Nobody Gonna Break Our Stride.
I Need a Haven
Before I moved in with Archervision, I had my own little second-floor apartment in a two-family home, with a deck overlooking a park.
I live in a vibrant, yet moderately economically depressed, area of Massachusetts, so the real estate is cherry if you do a little homework. My little nook in the world had curved, Mexican-inspired doorways and a huge kitchen. It had a spare room I used as my office, but that also gave me a certain sense of security because I knew if I ever fell on hard times I could turn it into a second bedroom.
It also had a huge walk-in closet and a second large coat closet in the spare, was in walking distance of the grocery store, and ... are you ready for this? When I moved in, the rent was $500 a month. When I moved out four years later, it was $600 a month.
I packed up all of my possessions and moved to a slightly better neighborhood last year, but there are a few quirks associated with the deal. The house I'm in now used to be a business. Then it was converted into four studio apartments. Then we came along and started busting down arbitrary walls (I use 'we' loosely), so now it's a two family, like my old place.
With a few exceptions.
Exception #1: I am on the first floor now. We rented the top to a family of four that quickly became a family of six - two parents, two kids, a newborn, and a guy that, according to them, doesn't live there but is in my driveway every morning, so I call him The Guy That Doesn't Live Here. They also have a pit bull they didn't tell us about and I think a cat or two, and some fish. I know about the fish because the tank broke one day and leaked into the floorboards, leaving a long orange stain on my white ceiling.
For Christmas, the upstairs clan decided to buy a juke box. For a second-floor apartment in a two-family home. They love Johnny Cash and the theme from The Sting.
One of the kids also got a remote-control something. In a second-floor apartment in a two-family home. Oh, and the dad? He got a new stereo system so he can play his rack-em-up shoot-em-up video games on THE LOUDEST SETTING POSSIBLE.
Then they moved the living room so it's directly over ours. If I want to hear what Oprah has to say, I have to turn the sound up to a level that vibrates my eardrums.
Remember the fish tank leak? That was fun. But more enjoyable to clean up was the leak from when the three-year-old decided to have a boat party in the bathroom sink. Kids will be kids. And the one a day later when the dishwasher backed up all over the kitchen floor and dirty, stanky water dripped into my own kitchen, ruining about seven photos on my fridge. Oh, and the as-of-yet unidentified brown stains multiplying on the office ceiling tiles.
The video-dad doesn't work in the winter so there is a nearly constant din emanating from upstairs - footsteps, television, gunshots, bombs, remote control wheels, dishwasher, dryer, washing machine, juke box, three-year-old, five-year-old, baby (the quietest of them all), dog, doors slamming ... cumulatively, it's the sound of my brain cracking.
On to Exception #2.
There are absolutely no closets on the first floor. I'm not exaggerating - not one. There's a back hall we use for storage. My clothes are stuffed in drawers and trunks so I must iron nearly every day. The basement is full of the most bizarre collection of crap you'll ever see, from bedpan-drums to trombones, so there's no hope of an overflow storage area down there.
Exception #3
No spare room. The office is shared and my roomie is a complete and total slob with a penchant for hoarding. I'm sorry if that's harsh, but you try working from home with stray helicam parts poking you in the ass. And I'm not even going to start explaining what a helicam is. It's the bane of my existence. That's all you need to know.
No spare room, actually, means every room is shared, and constantly messy. No quiet corner. No 'me-space.' No second bed to sleep on when the noise-level is out of control. I haven't slept properly in weeks. I'm sure there are some moms out there who want me to shut the hell up at this point, but keep in mind that until last year I had lived alone for more than a decade. The fact that there is someone else in my living space could be dubbed 'Exception 3a.'
Exception #4
The only store anywhere near us is a grody convenience store we call the inconvenient store. It has muffin mix, but no TP. Magnetic jacks, but no skim milk.
I've written a few snarky blogs on TSB lately, and I promise to scale the bitchiness back, but I'm tracing a lot of my stress back to my lack of what feels like a home. I travel often and view my house as a welcome respite from a crazy schedule. But now, that haven is missing. I work at home less and less, because who can concentrate on writing a magazine article or five with warfare and Chinese water torture coming from overhead? Or living with someone who thinks it's cute to interrupt a thought, a sentence, a sandwich, a pee break with 'HI!!!' all the time, even though said person has been home for hours and annoyingly yelped "HI!!" two minutes ago? Or who thinks opening mail should be a quarterly activity? Or who stages a silent protest against any kind of cleaning?
I guess, 1,200 words later or so, I'm looking for some tips on stressless. or less-stress, living. What can I do to my house to make it more livable?
What kind of sledge hammer would you suggest to decimate a juke box?
I live in a vibrant, yet moderately economically depressed, area of Massachusetts, so the real estate is cherry if you do a little homework. My little nook in the world had curved, Mexican-inspired doorways and a huge kitchen. It had a spare room I used as my office, but that also gave me a certain sense of security because I knew if I ever fell on hard times I could turn it into a second bedroom.
It also had a huge walk-in closet and a second large coat closet in the spare, was in walking distance of the grocery store, and ... are you ready for this? When I moved in, the rent was $500 a month. When I moved out four years later, it was $600 a month.
I packed up all of my possessions and moved to a slightly better neighborhood last year, but there are a few quirks associated with the deal. The house I'm in now used to be a business. Then it was converted into four studio apartments. Then we came along and started busting down arbitrary walls (I use 'we' loosely), so now it's a two family, like my old place.
With a few exceptions.
