Won't you be my neighbour?

Amidst the chaotic spring cleaning this morning, I paused long enough to notice a moving truck in front of our apartment building. Now it made sense to me why the normally quiet apartment above us sounded like it was hosting an indoor hockey tournament (that started at the unholy hour of 9:00am...on a Saturday...those assholes). I immediately began to feel guilty though, figuring that the old woman upstairs was moving because Luc and I are loud, inconsiderate neighbours. We frequently chase each other around the apartment, screaming like children (mostly Luc, not me, of course) and stay up past our bedtime on weekends playing loud music and getting drunk and belligerent, challenging our friends to wii boxing matches. The chasing each other bit was a habit that we started at our first place over three years ago. It was so bad that one afternoon while taking out the garbage, our landlord (who lived upstairs with his wife and daughter) stopped Luc for chat.

Landlord: "Luc...Luc, I wanted to talk to you about something, just listen, OK?"
Luc: "Yeah...sure, what's up?"
Landlord: "Luc, I know that you and Kristen argue sometimes, but Luc, it is never OK to hit a woman."
Luc: "Uhh..I think you..."
Landlord: "Please, just listen. It's never OK. There are no excuses for hitting a woman. You can get mad. You CAN get mad. But you never hit a woman, OK?"
Luc: (putting on his best 'serious' face and holding in laughter) "Yeah...OK, I...I understand."

Our landlord had heard us yelling and playing and chasing each other around and jumped to the outlandish conclusion that sweet, prairie boy Luc, the love of my life, was teaching me a lesson with the back of his hand. Ironically we ended up leaving that place because our landlord was too loud. By, "I live with my wife and baby", what he really meant tell us was: me and my 4-year-old daughter and my wife and my wife's sister and her 11-year-old son all live above you in a 2-bedroom suite....and another grown man is moving in with us shortly. He also failed to mention that his daughter had a pair of lungs on her like a howler monkey. Which she clearly inherited from Mama howler monkey.

Living at this new apartment has been great - I don't have to throw phone books at the ceiling at 3:00am anymore. And that, my friends, is luxury. But when I saw the moving truck, I feared that our upstairs neighbour held Luc and me in the same contempt as we had held our old landlord. Did she have to wear earplugs to bed every night because of us? Has she been spending nights, curled up in a ball screaming "shut the hell up" while cursing our names? Shortly after this bout of paranoia, Luc spoke to our now former-upstairs neighbour, and it turns out that she was supposed to move a long time ago but some arrangements had fallen through. So this evening, we will happily continue our ritual of drinking too much and beating the crap out of each other on wii boxing. Our old landlord never said anything to Luc about not virtually punching me in the teeth.