Things have reached a boiling point with the Creepertons. This time, they haven't done something particularly creepy per se, but bitchy and weird. Boyfriend and I have been stewing over this since Saturday and the more we think about it, the more mad we get. However, I don't think we can start at this most recent occurrence. Instead, I'm going to start at the beginning. For your convenience, this will be broken down into the Creeptastic Time Scale.
The Precreep Eon
(September 2008-October 2009)
During this period, a family lived above us consisting of a young new mother and father and their baby girl, whose gravel-smooth transition from crawling to walking we were lucky enough to hear. As well as her quickly-acquired ability to run. And fall. We always knew when the child would be put to bed because it would get suddenly quiet. As annoying as the small running elephant could be, we weren't really bothered by the sounds of a child learning (and failing) to walk, even if it meant the occasional bump and thump. Did we enjoy the month or so between them and the new guys? Of course.
The Neocreep Era
(October 2009-March 2010)
The day before Halloween 2009, the Creepertons moved in. Boyfriend and I remembered thinking, "Oh a couple with no kids, this shouldn't be too bad. But they look a little weird." Halloween fell on a Saturday that year and Boyfriend and I had a party. There were eight of us there at the time, and we heard a loud rapping on the door. I answered the door (dressed as Boyfriend-hit-by-Suicidal Bird I might add) to see Mr. Creeperton, who has asked us to keep it down. It was around 9:00 p.m. or 10:00 p.m. on a Saturday, Halloween, and they had just moved in so we found it a little ballsy and weird, but whatever. We recognized that it was, in fact, a party and louder than no party, so we turned the music down and tried to bring it inside as much as we could.
We attempted to stay hyper-aware of our noise levels from then on. We didn't hear anything else about our "noise" until the beginning of the Mediuscreep Era.
The Mediuscreep Era
(March 2010 to present day)
From Halloween night 2009 until March 2010, we didn't have any problems with the Creepertons directly. Sure they were freakin weird and we still hadn't figured out their relationship (are they siblings? Dating? Roommates? Mother and progeny? Who can tell?) But in March 2010, our real issues with the Creepertons began.
Boyfriend is an avid movie fan and in March 2010, we decided to host an Oscar party. Gentlemen were to wear suits and ladies were to don their most red carpet worthy dresses. We laid out a red carpet, had some cinema-type refreshments and sat down to watch the show. We were having a grand ole time sitting down and watching TV when we heard a knock on our door. B-Friend looks through the peephole and informs us that a police officer is outside. We don't immediately believe him so he opens the door and we see that a police officer is indeed outside. Boyfriend and I go to the door to address the officer's questions.
He says that he has received a call that we are having a party that is too loud. He asks what we're doing and we tell him of our party. We had to explain that it was an excuse to get dressed up and watch the Oscars since "We're having an Oscar party" didn't adequately explain what we were doing and he was still confused. Apparently, he hadn't before heard of an Oscar party. He asks if we had any music playing and Boyfriend tells him, "Only the orchestra on TV." As he stands before us on a red carpet while Boyfriend and B-Friend are wearing suits and I'm sporting a floor-length bridesmaid gown, he says he thinks someone must have been mistaken on the address they gave him. He then let us know that he sat outside for about 15 minutes and could see that our windows were open and could see us inside but never heard us. Before he leaves, he tells us to have a good evening. Doesn't even tell us to keep it down, because there was nothing to keep down. The look on his face was total confusion and a pinch of disbelief and he looked around to see a bunch of dressed-up nerds with posters of the Dark Crystal and Lord of the Rings lining the darkened room and a counter top adorned with popcorn, candy and fondue. On a Sunday.
We never confirmed that the call to the police came from the Creepertons. Indeed, I defended them at first, stating that they had come downstairs and addressed us directly last time so I don't know why they'd go straight to the police this time. Looking back, we're most definitely sure it was them.
The Bitchcreep Epoch
(February 2011 to present day)
February 2011 marked the emergence of a significant hole in our ceiling, the event which sparked many a question about the Creepertons and which brought to light their creepiness to people who weren't Boyfriend and I. The numerous subsequent entries on this very blog illustrate the increased ridiculousness that is the Creepertons in the Bitchcreep Epoch.
Boyfriend and I actually thought that the ceiling hole episode would probably get the Creepertons to lay off for a while because SURELY they can't complain about our not-really-loudness when we had to go without part of our ceiling for a week. In March no less, when those of us with allergies are having a hard enough time without direct exposure to mold in our homes, brought about by complete morons who let a sink leak for so long it rotted out a chunk of their kitchen, necessitating the complete replacement of their entire front kitchen counter and a portion of the ceiling below them.
This past weekend marked the pinnacle of our disdain for the Creepertons.
Boyfriend and I also believe that it may have initiated the countdown of our numbered days.
Friday night, two of our friends came over to hang out. D-Friend arrived at about 8:00 p.m. and A-Friend arrived about an hour later. At 9:15 p.m. or so, I left to run to the store and A-Friend left to get himself something to eat. This left naught but Boyfriend and D-Friend at the apartment. When I returned at 9:30 p.m., I could see Boyfriend and D-Friend on the patio, but even as I was walking past them, I couldn't hear anything they were saying, just that sound of someone's around close by and maybe talking to someone. You know, the normal sound of Friday nights in the late Spring/Summer when the weather's nice. In fact, I contemplated yelling "What up ninjas?!" but deemed the outside situation somewhat quiet and didn't want to disturb that. Nor look dumb.
