 |
| Photo via williampaid.com |
Are you a good neighbor? Everyone likes to think they are, right? In fact, I would pretty much have always answered "yes" to this question, but looking back I'm pretty sure our condo neighbors didn't appreciate when, as newlyweds, Brad and I would regularly come home tipsy at 2 a.m. and engage in a good hour of living room karaoke (and no, that isn't a euphemism....we really did come home late and night and belt out a few off-key sets). The duet of "Islands in the Stream" was a crowd-pleaser, I'm sure. But other than that I thought we were good neighbors, until we had two sets of downstairs neighbors move out of our two-flat in the last nine months.
When we first looked at the place where we are living now I misunderstood the realtor and thought we had two small kids under age five living downstairs. I was excited. We'd be BFF's! Watch each others kids! They would run around in the backyard, fall asleep in a pile watching movies, become the siblings Tate never had, and stand up in each other's weddings! Oh wait, that's just silly; Tate wouldn't be able to stand up because he would be marrying one of them! Turns out there were no kids (or parents for me to scare away with my exuberance), just one very, very sweet young couple, a gentle dog, and a massive pot habit. These people (or one of them, at least) seriously put Harold and Kumar to shame. I smelled skunky, skunky pot about 8 out of the first 14 days we were here, and believe me, I was counting.
I talked to our pediatrician and suggested perhaps it was medical marijuana and I didn't want to get them into trouble with the landlord, but I was worried about my son. She looked at me like I was the most naïve person in the world, said yes exposure is not great for him, and told me to open the windows. So on a semi-regular basis we would smell pot at night (thank god it was only at night), open all the windows even if it was 12 degrees out, whisk Tate upstairs to the 3rd floor, turn off the heat, and make sure the vents in his room were closed since if we didn't our HVAC system acted the some sort of massive bong and we could smell it up there. Clearly we were the good neighbors in this scenario. (Although me stomping around yelling "For the love of god are they smoking freaking weed AGAIN?" may have been a bit of a buzz kill.)
We had just reached the point of feeling like we knew them well enough to ask them to do something to contain their pot (a nice brownie, perhaps?) and to maybe stop disabling the smoke alarms in our shared 100-year-old tinderbox of a house while they were at it when spring hit and the smell became less and less frequent. Maybe they were opening windows or smoking outside or went to rehab...whatever. Next thing you know they tell us they bought a condo and are moving in a week. (Good luck with that one, future condo board.)
So we waited anxiously as information trickled in about the new tenants. Twentysomething couple (crap, could be pot heavy smokers). Surf in Lake Michigan in the winter (ok, totally heavy pot smokers). But they were nice, quiet, did not partake in smelly doobage, didn't leave their laundry tying up the washer, and they were gone in two months.
This week at the mailbox neighbor #2 awkwardly told me that they were moving out. "Well. some of the electrical doesn't work in our place and the property manager can't seem to fix it." Huh? I asked if it was outlets or what. "Yeah, in the dining room and a few other places. And you know, we have a dog so electrical is really important." Um, because the dog needs to use the blender? I was confused, but wished him well. I secretly wanted to ask him if our toddler was driving them away, but I didn't really want to know the answer. Let's face it, some days he's driving US away and we love him madly. Of course, since the world doesn't actually revolve around me the move could be totally unrelated, but we'll see how long renter #3 lasts.
Oh, and if any non-pot smokers with a love of the pitter patter of little feet are looking for semi-lit housing on a tree-lined, kid-friendly street in a neighborhood with an awesome public school I've got just the place for you.
When we first looked at the place where we are living now I misunderstood the realtor and thought we had two small kids under age five living downstairs. I was excited. We'd be BFF's! Watch each others kids! They would run around in the backyard, fall asleep in a pile watching movies, become the siblings Tate never had, and stand up in each other's weddings! Oh wait, that's just silly; Tate wouldn't be able to stand up because he would be marrying one of them! Turns out there were no kids (or parents for me to scare away with my exuberance), just one very, very sweet young couple, a gentle dog, and a massive pot habit. These people (or one of them, at least) seriously put Harold and Kumar to shame. I smelled skunky, skunky pot about 8 out of the first 14 days we were here, and believe me, I was counting.
I talked to our pediatrician and suggested perhaps it was medical marijuana and I didn't want to get them into trouble with the landlord, but I was worried about my son. She looked at me like I was the most naïve person in the world, said yes exposure is not great for him, and told me to open the windows. So on a semi-regular basis we would smell pot at night (thank god it was only at night), open all the windows even if it was 12 degrees out, whisk Tate upstairs to the 3rd floor, turn off the heat, and make sure the vents in his room were closed since if we didn't our HVAC system acted the some sort of massive bong and we could smell it up there. Clearly we were the good neighbors in this scenario. (Although me stomping around yelling "For the love of god are they smoking freaking weed AGAIN?" may have been a bit of a buzz kill.)
We had just reached the point of feeling like we knew them well enough to ask them to do something to contain their pot (a nice brownie, perhaps?) and to maybe stop disabling the smoke alarms in our shared 100-year-old tinderbox of a house while they were at it when spring hit and the smell became less and less frequent. Maybe they were opening windows or smoking outside or went to rehab...whatever. Next thing you know they tell us they bought a condo and are moving in a week. (Good luck with that one, future condo board.)
So we waited anxiously as information trickled in about the new tenants. Twentysomething couple (crap, could be pot heavy smokers). Surf in Lake Michigan in the winter (ok, totally heavy pot smokers). But they were nice, quiet, did not partake in smelly doobage, didn't leave their laundry tying up the washer, and they were gone in two months.
This week at the mailbox neighbor #2 awkwardly told me that they were moving out. "Well. some of the electrical doesn't work in our place and the property manager can't seem to fix it." Huh? I asked if it was outlets or what. "Yeah, in the dining room and a few other places. And you know, we have a dog so electrical is really important." Um, because the dog needs to use the blender? I was confused, but wished him well. I secretly wanted to ask him if our toddler was driving them away, but I didn't really want to know the answer. Let's face it, some days he's driving US away and we love him madly. Of course, since the world doesn't actually revolve around me the move could be totally unrelated, but we'll see how long renter #3 lasts.
Oh, and if any non-pot smokers with a love of the pitter patter of little feet are looking for semi-lit housing on a tree-lined, kid-friendly street in a neighborhood with an awesome public school I've got just the place for you.
No comments:
Post a Comment