Apartment Life
It's 5:00 in the morning. Why am I awake at this unreasonable hour? Combination of factors, really: thin walls and obnoxious neighbors. We share a wall with a young family, and almost nightly for the past nine months, their three year old has woken up in the middle of the night screaming like bloody murder. I'm not talking about a few cries for a glass of water, though that happens, too. I'm talking about full out, top of the lungs, "I'm being dipped in flaming boiling acid" shrieks. And it goes on for what seems like forever. At first, we thought he was being abused and we were having a full on Susan Vega-Natalie Merchant moment over it. Now we just think he's a nutcase, because it comes fully out of nowhere every night, usually starting with a chorus of "Mo-arrr," which is little kid Danish for "mommy," so either his mom is sneaking up on him in the middle of the night or he's not being abused. At least, not until I get my hands on the little shit.
But tonight I was woken up by the people upstairs, who as middle of the night entertainment are less consistent but certainly more inventive. I think I've mentioned them before, though I've really only seen the male part of the couple, a weedy, shifty looking alcoholic. They like to come home in the middle of the night and play really awful big hat country music at a volume pitched just right to vault us out of sleep. I sleep lightly and wake up early anyway, so if I get woken up at 4:30, that's pretty much it for me. I won't be going back to sleep. Fortunately this time, I was able to catch them before they passed out, and my broom against the ceiling action convinced them to turn it down. This is actually an improvement from them over the last months; up until a few weeks ago, they had some sort of parrot that they kept right above our bedroom. The parrot liked to salute the rising of the sun with a medley of tunes that were so eerily human-like that I kept thinking I'd finally lost it. But we haven't heard from the bird in a while, knock on wood.
It's moments like these that I really start to envy my friends who have their own houses. Yes, you still have to put up with crazy neighbor stuff, but usually they can't wake you up in the middle of the night with the "best" of Barbara Mandrell.
But tonight I was woken up by the people upstairs, who as middle of the night entertainment are less consistent but certainly more inventive. I think I've mentioned them before, though I've really only seen the male part of the couple, a weedy, shifty looking alcoholic. They like to come home in the middle of the night and play really awful big hat country music at a volume pitched just right to vault us out of sleep. I sleep lightly and wake up early anyway, so if I get woken up at 4:30, that's pretty much it for me. I won't be going back to sleep. Fortunately this time, I was able to catch them before they passed out, and my broom against the ceiling action convinced them to turn it down. This is actually an improvement from them over the last months; up until a few weeks ago, they had some sort of parrot that they kept right above our bedroom. The parrot liked to salute the rising of the sun with a medley of tunes that were so eerily human-like that I kept thinking I'd finally lost it. But we haven't heard from the bird in a while, knock on wood.
It's moments like these that I really start to envy my friends who have their own houses. Yes, you still have to put up with crazy neighbor stuff, but usually they can't wake you up in the middle of the night with the "best" of Barbara Mandrell.
posted by L&D at
8:03 PM
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