The Clompy Chronicles, Part 4

While I am spoiled both by location and price point, there are days when I long to move out of this abode. Find a place without a shared wall. With parking. A washer and dryer. Someplace not on a street corner because there's no human way to keep up with the dust traffic delivers. A quiet home where I can't hear my neighbors. Yes, that would be a dream.

I can't tell if they've installed a basketball court or a bowling alley, but Clompy and Boomer seem to run, crash and throw things a lot. Fortunately, they don't play all quarters or frames. Just enough to be disruptive and genuinely annoying. My favorite is when Boomer gets all Rocky and jumps rope in the bedroom. Slap, slap, slap, stumble, slap, slap, slap, slap, slap. The smoking has shrunk his lung capacity, so he can't keep it up for very long. Just enough to be disruptive and genuinely annoying.

The other morning, I heard a commotion outside their door. It was either the cops or deliverymen from the sound of the duo's deep voices and heavy feet. I refrained from getting up to snoop, since I trusted the thin wall to keep me appraised of whatever was going down. Then my phone rang and I got sidetracked. There wasn't any further hubbub. No one seemed to be getting arrested or ousted, so maybe it was the hockey rink their ordered. I just went about my day.

Somewhere around two, it occurred to me lunch might be warranted. Off I went to nab some. When I came back, something caught my eye.

They had flocked their pink flamingos.

This was as perplexing a site as the copy of "Bridal Guide" I got. I stared at the plastic fowl stabbed into their front yard and felt a deep sense of pity for them. How humiliating. Then I noted that Clompy and Boomer had also given the jade bush a heavy spray and added some "snow" to their windows.

Now, some people can pull this off with a sense of whimsy. Not so much here. I walked into my home and shut the door with the sinking feeling that I was no longer living in a duplex but a double-wide.

The Clompy Chronicles, Part 3

It seems the power of positive thinking thing worked. Except on the wrong neighbor. The one three doors down moved out. Clompy and her boyfriend, Boomer, remain. Sigh.

Boomer has taken up the bass. I haven't heard the hint of natural talent yet. Just awkward thudding that travels from their living room through their bedroom through my living room to my bedroom. He puts in a couple hours a day. Including some time around midnight. Last night, it was going on well after one ayem. Yes, I have thought about knocking on their door and blowing an air horn at them. But, after I've washed my face, brushed my teeth and peeled out my contacts, I don't really want to get dressed, go out, buy an air horn and knock on their door. I can be lazy. Or masochistic.

They've also created a nice resting area in their front yard, replete with two, plastic pink flamingos and a self-standing hammock, strategically placed right next to my living room window. Boomer likes to go out there and hear himself talk.

Is marching in one's apartment, back and forth and back and forth, the new trend in at-home exercise? Did I miss that memo or infomercial? Still trying to find a reasonable reason for the stomping Clompy does. He joins in, too. When he's not on his bass.

I'll keep trying to think positive thoughts, wish them to a better home that isn't adjoined to mine. Wonder who'll move next?

The Clompy Chronicles, Part 2

It seems there just might be something to this whole "positive thinking" thing. Clompy has been relatively quite for the past few weeks. Oh, there was one loud lovers quarrel a few days after I posted Part 1. I'm happy to report they made up later that day. They even went away for a while, which was a nice little vacation for me.

It's still far from Utopian. A new trend has started. Clompy and the boyfriend are making a habit of having cereal out in the back each morning, and they might as well be dining in my kitchen. I don't hear her, but he has rather a loud, deep, resonate voice that carries...all the way through my home. Not to mention a habit of stabbing the bowl with his spoon. He likes the sound of his own voice. I can tell, as he often punctuates everything with a satisfied laugh. It's nice to be able to entertain oneself. At least they've seemed to quit smoking. There has definitely been improvement.

For all their noise, I am kindly spared having to hear them sexing it up. And thank God and Baby Jesus for that. While I am relieved for selfish reasons, I also feel a little bad for her. She's a young gal, and these are the screaming years. I haven't actually found out when mine stop, but do my best to make sure all windows are shut and other noise on. And you thought music was just setting the mood. Still, this is about positive thinking. Wishing her the best. And I do want the best for her. I simply hope (and pray) that before she discovers loud sex, she will be in her fabulous new apartment or mansion or whatever the Fates will bless her with and far, far, far away from me. Or at least at his place. I'll start on wishing him better real estate, too.

Here are two clips on what some other unlucky neighbor has to endure. Try not to laugh. It could happen to you...on either side of the camera. (You may want to turn the volume down if you're at work.)

The Clompy Chronicles, Part 1

I live in a duplex. It's been my home for too long now, really. But, thanks to rent control, I pay so under-market that there's no point of packing up and moving any time soon. My landlord, who is this side of a slumlord and an all-around arse, hates me for that reason. I've been told not to expect any repairs that would cost much money and that, if I don't like it, I can leave. But, he also knows that I'm not afraid to call the City when push comes to shove, like when he illegally raised our rents a couple of years ago. It's a tentative tennant-landlord relationship, and we now enjoy a somewhat civil, professional loathing of each other. But he's not really what I'm here to talk about.

The duplex is a side-by-side dwelling rather than upstairs-downstairs design. I share a single wall; my living room with that bedroom. We reside on a busy boulevard in a touristy beach town, so quiet doesn't really happen all that much around here. I'm used to being serenaded by drunken homeless men in the wee hours of the morning. Treated to the stereophonic offerings of people waiting at the traffic light. The window-rattling exhausts of Harley gangs. I'm also lucky enough to live two blocks from the firehouse, so sirens are also a regular occurrence. I'm not really expecting it to be Quaker quiet around here, but I'm rather fed up with the slamming, banging and stomping round by my wallmate, Clompy.

