The sun is out and I want to strangle someone

[Amy!]

I live in an apartment complex, we pay very little for three bedrooms and all of the utilities are included. During the school year it's mostly great. Sure the evil beast above us and her vapid boy-crazy bansheei fight at all hours of the night but sometimes we get a good chuckle out of "Mooooommmmm! You are SUCH a biiiitch! (door slams, she throws herself on the bed) SHREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK! I can't go to school with THIS HAIR!". I've taken to mimicking her loudly when I see her in the hall, it's doubly fun when she's got her terribly cool 92 pound gangsta boyfriend in tow.

It's spring break now, and thankfully the smaller brats must be in some sort of early morning juvenile reform program because I've been able to sleep in. About 4 o'clock yesterday I almost had to kill three of them. First it was pounding on the side of the building with a large stick. I nicely asked them to stop when my fillings threatened to rattle out. Then they decided to play soccer, with the wall. Again, I nicely asked them to play elsewhere. I got a fuck off for using a neutral tone of voice but they did move. To the wall other wall of my apartment.

I can't wait for summer. Really. There is never any parental supervision. The closest they get is sitting 50 feet away in lawn chairs under the trees sipping lemonade and randomly bellowing commands for the kids to bring out the chips or the cookies. Only a few short weeks.

Anybody else hoping for a really rainy summer?

[iciclespark]

You poor woman. That's worse than the idiot parents who used to live across the hall who found it a fantastic idea to let their three year-old run around the building at 8am on a Saturday screaming, closing the door so she wouldn't disturb THEIR slumber. Thankfully for the girl, there doesn't seem to be any child predators in the building. Thankfully, she didn't run out the open door onto an extremely busy street right outside.

The best part? They used to live in OUR apartment, so frequently she'd get confused, try and open OUR door, while wailing, "Daddy!!!!! Daddy!!!! Lemme in!!!!!! :r

Or summer residence at U of T, where one year we had this asian family mixed in with the students going to school for the summer session, who let her pre-schooler run around at 6am outside screaming. There is no air conditioning at U of T. You MUST keep your window open lest you swelter and die. Every morning, students who have been up late cramming are awakened by shrieking.

We had to complain to campus police every day for three weeks to get them evicted. I have no idea why they were even there. I didn't notice anyone going to classes. They certainly weren't part of the training group for the city's football team, who always stay there each summer.

If only there were CF communities to live in...... *dreams*

[Amy!]

We keep ending up with people across the hall that leave their door open all the time. It's an echoey old building and kids playing in the hall while the mom vaccuums and listens to Phil Collins does not amuse me. We've been here almost five years and we've had four families like this and they all loved Phil and Hootie. What are the odds?

[SMMY]

Thankfully, the families we have on our street now are terrific. When we first moved in though, the neighbors across the street, which my other half and I dubbed "the Loud family" drove us nuts. It seemed like no one in the family could have a conversation under 100 decibels. We would be sitting in our living room in the evening and have to listen to every frickin argument this family had. The child was especially obnoxious as well as loud. There is nothing precious about a seven year old telling their mother to "F**k off you dumb c**t!" Our whole neighborhood celebrated when they moved out.

[hollerskates]

it just occurred to me that i sort of live in a childfree community. sort of. my apartment complex is separated by a creek but larger. more like a mini ravine with water. one side of the complex is for families and children. the other for single, married, college, out of college, etc. adults. there is a pool and gym for each side. i honestly don't think i've seen a child since i moved in september.

[katz]

If only there were CF communities to live in...... *dreams*

we have several "adult" communities here in Ottawa that are openly encouraging of Adult's only. There's not a family that lives in them.

[Amy!]

My brother-in-law lives in an adult community, the pool is constantly full of grandchildren. Outside of buying a home on a huge lot they're almost inescapable ;)

[Charles:]

You consider sleeping in 4:00?? Do you have a night job?

[Amy!]

No, I said I can sleep in for the morning hours because they must be in daycare programs. 4 was when they came home and started annoying me.

[half1113]

I only have to listen to the stupid teenagers across the street. The youngest is a senior in high school and every weekend they have parties. LOUD cars, radios, hollering. She's on my niece's softball team and my niece told me she got arrested not to long ago. That must have been the weekend we heard the last car door shut at 4:40 am. Every Saturday & Sunday morning my husband would go out pick the trash up and throw it in their yard. The house got wrapped MLK weekend and they NEVER cleaned it up. Let's not factor in their 6 dogs (illegal here) and their weener dog who likes to go under my house and bark at 3 am.

