the neighbors

Okay, I was going to wait to tell the neighbor story until I wrote about the rest of the week. But due to popular request on facebook, I have decided to blog about this subject today.

Here's the scoop. For those of you that don't know, we live on the 3rd (top) floor in our apartment building. I will also preface this by saying that we have never had ANY complaints in the past 3 years that we have lived here. We recently had new neighbors move in below us on the 2nd floor. I would say the couple is in their late 30's or early 40's. The first incident occured about two weeks ago. It was just Lily and me at home around 5PM. She was crawling around playing and I was doing nothing of consequence. Our doorbell rings and when I answer the door it's the lady from downstairs. She says (in a rude tone I might add)... "there's a large amount of noise coming from your apartment." I go on to explain that it's just me and my daughter at home and that there's nothing I can or should be doing DURING THE DAY any different. I have an 11 month old.... She looked at me like I should have a better answer for her and then left.

Fast forward to yesterday. It was around the same time of day (5PM) and Matt was still at work again like usual. I hear the doorbell ring, answer the door, and there stands the wife WITH her husband this time. When I saw them I immediately thought you HAVE to be kidding me. The husband talked this time and basically said the same thing but to add that there's large thumps and that it's so bad sometimes it "shakes their lamps." WOW!!! I was SOOOO irate and couldn't believe I was hearing this and that they had the nerve to come back again knowing we have a small child!! I tried to calmly explain again that there is nothing that I can do... we live in an apartment building and there's going to be noise if you have neighbors. And again that we have an 11 MONTH OLD! So they left probably still upset. What do they think is going on up here? An EARTHQUAKE?? They could have a LOT worse neighbors than us!! We are generally quiet people and Lily isn't even to the stage yet where she runs around and makes even more noise! Oh and then I say to try and be as nice as possible, you shouldn't have a problem in the evenings/night when it really DOES matter because our daughter goes to bed at 8. The lady looks at me and says in a sarcastic tone "well we're thankful for that!" Like we're doing her some sort of service by our daughter going to bed at 8.

OH MAN!!! Can you just tell by this blog how upset and angry I am? It literally kept me from going to bed last night because I was stewing about it.

So this morning Matt and I went to let the community manager know about the visits we had gotten (assuming they hadn't reported us to the office yet) and make sure she knew our side of the story and that we're just going about our daily lives. I know Dee (the manager) pretty well and she always talk to Lily and is real nice with her. She appreciated us letting her know so she would know in advance to explain to them if/when they do call that what they are experiencing is normal apartment noises and that they will have to get use to it or move to a top floor! Dee said they use to leave here previously and were on the top floor. Then they moved to Colorado for awhile and are now back. So maybe they just don't realize that you're going to hear people walking around above you. I'm thankful that Dee understood and said it wasn't a problem.

Well... that's my story. I haven't decided to ignore the door if they come again or answer it and be not quite so nice this time and explain they don't need to disturb our home anymore but just take their issues to the clubhouse since I know the staff is on our side. Hm.... It takes everything I've got not to just yell at them!!