They huffed and puffed...

And kept me up way past my bedtime!! AGAIN!!!


They being the new neighbors who moved into the upstairs apartment directly above mine a few weeks ago.

I live in an old apartment complex and I don't know if it's because it's old or because it has all hard wood floors and no carpet to muffle the sound between the floor of the upstairs apartment and my ceiling, but I can hear every. single. sound. that is made in the apartment above mine.

If it's a single decibel above a loud I can hear it. I can sit in my living room and audibly trace the steps of the couple upstairs by listening to them Clop and Stomp like woolly mammoths across the floor.

There he goes... to the bathroom.. ok onto the kitchen now... oh they're watching Idol.. nope Seinfeld... to the bedroom... oh back to the bathroom now.

You get the idea.

The girl seems to be pretty light on her feet. I don't hear her often. (Ok I don't hear her walking often, I'll elaborate on what I do hear in a moment) The boyfriend, however, has a VERY heavy step. I seriously lie in bed at night and watch the ceiling, waiting for the cracks to appear and plaster start to fall. It sounds like he's going to stomp right through the floor.




I'm a very very light sleeper. I also suffer from insomnia. So the 2-4 precious hours of sleep I do manage to occasionally get each night are right up there on the importance scale of say AIR.. oh and dark chocolate. My adventures with sleep aids have run the gamut from Ambian, Lunesta, Rozerum, Tylenol PM, and just about every other over the counter sleep aid out there. You might say I have a problem sleeping.

Occasionally when the exhaustion and delirium of sleep deprivation get to the point where I have trouble functioning I'll take some of the wonderful stuff my Dr gave me for the pinched nerve in my back. Read: GOOD sh*t - may cause drooling & incoherent mumbling. It guarantees me about 3-5 hours of nothing short of a freight train falling on my head will wake me up sleep. I truly don't like taking medication of any kind so I do this sparingly and only when I know that I simply cannot go another day without allowing my body to rest.



Back to the energizer bunnies upstairs. I'm all for having a good, healthy, active sex life. I mean it may have been back during the Reagan administration but even I had one once upon a time. Ok it wasn't that long ago.. when he was president I was like 8, but you get the idea.

But there is such a thing as common respect for your neighbors. I mean for the love of Rosie O'Donnell in Exit to Eden come on!



During the week I go to bed anywhere from 8pm to 10pm, but I'm almost always in bed by 10pm. I get up at 6am and while if you do the math, yes I am aware that allows for 8-10 hours of sleep, remember I'm an insomniac. Going to bed at 10pm means I lay in bed, mind racing until at least 12 or 1am. Then I wake up around 2am or 3am, then again around 4:30am then again when my alarm finally goes off at 6am. So if I'm lucky that rounds out to maybe 1 1/2 or 2 hours of solid uninterrupted sleep a night, then a few more interrupted hours.

The first weekend they moved in was horrible. Friday night, moving furniture and midget bowling at 2am. Those are the only two things I can think of that could possibly account for the ungodly amount of racket going on upstairs. Saturday night, more furniture rearranging, Sumo wrestling in the living room and a reenactment of the shoot-out at the OK Corral. Now I knew they were just getting moved in and getting things settled so I decided to be a nice understanding neighbor and let it go.




So on this has continued for the past 3 weeks, several nights a week.... and very early on Saturday mornings with the humping, and moaning, and bed scraping against the floor and banging against the wall.

My new roommate is moving in this Sunday so this past weekend I did some spring cleaning, swept, mopped, scrubbed the toilet you know.. fun stuff in preparation and decided well hell while I'm cleaning I may as well rearrange my room. I thought maybe.. if I move my bed against a different wall on the other side of the room the sound wouldn't be as bad. Their bed is positioned directly above where my bed was and I had the joy of hearing every little slide and scrape of the bed on the hardwood floors in their apartment.

**side note - bless her heart. her b/f has to be the most not rhythm having white boy on the planet. I mean seriously.. he'll get going (I can tell by the scraping of the bed on the floor and the banging on the wall) at a good speed and she'll get to well.. making noise and it's like all of a sudden he has completely used up the 3 minutes of concentration he has allotted for acting like he knows what he's doing and the scrapes will go all wonky like the ball in that old fashioned arcade game brick break when you get through the top layer of bricks and the ball just bounces around crazy trying to get back out.



***note to guys - if she starts getting louder and faster in her moaning, panting, whatever kind of noise she makes - she's almost there.. Don't Freaking Stop ya dimwitted schmuck! That is not the time to try out some new move you think you learned watching Debbie Does Dallas on VHS.

So I moved my bed, thinking I've if not solved the problem then at least lessened the volume of unwanted stuff I'll hear when I'm TRYING TO SLEEP! But no.. noo. noooooo. Apparently last night they decided to freakin christen the dresser or whatever else piece of furniture is Right Above Where I JUST MOVED MY BED!!!

So today when I get home from work I'm going to leave them a note on the door. I've not written it yet, but the following is a rough draft of what I've come up with so far. (Of course I'm going to leave a note.. geez you don't think I'm going to knock on the door and ask her face to face to moan a little more quietly so I can sleep do you?!? Gah!)



Dear new neighbor:

I don't know if you've noticed, and I'm not sure if it's the lack of carpeting or the age of the building but sounds carry very very well through these apartments. I've tried to be understanding, what with you just having moved in and all, but sheer exhaustion has forced me to address this issue. I'm leaving a note rather than speaking with your personally to save either of us any embarrassment . But could you possibly throw a rug under the bed in your room? Or a towel, or sheet or well anything that will muffle the sound of the scraping across the floor. And not just the bed, but anything else you and your boyfriend might decide to hump on. Oh and maybe think about investing in a ball gag? Or a sock, or pillow or heck the underwear he just pulled off will do I'm sure! You tend to get a bit uhhh loud.

I suffer from insomnia and am a very very light sleeper, so I value the few hours of sleep I do manage to get and tend to become a very unpleasant person when those precious hours of rest are disturbed. As they have been most every night since you've moved in. It's not personal, I'm happy you have an active sex life. Yay You! But the guy who lived upstairs before you was quiet. I like quiet.

Although we don't really talk to each other much in this building we do try to respect each other and keep things quiet in the evenings during the week. So if you must thrust.. please try to do so before 10pm Sun thru Thursday nights. Or maybe use the other bedroom, or the couch, or the kitchen counter once in a while. Spice things up. I know you have two beds. I watched your guy friend carry the mattresses up the stairs.

Thank you for your understanding and cooperation!!



Your sleep deprived neighbor =)