[Charles:]

Gotcha!

[haunted]

I feel terribly lucky to live a matter of blocks from a school and only have a small amount of kids actually living near my house.

I have more problems with people leaving "plz don't let your dogs bark!!!!" signs on the shared fenced field. neighbors, with loud dogs that top the children's volume doing this.

this makes me thankful. kids during the summer drive me absolutely mad. at least, in the neighborhoods I've lived in. hell, up until a few years ago I lived across the street from a mini-mart. during the school year. dfgndfgdfh. the kids were so bad they couldn't allow more than a few in at a time and the noise!

[eurotrash]

My last apartment building was childfree. It didn't advertise itself as such, but I'm sure it's no coincidence that 90% of the residents were single, and under 35. Even the older people or the marrieds didn't have children. It was great. Sure you have to put up with loud music or aruging now and then, but I feel much more comfortable calling the landlord for those situations than I do complaining about noisy kids.

My apartment building before that one was pure hell. Tons of families with small kids and the building was built around a courtyard with a swimming pool. From about May to October the pool was filled with screaming children and there was no way to get away from it. The landlord's kids were the noisiest of all, year round, so there was no hope in complaining or trying to work out some sort of quiet-hours solution.

[jeth]

I'm in a child-free building right now (it worked out quite by accident, but I love it!) so the only time I hear kids is when my upstairs neighbor has her grandkids over. That only seems to happen a handful of times a year, and only for a few hours at a time, so I can handle it.

I used to live in a complex full of kids who would run up and down our stairs for fun, use baseball bats to hit rocks at our windows on the second floor, sit on our cars and use the hoods for slides (this ended when I got remote keyless entry with a panic alarm - I could sit in the kitchen window watching them and set the alarm off if they got too close).

Needless to say I am so, so glad I don't live around there anymore.

[Samwitch]

It's spring break now, and thankfully the smaller brats must be in some sort of early morning juvenile reform program because I've been able to sleep in. About 4 o'clock yesterday I almost had to kill three of them. First it was pounding on the side of the building with a large stick. I nicely asked them to stop when my fillings threatened to rattle out. Then they decided to play soccer, with the wall. Again, I nicely asked them to play elsewhere. I got a fuck off for using a neutral tone of voice but they did move. To the wall other wall of my apartment.



The philosophy of our building's strata council is, "If you don't wish to control your dogs and children, the strata council will be more than happy to do it for you." When residents get their first $100 fine, the behaviour in question always seems to mysteriously cease. [post83]

[Perdita]

it just occurred to me that i sort of live in a childfree community. sort of. my apartment complex is separated by a creek but larger. more like a mini ravine with water. one side of the complex is for families and children. the other for single, married, college, out of college, etc. adults. there is a pool and gym for each side. i honestly don't think i've seen a child since i moved in september.
London seems to be more or less unintentionally CF, also. Or at least, nine-to-five, zones-12, professional/social London. Every now and again we have a school holiday and suddenly it's... where the hell did all these small people come from?

My parents used to go crazy with the neighbours and their kids, whose main form of communication was a syllable-less bellowing down the garden all summer...this was the family that had its own full-size bouncy castle. With its own ...whatever you call that thing that runs noisily off electricity and fills the bouncy castle with air. Fan thing. Fucking twats used to keep it on all day, all summer holidays, when the kids used it maybe... half an hour a day.

[Churumbela]

^
But have you ever been in a bouncy castle? It's great fun! Even if you don't have any kids. (Actually, especially when you don't have kids.) Twenty-four hours a day is a bit much though. Their electric bills must have been astronomical.

[Perdita]

Oh, for sure. Like, in parks and at fairs and things. But these gardens are those long thin Victorian types, so a little noise travels across about ten gardens... imagine sitting out in your back garden, in the sunshine, listening to... essentially 10,000 hoovers, all day long. Plus random and constant belligerent shouting as main form of communication between parents and kids while the kids do something else entirely. By that time you want to head over there with a knife. Not for the purposes of slashing the bouncy castle, you understand. Just to stab the neighbours with. :D

[Churumbela]

I can imagine that being incredibly annoying. This is why I live smack dab in the middle of the woods. We can't even see our neighbors' houses. It's blissful!