I’ve been a renter for the past 10 years. Renting does have its perks – you’re not obligated to fix anything that breaks (although depending on the landlord I’ve had, that point can be debated), you have the freedom – to an extent – to pick up and move for work without having to deal with a messy home sale, you don’t need to find a way to save up $40,000 or more to put down on a home mortgage.
Renting also has its drawbacks. I estimate that, over the last 10 years, I’ve spent just shy of $150,000 on rent. That’s one. No matter how long I rent, how much money I put in, I will never, ever have anything to show for it. Had I bought into a 20 year mortgage 10 years ago, I’d be halfway through payments on a $200,000 home, with enough equity on it to be putting in my own pool, rather than trekking to the community pool in my condo complex, where I can hopefully get a chair and not have my keys or wallet stolen.
When I first moved to Florida, I was working as a high level executive for a company that paid me well. I was renting a single family home in a posh gated community, and enjoying all the perks that a 4,700 square foot home had to offer. Those days went by the wayside when I was laid off ($60,000 in rent later), and I moved to a much more reasonable condo that offers about 1,400 square feet of exposed space (my neighbors across the way can look right in my windows, my balcony may as well be a community balcony for the entire row of condos, and the walking path in the park by my door makes it easy for strangers to peer in my doors and windows and scope out what’s inside).
Sharing walls also has its downside – we’ve lived here long enough to see 4 sets of neighbors come and go, all with children. I never realized how well-behaved those children were (I always assumed the walls were just well sound-proofed) until my new neighbors and their two little Hellions moved in next door. The little girl is a screamer (she’s about 4 and never seems to get over just how loud she can bellow – for no real reason other than to test the strength of her lungs) and the boy is both a screamer AND a pounder (he’s about 6, and when he’s not pounding up and down the stairs, banging on the walls, or hollering, he’s taking his mother’s decorative stake from her potted plant and dragging it along the wrought iron rails of the balcony next door). As a work at home pro, I have to take all of my business calls from this condo. I know that I have to schedule all of these between 8 am and noon in order to have peace. Once 12:30 rolls around, forget it. The banging/yelling commences, which makes my dogs bark, and I can’t hear myself think.
At first, I compensated for this by taking my calls out on the balcony. Sure, there was some traffic noise in the background, but it was much more reasonable than apologizing repeatedly for my dogs. The first time I met the kids’ mom (which was a few months into this torture), I introduced myself politely – she was apologizing for one of the rail banging incidents because she came outside and found her son pounding and yelling away while I tried to manage a call – and I worked into our small talk that I work from home. I thought that would be a polite way of letting her know that, “I get it – kids will be kids – but keep the iron stick out of his reach, PLEASE!”
My plan backfired. Because I told her “It’s ok” when she apologized, I see now that she took that as an invitation to have her son make as much noise as humanly possible, all the time. Today, I took a VERY important client call (on the balcony, of course, because he called unexpectedly right around 3:30, when the boy had just gotten home and was at his most wired). While I was sitting outside, Mom was out on her balcony chatting on the phone, and the kids came exploding out the front door below (and that’s not an overemphasis – I don’t know how that door remains on its hinges!) screaming and swinging some kind of play swords at each other. This, of course, sent my dogs into a tizzy, and they started barking from inside (and if you’ve ever heard a Maltese bark – they are the MOST shrill barkers in the animal kingdom). I glanced over at Mom to see if she could take a non-verbal cue that I was in a state of distress – I was dealing with crisis communications on the phone with a client who was facing some seriously bad PR (not my fault) and who was clearly displeased that there was so much noise in the background.
As if that wasn’t enough, the boy – who must have sensed my distress more than his mom – zeroed in on me, and bellowed, “HIIIIIIIIIIIII NEEIIIIIIIIGGHHHHHBBBBOOOOORRRRR!!!!!” I raised my finger to my lips, pointed at the phone, and tried to continue the call. He must have seen it as a challenge, because he bellowed again, “HIIIIII NNEEIIGGHHBBOORR!!!! I SAID HIIIIIII NNEEIIGGHHBBOORR!!!!!!!!” His sister, who must have thought this was a game, joined in, so that I had dueling shouters coming at me at once, with an increasingly irritated client on the phone, and some seriously stressed dogs.
At this point, even Mom couldn’t manage her phone call. Now – I don’t have kids of my own yet, but I know what my mother would have done, what any of my friends would have done, had their kids been acting like this. The kids would have been dragged inside and there would have been at least a basic apology. Oh, no. Mom looked at me as if it was my fault for not responding to them, asked the person on the line to “Hold on,” went inside and closed the door, leaving her screaming children unattended.
This is the last straw. I’ve put up with a lot of zaniness from the neighbors who’ve come and gone: the woman who let her two angry pit bulls run around off leash, the young couple who had ragin’ keggers ’til 2 – 3 am or later on random Tuesdays, the crotchety new parents who were staying with their mother who leaned out the window one night and hollered at me (I was reading a book and enjoying a class of wine, trying to ignore the ragin’ kegger going on next door) for “blasting my music so loud.” (Note: That Dad DID apologize to me the next day, I’m guessing because his mother in law told him that we weren’t the ones who blast our music).
But seriously – what kind of mother can’t see that her kids are completely out of control? Had she thought I was making a personal call, that’s one thing, but it was fairly obvious (she was only sitting 5 – 7 feet from me) that I was trying to calm a stressed client and that it wasn’t a social call to a friend to chit chat. It’s time to move.
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