Apparently we don't have our walking papers

It seems inevitable that living in an apartment building means having difficult neighbors. And today I decided that it's easier if your difficult neighbors are nasty and bitchy, because then you can just write them off as nasty, bitchy people. It's harder when the difficult ones wrap their own idiosyncrasies in a buttery pastry of niceness.

A couple of weeks after we moved in last summer, we got a knock on the door right after we had returned home from work. It was the couple that live below us, struggling to find the right English words and apologizing profusely for even coming to the door in the first place. They explained that they have a young son and that we woke him up the night before from the noise.

Now, at first we were stumped. I had spent the evening reading and the boyfriend had been in the office, still setting stuff up. We hadn't even turned on the TV or played music or anything. What could they possibly have heard.

Hammering, they explained. Oh yes. Right. At 11pm or so, which is admittedly too late to be doing so, the boyfriend had hung one picture in the office. He had maybe swung the hammer 7 times. Hardly a wild party, but they were so apologetic and so polite about it all that I wasn't too bothered. I rationalized that maybe they'd had bad experiences in the past and wanted to nip it in the bud right away. They were being a little reactionary about a single instance, but again, they were being so nice that I didn't know how else to act without looking like the asshole in the situation.

Well, we've now lived in the apartment for about 9 months. We rarely hear noise from any of the other apartments, unless there's a party or someone is talking in the hallway, so I've assumed that it's a pretty sturdy, sound-proof building. Apparently not.

This morning one of our friendly downstairs neighbors got into the elevator with us. She apologized for interrupting us and then explained that we are tall people and that every footstep we take in our apartment sounds like drilling to them. She proceeded to request that we consider wearing these particular slippers in our apartment, to cushion the noise. And again, I didn't know how to respond, because she was so polite. And she was saying that they all wear the slippers to cushion the noise for the people bellow them. But why should I have to wear slippers in my own home?

It's not like we're stomping around or wearing shoes all the time or jumping. We're just walking. Strolling from the bathroom to the bedroom. Sauntering across the office. Occasionally marching to the kitchen. (For a cookie. Or fro yo.)

So, the boyfriend and I were discussing it after the fact, and we determined that even though her tone was indubitably polite, what she was asking of us was downright rude! His reasoning was that instead of them asking us to wear slippers, they should wear ear plugs.

And these sorts of issues are what make renting so unattractive. Suddenly, after an extended period of being a happy renter while all of our homeowner friends deal with bad wiring and leaking roofs, I wish I was in a position to buy a house. Because even shovelling snow off the walk within 12 hours so the city won't fine us seems preferable to dealing with accusing you're-not-wearing-the-slippers looks in the elevator.

What I'm trying to say, downstairs neighbor people, is that you don't know how GOOD you have it with us! But I draw the line at not being allowed to walk au natural in my own space. (And by au natural I mean barefoot. But also in the nude, whenever I choose to be so. That's between me, the boyfriend and the cat.)

Total debt: $9920 and a bit
Spent today: $3.11 (Super cheap dinner before the boyfriend took me to Canada Blooms. Now I really want a house so I can put a gorgeous garden in!)
Weekly total: $93-ish (Let's not talk about credit. Dentist and cat food and stuff, oh my!)