Andreas arrived last night a little before 11pm. He, our friend John, and I then spent the next hour and a half emptying the pick-up and trailer and taking stuff up the stairs to the apartment. The house is being rennovated right now, and so the carpets in the hallway/staircase have been ripped out, making every trip up the stairs a very loud CLOMP-CLOMP-CLOMP. This is an issue because since we live in a quad-plex the apartment walls are actually house walls, and sound carries like you wouldn’t believe.

Perhaps I’m hyper-sensitive about the noise because I already got a noise complaint from the woman who lives upstairs. My computer woofer is quite, erm, loud, and last week I was bumping the new Badu and a little note appeared on the front door the next morning urging everyone to keep music down.

Last night I met the woman who made the noise complaint: our upstairs neighbor. She’s lived in the building for 23 years (believe it!) and within 10 minutes of meeting me, she was telling me about her neurological problem and how it makes her apartment very cluttered and how it’s an issue she needs to deal with and well, the new carpet being put in should really be an incentive to clean the place up and perhaps her friends will help her?, and yes, the new landlord is very nice.

I’m really glad that mental illness has lost much of its stigma in America. Granted, this may be due to pharmaceutical companies who have a lot to gain from convincing us all that we’re depressed or hyperactive or flaccid but regardless, there’s medication. Whatever the reason, I think it’s a good thing that people don’t have to hide in shame when they’ve dealing with mental/emotional issues. That said, I think perhaps we’ve slipped to far the other direction. My neighbor basically said, “Hi, nice to meet you. I have neurological problems,” which perhaps was just a way to prove her point. Not sure. Regardless, she also mentioned “this is a quiet building” three or four times, so Andreas and I are already anticipating sound problems. Heavy petting allowed, heavy breathing VERBOTTEN!

That said, our downstairs neighbors are really cool and encouraged us to make more noise.