I guess this is victory

It all started with our bathroom fan. Apparently, our use of it drives our upstairs neighbor to childhood. Seeing as we have no window in there or desire to harvest bathroom mold we continued using it like regular, rational people. At first, we couldn’t figure out why she was stomping and blaring her tv. When I say stomping, I mean there was cracking in our ceiling. We started calling her fatty, because we figured her weight was the cause of the ceiling noise and because we had grown to despise her existence. TBU tells people she’s 400 pounds but it’s closer to something like 300. Regardless, the common stairs she uses had to be reinforced after she loosened several steps and pulled the base away from the wall. TBU and I took great delight in this news.

A few months, ago she complained to management that we used our bathroom fan too much. And management had the nerve to call us and tell us not to use it if we didn’t need it. Remember this? Yeah, we need it. While we had them on the phone, we complained about her noise level, and you know what their response was? “THAT’S PART OF APARTMENT LIVING.” Why didn’t they just say that to Whiny McNeverLeavestheHouse?! I don’t know but I was pissed.

Our landlord already thinks I’m crazy unreasonable* so in an effort to appease me he said would get us a “silent” fan and hoped it would take care of the problem; but asked us not to use the fan until he installed the new one. After a week of not being able to use our regular cieling fan, our brand spanking new, taking care of business, “silent” fan was installed. And everything was reasonably quiet. Until fatty got home.

(* So crazy unreasonable as to be pissed when the handyman crushed all my plants that were out front, then left razorblades, rusty nails and cigarette butts in our entry way. Landlords response? “They’ll grow back,” and “Yeah he’s not the tidiest person, that’s why I’m here to clean up after him.” This was 5 days after the handyman was gone, and the landlord didn’t clean up shit, I wound up collecting all the trash later.)

There was no satisfying her. She was back to stomping and blaring her embarrassing taste in pop culture. We responded in kind. Actually, TBU resonded in kind. I prefer not having the bass determine my heart beat. MY stealth move was to leave the fan on and wear headphones. Eventually she would get out of breath from all the stomping and just blare the tv, which was easier to mask anyway. Then she would go to bed around 10. This has been our fairly consistent routine for the past few months.

I got out of the shower today and had had enough. It’s total fucking bullshit. I spent 3 hours psyching myself up for the confrontation. I planned on being very, very nice. Like so nice, it would be impossible not to see my point of view. Like so nice she would not want to ever upset me because I was so nice. Like so nice she would just shut the fuck up already. I prepared a speech with TBU’s help and opened the front door a bunch of times like I was going to do it but just couldn’t start walking up the steps. I called TBU and he said a bunch of shit that’s easy to say when you’re not the one about to climb a flight of stairs and knock on a door.

I practiced the speech and then I just did it. I climbed the stairs and knocked on her door.

And knocked again, this time louder.

And one more time, even louder.

Nothing.

It’s not like she’s fooling me, I know she’s there. I’ve heard her tree trunk legs all morning, Natalie Imbruglia was so loud I actually sang along to it. I waited, flipped off the peephole and walked back downstairs.

So much for being nice.

Funny thing is she’s been near silent since I went up there this morning. Granted the fan’s not on, but she’s quieter than normal. I can hear her walking, but it’s normal walking, not her usual wants-to-embarrass-herself-by-breaking-through-the ceiling, stomping. If I had known that all I had to do was knock on her door a couple times I would have done it a long time ago. It may have helped that while I was talking to her next-door neighbor (who we’re friendly with) I slipped in, “Yeah it would suck to have to get the landlord involved.” Now I know she’s complete chicken shit and thought no one was going to call her on being a fucking 6 year old. So if she reacts poorly the next time I take a shower, I’ll just knock on her door. Problem solved.