Bad Boys, Bad Boys, What You Gonna Do?

Mood: Frustrated (Writing is not as easy as it should be when your fictional characters refuse to cooperate with you).

What I'm watching: The Police Women of Broward County (Really? Someone should tell the blonde one that the only time that she should be wearing her hair that way is when she's working under cover as a cheap hooker).

I've long since accepted that living in an apartment and sharing thin walls means that I will know far more about my neighbors than I ever cared to know. I know when they're fighting, when they're *ahem* not fighting, what they're having for dinner and that the guy next door should probably see a doctor about his frequent bathroom issues.

So, when the neighbors across the hall started having one of their epic arguments the other night, I didn't think too much of it. When the police showed up it started getting slightly more interesting. Seems that the wife wanted to use the computer and the husband didn't want to let her so he tried to grab the power cord and then attempted to run her over with his rascal scooter. Yep, that's right, our disabled neighbor tried to run over his slightly less disabled wife with his scooter and the police were called to referee the computer argument.

Seriously? They should have just called my mother who would have taken the computer cord, slapped them both and sent them to bed without dinner. But, since they called the police, the officers who responded did their best to diffuse the situation and told them to give one another some space for the rest of the evening. The officer's parting words "Don't start in again the minute we leave." Of course they promised that they wouldn't.

Right. Uh-huh. Like that worked. See, my mother never would have fallen for that and before the officers had even pulled away from the curb, the argument was one once again. Within 10 minutes, the wife was in the hall on the phone with the police again. By this time I was starting to think that I should be standing outside in my bare feet with a baby on my hip while Scott stands next to me wearing a wife beater and drinking a beer. Fortunately, we have far more class so we watched the drama unfolding through the peephole in our front door.

This time the police asked the wife to leave for a while to give the situation a chance to cool. This was probably a wise decision, especially since the husband announced that he'd run out of prozac and so is now unmedicated. By the next morning the wife had returned and the fight was on once again and continued off and on over the next day or so, but, as Scott pointed out this morning, things have been eerily quiet over there for the past 24 hours or so.

Hopefully they've managed to patch things up and work out a sharing schedule for the computer but if a funny smell starts eminating from their apartment over the next week or so I'm not going to be a bit surprised.

Why Do All the Annoying People Live Next to Us!?!

Mood: Frustrated (Apartment living is not the utopia that one would hope)

What I'm Watching: The Osbournes Reloaded (I know, I should be ashamed of myself but I'm totally not!)

Have I mentioned lately just how much I want to move out of this wretched apartment?!? Forget the mold in the bathroom (just how bad can mold growing on the ceiling actually be?), forget the hole in the cabinet under the kitchen sink (after all, it's only been 3 years since the owner promised he'd be back to fix it 'next week'), and let's even forget about the constant rent increases, the thermostat that has absolutely NO markings or temperature readings (it's like having our very own game show...will it be the arctic tundra or the tropics in our livingroom...turn the dial and find out!) and the parking lot that has pot holes large enough to swallow your average midsize car. All of that pales in comparison to the neverending stream of freaking neighbors we've been forced to endure over the past few years.

The latest in a long line of irritating people who have shared our paper thin walls are rapidly pushing me into imminent neck punching territory! Normally I am a very deep sleeper. Tornadoes? I'd be snoring away as we were lifted into OZ. Earthquakes? I did actually sleep through one of those. Home Invasion? Heck, the theives could probably steal the bed right out from underneath me and I'd continue dreaming undisturbed. However, there are a couple of exceptions to the 'deep sleep' rule. I am trained to wake up to two sounds: a phone ringing and the alarm clock. That's it. Two things. Guess what two noises constantly come from the neighbors apartment???

Yep. That's right. Saturday morning around 3:00 am I was awakened by the ringing of the neighbors cell phone. Apparently the neighbor had set the phone as an alarm clock so the phone kept ringing for 3 minutes at a time. Every. five. minutes. FOR. THREE. FREAKING. HOURS!!! Sparky (Mr. 'I can't sleep if the neighbors sneeze too loud') is blissfully snoring away as I contemplate the odds of my being able to actually punch through the wall separating me and the cell phone and disposing of the offending noise by throwing the phone at the offending neighbor to wake him up. After all, if he set the alarm he must want to get up, right? So, actually I'd be doing him a neighborly favor.

People? If you set your alarm for 3:00 am, perhaps you shouldn't stay up until 2:00 am with 30 of your closest friends crammed into your tiny studio apartment. And, if you do decide to set the alarm for 3:00 am you'd better damn well haul your lazy ass out of bed and turn the damn thing off or I'm going to go all Mr. Kool-aid next time and crash through your wall and put your cell phone somewhere where it will become very difficult for you to actually answer it!