Unreasonable?
The driveway and main door of our neighbors home happens to run right alongside both ours and Miss A's bedroom windows. This is unfortunate for many reason. Especially in the winter when people need to let their vehicles run to warm up.
Last summer new neighbors moved in. I'm not sure what the living arrangement is. If it's a young couple or if the girl or guy own the house and are renting a room out to the other. We have tried to be friendly but they don't seem very interested.What has really been bugging me lately is that they seem to frequently have people over on weekends. The problem? Their guests smoke outside the door.
Sidenote: Having grown up with parents who drank alcohol on a regular basis as well as hosted many drunken gatherings I am familiar with how ingesting a fair amount of alcohol affects your ability to judge how loudly you are speaking. I spent many nights of my childhood laying awake for hours in bed listening to the boisterous voices of my parents and many of their 'friends'.
Having explained my prior expertise in this area I think it's fair to say with much certainty that my neighbors guests are under the influence while standing outside my window. They proceed to 'talk' which is actually yelling. This happened on the weekend waking me up at 2:30 AM. I think this is ridiculous. On another occasion several guests were leaving and I suspect they were all heading to the bar. They must have stood outside shouting back and forth to one another for at least 15 minutes before they finally left.
Is it unreasonable for me to expect more from our neighbors? Is it too much to ask that they are quiet after 11:00? I'm not talking about unavoidable noise such as vehicles coming and going or doors opening and closing. I'm talking about the yelling. Yelling at all hours of the night. So far they haven't ever woken Miss A up in the night. I think that might be grounds to go outside and play the bitchy neighbor role.
I keep thinking about the best and most non confrontational way to deal with this. I'm not sure it's such a good idea to deal with it in the heat of the moment when we are angry and they are intoxicated. That situation has the potential to even be dangerous. I'm thinking about putting a polite note in their mailbox explaining my view. Perhaps they don't even realize how obnoxious their friends are being. The pessimist in me tells me they won't care and they'll just blow it off and then things will be even more unpleasant. I just don't know. What would you do?
6 comments:
Most communities have noise ordinances; as in after a certain time of night (I think it's 10:00 or 10:30 around here)folks are expected to quiet down, barking dogs must be brought in, etc. I am betting that your town has something along these lines. What works best is to take the "hey, my kid's window is right there and when your guests...." and give them the opportunity to be decent.
Here's where it gets hard.... if you don't feel like you can safely ask them to hush at 2AM, then you have to just call the cops. Yeah. The cops, to enforce the night time noise ordinances. That is why it is best to ask them to shhhh first in person if you can.
I think you can start with talking to them, or writing a note outside that heat of the moment time. In the meantime, find out if they are renting. I think that probably will have bearing on how you go in the event that they don't respond appropriately.
And I agree with Bon - if they are being too loud in the middle of the night you need to call the cops and have them deal with it.
mmmm...
call the cops....
i don't care if I'm the bitchy neighbor or not...
if you're too loud, and too ignorant to respect others...then the police it is...
I agree with the first two. But save the cops for later if you can't work things out in person. No sense in making things confrontational with your neighbors if you don't have to.
Talk to them during the day, when you're feeling good, and do it asap. This problem will only get worse as the weather gets warmer.
Explain that your bedroom windows are right there. They probably haven't even thought of that. Explain about the noise and the smoke, but keep it simple. Just stick to the problem at hand.
And wear a snug shirt so they can see your lovely belly. Who could be mean to a pregnant woman?!? :]
If this doesn't work, then hell ya, call the cops.
*single spark
"And wear a snug shirt" before I finished this sentence I was thinking "How will showing off my boobs help?" Ha ha! But yeah, the belly might.
Yep, I agree with This Single Spark. I'd talk with them during the day when you're not annoyed and they're not drunk. I'm sure they'll be reasonable about it and there won't be any need to get the police involved.
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