The Twilight Zone

As I alluded to in my last post, I have been working on new living arrangements. My friend Deborah is moving to a new house and I am hoping to take over her apartment. It is in a great neighbourhood and a very quiet area. The space is a little smaller than what I have now, but much better outfitted (and cheaper!). The best news is that it is on the third floor of the house and has a lovely terrace that gets sunshine pretty much all day. My current apartment is on the ground floor with a communal fountain and lots of pedestrian traffic right outside my window, so I have to keep my curtains closed most of the time. I feel like I'm living in a cave and there's nowhere for me to sit outside.

Most of Deborah's arrangements have been made, but she has yet to sign a lease on the new house. Until she does that, she doesn't want to speak to her current landlord about leaving and having me move it. I also don't want to talk to my current landlord until everything is settled. Deborah is leaving for vacation on the 21st of February and will move her stuff to an outbuilding at the new house then. I expect that her apartment will be ready for me to move in by March 1. As time goes on, I get more and more concerned about the short notice that I will be giving my landlord about leaving.

The last few nights have been horrible at home. One wall of my apartment is actually on the "property line" (as if such a thing exists here!) so the neighbour's dogs are kenneled against the wall of my house under my window. There is the aforementioned public fountain about 10 feet away from my bedroom window with a public path between. The nights have been filled with dogs barking, the neighbour's baby screaming, metal buckets banging against each other and the stone wall at the fountain and motorcycles revving in the path. Sunday night was particularly bad and I got very little sleep. Monday night was worse. The neighbours have a generator which they felt the need to turn on at 4:00 AM as the power was off again. It's like have a jackhammer in my room. When I finally dragged myself out of bed at 7:00 yesterday morning, the power was still off and there was no water. I had heated water the night before for my morning shower, but I guess I was heating an empty tank. There wasn't even any cold water to splash on my face. At this point, I pretty much snapped. As I left for work I stopped and told my landlord that I would be finding a new place to live. I decided that if the arrangements with Deborah don't work out, I'll go someplace else - a hotel if I have to.

Last night I went to bed exhausted at about 9:30. When I woke up, it was dark out, deathly quiet and the power was on. I assumed it must have been before midnight as my power was supposed to be off from midnight-8 and it's usually quiet at that time of night. I checked my clock and it said 6:00 AM!!!! I couldn't believe it, so I turned on the light and looked again. Sure enough, I had slept right through - no generator, nobody at the fountain, no dogs barking, no baby screaming. And the power was on when it wasn't supposed to be. I was honestly so confused that it took me several minutes to get my head around it - thought I had wakened up in the Twilight Zone.

Just as I was leaving for work my landlord arrived to make an empassioned plea for me not to leave. He wants to put a bed in one of the other rooms to help me sleep; he seems to think that moving three feet across the apartment will somehow make a difference. Also he has been round to the neighbours asking them to keep quiet during the night. I feel really sorry for him, but I can't change my mind. I'm sure last night was an anomaly and there's no way that everyone in the neighbourhood are going to change their habits permanently to accommodate me. The fact that we had a few bonus hours of electricity certainly worked in their favour and they did admit that they wouldn't stop running their generator when the power was off. And even if the noise diminishes, it still doesn't solve the problem of being on the first floor and needing to keep my curtains closed against prying eyes. I am hoping I get some kind of resolution with Deborah's place soon.

I am working on another post. I should have it ready soon. In the meantime, I'll leave you with a photo of a little mishap beside the college this morning.