Imbrium
Jennifer
I f*cking hate the people in this apartment complex, and not just for their double-parking.
I've finally mustered up the resolve to make another attempt at a bunny garden - I haven't tried since damn caterpillars decimated my few potted herbs last year. With the addition of Normie (a fiend for leafy greens, btw), my veggie bills have gone up a bit and my frustration with the limited selection of affordable greens at grocery stores has been renewed ($3-4 for maybe an ounce of dried herbs = ripoff!). I hadn't planned to try to garden this spring because we live in an apartment complex full of sh*tty people with sh*tty kids and will be moving back to the house in San Antonio in May (ie the middle of the growing season).
I forget what sparked the idea, but I somehow got to thinking that I could make a very small green-house type enclosure to allow me to safely keep plants on the courtyard side of our apartment (where a pack of obnoxious brats loves to scream and run and scream some more and wreck everything up) without spending a lot of money... and - duh - a container garden would be easy to relocate when we move.
Anyway, I planted my first tray of seeds last weekend and some had already sprouted by Wednesday. I haven't gotten the greenhouse thing made yet, so I took some portable/stackable shelves (metal/plastic coated), set them up beside the apartment (grumbling the whole time about the ridiculous amount of dog sh*t in OUR grass because maybe 1 in 5 dog owners in this complex are actually considerate enough to pick up after their dogs) and moved my numerous wheat grass trays + my tray of seedlings outdoors to get some sun. To discourage kids and dogs from screwing up my plants, I used a little 2' high/10' long garden fence from Home Depot to make a circle around my plant shelves.
It was like 36F and drizzly Thursday evening and was predicted to get down to 28F with potential for ice/freezing rain... so naturally, I went out to bring in my plants (and the shelves, so no one would steal them). I found the "gate" panel of the fence (the one that was hooked to the panel at the other end to make an enclosed ciricle) wide open... and realized when I brought the tray of seedlings in that ALL of the little plastic straw pieces were missing. I forgot to take a pic of the tray when it was totally finished, unfortunately (damn, would that be helpful if I had ><), but the straws were set up like this:
The straws were pretty crucial, as I didn't bother to remember what I planted in each cell - instead, I used a different color of straw for each kind of seed and wrote down what plant corresponded to what color straw.
I KNOW the straws were deliberately removed - they were pushed in there too far for wind/rain to have removed ALL 32 of them without causing any damage whatsoever to my little sprouts, plus there wasn't a single colored straw piece anywhere in the grass around where I'd had the plants. At the same time, it didn't really seem like malicious sabotage since the plants weren't harmed or disturbed in the least... suggesting that some stupid kid with NO FREAKING MANNERS came along and pulled out all the straw pieces for sh*ts and giggles without ever stopping to consider that they might serve some sort of important purpose.
There's not even a REASON to take all my straws out of my plant cells! What the heck would anyone want with the straws? What's the purpose of taking them away from me? It's completely pointless!!
The idea that a kid did it makes me especially pissed off - it's bad enough for adults to be inconsiderate jerks; what's even worse is when they go around spawning kids and raising those kids to also be inconsiderate jerks. What kind of parent lets their kid roam the apartment complex unsupervised (inattentive parents that don't stop rude behavior even though they're right there counts as "unsupervised" in my book) without first teaching them that it's rude to tamper with other peoples' personal stuff?? I never would've dreamed of f*cking around with a neighbor's garden when I was a little kid, because I was raised to know better.
In addition to screaming and shrieking at the top of their lungs in the courtyard for hours at a stretch like our apartment is soundproof and we can't hear that sh*t loud and clear through the two 6'x6' windows our apartment has on the courtyard side, the hoodrat little kids in this complex have also:
~ Stuck gum to our front door frame for no damn reason... TWICE.
