I had a bad neighborhood day today.
Every Monday I sit and write out my plans for the week. It takes about an hour of going through past and current clients, jobs, and reviewing both short and long-term goals. I feel like it helps me stay organized and on message. I call this activity my weekly business meeting, even though I’m the only person there.
This week I had trouble concentrating because on the other side of my living room wall, the family nextdoor was having a massive screaming match. Not that it’s unusual for them to yell at each other all day and night. It’s just that today I was particularly grating. I’d had a long weekend of unresolved issues, jaw pain (TMJ does not enjoy dental work), and general family drama. Whatever patience usually allows me to tune out their screamfests had left. Undettered, I turned up the Brother Ali and powered through. But when I went to do some real writing work, I just stood there and listened to them scream.
Finally I went to Starbucks and finished the work I needed to get done. When I came home they were still yelling, and I was able to treat myself to the vocal stylings of their toddler telling them to “fuck off” on repeat.
As part of my afternoon, I decided to get rid of my old office chair. So I put the chair out in front of the building with a sign on it that said “FREE.” In any normal neighborhood that would have been the end of that. But we live in a shit storm. So by the time Ben came home from work a couple of completely unattended children, one of whom I think belongs to the yelling house, had ripped the sign off and thrown the chair in the street. So we went down and saved it. I was kind of worried that if it stayed there overnight somebody would light it on fire anyway. Which is totally a thing that sometimes happens to unattended large items in our neighborhood. The worst part is when it also catches the car parked next to it on fire. I’m not saying that the streets of Hawthorne are just covered in nighttime car fires, but here and again a new paint job is in order.
After we retrieved the chair we tried to take it to Goodwill, who informed us that it was too old for their liking, but suggested that Salvation Army might just be the slut we were looking for. So we drove to Salvation Army and rolled the chair in through the front door, thinking to pass it off to someone. No one was available. We rolled it all the way to the back of the store without even a sideways glance. Wanting to avoid conflict, I pushed it gently in through the doors of the abandoned donation center and motioned to Ben to leave as casually as possible. We walked straight back out the front door sans chair and went on about our day. I have decided to call our new criminal activity shopleaving. He suggested shopdropping, which I also quite like.
We went home thinking the drama was over, only to find that the dryer I’d put our clothes in was on the fritz. That makes two of four dryers that no longer work. At least somebody had the good sense to put a sign on one of them (which had been ripped off, so I taped it back on when I put my own “OUT OF ORDER” sign on the other one. Our shit apartment management company hasn’t fixed the first broken dryer for the last two weeks, so who knows how long this is in effect. They’re notoriously useless and unresponsive. They paid a bunch of guys to scrape a bunch of the paint and a good percentage the trim off our building a month ago, and it’s still showing random patches of bare wood and broken siding. Again, who knows when that’s going to change. If ever.
Yelling family is still yelling though all of this, BTW.
Then I went to walk the dog and a June bug flew into my eye. And I mean into. I saw it coming, I took evasive action, but it was already too late. My eyelids closed on the bug, actually trapping it in my eye, forcing both me and the bug in a deeper display of intimacy than either of us would ever want. Eye safety compromised, I just started flipping all above-the-waist parts of me in every separate direction I could muster. The bug dislodged, but my eye still feels really gross. I rinsed it out with water, but that just made it hurt more. After I’m done with this I’m going to drop some moisturizing drops in there. The last thing I need right now is June bug induced pink eye.
Any one of these things: the constant yelling, the casual vandalism, the general lack of attention from apartment owners and managers would have just been a normal part of life. Even the bug + eye event. Shit happens. But I’m tired, and I feel shitty about lots of other aspects of my life right now (hi terrible family) so it all added up. And BTW, it’s almost 1 a.m. Not only is the yelling family still yelling, they are banging things too.
And if you’re wondering how they do it, I’m not sure. They tend not rotate except for the mom. That woman has a talent.