DO YOU EVER SLEEP? (and yes that's me yelling)

An open letter to the insomniatic elephants that live upstairs:

Dear Insomniatic Elephants,

You moved into the upstairs apartment of my cute little beach bungalow over New Years, and I knew from the moment that you unloaded the first load of stuff from your car that we were going to have problems. I know that the landlord told you that we lived down here. In fact, you couldn't have missed the basketball hoop in the driveway, the soccer goal in the side yard and the myriad of bicycles that live on my porch. You had to have realized that we had TWO little boys living down here.

You hadn't been here a week when you complained very loudly while standing on your porch that 11 a.m. on a Saturday was "too early in the morning for any respectable mother to let her kids play outside" and I let it slide and called the boys inside.

I let it slide when you decided to vacuum your HARDWOOD floors at 2 a.m on a Tuesday.

I let it slide when you ran out of laundry detergent and fabric softener and decided to use mine.

I let it slide it when you had a knock down drag out fight with someone on the phone at 4 a.m.

I let it slide when you had the balls to come down here at 10 a.m. on a Wednesday morning to complain that you could hear my stereo and you were trying to sleep....there was a reason it was so loud. I couldn't hear my stereo over your TV that I swear you never turn off.

I understand that different people have different schedules and that since both of you apparently work from home, 'cuz lord knows you never leave for more than 20 minutes at a time you stay up a little later than we do down here. But common courtesy should tell you that if you can hear your TV in the driveway while you sit in your car with the headlights shining directly into the window of my kids room at 1 a.m. for twenty minutes talking on your phone, that the damn thing is too loud!! We don't want to listen to the last episode of American Idol instead of sleeping.

My husband works late at night. When he gets home from bashing in heads at the bar and its 4 oclock in the morning, he would like to go to sleep. Most of the time, he has to get back up for another job or some kind of kid function. When he wakes me up to tell me what movie you are watching, I get a little peeved.

I get a little peeved when you leave in the afternoon while the kids are outside playing and you come back from the 7-11 with a dozen doughnuts your lunch knowing that they are playing in the yard or at the basketball hoop and you suddenly feel it necessary to park whereever they were playing when you left. Be it in the yard, directly under the basketball hoop or wherever (which by the way is the only way for Neil to be able to park in HIS spot that you so nicely assigned so you wouldn't have to haul your ass walk as far up the stairs to your apartment.) I get peeved, but I don't complain.

I get a little peeved when you use my electricity to wash your clothes and when you plug the light into MY fuse box while you do laundry in the middle of the night and don't turn the light off when you are done. Have I mentioned that the laundry room is up against my closet? That when you are doing laundry and screaming talking on your phone at 3 a.m., we can hear every word you say, and every quarter that you leave in your pants tumbling in the dryer for hours all night long? But past waving at you as you walk by while my shades are open so that you can see that this is my bedroom where normal people sleep at night, I don't do anything.

I admit that I did tell you to "put on your big girl panties" and deal with the fact that you can hear the kids screaming in the morning while they are getting ready for school. There isn't much I can do with them at 8 a.m. I admit I also may have said "just think if you can hear us when it's quiet up there, we can hear you when it is quiet down here!"

BUT this is the last straw....you have gone too far. I'm putting on MY big girl panties and anonymously blogging to avoid confrontation saying something!

For the last THREE...COUNT THEM 1...2...3 nights, I have been rudely awakened from a sound sleep multiple times a night by what I have finally come to realize is you RIDING around your apartment in your office chair! Are you 12? Are you really that lazy that you can't pick your a$$ up off the chair and WALK to the fridge? Are you telling me that you can't get up and walk the 10 feet to the bathroom? You are really riding around your apartment in your office chair? At 4:30 in the morning? REALLY??

While I am glad to no longer hear the tap dancing elephant show in the middle of the night that has been accompaning the never ending war movie that you have been watching for the last three months, I must say that there is something shocking about being woken up to the sound of your upstairs neighbor riding across the hardwood floors to go pee.

I can't take it anymore...I don't want to tattle, but you are really pushing me to the brink of something dangerous! I might let the kids do a sneak lima bean attack!

It's midnight and you just rode to the kitchen and back....enjoy your snack.

Signed,
The Lima Bean Spitters