neighbors

a few months ago, we had a couple and their two kids move into the apartment next door to us. we live on the second floor of a three-storied six flat, so obviously ours are the only two apartments on the second floor.

now, our neighbors are really friendly and quite pleasant in general. in fact, at first we thought they were a little bit too friendly, and at times we even avoided getting too friendly with them for fear that they might (god forbid) ask us to babysit their kids for them one of these days. but so far, thankfully, that hasn't happened.

but they're really trashy!

ever since they moved in, they've pretty much taken over the common areas of our building and it's really starting to get on our nerves. i'll give you a few examples..

1. their two-seater baby stroller is permanently located on the landing between the first and second floor of the front stairwell.
2. the husband's bike is permanently located on the landing between the first and second floor of the back deck outside (which, really i don't mind that much cuz it's locked up by the railing of the deck so it's not really in the way).
3. their cat roams freely around the front stairwell.
4. on a daily basis, they leave a plastic bag full of either soiled diapers or cat litter right in front of their back porch entrance which is 2 feet away from our back porch entrance, even though the garbage dumpster is within spitting distance but they're too lazy to walk down to the garbage dumpster.
5. their kids 'play' in the carpeted front stairwell area and leave behind a trail of crumbs, wrappers and who knows what else so the carpet is pretty much visibly filthy.

now, c and i almost never use the front entrance to go in and out of the house, but we do of course use it to go downstairs to check the mail everyday and we've noticed that they never clean up after their kids' messes. frankly, i'm getting a little tired of having to look at their shit everyday. i mean, who does that? not to mention, now that it's tax season i always have clients coming in and out to drop off their taxes and i'm always embarrassed and apologetic when i walk them out through the filthy front stairwell.

thankfully c and i are moving out of this godforsaken place at the end of may. we already planned to move because we feel like our management company is nothing shy of a slumlord who doesn't give a rat's ass about the place. whenever we call to get something done, we're lucky if they come in two weeks, if at all. a few months ago they installed a new buzzer system and the engineers left a gaping hole right next to the newly installed buzzer in our apartment and another even larger gaping hole in the ceiling of our coat closet. one would think they would've patched it up before they left, but no.. we had to call the management company to come in and fix it, but of course they never did.

the entrance to the basement/storage room out back is even filthier. about a year ago we consistently ran into a bunch of high school kids at all hours of the day who used the area as their little weed smoking lounge. one day i happened to walk down there and saw a little bar stool, a raggedy chair and a box used as a coffee table set up all nicely down there. how convenient. of course c and i took all that out and threw the chairs in the dumpster. so now it's just filthy with bags and dirt and empty six pack containers and whatever else the wind blows in.

it's disgusting. and we've asked management to come in and clean the common areas about a million times, to no avail. c and i even cleaned it up ourselves once, but the very next day it was littered all over again. why bother?

anyway, it's almost time to move. and while i'll thoroughly miss the spaciousness of the apartment and the in-unit washer/dryer, i can't wait to get the hell out of this dump.