~ Rung our doorbell and then ran away on numerous occasions
~ Tapped on our living room window because Dusty was sitting in it
~ STARED into our windows when the blinds were up for some reason
The first time was when I had the blinds up in the glider room and was doing something to the window frame; two little boys were walking through the courtyard and when they saw me, they turned, walked to within a few feet of the window and freaking stared at me.
Also, kids routinely tapped on our windows when the living room blinds were partially raised for a while and Dusty would sit there. Once, I walked in the front door to find two kids with their faces freaking PRESSED to the living room window (a little girl around 5-6 and a little boy who was probably 3) where Dusty was sitting... and the little girl had the audacity to smile and give me this big wave as if to say "HIIIII!!", like she wasn't doing anything even REMOTELY inappropriate.
~ Stolen all the straws out of my seedling tray
~ Not sure if it was a kid, but someone put a BB-sized hole through our living room window at some point
Basically, there are SOME kids in this complex that are quiet, well-behaved and have been raised to have proper manners... but those are the ones I almost never see. A significant number of kids here have sh*tty parents who haven't taught them not to be little hoodrats and to show some damn manners once in a while... and their sh*tty parents let them run rampant around the courtyard outside our apartment without adequate supervision.
When I was a little kid in New Orleans, we lived in a reasonably nice (middle) middle class neighborhood... but at the end of our street was the main street through the neighborhood and on the opposite side of that street was this ghetto-*** apartment complex where the residents as a whole could only be described as "white trash". An awful lot of the people here are pretty much the hispanic version of "white trash".
~~~~~
I don't get why common courtesy is such a foreign concept to some people. I hate most of the people here, but I'm still civil towards everyone and behave respectfully unless someone specifically gives me a reason not to because that's just how decent people conduct themselves.
The only thing I EVER do that could potentially be construed as "inconsiderate" (which is a different matter entirely from deliberate, calculated revenge against someone who went out of their way to invite it) is playing with noisy power tools... and I say "potentially" because my situation is an exception to that rule. I only use them outside if it's the middle of the day and even then, never for more than 10-15 minutes TOPS (the maintenance and "lawn care" guys make far more noise than I do, and far more often) - 99% of the time, I use them indoors where the apartment walls muffle the sound and prevent it from echoing across the courtyard like the screams and shrieks of children.
While sound does easily travel through apartment walls/ceilings (and I use noisy power tools inside on a regular basis), there's only ONE apartment adjacent to ours (we're on the ground floor and have no shared walls with other apartments) - our upstairs neighbor. When Jay moved in, she approached him right away with a proposition - she said he could make as much noise as he wanted at any time of day or night and she wouldn't mind a bit... as long as he was okay with her doing the same. He likes to have the option to crank the music up pretty loudly, so he readily agreed.
Basically, we all have (and take advantage of) the freedom to create a racket at any time of day or night without fear of pissing off the neighbors... and in exchange, we all suck it up and get over it when people in the other apartment do the same. I would never even consider using a power saw or impact driver or whatever at four in the morning while living in an apartment complex if I didn't know for a fact that the only neighbor who might hear it won't be annoyed by the noise (the same way I couldn't care less about what sounds like her dragging heavy furniture across her living room floor at a similar hour). It's an awesome arrangement, as no one has to be paranoid about how much noise they make and everyone's happy.
Excluding the chick upstairs, though, I really do hate most of the people in this apartment complex!
I also wish I knew how to speak Spanish so I could tell people what I think of them in a language they'd understand. While I wouldn't mind being able to tell off 132 and 134 about their craptastic parenting skills and obnoxious demon-spawn children, the time I most wished I spoke Spanish was actually the time I saw some lady walking her dog in front of our apartment (on the non-courtyard side) - she was carrying plastic bags and clearly had the intention of cleaning up after her dog. I really wanted to be able to tell her just how appreciative I was that she was considerate enough to do that even though almost no one else is! I think I got the gist of it across, but language barriers are still frustrating... and I like to reward appropriate behavior just as much as I like to punish rudeness, if not more, because I DO notice and appreciate when people are courteous towards others.
