Good Fences Make Good Neighbors

But in a condo, there are no fences.

Ugh.

So I'm sitting here tonight happy in my clean and tidy little dwelling unit when I can smell garbage. I know it's not coming from my place, as I keep it pretty clean and take out the trash every other day at most. So I check the hallway. My neighbors across the hall are an elderly Russian couple who also seem to keep a tidy house. Other than hearing their TV from time to time, they're great neighbors. By that I mean they keep to themselves and keep it clean.

So I walk down the hall, and, as I suspected, it's the new neighbors. The unit next to mine had been vacant for more than a year until this crew moved in. I got spoiled. It's not their fault that I can hear their garbage disposal, their ventilation fan, and their shower. But the stanky-ass trash in the hallway is too much. If I can smell it behind MY CLOSED DOOR and DOWN THE HALL, there's a problem.

Now, in fairness, I too leave my (non-stinky) garbage outside my door if it's late and cold and I don't want to deal with the intractable ice patch that always seems to be on the front step. But if the garbage stinks, I'm not going to subject my neighbors to it. And I'll be godDAMNED if I'm going to let someone else's slovenliness impact my life. There was a time and a place for that, it was called college, and I'm LONG since over it.

So, at 10:15 pm, I knocked on my neighbor's door, and told them their trash stinks. The woman who didn't even get up off the couch to answer the door apologized, but I don't think she meant it. I told her I'd take out the trash for her, and she thanked me for that too, but with only slightly more sincerity. UGH. So I braved the cold and the icy-front-step-of-death and to take out my neighbor's trash so that MY home, the one that I have been busting my ass to clean all weekend, wouldn't stink.

All I could think of is that that trash would have sat in the hallway all night long. What in GOD'S NAME would my house have smelled like come morning? The hallways still reeked even after I took out her trash, so I sprayed it down with Lysol and hope I proved a point. But chances are I didn't.

Man, I hate people.