Oh the joys of apartment living

via google images/istock photo

Some new neighbors moved in below me awhile back. It's not been a good experience.

Now let me preface this by saying that in the neighbor department, especially being on the 2nd floor, our downstairs neighbors have it pretty easy in my mind. We are out the door in the morning between 8:00 and 8:30 most days and we don't get home until around 6:00 or 7:00 pm most nights. Sometimes even later. We eat dinner and the kids play outside with friends for the majority of the evening most days then it's off to bed for them between 8:00 and 9:00 pm. The only real days we are home more than a few waking hours are Saturday and Sunday, but even then we do cleaning and shopping, church and dinner with the fam. So we aren't consistently home anyway. I don't do any loud cleaning (vacuuming, laundry, dishwasher, etc) after like, 10 pm out of respect because I know that stuff can be kind of loud and believe that is tough, seeing as how most days thats the only time I have to do my cleanup stuff. Not to mention exercising.

Now I'm not completed jaded as to think we are perfectly quiet neighbors. There are three boys up here and they get riled up. There will be a little running around and some wrestling, but I really REALLY try to keep it to a minimum. So sure, we are probably kind of noisy but all in all we really aren't home often enough to be a bother. (*Also note, our quiet hours are from like, 10 pm to 7 am or something like that...you will want to remember this for later on)

BUT.

These new neighbors of ours.....my gosh. They have mastered the art of pounding on the ceiling. I'm pretty positive that they have a broom or something in every single room of their house, because they don't miss a beat. If we so much as walk wrong on the floor they pound at their ceiling not 1 second later. Here are some recent examples.

On Saturday we got Ryder his costume and he was SOO excited that he was doing a little skip in the kitchen while I was opening it up (at like 6 pm*) and we got a pounding. A week or so ago the boys were playing with some friends after dinner and came in to hide from a monster or something. They shut the door kind of loudly and surprise, surprise...we got a pounding.
The boys have a bad habit of running down the hall when they are exciting or grabbing something to play with and every single time, a pounding.
If we walk on one section of the floor by the kitchen that has a little squeak to it, we get a pounding.

The best yet...my bed is kind of squeaky so if I have toss and turn nights, my bed squeaks a little (obviously). Now this isn't like a hugely loud thunder rolling squeak, just a squeak. Well I was having a toss and turn night last night and the bed squeaked. At like 2 am. And literally right in the middle of the squeaking I hear a pounding. I was kind of out of it and wondered if maybe something had fallen because it hadn't registered yet what pounded so I sat up, took inventory and then laid down which resulted in me hitting my head on the headboard a second later. And not even one second after that...a pounding.

Could someone please tell me how a squeak from the apartment above could wake you up at 2 am? Its not like it was squeaking for hours on end...at most there was a minute of squeaking while I turned and adjusted my blankets.

REALLY FOLKS?!

Do you have nothing better to do with your time than sit in your apartment with a broom and bang on your ceiling every time we make a noise?

I really need to hurry up and figure out what I'm doing with my life and moving, because if I'm going to stay in Cedar it's time to find a new place. I can't take this much longer, it's getting ridiculous.