New Neighbor Woes

Having moved recently, I have decided that I have a love hate relationship with our new location.  I love our new house.  It is just so much better than the old one.  I really do.  It just suits us better.

There is a down side.  I can't handle our new neighbors.  While they don't have any "puff, puff, give" going on in the garage, that I know of, like some of our previous neighbors did, after just a couple of weeks of living here, we already have issues.

For starters, I can't handle her parking.  I know that may not make a lot of sense, but we park on of our cars on the street in front of the house, and so do they.  Well, she tries to, but she sucks at it.  She sucks worse than I do at parallel parking, and that says a lot.  It really wouldn't matter how bad she is, if it wasn't for the fact that she always takes up two spaces when she can.  She sees it as one easy spot for her, instead of the two spots it should be.  It drive me up the frigging wall.  That little bit of space out there is a precious commodity.  You try to preserve and respect it as much as possible for all the people on the street.  Its just the polite thing to do.  She, apparently, never got that memo or doesn't give a rat's hiney.  Also, when I can't quite get into a space or need help, I ask My Husband, who is seriously the best parallel parker in the whole wide world, to come out and spot me.  I have even ask him to help coach me and let me practice so that I can get better.  After all, he is the parking king.  Her husband doesn't so much help her as stand on the porch and yell "Your not doing that right!" when she can't even hear him.  It's fantastic.  I would dare say our entire street hold this grievance against them, even though they don't live next to them.

My biggest problem with them at the moment, though is that they are probably the loudest people I have ever heard in my life.  We live in a town home, and are attached to them by one wall; one miserable, stupid wall.  I can not fathom how they make as much noise as they do.  Seriously.  They could start up a drum circle over there and I think it would only serve to muddle the yelling, and not actually increase their volume level at all.

They have at least three kids, a baby, a toddler, and a tween.  I know the baby cries.  That I can forgive, easily.  The toddler, though, I'm thinking is allowed to run amok at all hours. I think I've figured out that her bedroom must be adjacent to ours, and most likely, her bed is up against the wall that joins our homes, and our bedrooms more specifically.  I also think she either jumps and falls in her bed and onto the wall all night, or actually lays there and kicks the crap out of the wall.  It seriously sounds like kicking.

When we are downstairs, the adjoining wall is up against their staircase.  All day long you hear what sounds like an elephant heard running up and down.  The other night, I actually fantasized about cutting a hole in the wall, right where their stair case is, and reaching through to grab the next person running on the stairs.  A few things kept from actually doing it, like possible criminal charges and being kicked out of my own home.  The biggest thing that made just a drew was trying to figure out how to make sure I got them going up, and not down.  After all, it wouldn't be to hurt them, just to scare them a little and make them stop.

I just can't take it.

My Husband has already gone over there at about 10:00pm one night.  They answered and he told them rather bluntly that it sounded like someone was kicking our wall.  The man of that house didn't seem shocked, surprised, or even upset.  He just said ok, and went back in, but the noise did stop!  That tells me it is some sort of behavioural issue they are completely overlooking normally.  I mean, if in one minute you can make it stop, and we would have heard if there had been yelling at the child, or anything else, then you could make it stop all the time if you chose too.  Not cool.

I don't let my kids behave like that.  In fact, if we are in any area of the home that I know they can probably hear us in, because we can hear them, I make my girls keep their voices down at night or in the early morning.  I try to make them understand that we should show respect for our neighbors and those around us.  Its becoming a problem for me, though, because I don't really want to make them be nice anymore.  I want to teach my girls the right thing, but some days when we get up at the crack of dawn and our neighbors are still sleeping, I seriously would like to send them into the bathroom and tell them the first one to finish got an ice cream, and just let the screaming fights ensue.  IT would be nice.  I'm not like that, though.  I'll continue to teach the girls to behave, and not let mine run amok just to spite the neighbors.  I may, however, get a very loud new sound system and hope they enjoy Nirvana.  At 6:00am.

I hope that things get a little better now that he has gone over there once, because I'm not sure how things will be if I have to go over there.  I don't want to, but I will if I need to.  I don't imagine it will be pretty, either.  I already have an internal filter on the fritz.  I'm pregnant.  I'm tired.  I'm super grouchy.  I'm also a natural red head.  All in all, I would say that makes me a ticking time bomb.

Somehow, be it force or not, we will figure this all out.  Maybe I'll get lucky and they will get orders elsewhere, soon.  That would be fantastic.  Unless the next set of neighbors ends up being worse which would about be my luck.