DECEMBER 13, 2007

I was finishing putting the lights on our Christmas tree today, enjoying the quiet morning and the first fledgling feelings of yuletide cheer I've felt this year, when it started. The noise. The incessant stomping and screaming of our upstairs neighbors and their two young kids and, as I looked up at our chandelier that rattling from the din above, I had to suppress the urge to break down and cry.

This is a huge problem we've been facing for awhile and the problem is that our upstairs neighbors are so rude and loud on a non-stop basis that it is literally driving me insane. I could go on and on trying to explain how bad the problem is but no amount of words could convey the auditory hell we live in on a daily basis. But, to give you an idea, just take two young kids who stomp and scream incessantly, add a dad who is a loudmouthed jackass who plays the bongos and doesn't know how to communicate without yelling, and top it off with a mom who gives violin lessons at home and you get a vague idea of what we deal with morning, noon and night. It's like living in an auditory torture chamber.

Mind you, going off about our neighbors is not what I like to spend time writing about, but this entry is a long time coming since this noise nightmare is the cause of my epic case of writer's block. Suffice to say it's nigh on impossible to think or write amidst this kind of sensory hell so everything in my life that requires concentration has become nearly impossible, which is why posts have been sporadic. The noise problem frays my nerves to such an extreme that I'm angry and irritable all the time and my anxiety level is off the chart, and I pay for that daily in the form of my dwindling sanity and utter lack of productivity.

Of course, this might make you wonder why we haven't complained about the noise and, the thing is, we have but our neighbors don't give a rat's ass about anyone else so trying to reason with them has been futile. And, technically, we could file a complaint with the apartment management company but, since our neighbors are such assholes, the only thing that would do is make the situation worse. Besides, the solution we're looking for is to move far away from these people since that will solve the problem once and for all. Unfortunately, the rental market has shrunk so much that we haven't been able to find a place, despite having looked for months, so we're stuck for the time being. But we're still desperately hoping to get out of here before we completely lose our minds.

So that's why things have been slow on the journal front. The noise, the endless nerve-racking, ear piercing, brain melting noise that robs us of our sanity. Hopefully we'll be able to move but, until then, we're stuck with this nightmare and all its unfortunate consequences. It's frustrating in and of itself but also in that I've been wanting to redesign my site and add new sections but that's impossible to do while I'm going postal and beating my head against the wall.

In the meantime, I'll keep making every effort to be productive but, when it's silent here on my journal, know that it's not a lack of effort but simply because I have been strangled by my own eardrum.

listening: blue october . reading: --

walk: 15 minutes . weight lost: 10.0 pounds

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