My New Upstairs Neighbor Has the Kids This Weekend. (Rantish. Sort Of. Maybe.)

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

STOMPSTOMPSTOMPSTOMP! BANG! CRASH! BOOM!

All morning long. And part of last night too.

It’s getting tiresome.

One one hand, I believe in letting kids be kids whenever possible. Making noise is sometimes part of the deal. On the other hand, I lose a little bit of sanity with each subsequent BOOM!

On the other, other hand, in the two weeks he’s been here, New Guy also hasn’t quite gotten the grasp of the fact that the sound of his music travels just as well as his li’l darlings’ footfalls. However, it’s mostly during the day so I don’t really feel as if I can say anything about that. The exception being the two times he decided to serende us with his keyboard stylings at 2AM. The first time was mercifully brief and the second time, the music stopped only when I knocked on his door, which he didn’t answer. I can understand that because the acoustics here are strange. A knock on your door can sound like a knock on a neighbor’s door or something getting bumped against one of their walls. Anyhow, since he seemed to have gotten the message, I didn’t knock again.

I don’t know what prompted me but as I was writing that last paragraph, I decided to go to my front door and open it. New Guy just happened to be coming up from the basement laundry room just then. So, as nonconfrontationally as possible, I asked him if he could get them to quiet down a bit. He seemed like a good guy but had a sort of weary hey-what-can-I-do? air about him. I told that I understood that it’s pouring down rain so they can’t play outside but asked him to please try to calm them down a little. I guess he tried. There’s quiet between the bouts of BANGS! and BOOMS!

For a frame of reference, the ladies who lived up there previously used to have their nieces and nephews over. While there was some noise, they were much quieter than these kids.

Well, I started this a little annoyed. Now I’m trying to think how I can help him keep them occupied, happy and quiet. I’ve resolved to tell him about the community center. It’s only a few blocks away and always seems to have kid-oriented stuff going on. Plus, the library is even closer. They sometimes have activities for the kids, as well as all that good reading material, of course.

It’s taken a long time to write this. There is marked improvement upstairs. It’s in the quiet-to-dull-roar range for now. I think I can live with that. It’s strange how extra noise in your life can make you feel so tired though. Maybe that’s how New Guy is feeling too.

2

I like your attitude. He’d probably appreciate knowing about these places, especially if he’s new in the neighborhood.

(Is he cute?)

3

I really don’t understand at what point human beings decided that it’s a good idea to share walls with strangers. Probably sometime before noisy electronics were invented–but there were still kids and musical instruments. Grrrrrrr. I hope I never have to live in an apartment again.

4

He’s not bad but he’s at least 15 years younger than me. Probably more. Plus, I don’t know if he’s divorced or just separated. I don’t think I’d be interested in him romantically anyway but he might make a nice friend.

Orrrrr…::narrows eyes suspiciously::…were you asking for yourself?

:wink:

**Sattua, **I’ve lived in apartments all my adult life and have had an amazingly long run of very quiet neighbors. Maybe I’ve been lucky or maybe there’s something in the water around here.

This evening things have been much more quiet. I’ll have to thank New Guy next time I see him.

5

And I had a pretty amazing run of noisy, inconsiderate, and downright rude neighbors.

First, there was the newly-married Bulgarian couple, who kept the TV on at high volume all day, every day, and had screaming fights every night (in Bulgarian, so it wasn’t even interesting for me).

Then there were the two Bolivian girls (I began to call them Oblivion girls) who stayed up until 1 shouting on the telephone, woke up at 5 and “needed” loud music right away, and complained about my exercise machine making the floor squeak at 5 p.m.

The last set of apartment neighbors were a pair of students and their three cats. One of the students came equipped with an electric guitar, which he HAD to play through the amplifier, which he HAD to turn up. After he’d really gotten going–maybe an hour into each session–he would start to shout along with it (he was trying to play heavy metal) and eventually get so worked up that he would start kicking the walls. The cats smelled bad, too.

See? That’s standard apartment experience, apparently. I hated it more than I can tell you, and though professorships in my area are scarce this year, I will turn down every single one that involves moving to a place where I cannot afford to live in a freestanding house.

