Neighbours - A Rant

So the worst part about condo living (other then condo association meetings, but those are only once per year) is having to share walls with other people.

On one side of us we have a nice family. Their kids are kind of noisy - playing, stomping up and down stairs etc - but that's normal kid noise so I try to not let it bother me too much. But their dogs! They have two Jack Russells, and they are noisy. Most of the time they have on these collars that squirt them with water when they bark, but when they don't have the collars on, they bark themselves into a conniption whenever we go into our yard. They were so agitated the other night, I thought they were going to try to get through the fence. When they do have the collars on, and they want back into the house, they will spend HOURS banging against the door. I don't know how the owners can ignore it, because it reverberates like crazy all through our house. Thump, thump, thump...pause...thump, thump, thump...for hours, literally. Also, they have a cobblestone yard, and they don't clean up after the dogs very often. GROSS!

On the other side, we have a woman and her teenage daughter, who also have a dog. A white, yippy rat of a creature. It's favourite hobby is to sit by the front window and bark at anything that even thinks about moving. So in the summer I go out to water my garden or even check the mail, and it has a conniption. I open the windows in the living room, someone goes by on the street, and the dog has a fit that sounds like it's in our house. And it will bark, bark, bark for hours when it's home alone. Trevor's mom was so annoyed by it when she was watering our garden while we were away that she sprayed it with the hose and barked back, which I'm very entertained by. And it's not just the dog barking...they have an alarm or something by their front door which buzzes every couple of minutes. The front yard faces south, so early this summer (our first summer in this house) I took my chair and book into the yard for a bit of reading. Between the buzzing and the barking, I went raving mad in about five minutes. I thought I'd try the back yard, even though it's not sunny, but when I went back there, the mom and daughter were having a fit in the kitchen with the window open! Oh, and there was the time I was watering the garden, and the daughter was in the living room on the phone freaking out at someone. I was trying to ignore her and water faster so I can leave, and then she comes over and slams the window shut, and glares at ME! Like I wanted to listen to her stupid phone call! And the mom's boyfriend comes to visit sometimes and brings his big yellow Lab with him, and doesn't keep it on a leash, which is a huge pet peeve of mine. Big dogs can be very dangerous.

So this week we got a new sound system because the old one crapped out, and tonight I watched Dead Man's Chest. Now, there are a lot of explosions, but I had the sound pretty low because Trevor has a headache. So it's about 9:15 (no where near noise curfew time) and they start banging on the wall! I'm really cross, because in general we do not make a lot of noise. Because it's a new system, the bass settings might have been a little loud, but no where near as loud as that stupid dog! Or that door they slammed really loud the other day at about 2am, which woke me up nearly having a heart attack from fright. One movie and they're freaking out! Loud people shouldn't bang on walls, because they might find themselves in a whole lot of trouble from people they've pushed to the edge...a YEAR of listening to them make all sorts of noise is just about my limit! One more button pushed and I'm going to be ready to complain to the condo board about them.