh’s room. I checked the video monitor and she wasn’t even moving and paranoid me freaked out (been watching far too many ghost movies lately) and woke Lobster up:
me: OMG OMG WAKE UP!!!!
lobster: Huh? what? zzzzzzz
me: WAAAAKKKEEEEEE UPPPPP I THINK SOMEONE’S IN BEHBEH’S ROOM!!!
lobster: WHAT? *jumps out of bed in less than two seconds flat*
me: (internal monologue: note to self, if you ever want to wake him up quickly, say something happened to the baby. Good to know.)
And we ran to her room, opened the door and…
Nothing. So Lobster looks at me like I’m nuts, turns around to head back to our room and I sheepishly follow. As we’re about to close our bedroom door we hear “DING DONG”. Its now almost quarter to 4 and someone just rang our doorbell. At this point I’m starting to consider its the girl next door playing what could only have been handball against her wall (that is shared with behbeh’s wall) in her room.
I open our front door to start heading downstairs when the girl next door runs into me, apparently also on her way downstairs and the conversation goes something like this:
me: was that one of your friends that just ran OUR doorbell this late?
her: uhm…. I don’t know. I heard the doorbell too. I can go check to see who it is.
me: uh huh
*she skitters off downstairs
me: (internal monologue: really? You heard MY doorbell ring, happened to be up and were so concerned you decided to check who it was? Malarcky!)
*footsteps coming up the stairs in the building*
Lobster then pulls me back inside the apartment and very valiantly (probably to save the neighbor from my wrath) offers to speak to them. He comes back in not even a minute later, shaking his head.
me: soooo??????
lobster: well it was a guy, who was clearly drunk… and he sort of mumbled out a “sorry” as he walked by. She didn’t say anything. Oh and a hundred pound doberman followed the guy into the apartment.
me: a 100lb doberman? Large dogs aren’t allowed in building at all.
lobster: Meh. Its fine. We should go back to bed.
me: rawr rawr rawr *gnash gnash gnash*
lobster: I know, you’ll feel better once you sleep
By the time we got back upstairs and into bed it was almost 4:15am and my insomnia (which I’ve had for over a week now) was kicking in again. I tossed and turned for a while and I start hearing “thud” from the baby monitor again and then nothing for a few minutes and then THUD. Then silence again for a couple of minutes and THUD THUD. THUD THUD THUD THUD. I looked at the baby monitor and Behbeh had started stirring around every time there was a “Thud”. This went on for about half an hour. By around 4:45 I’d had enough.
I got out of bed, Lobster was still snoring away. Bless him, he’s got this great ability to just fall asleep whenever he feels like it. It makes me want to pinch him awake sometimes just to see how quickly he can fall back asleep again. Without telling him where I was going, I headed downstairs and over to the neighbor’s apartment. In hindsight, this was probably a dumb move on my part, leaving the house without telling him where I was… but yeah. At almost 5am with no sleep for now two hours, I was too pissed off to give a crap about safety.
I head over next door and start knocking on the door, politely initially. As soon as I knocked, the thudding stopped and started heading towards me THUD THUD THUD THUD THUDTHUDTHUDTHUD… and away.. and towards me and away. Then I heard hurried whispering voices. No one opened the door. I tried knocking again. Same thing happened again. Still no one opened the door.
About 10 minutes into this drama, I started wailing away at the door and yelled out “YOU MIGHT AS WELL OPEN THE DOOR I’M NOT GOING AWAY!!!” Then I hear quick footsteps up the stairs in the apartment and a door open and close. And more thud thud thudding. So i keep banging away on the door. About 20 minutes in, the door FINALLY opens and a very sheepish and very high/drunk guy opens the door.
me: Hi. Do you have a very large dog in the apartment with you?
sheepish guy: uh… well.. um…
*very large dog aka 100lb doberman pushes past him and proceeds to come up to me and lick my hands*
me: awwww…. cute dog. (I clearly get distracted by cuteness way too easily) Wait! Oh yeah. Your very large dog is being very loud and obnoxious. You rang my doorbell at 3am and since then I haven’t been able to sleep and NOW my 2 year old is starting to wake up. Very bad things happen to people who wake up my 2 year old at 5 am. You need to take that dog upstairs, lock it in the bathroom, in your room, under your bed, in a closet… i don’t care what you do. But STOP IT FROM THUDDING ALL OVER THE HOUSE. The building has wooden floors and I can hear every.damn.sound!!!
