What our upstairs neighbor might be doing

It's not easy, having your feet removed and replaced with anvils. But darn it, I'm going to find a way to get by. Now to practice my walking. No—JUMPING. That's the spirit, me!

If only the clog dancing studio hadn't burned to the ground. I suppose we'll have to use my living room. My neighbors will understand once they find out how much money our performance will raise for the third-world orphans.

MY BOOKCASE IS TRYING TO KILL ME NOT AGAIN OH BOOKCASE LEAVE ME BE OH GAAAAAH

This new therapist wants me to do trust falls all by myself, because if I can't trust myself, he says, who can I trust? He's the expert, I guess. I wish I could at least do them on my mattress. Or some pillows. Ow.

I AM GOING TO BAKE COOKIES FOR THE NEW NEIGHBORS! I AM SO EXCITED TO MEET THEM! I CAN'T STOP JUMPING! AND FALLING! AND LEAPING FROM THE TOPS OF THINGS!

You know, I think I'll hammer some sound-absorbing materials to my floors. So that I don't bother anyone else in the building. I know some people would say, wait until morning, get some rest. But there's no rest for the thoughtful. I'll hammer until 3 a.m. if I have to. Just hammer and hammer.

Comments

[Elizabeth_K]

Maybe Henry's newly made (soon!) friends will let ya'll sleep over, all of you, and enjoy what will surely be their quiet accommodations. Sorry re: neighbor ...

[bikerchick]

Oh, dear. I feel you. I really, really do. I lived in an older condo with clog-wearing, step-dancing neighbors who kept vampire hours, played stone fetch with their 12 rampaging Neopolitan Mastiffs, and who had an at-home concrete block manufacturing business in the spare bedroom. Oh yes and did I mention that they used their porch to dry salted fish?!? Hang in there.

[Mrs Embers]

HAHAHAHA! Oh, my dear... it's only funny to me because I know EXACTLY what you're talking about!

We used to call our upstairs neighbour "Clompie Stomperson"- I swear the woman's high-heels were stapled to her feet. Why else would she wear them at midnight?

[JR]

Dude, the bookcase scenario just killed me. I am dead.

[Bikini]

Stop! It's HAMMER TIME.

Couldn't resist

[hoskas]

Ah, the joys of cityliving.

[Krys72599]

Welcome back to apt living...

[Marinka]

I'm just doing what Fred Astaire did. Except backwards, so that I bump into everything, and in high heels!

This may be the best post that I've ever read.

[Jennie]

HAHAHA--sorry for yelling, but I now do everything at top volume in an effort to hear myself over our crazy neighbour lady. She hammers, but she never seems to MAKE anything. As far as we can tell, she hammers the wall exactly 13 times, several times a day. I think she's covering her walls with aluminium foil; my husband thinks she's just crazy.My favourite time is when she hammers at 5am! It's just like an alarm clock! Only LOUDER and two hours early!(ahem, sorry for the rant, apparently your post hit a nerve! :) )love the website and the Tweets, btw.

[MomVee]

When I lived in Manhattan, I concluded that our upstairs neighbors had a petting zoo. Sometimes there was a sound of a recalcitrant llama being dragged across the living room. Sometimes there was the sound of the feed vending machine overturning and lots of hard pellet of animal feed skittering across the floor. And sometimes there was the sound of a llama falling over, dead.

When my parents were first married they lived under a stewardess who got up at 3 am every day and dropped four thousand wire hangers on the floor of her closet.

[Meredith]

Our upstairs neighbors are on a Pointer Sisters kick, lately. Luckily, no clog dancing to go along with it but it does sound as if they are sprinting from room to room most days.

[MidStreamMom]

Nothing to be done but become "The Rectifier" a la Tim Robbins in Noise. If "going medieval" isn't your style (and I wouldn't think it would be) perhaps a politely phrased note under their door could be your first salvo.

[Eric Hegwer]

And that was the moment we decided to buy a house. Just think of all the new content you would get - wait thats what I did!

[jdg]

this is exactly what the mafioso who used to live in a plywood shed in the garage under our apartment in san francisco used to speculate about in cantonese. . .

[Carrie]

I must admit that my husband and I once installed our own tile floor in a 2nd floor condo. Since the hubs didn't have vacation time to spare and we didn't get it done over the weekend, we had to work on it mornings before work and evenings.Tapping the hammer on each tile. Tap tap tap tap tap.Don't worry, karma paid me back when the guy upstairs from us got mad at the whole building and decided not only to aggressively walk (I didn't even know such was possible) and introduce us all to his favorite techno radio station.We were begging the neighbors to call the cops. Instead, he defaulted on his association payments before we finished foreclosing, ended up selling his unit for nearly 100% profit.Karma? Where are you?

[LPC]

Thank you so much for being funny.

[Danabug]

My husband & I ARE the upstairs neighbors & I'll bet the folks below us are visualizing the same scenarios about us. Neither of us are small people & we have a tendency to run into things on a regular basis (where did THAT bruise come from?). I've always felt sorry for the folks below...

[Under-employed girl]

Oh it's so nice to read your blog and the comments. I thought I was the only person who lived under someone with a dog the size of a horse that likes to bark and play fetch while she rearranges the furniture in her cement block combat boots.

[Debl]

Who knew there were so many people in the world who feel the need to rearrange heavy furniture every night before bed? They are legion.

[Poppy Buxom]

You have beautifully dramatized the only advantage single family dwellings retain for me after 11 years of living in the suburbs.

I am tired to death of yards and driveways and snow removal and having to fix up this damned fixer-upper.

But now I'm having painful flashbacks to living under the family with the adult musician sons who had a habit of returning home to live with their mother. And practicing all day long. Whereas now, the only noises I hear over my head are rain drops.

[Margaret]

Wow. I have a totally different experience. At the start of the divorce process 2.5 years ago I moved in to the downstairs level of a duplex of some good friends and every tap, skip, heel, murmur, bang, laugh, and snort was a comfort to me. I. am. not. alone. There. are. happy. people. in. the. world. I. will. not. float. away. Maybe it's because I love them, or maybe because I needed their souls above me, but I cherished the auditory evidence of their daily life and still do. I count myself lucky. And now I'm another happy noise making soul in the world.

[MotherhoodTheUltimateSurvivor]

Ha ha ha (that's laughing with you, not at you). I lived in a building where I swear, the neighbour above us would fill a jar with marbles and the dump it on the ceramic tiles - over and over and over - especially after midnight. To this day I still have no idea what it was.

You should do a blog where people write in about their worst neighbours experience.

[Sue]

Hilarious. Do you think you notice it more now that you've lived in a house and are back to apartment life? Were you just used to it before?

We rented a first floor apartment once, and it sounded like children were constantly being murdered upstairs. Turned out it was their cats. It was extremely creepy.

[Sheila]

Oh, apartment living. I've spent years in apartments and I do not miss it. It seemed like each and every one of our upstairs neighbors had kids who liked to jump off furniture (actually knocked our pictures off the walls), loved to play music at all times as loud as possible, and then had sex all night on squeaky beds. And they all wore tap shoes, too. I love not sharing walls/floors/ceilings!

[Dana]

Feet replaced by anvils! Trust falls with no pillow! I'm dying. Remember Woody Allen's line in _Manhattan_ about his upstairs neighbor who always sounded like he was "strangling a parrot"?