I’m typing today to the sound of loud saws and hammers. They’re working on the four-unit apartment building next door. It doesn’t phase me as much as it might, because they’ve been working on the same building with the same saws and the same hammers for TEN FUCKING YEARS…
Think I’m kidding? No indeed. I’m quite serious. It all started about 1993 or 1994, a couple of years after I moved into my apartment, when they extended the back of the building and enclosed some balconies, turning the air shaft which provides the windows for my living room and bedroom into a very narrow tube. This wasn’t a problem; I’m not a big fan of overabundant light, although I think my downstairs neighbor was less amused. Actually, I think the city was a little miffed too, as certain permits hadn’t been filed…
For the next decade, the construction continued off and on, sometimes much more “off” and sometimes much more “on”, but always there lurking in the background. Almost any time I sit in the living room during the day on a weekday, I hear the workers chatting away, since the deck where they evidently spend most of their time is about eight feet from my window. This chatter doesn’t really phase me either, since I also hear it at night from the very loud residents of said building. Once or twice when it extended past midnight and was accompanied by (really bad) music, I even called the cops…
Today, it’s a little noisier than usual. We heard some pouding late last evening too, which suggests to me that the noisy residents themselves might be doing some of the modifications. They’ve done enough pouding and sawing over the past ten years that they must have gutted and reconstructed the whole goddamned building at least three times…
Hmmm. I wonder if they have the proper permits this time. Maybe I should check into that…