What's that sound?!

There are a lot of pros to renting. I especially love renting basement apartments for many reasons. One, is that I love renting privately, it seems that they care more and are faster at responding. To me, it just seems most apartment complexes are rude and take forever to call you back with the housing problems. You're just another name on the list.

I also love how cool basements are. While, yes, they are cool in an 80's rock band sort of way, they are cool temperature-wise as well. I would rather put on more layers than sweat like a baptist reverend in boyscouts. However, there are some cons to living in basements as well. Here are a few I have noticed over the year.

First, all the bugs love to hide out where you conveniently live and that is not okay with me. Mostly in Arizona I was worried about scorpions but now I am worried about hobo spiders. While hobo spiders may not be as harmful as a scorpion, they just look nasty! The bugs have got to go.

Next, it's inevitable that there WILL be people clanking around upstairs. Yes, even if you want to sleep through a headache, there will be someone upstairs walking around like King Kong. I've gotten used to this one however and I can usually sleep through the creaks and thumps.

Lastly, house noises. This one bugs me most of all because since every house noise is different, I have to adjust and reprogram my memory for each one. However, this basement that we are living in now is by far the worst!

Since our kitchen is right next to the laundry room, the pipes are connected. Whenever we do laundry (or the guys upstairs do) and the water drains, it comes up through our kitchen sink. Not, "up" in a gross way where it floods the kitchen or fills up the basin, just "up" enough that you will hear a gurgle of sweaty laundry water. Although it doesn't stink and you can't even see it to say it looks gross, it sounds like a 2 o'clock sacrament meeting on fast Sunday or someone after eating at Beto's or Filliburto's.

Also, because all the pipes seem to be connected, whenever you turn the water on for a long period of time, say, for a shower or to do the dishes, something begins to knock in our kitchen. It's like Ayun-yung from Arrested Development is in our walls sending us Morse code.


Normally this wouldn't bug me but when it goes off at 6 AM and I get woken up by a *click...click...click...click..click.click.CLICKCLICKCLICKCLICK!* It's enough to drive anyone bonkers.

Another thing that is seriously moving me to make an appointment with a psychiatrist is the high squeaking I hear. I think there is a little kid next door that has got a hold of a dog whistle. The kind that is unhearable to the human ears. When I have vinyl to do, I usually just sit at the kitchen table and quietly try to weed. Then, I hear a noise that sounds like the charge to a defibrillator. At first, I try to ignore it but soon it goes off over and over again. Next, I figure that I must be my nose whistling so I sniff a couple of times to disrupt my nasal acoustics. When it STILL doesn't go away, I breathe in and out of my nose steadily to see if it is REALLY making the noise. It never is, yet I still hear the defibrillator noise over and over again.

I have now lived in this basement for 2 months and I am still not used to the clicks, bumps and squeaks. The sad part is that I am moving to another basement apartment in a month and that means new noises to annoy me!