They Need To Make A Schedule

Even paradise, I suppose, must have its potholes.

I awoke to the sounds of talking, no idea what time it was. Since I'd been awakened by a short, shouted morning greeting conversation at 5 the morning before I assumed it was the same sort of thing and it would stop. It didn't. By the time I looked at the clock it was 2:45. Getting up to pee is was like deja vu.

For many a summer there was a group of boys (technically adults but, like my dog, not fully adult brain-wise) who sat in the courtyard below my window drinking, talking and sometimes fighting. It would happen at least twice a week and often more. At best it was from 10 - midnight. At worst much longer. Many long campaigns of calling 311 and/or 911 and the security for the complex were waged.

Finally we got a new security company and things seem much better. The handful of times this summer that there's been enough noise that I've felt the need to call it in the new security guys have been able to go out and move the chit chatters along in short order. For the record, I have been feeling proper levels of gratitude about this. It's why I didn't call security right away, I figured they were on it.

Indeed, when I did call they told me they'd sent a guy to speak to them as my call was being picked up. (I'm sure plenty of my neighbors had already rung in.) It didn't help.

I tried to go back to sleep and mourned the loss of my iron sleeping constitution. I can sleep on a train. I can sleep in a crowded park. I can sleep in a car with conversation around me. I can curl up on the floor of an airport and get some good shut eye. Wake me up, though, and it's getting a little harder to go back. Wake me up and make me angry? Yea verily it is a death blow to the night.

Just after four I called again. I apologetically asked the guards if they could do anything to move these guys along. They told me the police were on the way into the complex right now. And they were. 5 minutes later a hush fell over the crowd.

And it stayed that way.

When the alarm went off at 6 I nearly cried. This 6am wake up call is new to me since Eddie's arrival. It hurts enough when I've gotten proper sleep. I gamely showered and mentally wrote amusing yet appropriately chiding letters I wanted to stick to the benches in the courtyard. ("Your discussion last night revolved closely on the theme of respect; whether you respected each other and how you showed that..."). By 6:40 I was just out the door to the park with a wiggly little smart dog (like a smart phone but the reception is iffier) later than usual, later than I liked, late to meet our treat provider. We hit the stairwell at a run and came up short.

Someone had peed in the stairwell. Gallons of urine. It rivered in sticky, odiferous fingers down 2 short flights and pooled at the bottom in a lake nearly to wide for me to leap.

A couple of days ago I realized, much to my dismay, that when Eddie dawdles behind me on one level of the stairs he's actually sniffing then marking a section of the wall. If I hadn't been so close to tears I'd have laughed. Here I am working my brain to a nub trying to teach Mr. Smartypants not to pee in the building and why bother? I know every dog in the building. There is not one dog even nearly big enough to produce that much piss. It had to be a human and it had to be one of those guys recently asked by the cops to move along. Such a huge blow to the ego ("That sign says this area closes at 10pm, please move along.") clearly required an epic marking of his territory.

And the elevator was out of order.

They're making it pretty hard for me to follow my peace, love and understanding guidelines for the week. We shall see if I'm up to the challenge.

Photo: Omar from The Wire. I want him to come sort this shit out once and for all.