Redneck Neighbors From Hell

Who gets up at 5 am to clean house on a Saturday with music blaring? What is wrong with silent cleaning? My upstairs neighbor's, that's who. I try to remember these are the same neighbor's that had a stripper pole in the middle of their living room floor, two indoor pit bulls and one indoor sooner dog, pretended their hallway was a bowling ally, worship Chuck Norris and think domestic violence is a normal way of life. This is the part of this blog where you should all learn to spell R E D N E C K.

I have not lived in an apartment for years but wanted to move into something much smaller than my house and not have to worry about repairs or yard work now that I am on my own. So I sold my house and went apartment hunting. I found this one and love it. I love the built in gas grill on my private patio, that I never use because that would involve cooking, but just knowing it is there in case of a major snow flurry storm brings me comfort. My fireplace that I never turn on because it freaks my pug the hell out.  My pool that The Boy uses every day because it keeps him from running the streets and learning redneck ways. The nicely lit and fenced tennis court that I use as a dog exercise area because my persnickity Chihuahua won't touch grass or concrete with his feet or his delicate ass. The location is convenient, it is a small luxury complex and my son is the only person in here under the age of 25 so there are no kids to deal with. I am NOT a kid person. I  like my own children, most of the time, but barely tolerate anyone else's. The grounds are landscaped beautifully in a wooded setting (if Bigfoot is out there he stays quiet), assigned parking, only four units per building and they allow pets.  Up until six months ago it was very quiet. The apartment next to me belongs to an officer in the military who is gone for months at a time, I have honestly never seen or heard the people that live above him after the day they moved in and they have been here for almost two years. The apartment above me belonged to a single woman who also was never home. It has been very quiet here since I moved in four years ago. Until my upstairs neighbor got transferred for her job. That is when THEY moved in.

These people are unlike anything I have ever seen. I have been in the south for a long time, trust me, I have seen Redneck's but these two take it to a whole new level. Within a week of them moving in I was going to my car one morning and from no where came a giant fur ball that slammed into me and knocked me down. I have no idea what breed mixture this dog was, I'm still not convinced it wasn't a pony, I don't care how many times my son swears on his life it was a dog. For the next three weeks I watched this unleashed 120lb animal terrorize the complex and everyone who lives, visits or works here. The landscaping took a definite beating, doors were chewed, car tires were chewed, people knocked down, dog hair in the pool (the beast liked to swim), all downstairs windows were subjected to massive amounts of dog slobber and any lawn furniture was carried off. To this day I have not found three of my chairs, the last sighting of them was the beast dragging one across the backyard and into the woods. From there the trail goes cold. Management finally stepped in and gave them the option of moving or getting rid of the dog when the mail lady refused to deliver here and the dog ran into someone's apartment and refused to leave, necessitating a call to animal control. Unfortunately they chose to get rid of the dog instead of moving.

Then it started. We kept hearing strange noises coming from upstairs combined with being able to hear every single thing they say because they apparently were never taught to use their inside voices. We could not figure out what these noises were.  I'm a ghost hunter, my team and I have heard a lot of strange things over the years but nothing like this. I can only describe it as sounding like an elephant with flapping wings running at top speed and then slamming into a wall. This went on for weeks. The windows and ceiling fixtures rattled and threatened to break. Then one night I was coming back from the mailbox and they had their curtains open.  I saw the woman run across the room and jump into mid air followed by a loud crashing sound.  Suddenly the noise made sense. They had erected a stripper pole in the middle of their living room floor. She obviously wasn't very good at it and misses more than she lands it. My next door neighbor comes back from Iraq and complains to management. Think about that for a minute. Think how bad that noise had to be if it bothered someone who just came from a war zone.

They removed the stripper pole per managements request. But soon took up another indoor activity. Bowling. I shit you not. These fools actually had real bowling pins lined up at the end of the hall and used real bowling balls to "practice" their skills. That hobby only lasted until the ball went through the wall damaging a water pipe on the way and flooding their apartment and mine causing several hundred dollars worth of damage.

The bowling ally closed down and the mixed martial arts studio opened. These are not tiny people, hell they aren't even normal size people. She weighs roughly 250 pounds, which may also explain her difficulty getting on the stripper pole. Her boyfriend is an easy 300 pounds. Two people that size slamming each other to the floor makes you uneasy. You're just waiting on them to come through the floor and land in your lap while you are sitting there in Mickey Mouse pajama bottoms and a Tweety Bird t-shirt with chocolate stains on it, eating popcorn and engrossed in reality TV. Scary, because if you're expecting company you would have on the good Betty Boop pajamas or at the very least you would have matched your characters better. Then one night they got mad at each other over who won and a real fight ensued. They beat the living crap out of each other, not even stopping when the cops showed up to seperate them. He hit one of the cops and they hauled his butt off to jail. He never came back. Now he was gone and the beast was gone. Sanity briefly returned. But it was fleeting.

A week after the love of her life was hauled off and she kicked him out because he hit her, guess she didn't notice that he was in far worse shape than she was, she found a new love and moved him in. This one comes with two full grown pit bulls and a medium sized rather cute, if ill mannered, sooner dog and an angry ex wife who isn't happy about the whole situation. Made worse by the fact that "his sorry ass can't even send in the child support and she has to come beating on the door every damn week to collect". I know this because she screams it every week when she comes to get it. I hold my breath every week in fear that she is going to get fed up and leave those four Capuchin monkey's on the door step for him to take care of. If it happens I will grab two of them in each arm and chase her out of the parking lot screaming "Wait...you forgot your monkey's!" I will chase her car all the way to her destination if need be.

New skinny Redneck boyfriend likes basketball. A lot. But he doesn't like it on the basketball court, he likes it on their front porch, late at night. That's always fun to listen to for 3-4 hours every night.

They are on their third television. The first two having been tossed over the balcony and through the windshield of her car during one of what she calls "their disagreements". Along with several cell phones. The major disagreements must be the ones when he grabs her by the throat and tries to throw HER off the balcony. God forbid he ever gets strong enough to actually pick her up and she lands on her car. There will be no fixing that car as big as she is. Probably safe there I doubt his 130 lbs will ever be a match for her 250 lbs. At this point I am thinking my only hope is that she accidently smothers him some night during wild sex.

At least they are clean, very clean. They vacuum every night in the middle of the night or very early morning hours and do 2-3 loads of laundry every day, always off balance so the entire building shakes. Saturday is cleaning day. But it seems they have to be motivated by very loud rap music during which he shows his redneck white boy rapping skills by "singing" along with the track. Only louder, so as to drown out the music in an effort to show us all how talented he is.

Did I mention they like to start cleaning at 5 am?