Monday, January 21, 2008

Proximity to Others

Currently, we live in a very small, 2 bedroom apartment. We call it our "little, tiny, baby, pretend house". It's not ideal (ideal would be a single family house on a large wooded lot with trees, cows, chickens, and a school room), but has been a positive experience overall. It forced us (well, mainly me) to purge a lot of things we had been holding onto for one reason or another, we have had to be creative with storage solutions (the boy's shower is filled with bins and paper goods and the laundry room doubles as a pantry...which is working out rather well), and we seem to finally be organized (for the most part).

In the 5 months we have lived here, people have come and gone. The ones that are here now, at least in our building, are making it unpleasant to live here. I have to wade through cigarette butts, empty beer bottles, and discarded fast food bags in order to get to my car. It's disgusting! Why are people too lazy to walk 15 yards to the dumpster or reach for an ashtray? I have personally gone out and picked up THEIR trash only to have it littered up again within a few days.

Even as I write this (4:54 am), my neighbor is saving the world by blowing things up. The bass from his video game is annoying and unnecessary. On occasion, it has rattled the stuff on my wall. Now, I understand this is the sort of thing you have to deal with when living in an apartment, but this is extreme in my opinion. We have talked with him twice and the apartment managers 5 times. I have even kept a record of the times the noise had occurred, which was all hours of the day and night. I am pulling my hair out!

What have I learned from this? I need space. I can not live in close proximity to others. We only have 4-6 months left in this particular place and then we are moving to one of 9 states for grad. school. Hopefully I will be able to find my ideal living situation.

5 comments:

Laura said...

Ugh. I'm sorry to hear about your frustrations. We moved over the summer so my hubby could pursue his PhD. We had a choice of two places: a three-bedroom apartment in an income-based neighborhood or a three-bedroom house on a large piece of land that would cost us about $150 more per month. We opted for the house and are glad we did. I, like you, cannot live that close to people. We love having LOTS of people over, but I am an introvert and need breaks from being surrounded by people and their noise and their stuff. Every once in awhile, I think it would have been more financially responsible to move into the apartment, but I work from home, dh studies and works here, and we homeschool. If we lived in the apartment, dh would have to study at the library (which would restrict his working hours) and I would have to go to the library to work. We only have one car, so we'd either have to drive back and forth and waste gas or get a second car. Ultimately, the house is costing us about the same as the apartment.
When you go looking for housing in your new state, I highly recommend contacting the churches of your denomination (or any denomination, I suppose) and asking if anyone there can help you. It is one of the jobs of the Church to help it's people. This is how we found the last two places we have lived, and they have both been great places.
We'll be praying for you as you await decisions on applications. It can be a stressful experience.
Blessings to you all!

Lori C., Texas said...

We have been there and done that!:) We live in a college town and you can't live in an apartment with out living next to very loud drunk college kids!:) Hope things get better.

Anonymous said...

well, sad to see you will be leaving the area - I just saw on the WTM board that we live in the same area! Anne Marie - St. Theophan Academy on WTM

Lisa~ said...

Brittney... that must be tough... it would drive me nuts too... at least you can look forward to leaving soon and start fresh somewhere... that’s exciting. *Ü* secretly hoping Washington would be one of the 9...

You will be able to look back in 10 years and say... remember those people?? Soon it will all be a memory...

Hoping today is a better neighbor day!


hugs... Lisa

andie said...

If we weren't leaving, I'd be pressuring you to pick WVU. :-) The good thing about the Morgantown area is that you will be able to find space fairly easily!

In the meantime...earplugs?