[ why baby why?! ]

I was awoken today at 6:00 am by the sound of my upstairs neighbors doing their laundry (we have in-unit washers and dryers), which was bad enough, but then my next door neighbor's baby started screaming bloody murder and I found myself trying really hard to find my happy place: "I want a house on a lake, with a boat, and a dog named Rufus", I kept chanting, but to no avail. I have been overwhelmed lately with the amount of inconsideration that people have for one another in this apartment complex.

The upstairs neighbors seem to think that they live in a bubble which sound and gravity cannot permeate. They used to dump their old mop water over the balcony (and onto our patio) until I complained three times. If it’s not laundry at 6:00am, it’s laundry at 1:00am! They also got a drumming game at one point, as if banging on something for ten hours a day (sadly, not an exaggeration), would be okay with the people living below them. The maintenance guy had to come over, stand in our living room, listen in horror, then promptly go upstairs and tell them that the drumming was louder than hell downstairs, to which the guy responded, “really?”, and he told them they needed to get rid of it.

Actually, both next door neighbors have babies and it’s driving me a little nutso. The one that was screaming this morning has parents who like to ignore his cries. I know, I know, you’re saying that it’s not inconsiderate to have a kid, but it is inconsiderate to ignore the little monkey because you don’t want to get out of bed. This same neighbor also thought it was okay to install his own satellite dish (in the middle of the night), one hundred feet around the corner of the building, in front of someone’s kitchen window mind you, then run a cable on the ground past two apartments (one of which is mine), and then drill a hole in the side of his apartment wall, to hook up his television. How does anyone think that this is okay? It has since been taken down because it’s totally against the rules.

One final rant: The baby on the other side needs to hear “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” (totally not kidding), in order to calm her down from her fits of uncontrollable crying. Let me just say, I used to like that song. Used to.