I've finally mustered up the resolve to make another attempt at a bunny garden - I haven't tried since damn caterpillars decimated my few potted herbs last year. With the addition of Normie (a fiend for leafy greens, btw), my veggie bills have gone up a bit and my frustration with the limited selection of affordable greens at grocery stores has been renewed ($3-4 for maybe an ounce of dried herbs = ripoff!). I hadn't planned to try to garden this spring because we live in an apartment complex full of sh*tty people with sh*tty kids and will be moving back to the house in San Antonio in May (ie the middle of the growing season).
I forget what sparked the idea, but I somehow got to thinking that I could make a very small green-house type enclosure to allow me to safely keep plants on the courtyard side of our apartment (where a pack of obnoxious brats loves to scream and run and scream some more and wreck everything up) without spending a lot of money... and - duh - a container garden would be easy to relocate when we move.
Anyway, I planted my first tray of seeds last weekend and some had already sprouted by Wednesday. I haven't gotten the greenhouse thing made yet, so I took some portable/stackable shelves (metal/plastic coated), set them up beside the apartment (grumbling the whole time about the ridiculous amount of dog sh*t in OUR grass because maybe 1 in 5 dog owners in this complex are actually considerate enough to pick up after their dogs) and moved my numerous wheat grass trays + my tray of seedlings outdoors to get some sun. To discourage kids and dogs from screwing up my plants, I used a little 2' high/10' long garden fence from Home Depot to make a circle around my plant shelves.
It was like 36F and drizzly Thursday evening and was predicted to get down to 28F with potential for ice/freezing rain... so naturally, I went out to bring in my plants (and the shelves, so no one would steal them). I found the "gate" panel of the fence (the one that was hooked to the panel at the other end to make an enclosed ciricle) wide open... and realized when I brought the tray of seedlings in that ALL of the little plastic straw pieces were missing. I forgot to take a pic of the tray when it was totally finished, unfortunately (damn, would that be helpful if I had ><), but the straws were set up like this:
The straws were pretty crucial, as I didn't bother to remember what I planted in each cell - instead, I used a different color of straw for each kind of seed and wrote down what plant corresponded to what color straw.
I KNOW the straws were deliberately removed - they were pushed in there too far for wind/rain to have removed ALL 32 of them without causing any damage whatsoever to my little sprouts, plus there wasn't a single colored straw piece anywhere in the grass around where I'd had the plants. At the same time, it didn't really seem like malicious sabotage since the plants weren't harmed or disturbed in the least... suggesting that some stupid kid with NO FREAKING MANNERS came along and pulled out all the straw pieces for sh*ts and giggles without ever stopping to consider that they might serve some sort of important purpose.
There's not even a REASON to take all my straws out of my plant cells! What the heck would anyone want with the straws? What's the purpose of taking them away from me? It's completely pointless!!
The idea that a kid did it makes me especially pissed off - it's bad enough for adults to be inconsiderate jerks; what's even worse is when they go around spawning kids and raising those kids to also be inconsiderate jerks. What kind of parent lets their kid roam the apartment complex unsupervised (inattentive parents that don't stop rude behavior even though they're right there counts as "unsupervised" in my book) without first teaching them that it's rude to tamper with other peoples' personal stuff?? I never would've dreamed of f*cking around with a neighbor's garden when I was a little kid, because I was raised to know better.
In addition to screaming and shrieking at the top of their lungs in the courtyard for hours at a stretch like our apartment is soundproof and we can't hear that sh*t loud and clear through the two 6'x6' windows our apartment has on the courtyard side, the hoodrat little kids in this complex have also:
~ Stuck gum to our front door frame for no damn reason... TWICE.
~ Rung our doorbell and then ran away on numerous occasions
~ Tapped on our living room window because Dusty was sitting in it
~ STARED into our windows when the blinds were up for some reason
The first time was when I had the blinds up in the glider room and was doing something to the window frame; two little boys were walking through the courtyard and when they saw me, they turned, walked to within a few feet of the window and freaking stared at me.
