I live in Texas now, but I will never call myself a Texan. I love the place, but I hate bugs, never plan on buying cowboy boots, and I can even begin to try to fake the accents everyone has around here. If I had a dollar for every time I heard the word "ya'll", I would already have my house paid off. I guess that doesn't say much since my house is cheaper than most expensive cars.
My husband started his MBA orientation this week. He has to dress "business casual" most of the days and for a Mormon guy with only white shirts, he can't wear that every day! I decided to take my girls to the mall and do some shirt shopping.
I was in Macy's and Olivia was getting pretty tired and started to whine a little bit, but I found the shirt that I wanted to get John and proceeded to the check out. I bought the shirt and headed to the escalator because Olivia loves stairs, but even more, she loves moving stairs. We get to the escalator and we both stepped on the same step at the same time. I was even holding Olivia's hand, but she got scared at the last minute, let go and I started going down without my little girl! With Jocelyn in my front carrier, my baby bag strapped over my shoulder, and open stroller and Macy's bag in one hand, I raced up the 5 or 6 steps I was already down like a mad woman! My stroller kept bumping on the side and considering how out of shape I am, it wasn't very graceful and took me longer than most multi-tasking moms. When I got to the top, a very irritated, possibly angry worker came up to me and raising her voice said, "Ma'm. You need to stop playing around! You have to take the elevator!" Really? Did she think I was playing around?
I wasn't angry or anything. I just politely asked where the elevator was. I thought it was pretty hilarious at the time that she could get so mad at me for trying to get my scared kid. My sister said it's probably because I look like a teen mom, so she thought I really was playing around. And for those of you who haven't seen me in a while, I don't look like a teen mom. I've aged 30 years in the last decade.
That's my story #1.
Here's #2. It's more of an advice story than an interesting one.
I live in a really ghetto apartment, but I expected that with my extremely cheap rent. We have some nice guys that live below us that just live a different lifestyle than we do. They're single and they smoke pot, a lot. No big deal. They're pretty mellow. I can live with it.
My kids go to bed at 8PM and Jocelyn wakes up at 6:30, and Olivia wakes up a little before 8. A few days ago, Olivia woke up around 8:30 and was running around the apartment which is pretty run down, so I know that my downstairs neighbors can hear the walking, but I didn't think that it would be that big a deal in what I thought was the late morning. Around 9:15, one of them comes up and asks if Olivia will stop running around because he works late (gets off at 11) and he needed to sleep. Totally understandable right? I kept Olivia quite, but I let her resume to her usual 2-year-old behavior around 11.
The next day, they were playing loud music, I mean LOUD music from 6-10 PM. It didn't keep my kids awake. It was annoying, but at least my kids slept through it. When Jocelyn woke up at 12:30, I heard one arguing with a woman. At 4:30, I could still hear them awake! When John left the house at 6, they were still awake. I know they're single and everything, but they can't expect me to keep my kids quite all morning and early afternoon. If they think that's what I'm going to have to do, then they have to stay quite from 5 at night during our family activities through their bedtime.
I'm pretty sure we are matched up with the worst possible neighbors for our family. I know that they are just single dude that stay up late and I totally understand that. I don't want them to be burdened with the annoying family that lives upstairs. Tell me what I should do? Right now, I'll just suck it up until I move next December. And after 11 AM hits, I'm not keeping my kids quite. That's good right?
