Getting to Know My Neighborhood

Yesterday, I bundled up warm and trekked around the 'hood.

It's surprisingly quiet around here for being in a city.  There's a club a few blocks up and sometimes it gets a little loud on weekends, but other than that it's peaceful.

I went to the P&G Diner, had some coffee, and made a few phone calls.  I think this annoyed the people sitting next to me, but it wasn't like I was just sitting there chatting loudly.  I was making IMPORTANT phone calls and I was doing it quietly.  There's a difference.  When I asked the waitress for my check, she said "I was going to bring it over earlier, but you were on the phone."  That's good, because you know, I would have really freaked out on her if she laid the check on the table while I was on the phone.  I liked the diner though and decided it would be my new hangout.

Then I walked down to the convenience store.  So now I found the two most important places in my village: the diner and convenience store.

Since it's that time of month where I have license to bitch, here's what's irritating me today.  My upstairs neighbor.  She's nice and is genuinely a good-hearted person, but she has this one habit that drives me nuts.  She screams at her cats.  Now, this doesn't bother me during the day, but she does it almost every night between 3 and 6 AM.  Sometimes I'm already awake during those hours, but when I'm sleeping it wakes me up, and that's happened 8 or 9 times now.  The last time I talked to her, I asked if she had problems sleeping at night and she said her cats constantly wake her up.  I told her that cats are nocturnal and they get rambunctious during the night.  She could try shutting her bedroom door to keep them out.  I didn't mention that she was waking me up though, because we're the only two people in the building and I'm not sure how to approach the subject without putting her on the defense.

But, when she screams at them, it isn't just "Go away, Shadow!"  It's a five minute tirade filled with expletives and threats to beat them.  I said before that I thought she was a little nutty, but she's more than a little nutty.

One day she came down to my apartment to chat and she told me a story about how her female therapist made a pass at her and then her therapist's boyfriend started stalking her.  She called her therapist and bitched her out about it, which resulted in the police coming to her door and forcefully taking her to the mental hospital.  She believed that they conspired against her.  See, now this is why I don't want to get on her bad side.  I don't let her inside my apartment anymore either.  When she comes to the door, I just call out, "Sorry, not dressed."  When she calls me, I let the machine pick up.

Yesterday, I got a message on my machine from her.  She let me know what I got in the mail (yeah, she checks my mailbox) and then very nicely told me I had a package in the hallway.  Then she not so nicely ordered me to get it out of the hallway.  I'm thinking about saying something to the landlord, but that could make things worse.  I've been thinking of a way to approach her about it too, but I don't think being rational is one of her strong points.

Welcome to My World

I can practically hear Shreyas laughing while he reads this, because he wonders how I always end up in these weird situations.  So as a tribute to him, here's one of his favorite weird stories.  Vinnie and I stayed at a Holiday Inn back in December.  In the room next to us, there was a group sex marathon going on.  We could hear everything.  It was like they were auditioning for a porn movie and wanted everyone in the hotel to know it.  There was slurping, smacking, and moaning...and it lasted from 2 AM to 11 AM the next morning.  We called the front desk and the clerk called and told them to keep the noise down.  They didn't.  Around 5 AM, we started making fun of them by moaning really loud.  Then, I did my best Academy Award winning performance of faking an orgasm.  It got very quiet after it.  Then we heard a knock on the door.  I asked who it was, and a girl said she was from the room next door and asked if we wanted to make their threesome a fivesome.  WHAT THE FUCK?!  She didn't even know who we were, what we looked like, or how old we were.  Hell, for all she knew we were an 80-year old couple.

These things happen to everyone, right? right?

tags: neighborhood  diner  neighbors  weird neighbor  crazy neighbor  village  convenience store  license to bitch  mental case  apartment living  holiday inn  hotel  group sex  

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