Blog: Ramblings and Rants

The walls are vibrating again. No, this isn’t another earthquake. My pictures are dancing on the white apartment walls because the neighbors are watching a movie on their super-bass entertainment system.

These are the Rumbling Neighbors, who moved into the apartment behind mine recently vacated by the Showering People. The Showering People showered constantly, at all hours of the day and night. Barely two hours would go by before one of the two showers would roar to life. Often they would chain-shower: shower, five minute pause, the squeak of flesh upon wet fiberglass, shower, ten minute pause, shower.

The showering might have had something to do with the animalistic rutting that could occassionally be heard not through our adjoining walls (thank all that is holy!) but through the Showing People’s front door, down the hallway, through my door, and into my living room. Fortunately I spent more time in my home office, often with the television or MP3s playing, than in the living room.

Across the hall from the Rumbling Neighbors are the Royal Family. They’ve been here about a month. I call them the Royal Family because they clearly believe this is their world, and the rest of us need to adapt to living around them.

From the moment the Royal Family moved in, a rocking horse and kid’s desk with integrated chair sat on the landing atop the three-flight stairs. That’s O.K. I can live with that. What I couldn’t live with was climbing the stairs everyday on my way home from work to find a bag of trash (or two) outside the Royal Family’s door. The trash didn’t sit there for just a few minutes or an hour, until dinner was done. Rather the same bag would sit for twenty-four to forty-eight hours, even as the Royal Family came and went.

Twice I was nice and, on my way by, discreetly snatched up the Glad bag to deposit it in the dumpster myself. I did this as a courtesy more than anything, thinking they’d simply forgotten the bag was sitting just outside their door.

But everyday there was a trash bag outside that door, either a new one or yesterday’s… Until a polite note reminded the Royal Family that others lived around them.

Across the hall from me, behind the Royal Family is an extremely devout family who practice some form of Christianity that forbids a man and a woman not married to one another to be in a room (or apartment) with a closed door (even the front door). This being the case, the wife of the Devout Couple would occassionally throw disapproving glances my way when Strawberry Blonde and her daughters would arrive or depart. Other than the mildly communicated judgement upon the visits of my girlfriend and her children, the Devout Couple is quite nice.

I believe the Royal Family and the Rumbling Neighbors are both families unaccustomed to apartment living. In a house, one may have a deep-bass entertainment system without fear of rumbling the walls of the adjoining home (and the one across the hall, and the below, and the one below and over…). The Royal Family probably had a place to leave outdoors their child’s rocking horse and desk and even their garbage where it didn’t affect others. I’m sure if they thought about it, they would realize that the same use of space that is perfectly acceptable for the standalone structure of a house is not appropriate for the shared living community and interconnected dwellings of an apartment.

Five more days, and I’ll be bidding adieu to the Devout Couple. I’ll leave behind the sufferance of Royal Family and the creep of their trash across common areas. Sayonara, shall I say, bowing out from the frequent rumbling of my walls and dancing pictures.

Five more days and I shall live in a house, a free standing domicile wherein I may enjoy peace and quiet (when the girls are asleep) and a walkway free of garbage (’cause Strawberry Blonde will make me take it all the way to the curb).