Neighbourly Love
I cannot wait until the day we have a place of our own. A free-standing house, with no people on the same premises other than just us.
Not that that necessarily guarantees that there is no noise, seeing as we have some asshats next door, whose house is a good distance away from us, yet still manage to cause plenty of noise pollution and irritation. Those are the neighbours that had that 2-3 year long backyard construction project going on that would wake us up at oh-damn-thirty in the morning on the weekends (and sometimes weekdays) with the noisy and smelly motorised diggers, proceed to irritate the crap out of us for a couple of hours, and then of course spend the rest of the afternoon past noon or 1pm doing really quiet stuff. Of course.
Add to the fact that one of the guys who lives there, can't talk at under 150db. He always sounds like he's shouting, even if he's having a conversation with someone really close to him. I can never hear them, but I can often hear his side of the conversation verbatim, from at least 60-80feet away, through a thick concrete wall and closed window. I think he's the same fucker who likes to listen to music outside... by opening the trunk and doors of his SUV, (of course), and blasting loud crappy music from the car's stereo system.
If that wasn't enough, they have a dog. A dog that almost makes me want to feed it rat poison sometimes, and this is coming from a professed animal lover. They have a tendency to tie their dog up outside on a fairly short rope. Not necessarily such a bad thing, though one year during the Eternal Backyard Construction Project they tied it up way down away from their house, and not very far from our bedroom window (of course). In the summer. In 80-90 degree heat with high humidity. With no water. All day. (So I gave it a bowl of water, seeing as they neglected to). The worst part about this dog is that it cannot be alone. It'll cry, keen, whine, howl, yelp, bark etc. incessantly for hours when they tie it up outside. Not much fun when they tie it up outside first thing in the morning. To add insult to injury, it appears they recently got another dog... and rather than keep each other company so that the first dog doesn't do said yelping/howling/keening, they now BOTH do it.
And that's just the next door neighbours. To be fair the ones upstairs, who own this house (we have the downstairs semi-basement apartment), aren't that bad, though they irritate me enough as it is. Our landlord and lady are nice people, and if stuff needs fixing or doing, it's often done before we even have to ask them. Sometimes however I feel like throttling the whole bunch though. There are 4 generations upstairs... our landlady's mother lives with them, she's going senile and is essentially just "waiting for god". I don't think she goes outside at all, nor moves from her chair in front of the tv... I can only imagine the rivetting fun of living one's golden years that way... Then our landlords have 2 daughters, one's slightly younger than we are, the other's older than we are by at least a couple years I think. The eldest daughter also has a 7-8 year old son, who keeps getting porkier as time goes on, and who already had cellulite on his belly at age 5-6. As it so happens, the eldest daughter is also pregnant, and due about 2 weeks before I am.
So there's a household of 6 upstairs, and for 6 people, they're generally pretty quiet. They do have some really annoying traits/habits though... such as vacuuming on the weekend starting at 7-8am, often the room directly over our bedroom. I'm not sure which person is the neat freak, but it's happened that they've vacuumed the same rooms 3 days in a row, and they usually seem to go through each room at least twice per vacuuming session. Nothing makes me more homicidal than hearing a vacuum overhead at 7.30 in the fucking morning on a Saturday or Sunday. I also don't get why you need to do the same room a couple of times during the same vacuuming session... it gets to the point where you wonder whether they're trying to suck the dirt off your floor through the ceiling. And if their vacuum is that bad, maybe they need to invest in something with more suction power... the economy of saving time would probably far outweigh the extra expense of a new/better vacuum.
Other things that irritate are the fact that they seem to know exactly when we're about to have a shower, and to start up their laundry at the same time, leaving us with water that will sometimes change to either boiling or cold while we're in it. I've almost considered scanning the house for listening devices, to see if they can hear us say we're going to take a shower, that's how often this happens... seriously, 8 out of 10 showers will have them starting a laundry cycle... and this is even when shower times are varied between 9am-6pm, it's ridiculous. And with 6 people, there's a lot of laundry. Today I got irked by the fact that they're having a laundry day or something. They started doing laundry at about 7am, and they're still at it at almost 2pm. I can only imagine what happens when they have that new baby up there, who will upchuck and poop on several outfits a day, increasing the laundry amounts they already do.
And I can only imagine what fun weekend mornings are going to be in about 3 months, when they vacuum loads, and we're suffering extreme sleep deprivation. I am not a nice person when sleep deprived as it is, and you do not want to wake or harrass me if I haven't slept enough, and here we have months of sleep deprivation and delirium scheduled to start in about 3 months... argh!
