The situation has degenerated.  We are making alliances.  This is war!  I'm not talking about the Middle East or Russia and Turkey or anything like that.  This is us against the insane upstairs neighbors!  Either they had been keeping it down a bit or we had simply grown accustomed to the noise of arguing and vacuuming and singing ballads.  Other than some head shaking and the occasional  “Shut up!” yelled at the ceiling, life was relatively calm.  But last week there was a real screaming match one night and GP had to telephone and tell them to cool it.  Then this past weekend there was a first.  A battle WHILE she was vacuuming.  Double whammy.  Then a couple days ago the kid had a friend over.  (They must have paid him, the “friend”, to visit.)  PC, (we call him pig-child), argued with HIM all afternoon, and then started off on his parents.  The arguing intensified though the evening and by the time I got to bed they were screaming.  And I mean SCREAMING.  The kid was hysterically raging around their apartment and his parents were hollering and then they must have tried to subdue him because he started yelling. “Get your hands off me!” and “Help, Help you're suffocating me” and “This place is filled with crazy people!”   The kid was seriously flipping out.  This was now about 11pm.  Grace was trying to sleep and we wanted to go to bed but it was impossible.  GP stomped out to bang on their door, (they wouldn’t hear the phone over the racket).  All of the neighbors had gathered into the hallway and they were discussing what steps to take when there was a huge slamming of doors and then silence.  We heard PC in his room playing with whatever the hell it is he plays with on his carpetless floor til all hours of the night.  The kid doesn’t sleep.  There is obviously some serious issue with him and he’s getting BIG so scary.  The next morning GP wrote a note and taped to the front door of our building where everyone will see it.  It says something along the lines of;

To the inconsiderate neighbors on the 2^nd floor.  Thank you for the circus show last night.  In the future we would appreciate a little more tranquility in the evening.

Then he went to the police.  He didn't files a complaint so much as an official heads-up.  This way in the future if it gets out of hand again all we do is call the cops and they have a file on the family.  Had they even once apologized or acknowledged the issue we wouldn't be so pissed off but nary a word from them.

On another note...I don't know why they even bother to have right of ways and stop signs and traffic lights in this country.  It's a frickin free-for-all!  I practically got myself killed driving home from the supermarket just now when some old fart drove across the road in front of meet with in feet and never even bothered to look.  

Cooking dinner for the MIL tonight.  She is home from knee rehab and doing fine.  She'll probably out live me.  SHE doesn't have to drive here!  xxoo me