On Apartment Living

This little housing odyssey we're on right now has us in an apartment for a few months. Really it was always part of the plan. There was something about the nature of the market we were in that said to us we should sell our house first and then buy the new one. That brings with it needing a place to be in between.

So we are living in a very nice apartment. It's reminded me of things I guess I'd forgotten. We're in the downstairs of a two story unit. The upstairs neighbors have kids. I think they are training to be world cup soccer players. We get an awful lot of scampering through the ceiling. Once a long time ago I stayed with a friend who lived in a basement apartment under a family with a baby. They has one of those caste red seats where the baby can roll around the room. They also had hardwood floors. My friend, she got hour after hour of rolling casters. The apartment here and our soccer athletes, it's not that bad, but it does remind me how nice it was when we were in our own house.

Sometime after we moved in the upstairs neighbors got a pet. Pets are nice. We have an army of cats. I guess we should be thankful the folks upstairs didn't get cats or a dog. We'd wind up hearing skittering all the time if that were the case. What they did get was a bird. Most of the time we have no notice of their feathered friend. Occasionally though it seems like maybe it's too much for them and they'll put the birdcage in the basement and we'll hear what must be a lonely bird tweeting from downstairs. More irritatingly, they've taken to putting the cage outside on their balcony - right over our bedroom window. We've been doing our best to keep the air off and the windows open. On more than one occasion that's got us chirping at 5:00 am.

And really chirping and tweeting don't really cover it. A little bit it's more like shrieking, if birds shrieked.

Recently we discovered that the new upstairs tenants in the next door unit like to stay up and shoot the shit well into the shank of the evening, and of course this is on their balcony. That gives us chatting until two and the shrieking at five.

All of which is just a real long way of saying I really can't wait for the work on our new place to be done.