I didn’t really wait for a reply. It was bad enough that my idiot horny neighbor’s booty call woke me up at 3am and that said booty call’s dog was galvanting all over the apartment all hours of the night like an elephant. It was pissing me off that she didn’t have the decency to talk to me herself (after lying to me) but went and hid in her room. I just turned around and went back to my apartment.
By the time I got upstairs to our room, I heard the downstairs main building door slam shut. Like the creeper I am I looked out our window and saw Mr. Booty-call and his elephant-dog leaving the building and heading down the street.
Is it terrible that all I could think of right then was this?
I’m terrible I know. Just to show you how terrible I am, I then got back into bed and woke Lobster up to tell him what I did and what happened. He very sleepily replied “yes dear” and fell back asleep.
Me? I fell asleep at 8am, about 5 minutes before behbeh woke up.
Lesson in all this?
Insomnia is a *itch and apparently so am I when my neighbor’s booty call wakes me up at 3am.
update: the clip clopping has been MUCH quieter lately… can’t imagine why she’s walking around quietly lately…
I find it SO comforting to know that there are others out there who share repeated hellish experiences with apartment neighbors. I have so much anxiety over apartment living that I can barely live in my apartment.
I was woken up last night at 3:30 am to a very loud group of neighbors in the hallway. If I had the energy I would have done the same thing. All I could think was “It’s Sunday! Don’t you people have work, school, or something tomorrow?” I have 3 am feedings in my not-too-distant future, godwilling. I want to get as much sleep as I can right now.
ughhhhhhh, you should have had John set them straight. You’re, inshaAllah, going to need all the sleep you can get right now. Don’t want to mess with that.
Catsinyourpants, oh my goodness, i’m so sorry to hear you’ve been having anxiety over it. Can you speak to your landlord or management company for help???
Well, my management company already thinks I’m “high maintenance.” I got a couple evicted last year because they had two large dogs in violation of the lease–needless to say they barked ALL THE TIME! And I have complained about other things too, all within my rights under the lease, but they have stopped listening to me. Hardwood floors are killer in apartments …
I guess it’s time to move!
You could try doing what we did. We got a phone consultation with a tenant landlord rights lawyer. Most will do the initial consultation for free. We were having a similar issue where our management company stopped fixing things in our apt. because we kept having issues… all within the lease. The lawyer gave us some fabulous advice and we sent off a certified mail letter quoting some of the PA state laws regarding those issues and said we’d deduct money from our rent if the management company didn’t comply by a certain date. Within a week, everything in the apartment we’d been requesting be looked at, was fixed. Sometimes a stern letter quoting laws goes a long long way.
Next time, you should wake up Behbeh and have her keep you company through the night. Then when you finally get a chance to sleep, she’ll want to sleep, too! Pretty clever, right?
LOL I see that backfiring on me badly. I totally tried that out when she was younger, to force her to sleep through the night. It turns out an over tired baby not sleeping is a real thing. Wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy
under the circumstances i thought you did the right thing, if you didn’t make a stand now then it would get worse for you and your little one ;0)
Thanks! Thats kind of what I’d figured. Nip it in the bud while I could before they got too used to acting like teenagers. Thanks for commenting
very wise and pretty much what most would do in your circumstances ;0)
I think you handled yourself well… I would flip the **** out. How thin are those walls though holy moly!
hahaha thanks sonya! Yeah our walls are pretty darn thin and then add the all wood flooring – makes for you having to actually THINK about how loud you’re being.
This was wonderful writing which I just found hilarious! You are much braver than me, though, to face a drunken guy and his DOBERMAN (!!) at that time in the morning! :S
I used to have very noisy neighbours – music at all hours – I wasn’t as tough as you. I tried, but i had no effect and the local authorities didn’t want to know, so I effectively gave up. I used to put off going home from work because I didn’t want to be there… they made my life a misery for about seven or eight years in all… it’s always my biggest fear when I move into an apartment… the frickin’ neighbours!!
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