<rant>

For the first five years in our house, we had dream neighbors. To our left was a couple about our age and on the right was a lovely single mother and her young daughter. With both sets of neighbors, we did things like take in each other’s mail during vacations, bring trashcans up from the street and yes, borrow cups of sugar. We were friendly but not super close — the perfect balance with your neighbors. There was light pet-sitting and pitching in to help out when hurricanes brought trees down.

But then the couple got pregnant and bought a new house a few streets away. The single mom got a job two hours away after she was laid off from hers here in Central Florida.

Within a few weeks, we went from neighbors we knew and liked to two new sets. And other than some yippy small dogs, for the most part, we lucked out again. We weren’t as close with our new neighbors — both young couples — but we exchanged pleasantries and had no issues.

Once again, things changed quickly around here. The young couple to our left moved to Indianapolis so he could go to business school (since I haven’t mentioned it, that house is a rental). The other couple moved out because our old neighbor is moving back! (she kept her house and just rented it out).

Two weekends ago, a new couple moved into the house on our left. And don’t you hate when your first instincts appear to be right? Here’s what I tweeted the weekend they moved in.

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/momjoviblog/status/127796950778130434″]

Clearly I was so upset that it caused me to make grammatical errors in my tweets.

And so far, they’ve lived up to my initial fears. They keep very strange hours. I hear them outside at all times of the night. Last night, we got home from Disney around 9 and they had about 10 people over. There was no music, but there was a lot of loud shouting talking. And they have this awful habit of going outside all the damn time. Know what happens every time they do? They let their back screen door slam — loudly. Both of our bedrooms are parallel to their backyard so we all hear it every time.

Then, at about 4:30 this morning, they inexplicably went out to play with their dog for about 45 minutes. “Here Charlie. Good boy! Here, go get it!” What made that whole thing worse is that I had JUST fallen asleep.

Let me tell you about the other neighbors, two houses over. Last night they had a Halloween party. A LOUD one. Again, when we pulled into the driveway, we heard the music. It was about 9, so we thought, “OK, that’s really loud but they’ll probably turn it down soon since this is such a residential street.” On our street alone, there are two newborns, three toddlers and two or three elementary school-age kids. We’re not a young, partying street.

But the music played on. Ten o’clock. Eleven o’clock. Midnight. At one point, they were howling into a microphone. Yes, howling, werewolf style. And the bass? Oh the bass. It was louder than the TV in our house. Somehow it kept getting louder every hour.

(OK, that’s not really true but it’s about how I looked at midnight)

And oh yeah, DadJovi was waking up at 4:15 to drive to Daytona this morning for the Daytona Beach Half Marathon. The timing couldn’t have been worse.

It took everything in me to not call the cops. But then I knew my 22-year-old self would have HATED me. I almost didn’t care. What the hell did she know? You see, every fall, my roommates and I in DC had a HUGE blowout that we called the Fessenden Fall Bash (our street). As I started cursing my old self, I remembered several key differences though: a) we ALWAYS warned our neighbors at least a week in advance and gave them all our cell phone numbers to call in case things got too loud b) we NEVER played music that loud. We kept it low. and c) we lived in an actual college neighborhood (American University), even if we weren’t in college anymore ourselves. So you see, even in our partying, we were more responsible.

So, between the raging Halloween party, DadJovi not being able to find his running shorts at 4:15 a.m. and then the Great Dog Olympics at 4:45 a.m., I think I got about four hours of sleep last night. I’m not a happy camper today.

I’ve been trying to think of ways to get my revenge. The only thing I came up with so far is that I should have showed up with E. at 7:30 a.m. and blasted Dora on their TVs. I suddenly wished I had a crying baby so I could park myself on their porches for a couple hours.

DadJovi says he’s going to tell the landlord of the people down the street (again, another rental. Maybe we should move).

I just want to sleep, although I’m sure he’ll get to have that honor since he did get up, drive an hour, run 13 miles in 1:44:32, then drive back.

Is it too much to ask to have adult, responsible neighbors? Would you have called the cops? Or am I just really lame?

</rant>