As I was coming to the breezeway to go to my door, Mr. Creeperton was coming down the stairs. He catches me as I'm about to walk by, saying "Excuse me, I don't mean to be rude, but can you guys keep it down? It's getting kinda loud up here. Don't mean to be rude." I, completely caught off guard, just say "okay" and continue walking to my door.
Let's recap:
1) When Mr. Creeperton was coming down to complain that it was "kinda loud upstairs," there were only two people at my apartment at the time.
2) It was so "kinda loud" that I couldn't hear them. When I was outside. Twenty feet away.
3) It was 9:30 on a Friday night. My 2-year old nephew is occasionally still up at this time. My 8-year old little brother is still at least an hour away from bedtime. Twenty years ago, TGIF would still be on.
I go inside and tell Boyfriend and D-Friend that we've been asked to quiet down. Looking at me as though I've just suggested we attempt to achieve positronic distillation of subatomic particles, I explain what just happened. The sheer ludicrousness of the request sparks a running joke the rest of the night where we'd "shh" a person who laughed too loudly. I didn't say it was humorous, just a joke. At 11:30 p.m., I call it a night and go to bed, where I had my door cracked and no fan on so I could ensure it didn't get too loud. Even with the main sliding glass window open in the living room, I could barely hear the other three people. I fell asleep quickly and didn't awake until 1:30 a.m. when Boyfriend and D-Friend were snoring like hibernating bears to Daniel Tosh. After talking with Boyfriend, we estimated that they came inside around 12:30 a.m. (on a Friday night, mind you, because we're all awesomely lame) and fell asleep shortly thereafter to the Chapelle Show, before Boyfriend awoke again and changed it to Tosh.
Saturday morning I received a phone call from our management office at the apartment, inquiring as to whether or not we had had a party the night before. It seems she had "received a very strongly-worded letter" and was checking up on it. I didn't feel it was time to tell her all the things we normally hear in an attempt to prevent the situation from becoming childish and reminiscent of "well THEY did THIS first" so I was simply honest with her about the happenings of the night before. She sounded as confused as the Oscar party police officer appeared, and ended the conversation by saying "Well you ARE allowed to have friends over" and then recommended that I remind them not to park in the front row, as a courtesy to residents. Sure thing.
Fast forward to Monday night and Neighbor Friend tells me he received a phone call asking about Friday night as well. He assures us that he did not hear us and adds that he's never heard us, even when he can see we have more than four people on the patio. I'm assuming that others received that phone call as well and I'm confident that everyone else will give the same answer as Neighbor Friend. I should also add that Neighbor Friend is the type who will most definitely let you know when you're doing something he doesn't think is cool. For example, when our building spent the whole day shoveling snow from the lot in front of our building and someone from another building was going to park there because their spots were covered and Neighbor Friend told him to move and shovel his own lot. Oh and also, Mr. Creeperton helped shovel the lot that day. And he didn't say a single word to anyone.
So now Boyfriend and I are really pissed and also fearful, as it seems the Creepertons may not receive the support they were looking for from apartment management, which may only incense them further. We could sit and do nothing but we feel that we need some sort of documentation since there is apparently a "strongly-worded letter" about our "parties" in our file. We've lived below someone with a toddler who went to bed at 8:00 p.m., beside the Marlboro Man and his wife who appear to be in their 50s or 60s, and across from someone who has called police on other neighbors' parties when they got too loud. If anyone was going to complain, you'd think it would be one of those, not the youngish couple above us who seemingly have no real normal job responsibilities because they're always at home and they stay up until all hours of the night. Running their garbage disposal. Dropping small explosives. In the dark.
We feel we should also write a letter. How does one sound professional in a letter while wanting to write that the people who've complained about our talking have awakened us in the middle of the night from running their garbage disposal and dropping what can only be assumed are bowling balls or frozen heads, dropped items so heavy that the impact has caused things to fall from our shelves in the utility room, stared at our apartment from their cars, and oh yeah, were too utterly stupid and/or irresponsible to notice and/or report a sink that had leaked so profusely for so long that it rotted out their cabinet, floor and our ceiling?
During all of this, we've never submitted a complaint about them, nor have we gone up there to ask them to please hold things more securely--partly because we understand that with apartment living comes the noises of others and partly because they scare the bejesus out of us. However, we do want something on file that indicates our aversion to filing complaints while also acknowledging that we do not live below quiet, peaceful people who we thoughtlessly disrupt. Instead, we live below extremely loud creepy people who, for some reason, do not like us and grind their victims' bones in the night while running their air conditioner every day for the past year and a half, the unit for which just happens to be right outside of our patio and my gosh, let's talk about noise, shall we?
My hypothesis is thus: Mr. and Bitch Creeperton have realized that Boyfriend and I are on to them. They themselves cannot move because they have too much delicate cargo to transport and possibly cannot afford the required refrigerated truck for the bodies that have not yet been taken care of. As such, they want us removed.
