Frozen Nowhere

I’m trying not to want to throttle the people who live in the suite above me. I really am.

I’m TRYING to be a compassionate and understanding person. I am trying NOT to be a complaining bitch who lives in the basement.

But, come on now people, WORK WITH ME!!!

The neighbors above me seem to have a new obsession. I hear its all the rage with… well… with pretty much EVERYONE out there (except me, because despite the fact that I am internet and computer savvy, can usually tech support myself and take apart my computer without too much distress, I don’t have a Wii, PlayStation 3, or XBox 360)…

Yeah, they are into RockBand.

In a MAJOR way.

So… okay, they like to play Rock Band (is it one work or 2?), they are 20something kids with little to no real responsibilities. So what is so wrong with that?

Well… THIS:

They have no carpet on their floor.
The male roommate has apparently taken up the DRUMMER roll for this imaginary video-game BAND
THEREFORE (okay, aside: how come there insn’t a “therefore” symbol available to me? I mean, Really? If I was writing this in my journal I’d totally be able to notate that (yes, I made that word up, sue me) but I can’t do it in type? Hmph!):

My evenings are STUFFED with having to listen to rhythmic and not-so-rhythmic BANGING above my head. What to the people upstairs sounds like “tap tap tap” to me reverberates and POUNDS as if someone is jumping up and down on the floor above me. To make matters WORSE, they have taken this so seriously lately that it isn’t just ONE night that is full of this banging-clashing-pounding from upstairs (nevermind the LOUD music that they have to play that is getting progressively LOUDER up there and therefore to the almost intolerable level below them in my place, as they get slowly more and more hard of hearing and need to turn it up FURTHER)… but its become a habit of several nights a week.

Sunday night they apparently had the ENTIRE “Band” over for a “game”. It started about the time the kids came back from their father’s place (repleat with 7 or 8 bags of stuff that they NEED to carry everywhere with them now)… the THUMP-BANG-POUND-BANG-BANGBANG-THUMP and the hideous yodelling of at least ONE, if not two, “lead singers”  who should NEVER pursue a career in the musical arts. They hollered and giggled and yodelled through their mics… and we were privvy to every last SYLLABLE below them in our suite.

But, more than that, I was serenaded by these moronic children from about 5pm until 11pm that night while they played their little gitar game with their friends. And from the sounds of their lyrical proformances that evening, they were also involved in imbibing of interesting “adult” beverages. During the evening. And they sang and they stomped and pounded, and they RAN back and forth between the living room and kitchen (openning the door between their suite and the stairs to MY suite and slamming it shut several times) and out the front door and to the bathroom all evening.

Around 11pm the “smell” started to drift down from upstairs (and although the rock band noise had abated by this time, it was obvious by the running and jumping and laughing and screaming drifting down that the Party most definately was NOT over)… a smell of smoke, but not of common smoke (and they aren’t to be smoking in the house, its in the rental agreement)… yeah.

I went to bed at 12, figuring that they’d quiet down eventually. I drifted in and out of sleep due to the crashing and banging going on in the rooms directly above me as the party continued into the early hours of the morning. The last time I heard banging I looked at my phone and it was 3am… yeah… not a great night for me.

And I’d be OKAY with it, if it weren’t for the simple facts of this situation:

1. This is not the first time they have been noisy late at night or into the night.

2. While it does not sound loud to them, it is loud enough that the constant nature of the noise gives me a headache

3. I cannot listen or watch tv or a movie without turning the TV up over and over to compensate for the level of noise.

4. The noise is keeping the kids (particularily BoyChild, who sleeps in a bunk bed top that is probably 2 feet BELOW where they are making so much noise)

5. It is simply RUDE to be doing this all night EVERY night… find a new place to do it… put on fucking headphones so at least I don’t have to hear the MUSIC part, put a rug or mat down under the foot peddle…

And if it were simply one night a week, I could overlook it for the sake of not being a bitchy neighbor.

But it is not just ONE night.

They did give me a reprieve on Monday… likely hungover from the night before (or out at work in the minimum wage jungle) and I was allowed to turn on my tv AND hear it for one night. But at promptly 8pm (EXACTLY bedtime for the kids, and the time that the school counsellor decided to call, amid the craziness that comes when mom tries to talk on the phone to someone) they started up the bangBangBANGBANG pounding on the floor.

And, yes, I have contacted my landlord regarding this matter because after a few weeks of this it is starting to really GET to me not being able to listen to or watch tv in the evening or being woken up in the night from the noise and banging from above me. But when your landlord is hanging out on a beach in Costa Rica instead of actually DEALING with things (it annoys me sometimes, he doesn’t have the ability to deal with anything if it goes wrong, but he gets to rake in the money, and he cut back the cable without thinking of what that is like…) you can’t be really thinking that they are going to be dealing with their property at all…

And, yes, I have banged on the ceiling to alert them to the fact that the noise is bothering me. I have talked to them a few times, as well, regarding the amount of banging that is occuring down in my suite… but  either they don’t get it (because, to them it isn’t a pounding bang, but a tapping sound… so they think I’m just being a bitch) and I am worried that complaining too much will just cause them to do MORE to annoy me.

I’m sorely tempted to go out and buy a few clock radios with the really irritating alarms, setting one in each of the three bedrooms with different REALLY early alarm times, and leaving them there over the Christmas break when we are gone… because there is no way they can get into any of the rooms to turn them off, they would have to put up with them going off for whatever amount of time alarms go off if no one touches them… EVERY DAY (laugh)…

I know I won’t… but I would LOVE to get back at them a bit for the constant headache that their “drumming” is causing…

The thought is deliciously evil…