I don't even want to know....

Last night our neighbors were screaming and making a ton of noise in the laundry room. Because it is a shared space, noise in there sounds like it is in our kitchen. It sounded like someone was fighting, but as you know, that is not out of the norm for them. So, we just turned up the ocean function on our noise maker and went to sleep dreaming we were far far away.

Well this morning we go out to the laundry room to do some laundry. (side note: Saturday through Sunday morning is our time, so they should not have even been out there!) Well, this is what we found....

Awesome. Now we have to either do acrobatic moves or get a large dose of antibiotics just to do our laundry! Lord only knows what is floating around in their bloodstream. Who bleeds all over a shared laundry room and just leaves it?! Disgusting.

Now they are creeping around the back of the house obviously looking for something and whispering in spanish. I just hope they find whatever it is that they lost in their bloody mess before either Domino or the kids from the daycare behind us do. We need to move!

Fighting, yet again!

Ramona and Talia were screaming at eachother last night while we were getting ready for bed. Screaming matches overheard from our duplex neighbors are not out of the norm by any means. In fact, on our first night there, Ramona and Jesus were fighting so loudly at 11pm that Janet screamed out her door (in a decible I have never heard come out of a woman!), "Shut the F*@K up or I will call the cops!!"

Generally though, the screaming matches are between couples. Talia and Arturo screaming at eachother about him being a "f*#king f*#*ot" or her needing to "watch your F*@king back or Ill get you" (fyi: I am well aware of the domestic violence undertones and am waiting, if anything escalades, I will be the first to call the cops or CPS!).  Or Ramona and Jesus screaming at eachother in an equal mix of Spanish and English, so I have no idea what they are saying (Seriously need to get a Rosetta Stone!)

Well, this argument was between Ramona and Talia. So everyone cross their fingers for us that maybe Ramona will finally kick the 3 of them out!!! (wishfull thinking, I know...)

How can you have this much crap?!

Our lovely duplex-sharing neighbors have tons and tons of crap! Plus, they have too many people living in the little space, so as I have mentioned before, their crap spills outside of their house and into our space (grr...)! I woke up this morning and had to put my pants in the dryer to de-wrinkle. I found a pile of stuff on top of the dryer and another way too big load in the dryer. We have a schedule for the laundry room (that I even posted, color coded, in the laundry room!) that is essentially every other day. They have no where to put all of their laundry so it usually just lives in the laundry room....in the way!

This is their clean laundry! How do people live like this?!

So that was my morning, great way to start it off. Then I came home to this;

Apparently our front door is now a parking spot. This lady dosent even live here, she is a friend of Arturo and Talia (who also are not supposed to be living here!). She used to be here all the time with her screaming kids, well past 10pm, on school nights. Lucky us, she is back!

As if this wasn't enough for 1 day, this happened! We need to move!!!

Birth control!

I was sitting on our couch today checking my e-mail and actually enjoying the calmness of Apple Lane. Enter Arturo and Talia. Talia comes out yelling at her son with every other word being the f word. They are supposedly going somewhere while Artie is screaming at the top of his lungs. Arturo starts yelling at Artie also telling him to go inside. He just wants to go wherever his parents are going. Keep in mind the reason Artie is screaming is because he wants his parents' attention, he is only two after all. Artie continues to scream and scream. Talia cannot take the pressure and yells, "He can't come because he's a fucking crybaby!" I do not know about you, but I grew up in a family of five and my parents never yelled curse words at us. Now I am not a parent yet, but when I am I hope when my kids are screaming for my attention that I will be able to give it to them.

Like a Cracker Jack box

We each have a flower bed area in front of our duplexes. Everyone else has planted some actual flowers amongst the weeds and rocks. The previous tennants of our apartment attempted some gardening in it but ended up with mainly weeds and rocks. We are still denying that we are living here I think, because we left the weeds to make their statement. Well a few days ago I decided that they had to go, I think there was some dead mint in there and it really stunk! So, I spent a little while digging up the weeds. Deana drove by and said "oh, that looks better" as if our little patch of overgrown "gardening" was slumming the place down!

Turns out, I should have maybe left the weeds because underneath was a death bed for our neighbors toys and junk. I finally got up the nerve to grab a garbage bag today and clean it out and this is a small sampling of what I found; about 7 matchstick cars, 4 pieces of broken chalk, a used firecracker, too many marbles to count, lip gloss, some indistinguishable leftovers, and of course...cigarette butts galore! (this "flower bed" is about 4'x1')

What can I plant that is very very thorny.....

Blocking the world out

I made a post about our neighbors in apartment #3 and their sense of entitlement about our SHARED front porch. To eliminate the chance of repeating myself here is the link; blog about porch.

So, my friend Lynn helped me fashion a curtain to put up separating our porch. Our hope was that it would serve many purposes;

a) give them the oh-so-subtle hint that their crap (toys, chairs, tables!, kids, garbage, and cigarette butts) only belongs on their side of the porch.

b) ward off at least some of the cigarette smoke smell that wafts over and in our window.

c) save us and our dog from tripping over their kids or toys (always directly in front of our door) and breaking a leg.

d) and of course, blocking our view of them and their mess!

We were apprehensive and didn't want to get our hopes up. We figured that the more likely scenario would be that the kids would pull it down, smear mud all over it, or use it as a toy and therefore spend even more time in front of our door. Much to our surprise though, it worked! Quite often we get to hear the parents yelling at the kids (I am saying kids plural because somehow there are always multiple kids there even though only 1 lives there) to stay on their side of the curtain. Yay!

But, the best part is that our view changed from this:

to this!:

The color of sanity is a red curtain!