Exception #1: I am on the first floor now. We rented the top to a family of four that quickly became a family of six - two parents, two kids, a newborn, and a guy that, according to them, doesn't live there but is in my driveway every morning, so I call him The Guy That Doesn't Live Here. They also have a pit bull they didn't tell us about and I think a cat or two, and some fish. I know about the fish because the tank broke one day and leaked into the floorboards, leaving a long orange stain on my white ceiling.
For Christmas, the upstairs clan decided to buy a juke box. For a second-floor apartment in a two-family home. They love Johnny Cash and the theme from The Sting.
One of the kids also got a remote-control something. In a second-floor apartment in a two-family home. Oh, and the dad? He got a new stereo system so he can play his rack-em-up shoot-em-up video games on THE LOUDEST SETTING POSSIBLE.
Then they moved the living room so it's directly over ours. If I want to hear what Oprah has to say, I have to turn the sound up to a level that vibrates my eardrums.
Remember the fish tank leak? That was fun. But more enjoyable to clean up was the leak from when the three-year-old decided to have a boat party in the bathroom sink. Kids will be kids. And the one a day later when the dishwasher backed up all over the kitchen floor and dirty, stanky water dripped into my own kitchen, ruining about seven photos on my fridge. Oh, and the as-of-yet unidentified brown stains multiplying on the office ceiling tiles.
The video-dad doesn't work in the winter so there is a nearly constant din emanating from upstairs - footsteps, television, gunshots, bombs, remote control wheels, dishwasher, dryer, washing machine, juke box, three-year-old, five-year-old, baby (the quietest of them all), dog, doors slamming ... cumulatively, it's the sound of my brain cracking.
On to Exception #2.
There are absolutely no closets on the first floor. I'm not exaggerating - not one. There's a back hall we use for storage. My clothes are stuffed in drawers and trunks so I must iron nearly every day. The basement is full of the most bizarre collection of crap you'll ever see, from bedpan-drums to trombones, so there's no hope of an overflow storage area down there.
Exception #3
No spare room. The office is shared and my roomie is a complete and total slob with a penchant for hoarding. I'm sorry if that's harsh, but you try working from home with stray helicam parts poking you in the ass. And I'm not even going to start explaining what a helicam is. It's the bane of my existence. That's all you need to know.
No spare room, actually, means every room is shared, and constantly messy. No quiet corner. No 'me-space.' No second bed to sleep on when the noise-level is out of control. I haven't slept properly in weeks. I'm sure there are some moms out there who want me to shut the hell up at this point, but keep in mind that until last year I had lived alone for more than a decade. The fact that there is someone else in my living space could be dubbed 'Exception 3a.'
Exception #4
The only store anywhere near us is a grody convenience store we call the inconvenient store. It has muffin mix, but no TP. Magnetic jacks, but no skim milk.
I've written a few snarky blogs on TSB lately, and I promise to scale the bitchiness back, but I'm tracing a lot of my stress back to my lack of what feels like a home. I travel often and view my house as a welcome respite from a crazy schedule. But now, that haven is missing. I work at home less and less, because who can concentrate on writing a magazine article or five with warfare and Chinese water torture coming from overhead? Or living with someone who thinks it's cute to interrupt a thought, a sentence, a sandwich, a pee break with 'HI!!!' all the time, even though said person has been home for hours and annoyingly yelped "HI!!" two minutes ago? Or who thinks opening mail should be a quarterly activity? Or who stages a silent protest against any kind of cleaning?
I guess, 1,200 words later or so, I'm looking for some tips on stressless. or less-stress, living. What can I do to my house to make it more livable?
What kind of sledge hammer would you suggest to decimate a juke box?
Add a Comment
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Comment by Ashmystir on March 12, 2008 at 1:28pm -
Sorry to sound like Bill Clinton but...
I feel your pain!
Good luck and hope it gets better for you.
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Comment by Dawn on March 11, 2008 at 6:03pm - That does make a tab more tricky, doesn't it? ;-) Perhaps you could make the bedpan hoarder sleep in the basement with the bedpans... (Seriously, bedpans??)
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Comment by WriterJax on March 11, 2008 at 5:12pm -
seriously. Too bad the landlord is also the bed pan hoarder.
I'd also like to amend the 'some moms are thinking' part to read 'moms and dads';)
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Comment by Dawn on March 11, 2008 at 4:18pm
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I wish you had the option I had. Last time my home became someplace I least wanted to be, I left... But that's a whole different story. And off my point.
Backtrack to December. My neighbors have Rock Band and Guitar Hero. That they play every night. One night, they started playing at 9pm. Not a huge deal since I don't usually go to bed before 11pm. Except that I could hear them like they were playing in *my* living room. They drowned out my tv. The apartments are all on one floor, exact carbon copies of one another. My bedroom is against their living room, so there was a whole room between us. When I went to bed, they were still playing. And nudging the volume up after each song. Until the bass line was quite literally shaking my mattress below me. We won't even talk about the... "singing". Except to say I am thinking someone being bludgeoned to death probably sounds better. Anyway, my solution was to call the landlord & say "Look. A month ago before these people moved in, I could hear birds singing, squirrels scampering, crickets chirping, MY OWN THOUGHTS. I cannot take this anymore. Either they go, or you let me out of my lease. Because this? Is not going to keep happening." Let's just say the silence over there now is a beautiful thing.
I wish I had a better solution to offer you, but in all honesty, if my home stops being a place that I am most comfortable, then it's the home & what's in it that I evaluate. Home should be the one place that you can escape to. Not want to escape *from*.
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