6

I like my apartment, but it does take some time to get used to the noises of the people in the units around you! We have one group who apparently like hockey, so game nights are often filled with cheering but that usually ends by our bedtime if during the week, and they usually only gather on weekends anyways, so it isn’t so bad. VERY squeeky floors in these old buildings, so that’s pretty much a constant if anyone is walking around anywhere.

In the past two units we’ve lived in, though, we have had the singular joy of Piano Time. In the old place, it was usually around 4-5 pm, 5-7 days a week, for an hour of piano practise. Whoever was playing was actually pretty good, and if we turned on the TV or our own stereo we wouldn’t be able to hear it, so it was tolerable. Piano Time here, though, is someone who isn’t quite so talented, and even with the TV on, we hear it pretty well (I think the piano is in the room immediately above our TV room - and how the hell they managed to get a piano up to the third floor of this building is beyond me!) Despite that, Piano Time is better than Weird Music Time, which seems to be an odd collection of Country and Movie Soundtrack tunes. Luckily too, though, that only seems to last an hour or so, and only during the day time.

Still, I can live with it. I don’t want to be responsible for a house right now, and to live in this area, houses don’t really exist anyways.

7

**Sattua, **it sucks to have experiences like that. I know they’re more common than not. I once had a neighbor who could sleep through a fire alarm. Literally! I knocked on her door during one once (it was a false alarm) and she later told me the knocking was what woke her from her nap! :rolleyes:

Anyway, in order for her to get up at 3AM for her job, she had an alarm clock with an adjustable volume control. At top volume, which she kept it on, it was nearly as loud as our fire alarm. It would go off and maybe ten or fifteen minutes later, she’d wake up and turn it off. I took to banging her wall the moment it started, since that seemed to penetrate her sleep. I think she resented that a bit because she would then hit the snooze button and then go take a nice loooong shower.

But she did realize it was a problem for me (and probably others) and eventually arranged to move to another unit in our building. Don’t know how things worked out for her new neighbors but I think she moved out of the building altogether a few months later.

mnemosyne, speaking of guys and sports, there’s some folks across the alley who who have their buddies over a few times a week for some good ol’ male bonding over the video games, sport du jour or some macho movie. Of course, it wouldn’t be the same without lots of shouting and cussing. Even though they seem to do this only in the daytime, I’m glad I don’t share walls with them. And, in cold weather like this, I don’t hear them at all since our patio doors are closed. That’s a bonus.

Music wise, New Guy has a keyboard and an electric guitar. Or maybe he can set his keyboard to sound like an electic guitar. He only practices occasionally for maybe 20 minutes at time. Or he uses headphone sometimes.

This is what I could hear more often: The two ladies who lived upstairs previously got together a couple of times with a friend or two and sang the most beautiful close harmony songs in Russian. It was so lovely to hear! I wish I could ask them about it but they don’t speak much English yet, though they are taking ESL classes.

They moved from that apartment into the two-bedroom next door to me when it became available a month ago. I keep hoping to hear them sing again. It’ll be easier to hear them through the wall.

8

Our neighbor has his two sons (one looks about 15 or so, the other, maybe 12) visit him on every other weekend. Their kitchen shares a wall with mine (where I study every Saturday and Sunday morning.)This is the usual:

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

CRASH! BAM! (wall shakes)

DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAD!!!

CRASH!

Rinse and repeat for a good 3 hours.

Our apartment opens up to a little courtyard, surrounded by other apartments. We’ve been here about two years. The last few months, we’ve had a complete turnover in new tenants in every apartment facing the courtyard. Each new tenant has one or two children under the age of 8. The courtyard has consequently turned into an outdoor daycare center. Screaming children all day long.

The other day they were throwing a ball that kept hitting my front door, then digging through the bushes in front of my apartment to find it (loudly.) I was in the living room watching tv. Having gone slightly mad from listening to constant screaming for the past two hours, I waited until they were right outside my front door then kicked it.

What was THAT?

ahhhhhhhh!!!

It was pretty funny. They quit throwing stuff at my door. :smiley: