December 23, 2012

What a horrible day I have had. The weather was overcast and relatively warm, so the snow continued to melt from tree tops and building roofs making it look and sound as if it was actually raining.

I did two loads of laundry, cleaned up the kitchen, had breakfast and then colored my hair in relative peace until the racket from the tenants upstairs started again. I don’t know how many pieces of furniture they could be moving around or whether they’re still remodeling their flat, but I was getting sick of it. I tried tuning out the noises by listening to music, rain sounds in fact, and that didn’t help. I got a pair of my earplugs and wore them all day long to little effect.

At 6:30 pm, the sound of a drill was shrill enough to penetrate both the music filter and my earplugs and I marched upstairs again to loudly knock on their door. A young woman opened the door this time and she spoke English relatively well. She denied they were using a drill and invited me to come into her apartment, but I was already in my pajamas and had no desire to do so. The interesting thing is that the drill stopped completely after my visit.

I emailed Zarina about the incident and made up my mind right there and then to move out of this place as tomorrow is my last paid up day. I’ll have her notify the landlady that I’m going berserk with the noise and can’t take it anymore. I’ll have her review the contract to see what clause my mention penalties for breaking the lease and just deal with them.

I emailed Elvira, who had offered in the past to help me find a suitable place, letting her know to start the search immediately for I certainly don’t want to spend my Christmas break in this flat listening to the constant noise coming from other units. I could barely concentrate on the two handouts I was preparing for the workshop on Tuesday. She’s extremely efficient and almost right away wrote back with a list of apartment listings she’d found in a local website. I need to find a unit on the top floor and many of these flats were located in nine-story building with the usually unreliable elevator issue.

My sister and I had agreed to skype tonight and we had barely started our conversation when my Internet access simply got cut off for no reason whatsoever. I tried using my tablet and got a signal, so it was definitely the laptop computer that had some kind of glitch in it. We agreed to postpone the session for the following morning, my time. I couldn’t figure out how to download the Skype program to the tablet and import my contacts. I’ll save that for another day when I have more patience.

Trying to gain some distraction from my agitated state, I searched for a movie I hadn’t seen yet and found one recommended by Mathew, “This Boy’s Life”, based on the early years of the writer Tobias Wolff. It was mesmerizing movie with a young Leonardo diCaprio in it along with Robert de Niro and Ellen Barkin albeit a tad too violent at times. It certainly took my mind off the situation in the flat.

Read a little bit of “American Pastoral” while strategizing mentally as to what the best way would be to pack my belongings for the eventual move.