Day 29 - My Ranting

Me cranky. Me Bitchy. Me VERY P.O. today.

Our neighbors across the street threw a party last night that lasted into the wee hours of the morning and decided to make us all feel part of it, BY BLASTING THEIR FUCKING MUSIC until we felt the party was going on in our own freaking living room!!! Pardon my language but when it’s 3:00am and you’re still tossing and turning in your bed to the beat of techno-music you don’t wake up in the morning feeling very civilized.

The thing is, when I first moved in with hubby back in 2002, one of the very first things I learned was that YOU DO NOT VACUM after 10pm. He told me that in France there was a law that prohibited anyone living in apartment buildings to make noise after 10pm and that the police would coming knocking on your door if you did not abide by this law.

But nobody seemed to tell this to our neighbors. They kept laughing and talking and yelling next to their windows (which of course carried their voices to ours) with their music blasting in the background. Hubby and I kept swearing and cursing their future children but nothing seemed to work.

Wanna hear the worst part?

I think our neighbors are Mexican. Hubby doesn’t agree, but sometimes when the girl is doing her house chores she opens all her windows wide and I know I’ve heard spanish coming from their apartment. I’m also pretty sure I’ve heard them playing mariachi music and even *gulp* Mana! And last night I swear I head them playing “Amor Prohibido” from Selena at some point….

I kept thinking back to those years in high school and college back home, when I’d go to all these parties that lasted well past 5am in which we craned the volume to the max and danced and laughed and yelled not caring a single bit about the neighbors, even calling them “boring old farts” when they called the police on us to come break up the party. And here I was, some 10 years later, me being the “boring old fart” on the verge of grabbing her cell phone and dialing *12 (the French equivalent for 911).

The way life hits you sometimes.

We never did call the police though (although I was just about ready to go to our window and yell at the top of my lungs "ya bajale a tu pinche musica, con un carajo!!!"). Someone else beat us to it. Around 3:30am a patrol car parked in front of their place. Hubby and I sprang out of bed and took a sneak peak from our window. Out came the hostess of the party and a couple of her fellow friends to explain to the policemen that they were having a “cremaillère” (which is a traditional French “welcome to your new apartment” party). New apartment my foot, they’ve been living there for at least three months now, but anyway they promised to lower the volume, which ok, they did, but unfortunately for us we could still hear them talking and laughing (damn you double glazed windows we put in a couple of months ago, you can’t even block out that sort of little old noise!).

Finally, around 4am the party broke up and our street fell silent. The last thing I remember before dozing off was thinking how I wish they lived just above us so that I could pull an “Uncle Jaime” on them.

My uncle Jaime used to live in a building where his upstairs neighbors kept partying every night well into the morning and then sleeping it off during the day. One day he was so fed up with this that he waited until it was Sunday morning, got up at 6am, put on his Guns & Roses “Appetite for Destruction” CD in his stereo (he had the kind that comes with floor standing abnormally huge woofer speakers), cranked up the volume to “are you freakin’ nuts?” levels and blasted that thing full force while he made himself breakfast. He said he never heard a hint of a music note coming from their place after that.

But our neighbors don’t live above us.

Sure enough, when I got up this morning I looked out the window and all their shutters are closed and locked. Hmmmm… enjoying some nice sleep time after all that partying and dancing, are ya?

Pfffff, life is just not fair.

Fned.