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Marieke ([personal profile] annuin) wrote2005-04-14 01:50 pm
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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.
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[identity profile] tanthe.livejournal.com 2005-04-14 06:41 pm (UTC)(link)
Or not.

It's not like we're going to easily find a place this size, at a similar (or better yet cheaper) price, near here or closer to the city. Especially not if we were to start looking for a place that has one more bedroom than this place does.

And then we might have to contend with crappy landlords (ours at least are nice people who fix stuff immediately), or crappier properties (and I refuse to live in areas that are nasty, or places that are dirty or roach motels) and then you still run the risk of shitty neighbours too.

Plus moving in the third trimester, or with a newborn, is also not exactly going to be an option.

For all the little drawbacks this place has, it's not like we're easily going to find something that's as good or better for a similar price. We live a very short walk from good public transport into NYC. It's also much better than our previous place, being nicer, much bigger (1.5-2x) and cheaper (by several hundred if we factor in bills too) than the apartment we rented in one of those housing communities like the one you live in right now. And there we had some asshole neighbour downstairs who'd play rap, hip hop and r&b music crap on weekends (and many weekdays) starting at 8am, with the windows open.

The vacuuming and laundry stuff is a lot less annoying than hours and hours of that rap crap several days a week.
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[identity profile] tanthe.livejournal.com 2005-04-14 06:45 pm (UTC)(link)
At least they're nice parents ;)

[identity profile] tanthe.livejournal.com 2005-04-14 06:43 pm (UTC)(link)
For all my ranting, this is still a good place to live. It's just sometimes all the little things build up, and one needs to vent.

[identity profile] lady-kverem.livejournal.com 2005-04-14 07:04 pm (UTC)(link)
If you go postal.. please make sure you invite me up first. I'd like to see that!!

Sorry that your neighbours are so terrible. I went through that for 6 months. Didn't help that my roomate at the time was quite the tramp. And she should have kept a "guest book" next to her bed. In all seriousness, I hardly even lived at home. I payed the bills, and stayed at my best friends place.

Never again will I have a roomate who doesn't respect herself like that again. It was annoying and frustrating. Needless to say we're not the best of friends anymore.

Cheers
Melissa

[identity profile] tanthe.livejournal.com 2005-04-14 11:19 pm (UTC)(link)
Heh.

As I pointed out to [livejournal.com profile] darkvervain I really can't complain too much in all fairness, at least not about the landlords/ones upstairs. A few gripes is really all I have, so it's not like we get persistant hassle and crap.

The people next door, they're just annoying. More money than taste/sense. And as I type, one of them is listening to music outside again *gah*.

And yikes about your roommate... I couldn't live with someone whose social life required the installment of a turnstile door. Not unless they had a seperate entrance into the house, and soundproofed walls, because no doubt that was part of your issue with her?

[identity profile] damesilibo.livejournal.com 2005-04-14 07:41 pm (UTC)(link)
Some of that is from living in the basement.I had a similar situation living in a basement apartment under my landlord.They were very nice people, but very early risers and extremely industrious.It seems like noise carries down somewhow.Needless to say,when I moved into an attic apartment,I kept that in mind for the people below me.
Things like the laundry/vacuumming you might be able to compromise with your landlord on.They might have pity on you since you're expecting. Might as well milk it..
The neighbors' dog being kept with no water on a hot summer's day could get them reported to the SPCA,though.Not nice.

[identity profile] tanthe.livejournal.com 2005-04-14 11:15 pm (UTC)(link)
Not surprising really, since if they vacuum, their floor is the thing that directly seperates both living spaces and the noise is right on it, whereas were we to vacuum, the noise would first have to travel upwards through the room, then through our ceiling/their floor. Which is a lot less likely.

The dog thing happened once, 2 summers ago. If it were to happen again I'd probably call the SPCA or something, because it really wasn't nice of them to do. Other than that, the dogs look healthy and fine, so it's not like they're victims of systematic abuse or anything.

The only time the laundry thing might really become an issue is if I go into labour and they're doing a couple loads of laundry when we want to fill our birthing pool. Needless to say, I think at that point I'll be sending PreZ upstairs to ask if they can put that off for a bit :P

[identity profile] crescentmuse.livejournal.com 2005-04-14 11:15 pm (UTC)(link)
{{dream house with good neighbors vibes}}
even if we can't have it we can dream of it *le sigh*

[identity profile] tanthe.livejournal.com 2005-04-14 11:21 pm (UTC)(link)
Maybe in a few years. Right now we're not looking at the housing market, due mostly to the fact that we plan on moving overseas in about 2 years, back to my husband's native Australia. Buying real estate now, and then going through the headache to sell it again in 2 years wouldn't be worth it.

Plus real estate in the tri-state area is probably ridiculously inflated at present.

[identity profile] crescentmuse.livejournal.com 2005-04-15 01:29 pm (UTC)(link)
Wow! Overseas? That is a huge change and what a fun adventure!

We aren't looking yet either because we want to move back home to SC but not for another year and a half. I'm xing off the days on the calendar. :-)