Friday, February 08, 2008

Borderland

Somehow recently, I have run into a slew of blog contests. I'm guessing that cabin fever has hit all of us hard. The latest is over at Bark Knits. She wants to know how you met your sweetie. The deadline is Valentine's Day. Tell her I sent you...

So, we finally recovered from the 15+ inches of snow that we got on Wednesday. It was nice to have a snow day, but honestly, I am sick of the snow and all of the general ickiness that goes along with late winter. Cabin fever has hit Chez Wool pretty hard and we are all grumping at each other pretty fiercely. I honestly cannot wait until spring and I can get Caleb outside to burn off some of the energy he has.

It doesn't help that our upstairs neighbor is completely incapable of living in an apartment situation. She is driving us crazy and is whining to the landlord.

We've been in this apartment for 3-1/2 years and never had any issues with the previous tenants upstairs. This summer they bought a house and a new lady moved in. Apparently, she is a complete white trash princess and has never had to fend for herself before. When she was looking at the apartment, she had the audacity to ask the landlord if she could take one of our spots in the garage. (We pay significantly more rent and as a result, we get 2 garage spaces and the finished portion of the basement.) Needless to say he didn't even approach us about that.

When she and her daughters first moved in, they consistently forgot to either lock or close completely the back door to the house, meaning that anyone could walk into the basement and into my apartment. Not cool with me at all. We spoke with her about it a couple of times and eventually ended up taping a note to the door reminding them that it needed to be latched and the knob needed to be locked. (We actually prefer that the deadbolt not be fastened because Caleb doesn't remember how to unlock it - it freaks me out a bit thinking about what would happen if there was an emergency of some kind and he needed to get out.)

She got really pissy about the note on the door.

There have been other encounters, but the biggest issue is that she and the older daughter park oddly and it doesn't allow for the snow to be removed easily. Since shoveling is our responsibility, we've told the landlord that if their cars aren't in the way that we will be more than happy (not really, but it is part of the lease) to clear that portion of the driveway.

But, and it is a big but, if they don't move them, we will NOT be shoveling around them because of the liability if we damage their cars. He agreed that this seemed fair and all was tolerable.

With all of the snow that we got this week, Eric was more than generous and used the snow blower to go around all of their cars because they hadn't moved them out so that we could clear the area. Apparently, yesterday Princess contacted the landlord complaining that we didn't do a sufficient job shoveling her area. Never mind the fact that she backed her car up and brushed it off onto the area that was already cleared. Never mind that when Eric got home last night she was blocking access to the garage.

I hate to get into a pissing match with her, but that is where we are at and Eric is nothing if not self-righteous. It should get interesting.

On the knitting front, I finished the last body repeat of the Shetland Triangle, not to be confused with the Bermuda Triangle, although, the more I think about it, there are striking similarities.
*They are both triangles - this one is rather obvious.
*They are both larger than one might think - lace post-blocking anyone?
*They both appear innocuous, but both warp the time-space continuum. How else to explain how I sit down to knit a row or two at 8 pm and look up and Leno is doing his monologue?

Because of the warping, I was able to finish up the body of the shawl and started the border chart. I probably could have squeezed in another body repeat with the amount of yarn that I have, but I wanted to make sure that I wouldn't run out. No new pictures yet because honestly, it looks just like before, only slightly larger.

7 comments:

Ewe Little Dickens said...

Cripe, having apt. neighbor difficulties is the worst! (I swear I spent half of my first year in grad school on the phone with the Ann Arbor police department about my upstairs neighbors) - at least it sounds like you have a reasonable landlord! Hope you can find some sanity with knitting!

Natalie Rush said...

Thanks for sharing my contest. :) Bad neighbors are the worse.

Good luck!!

Anonymous said...

I'm sorry about your inconsiderate neighbors. People like that really make life hell. Your knitting sounds interesting. Can't wait to see it :)

Anonymous said...

My husband and I both laughed at your neighbor story. Our apartment has two businesses downstairs instead of a basement. One of the business owners is completely crazy. When we first moved in, there were four trash barrels in the back. Two were half full with sand/rocks/cement/who-knows-what-else. The crazy lady and her husband blocked my car in the driveway (in 98 degree heat when I was 8 months pregnant) to lecutre me about them. I tried to explain that I had nothing to do with them, that it was hot and I wanted to leave, all to no avail. She took to yelling obscenities at me whenever she saw me outside. This summer, she called our landlord ON HIS HONEYMOON to complain that our trash smelled. (Hello? It's summer and full of dirty diapers and leftovers, what do you expect. It's TRASH!) Anyway... I take my revenge by making as much noise as I can during business hours.

Anonymous said...

Ugh. Bad neighbors are just such a PITA!

My DH loves to complain about our neighbors down the driveway ~ how controlling they are, how opinionated about how we do things at our house ... only problem ... they're my parents. Guess we'll have to put up with them (especially since they let us build our house on their property). hee

Hope it gets better at your place!

Jennifer

Ragan Knits etc... said...

Oh no!!!!!!!
We can feel your pain too! We have certainly had our share of bad neighbors. You would think that this would go away when we bought a house in a neighborhood which has community dues (and rules)...BUT NO!!!! We still have crappy neighbors...they hit our mailbox with their cars...their trash is always in my front yard...their kids play in my driveway and hit my cars with basketballs at 10pm on a school night when we are trying to sleep....AUGHHHHHHH! People are just getting more and more rude these days. Now that I have written a book...time to check out that contest! I wish ya the best with this neighbor. GRRRRR!

Gwen said...

Urg. We had some upstairs neighbours back in the day who would freakishly get up literally in the MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT to play foosball. They had the foosball table set up right above our baby's room, and let me tell you, it was horrible. There's nothing like communal living to cramp your style.