If you hear about some new mother going postal in Westchester co. NY sometime in July or later... you'll know who.
Not that that necessarily guarantees that there is no noise, seeing as we have some asshats next door, whose house is a good distance away from us, yet still manage to cause plenty of noise pollution and irritation. Those are the neighbours that had that 2-3 year long backyard construction project going on that would wake us up at oh-damn-thirty in the morning on the weekends (and sometimes weekdays) with the noisy and smelly motorised diggers, proceed to irritate the crap out of us for a couple of hours, and then of course spend the rest of the afternoon past noon or 1pm doing really quiet stuff. Of course.
Add to the fact that one of the guys who lives there, can't talk at under 150db. He always sounds like he's shouting, even if he's having a conversation with someone really close to him. I can never hear them, but I can often hear his side of the conversation verbatim, from at least 60-80feet away, through a thick concrete wall and closed window. I think he's the same fucker who likes to listen to music outside... by opening the trunk and doors of his SUV, (of course), and blasting loud crappy music from the car's stereo system.
If that wasn't enough, they have a dog. A dog that almost makes me want to feed it rat poison sometimes, and this is coming from a professed animal lover. They have a tendency to tie their dog up outside on a fairly short rope. Not necessarily such a bad thing, though one year during the Eternal Backyard Construction Project they tied it up way down away from their house, and not very far from our bedroom window (of course). In the summer. In 80-90 degree heat with high humidity. With no water. All day. (So I gave it a bowl of water, seeing as they neglected to). The worst part about this dog is that it cannot be alone. It'll cry, keen, whine, howl, yelp, bark etc. incessantly for hours when they tie it up outside. Not much fun when they tie it up outside first thing in the morning. To add insult to injury, it appears they recently got another dog... and rather than keep each other company so that the first dog doesn't do said yelping/howling/keening, they now BOTH do it.
And that's just the next door neighbours. To be fair the ones upstairs, who own this house (we have the downstairs semi-basement apartment), aren't that bad, though they irritate me enough as it is. Our landlord and lady are nice people, and if stuff needs fixing or doing, it's often done before we even have to ask them. Sometimes however I feel like throttling the whole bunch though. There are 4 generations upstairs... our landlady's mother lives with them, she's going senile and is essentially just "waiting for god". I don't think she goes outside at all, nor moves from her chair in front of the tv... I can only imagine the rivetting fun of living one's golden years that way... Then our landlords have 2 daughters, one's slightly younger than we are, the other's older than we are by at least a couple years I think. The eldest daughter also has a 7-8 year old son, who keeps getting porkier as time goes on, and who already had cellulite on his belly at age 5-6. As it so happens, the eldest daughter is also pregnant, and due about 2 weeks before I am.
So there's a household of 6 upstairs, and for 6 people, they're generally pretty quiet. They do have some really annoying traits/habits though... such as vacuuming on the weekend starting at 7-8am, often the room directly over our bedroom. I'm not sure which person is the neat freak, but it's happened that they've vacuumed the same rooms 3 days in a row, and they usually seem to go through each room at least twice per vacuuming session. Nothing makes me more homicidal than hearing a vacuum overhead at 7.30 in the fucking morning on a Saturday or Sunday. I also don't get why you need to do the same room a couple of times during the same vacuuming session... it gets to the point where you wonder whether they're trying to suck the dirt off your floor through the ceiling. And if their vacuum is that bad, maybe they need to invest in something with more suction power... the economy of saving time would probably far outweigh the extra expense of a new/better vacuum.
Other things that irritate are the fact that they seem to know exactly when we're about to have a shower, and to start up their laundry at the same time, leaving us with water that will sometimes change to either boiling or cold while we're in it. I've almost considered scanning the house for listening devices, to see if they can hear us say we're going to take a shower, that's how often this happens... seriously, 8 out of 10 showers will have them starting a laundry cycle... and this is even when shower times are varied between 9am-6pm, it's ridiculous. And with 6 people, there's a lot of laundry. Today I got irked by the fact that they're having a laundry day or something. They started doing laundry at about 7am, and they're still at it at almost 2pm. I can only imagine what happens when they have that new baby up there, who will upchuck and poop on several outfits a day, increasing the laundry amounts they already do.
And I can only imagine what fun weekend mornings are going to be in about 3 months, when they vacuum loads, and we're suffering extreme sleep deprivation. I am not a nice person when sleep deprived as it is, and you do not want to wake or harrass me if I haven't slept enough, and here we have months of sleep deprivation and delirium scheduled to start in about 3 months... argh!
If you hear about some new mother going postal in Westchester co. NY sometime in July or later... you'll know who.