Except I'm totally lying. I've been quiet over here because I've been incredibly busy doing all sorts of non-exciting things, such as finding a daycare and pediatrician for the baby, napping whenever humanly possible, shopping for a vaccuum online, trying to convince Aaron that we really need the hot pink vaccuum, and of course, working as much as humanly possible (which is, admittedly, not a whole because I'm just so tired all the damn time it takes me forever to do anything). So, I'm sure you can see why I've blogged about absolutely zero of these things.
In other news, on Thursday I will be exactly one month shy of my due date! Today I was walking in to my apartment building after a quick run to the grocery store for chocolate and naan (priorities, you know), when I heard someone say hello to me. I looked up, and there was my across-the-hall neighbor who I haven't seen for about a month or so. "You live right there right?" she asked. "I didn't know you were pregnant. When are you due?"
Besides being shocked that someone hadn't noticed my incredible girth which has been noticeable for at least a couple of months now, I was shocked that I actually saw her, because I did not see this woman, who has a little one of her own who is about a year old now, for the entire winter. If I had stayed in my darkened apartment (their windows are never lit up when it's dark outside) with a baby, mostly by myself, for the entire winter, I would have gone nuts! She seems very nice, but strange. Her little boy is adorable and we've been hearing him a lot more recently, if not seeing him.
Her husband is also incredibly strange. I was amazed a few weeks back when, instead of running away from me like usual or trying to get into the building without having to interact with me, he held the door open for me. Then he said hello back when I greeted him. I about fainted from the shock. At least they're quiet unlike the neighbors downstairs (speaking of, I watched the dad walk in last week with the open beer he had been drinking on his drive home, which is so totally classy I can hardly stand it), right?
Aaron wants to move out of this place for the most part because of the neighbors. They're either weird (see: across the hall neighbors) or loud (see: neighbors downstairs, diagonal across the hall, and downstairs and across the hall). I've told him that bad neighbors exist pretty much everywhere, but he thinks that a new place, maybe even our own house, will be much better.
I kind of don't want to move, because it would happen six weeks after the baby is due, but I also don't want to live somewhere that makes Aaron unhappy. So, to appease us both and just for fun, anyone want to share their bad neighbor stories so that I can show him that bad neighbors will happen no matter where we move?
(And how was that for the most disjointed post ever? Can you tell that the baby woke me up kicking in the middle of the night and has been on the move ever since?)
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6 comments:
Crappy neighbors do exist everywhere but sometimes you can get lucky. It's hard to know if the neighbors will be problematic when moving because the landlords won't often admit that or even know!
Wacky neighbors exist everywhere -- even when you have your own house. Our next-door neighbors have an ever-fluctuating pile of trash in their back yard, the people on the other side of them (the only other people in the cul-de-sac) have never acknowledged our presence in the 3+ years we've lived there. And the people across the street wake up very early every Saturday morning in the summer and rev their loud motorcycle engines for 45 minutes. They never seem to actually drive the bikes anywhere -- just have fun motorcycle revving time in the mornings.
On the other hand, there are a LOT of perks to not having any shared walls!
Our neighbor owns a construction business. He keeps a trailer that never moves in the side yard. And the crews seem to meet at his house at the beginning and end of the day. He personally owns two trucks and one car and has someone (an aunt, maybe?) living with him that owns the fourth vehicle in that seems to be in the driveway at all times.
The neighbor to the right of us is a firefighter and keep his Great Pyrenees (sp?) outside while he goes to work for 24 hour shifts, which means she barks. Loud. And constantly. The neighbor to our left is a nurse who gets up at 3:00 in the morning to go to work (which is really fun in the winter, when she has to scrape ice off her car right underneath our bedroom window). The neighbor across the street is an older fellow who washes his six cars once a day and likes to spy on us. So, yeah, it's kind of the luck of the draw, I guess. Interviewing the neighbors should be part of the process of buying a house.
We lived next to a screamer who would yell so loud we could hear it inside our house. They were inside their house.
In the summer she would also sing.
Then there was the time she beat on her husband's truck with a baseball bat and he was inside of it.
Thank god we moved.
I have been pretty lucky with neighbors so far. (Does that mean I am due? Knock wood!)
Maybe you guys will luck out at the next place!
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