Neighborly Rants

The great thing about living in on-campus family student housing is that the rent is super-cheap compared to the surrounding area in Santa Barbara. The downfall is that with this low rent comes low-quality construction. Not only are the buildings old, but the walls and floors are paper-thin, and the windows provide little insulation against both cold and noise.

This was made abundantly clear to me this past weekend. We live in 2-story apartment complexes, and as luck would have it, occupy a ground floor apartment. Our upstairs neighbors can be heard walking overhead-- sometimes it sounds like a herd of elephants stampeding. The floor (i.e. our ceiling) creaks when they walk in certain corners of the living room. And the walls are so thin I can hear, with crystal clarity, when they pee in the toilet and flush it!

A lot of this doesn't really bother me-- they can't help that the building is so cheaply constructed that the only way to NOT make a sound is to tiptoe everywhere and whisper.

What DOES bother me, however, is when they take their "stomping" into the late night hours. Surely they must realize that when you walk normally (i.e. exerting extra pressure on your heel first as you take a step), the floor is going to echo with the thud. Would it hurt to tread a little more carefully late at night, or very early in the morning? Worse yet-- they stay up late and wake up early, which means we're forced to pretty much the same schedule!

Okay, even that I can attribute to ignorance on their part. But here's the kicker: yesterday night I tried to go to sleep at around midnight, since I had to get up early the next morning to go to work. What should keep me up, but the sound of the upstairs neighbors' television blaring! I tossed and turned for half an hour. I even tried putting earplugs in, but earplugs do absolutely nothing to block out the deep sound of the bass. So I put on my robe and shoes, and trudged upstairs to knock on their door. The guy answered. I asked them to turn down the TV, as I could hear it and it was keeping me up. He said okay, and as he shut the door and I headed back down the stairs, I heard the unmistakable sound of the girl laughing her ass off. It was a derisive laugh with the distinct tone of "What the fuck is she on about? Screw her", which pissed me off. When I got back to my own apartment, I realized I was right-- the volume had not changed. Luckily they turned off the TV and headed to bed about 15 minutes later, so I wasn't tortured for much longer.

I just have a hard time understanding how people can be so inconsiderate. Like I said, I can give them the benefit of the doubt that they might not realize they're disturbing us. But when I actually TELL them that it's bothering me, I find it utterly discourteous and disrespectful to continue. I just don't get it. Do they honestly think I'm making a big deal out of nothing, just because THEY don't deem the TV too loud?? How selfish.

Thanks to my neighbors, I didn't get to sleep until an hour after I intended to, and didn't get into work early like I had planned. Next time it happens, I'm sending Allan upstairs to deal with them.

There are, after all, merits to having a 6'8" husband :-D