Also, kids routinely tapped on our windows when the living room blinds were partially raised for a while and Dusty would sit there. Once, I walked in the front door to find two kids with their faces freaking PRESSED to the living room window (a little girl around 5-6 and a little boy who was probably 3) where Dusty was sitting... and the little girl had the audacity to smile and give me this big wave as if to say "HIIIII!!", like she wasn't doing anything even REMOTELY inappropriate.
~ Stolen all the straws out of my seedling tray
~ Not sure if it was a kid, but someone put a BB-sized hole through our living room window at some point
Basically, there are SOME kids in this complex that are quiet, well-behaved and have been raised to have proper manners... but those are the ones I almost never see. A significant number of kids here have sh*tty parents who haven't taught them not to be little hoodrats and to show some damn manners once in a while... and their sh*tty parents let them run rampant around the courtyard outside our apartment without adequate supervision.
When I was a little kid in New Orleans, we lived in a reasonably nice (middle) middle class neighborhood... but at the end of our street was the main street through the neighborhood and on the opposite side of that street was this ghetto-*** apartment complex where the residents as a whole could only be described as "white trash". An awful lot of the people here are pretty much the hispanic version of "white trash".
~~~~~
I don't get why common courtesy is such a foreign concept to some people. I hate most of the people here, but I'm still civil towards everyone and behave respectfully unless someone specifically gives me a reason not to because that's just how decent people conduct themselves.
The only thing I EVER do that could potentially be construed as "inconsiderate" (which is a different matter entirely from deliberate, calculated revenge against someone who went out of their way to invite it) is playing with noisy power tools... and I say "potentially" because my situation is an exception to that rule. I only use them outside if it's the middle of the day and even then, never for more than 10-15 minutes TOPS (the maintenance and "lawn care" guys make far more noise than I do, and far more often) - 99% of the time, I use them indoors where the apartment walls muffle the sound and prevent it from echoing across the courtyard like the screams and shrieks of children.
While sound does easily travel through apartment walls/ceilings (and I use noisy power tools inside on a regular basis), there's only ONE apartment adjacent to ours (we're on the ground floor and have no shared walls with other apartments) - our upstairs neighbor. When Jay moved in, she approached him right away with a proposition - she said he could make as much noise as he wanted at any time of day or night and she wouldn't mind a bit... as long as he was okay with her doing the same. He likes to have the option to crank the music up pretty loudly, so he readily agreed.
Basically, we all have (and take advantage of) the freedom to create a racket at any time of day or night without fear of pissing off the neighbors... and in exchange, we all suck it up and get over it when people in the other apartment do the same. I would never even consider using a power saw or impact driver or whatever at four in the morning while living in an apartment complex if I didn't know for a fact that the only neighbor who might hear it won't be annoyed by the noise (the same way I couldn't care less about what sounds like her dragging heavy furniture across her living room floor at a similar hour). It's an awesome arrangement, as no one has to be paranoid about how much noise they make and everyone's happy.
Excluding the chick upstairs, though, I really do hate most of the people in this apartment complex!
I also wish I knew how to speak Spanish so I could tell people what I think of them in a language they'd understand. While I wouldn't mind being able to tell off 132 and 134 about their craptastic parenting skills and obnoxious demon-spawn children, the time I most wished I spoke Spanish was actually the time I saw some lady walking her dog in front of our apartment (on the non-courtyard side) - she was carrying plastic bags and clearly had the intention of cleaning up after her dog. I really wanted to be able to tell her just how appreciative I was that she was considerate enough to do that even though almost no one else is! I think I got the gist of it across, but language barriers are still frustrating... and I like to reward appropriate behavior just as much as I like to punish rudeness, if not more, because I DO notice and appreciate when people are courteous towards others.