Clompy is my fourth neighbor in the decade I've been here. The first was a wonderful lady who had lived in her half of the duplex for over twenty years. She was the perfect neighbor: hard of hearing, rarely home, happy for me to have a party. The only down side she brought was when she took up the hobby of feeding the pigeons. They ate at her place, and crapped all over mine. Sadly, after a series of strokes, she was put in a nursing home by her niece. Shortly thereafter, the pigeons left, and another nuissance arrived. Builders.

Being the tasteless braggart my landlord is, he decided to rennovate the apartment, devoiding it of all it's 1930's, Art Deco inspired charm. He filled the kitchen with manufactured faux oak cabinetry, took out the Deco tub and replaced the ceramic with marble tile and finished the shower with a glass door. He knocked down a wall, removing a hallway and rerouting the closet to create a huge bedroom with a now en suite bathroom. Personally, I'd rather keep my hallway so guests wouldn't have to saunter though my bedroom to "use the facilities", but that's just me. These rennovations took over a year. Hardly cost-effective by my math. And I got to enjoy the sounds of banging, slamming, loud Spanish, power outtages, water offages, dust, drills, more banging, more loud Spanish and several headaches.

Did I mention that I work from home? My "office" shares that common wall. That year was a lot of fun, let me tell you.

I took a look at the place when it was finished, and it was nothing special. It made me sad that all the quaintness my apartment has was gone. Never to return. Just like my favorite neighbor.

A new tennant moved it. A lady over a certain age with a yappy Pommeranian. She liked to have a quick chat whenever I was in a rush, was convinced people were using a key to get into her apartment and steal things, and mistook mating squirrels on our roof as a theif looking to break in through our massive skylights that take over the ceiling space of our bathrooms.

I soon found that the new design of the bedroom made me very aware of the closet, which was now directly across from my desk. Every time it opened or closed I heard it. I could hear clothes being hung or slid across their rod. Shoes being thrown in, but mostly the doors being slid hard to their end and a deadening thud.

My neighbor also had the habit of letting the yappy Pommeranian out in the front yard each day, where he would bark the entire time. He was an obnoxious dog with a rotten disposition. She would let him bark like that for an hour or more. Nonstop. And it was that panicked sounding bark of a small dog. It was beyond annoying. I finally had to let her know what a disruption that was, especially when I would be on a business call. After that, I would give him ten minutes of bark time before I would yell through the wall that it was enough already.

She moved out when her year lease was up. I did a happy dance.

The next neighbor was a strange man with many strange women, who kind of lived there, and kind of used it as an office, and always had a different car and a different girl, but the girls weren't really like girlfriends, more like Girl Fridays, and the girls always had different cars (and they were all really expensive, foreign cars, which made little sense since we all have street parking; the landlord rents the garages out separately to make a few more bucks). I could hear them talking and dropping things every now and then, but then there would be long bouts of silence when he would be away. He was a peculiar man, we (some of my other neighbors and I) all agreed. He, too, moved out after a year.

Each time the For Rent sign went up, I was filled with hope. Hope of a cool neighbor. One I could either have an occasional drink with, or one I would never see or hear at all. This time, the apartment stayed vacant for many months. The economy is not what it once was, and high rents have lost their prestige. Finally, the sign came down and Clompy moved in.

Clompy is a young girl, about 5'1. Her hair is long and black. Her arms are sleeved in tattoos. She probably weighs a buck o' five, if that, but she stomps around that apartment like she's a stormtrooper. She does not so much close a door as she slams it. Hard. Each and every time. There is the front door, the security screen door, and the gate enclosing her small front yard. She slams all of them on her way in or out, and often repeats the process when she's forgotten something on her way out, which is rather often.

She's a smoker. But not a smoker who smokes indoors; she's one who likes to do it from her back steps while talking on her cell phone. The smoke somehow floats all the way from her backstep to my kitchen window and through my window fan all the way into my living room, up my sinuses and into my brain giving me a nice headache. The back path is littered with her butts. The pot of a dead plant is her favorite ashtray, which has not been emptied in over a year. That's right. She is the only one to go past her lease.

Clompy now has a boyfriend. I'm very happy for her. Except when they chase each other around the apartment, clomping at a rapid pace, or have a fight and slam even more doors. I met him when I popped my head out my backdoor this weekend to ask them to please enjoy their cigarettes in the front yard, as their smoke infiltrates my home and makes me a tad sick. I said this with all sweetness and sincerity, repleat with "please" and "thank you". They both looked at me blankly (as if English might be a second language), didn't say a word (though I know for a fact they do indeed speak English), put out their cigaretts and went inside the house. I guess they are what you would call "Emo". Whatever. I just wasn't going to have a nightly cigarette with them this summer like I tolerated last.

I didn't have a chance to address the clomping and the slamming then. I thought it might be too much for them to handle. I'm trying to figure out the right way to bring it up. Getting out of bed after midnight to knock on her door and mention that I can hear them clomping and slamming about all the way back in my bedroom really isn't convenient for me. A letter left might not be the most personable offering either. So, I'm going to start with the power of positive thinking. I'm going to think positively that she will move. That she will find a great new job and a great new place near that job, and her broody, stompy boyfriend will go with her. All of us will be better off then. And it has to be her. She definitely has to be the one to go because, for what I pay in rent, I'm never leaving.

Stay tuned. I'll keep you posted on the power of positive thinking. And, if you don't mind helping, I would very much appreciate you putting your positive thoughts towards Clompy's success and smooth move. Cheers!