Hi, there, Dear Reader. It’s late morning here in New Hometown, Florida on Monday, June 7, 2021. Presently, the temperature is 80˚F (26˚C) under partly sunny skies. With humidity at 45% and the wind blowing from the southeast at 5 MPH (10 KM/H), the feels-like temperature is 78˚F (26˚C). Today we can expect partly sunny skies and a high of 92˚F (33˚C). Tonight, skies will remain partly cloudy, and the low will be 73˚F (23˚C). The Air Quality Index (AQI) for my area is 31, or Good.

Last night I tried to go to bed early – early for me being at 10:30 PM, since I usually stay up past 11 and try to watch documentaries or the odd drama on either Netflix, Disney+, or Amazon Prime Video – but the Caregiver’s middle son kept me up till the wee hours of the morning moving heavy objects up in his above-the-garage loft and stomping up and down the stairs.

I don’t know – or care – if J had a bunch of his friends over to game or if he was moving furniture around up there. It’s none of my business and J is a young adult who can have friends over if he wants.

What irks me, though, is that J seems oblivious to the fact that his activities are noisy and that they keep me from getting a good night’s rest.

I mean, seriously. Does he not hear how loud his footfalls are when he runs up and down the flight the stairs to his loft, which is the size of a one-bedroom apartment and used to be the domain of the Caregiver’s older son, D, until he moved out – temporarily, anyway – in 2015.

J is neither deaf nor stupid; he’s a bright, hard-working, and responsible young man. And he is a nice person – just a bit self-centered and always in a hurry. Yet, as she does with his siblings, his mother does nothing to encourage him to be more considerate of others. Especially when it comes to loud noises in the middle of the night.

In my 58 years on the third rock from the Sun, I have lived in several multistory apartment buildings under a wide array of circumstances. Twice in Bogota, Colombia when I was a little boy between the ages of three and nine, twice in Miami whilst we were waiting to move into the two houses Mom and I owned there, and once in Seville, Spain, when I participated in the Semester in Spain study-abroad program in the fall of 1988.

In all those instances, I always ended up living in an apartment with another one above. Noise from the people upstairs was always a problem. It’s one of the reasons why I dread moving out, too, as living in an apartment on the bottom floor usually comes with a host of other issues, as well.[1]

Eventually, J stopped making a racket upstairs and I was able to get some sleep, but I don’t think I slept enough. I have a mild but nagging headache, my eyes are tired, and – sadly- I am more than a bit grumpy.

Ugh. I could, of course, tell the Caregiver what happened last night, but she’s the kind of mom who wants to be liked rather than respected, so all I will accomplish is to start an argument and – likely – become even less liked by the family than I am now. Past experience has taught me that in a dispute that involves a woman, her kids, and a third party, nine times out of 10 the mom will side with her offspring. And since I don’t relish the idea of moving because of the “better the Devil you know than the one you don’t” concept, this is not the hill I am willing to die on.

Ugh. Today is not going to be a productive day. Even writing this blog is taking more out of me than normal, so I can tell that unless I feel better after I take a shower and get dressed in “street clothes,” my best bet to survive is to get as much rest as possible.

In Other News

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you probably remember that I am expecting two new – and pricey – Blu-ray box sets:  the newly digitally remastered for high-def Blu-ray reissue of Baseball: A Film by Ken Burns and the 4K UHD Indiana Jones 4-Film Collection. They will be released tomorrow, and depending on certain variables – such as when Amazon ships them and where they are shipped from, they should arrive at our doorstep by Thursday.

If – as Amazon sometimes does – my shipment is sent tonight from, say, Davenport, Florida, there is still a chance that I might get those box sets tomorrow. Monday is still young, so if Amazon sends them out this afternoon or by the early evening from a nearby warehouse, they could arrive on Release Day.

If not, well, Amazon sometimes gives itself a big enough window for deliveries, especially for highly anticipated items such as the Indy 4K Blu-rays. I have seen this sort of estimate before – Amazon will say Arriving Thursday in its track-your-order page and lo and behold – the order arrives on Wednesday.

I’m not worried about it. I have the Indy movies on DVD and HD Blu-ray, and I also own the 11-disc Baseball set on DVD, so it’s not like I can’t watch them now. If by some chance they are delivered tomorrow, great. If not, I can wait till Thursday.

Oh, and my copy of the Billy Joel Greatest Hits, Volume I & Volume II songbook arrived, on schedule, yesterday.

Well, my friend. I think I’ll close for now. I’m still not feeling at my best, and I need to eat something before I take my shower, shave, and get into fresh clothes. So, until next time, stay safe, stay healthy, and I’ll catch you on the sunny side of things.  

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[1] For instance, when I had a pet-sitting gig in the early 2000s that entailed going to my client’s ground floor apartment at a – relatively – nearby apartment complex to take care of his cat while he was away working on a cruise ship, I often found that his kitchen sink was clogged. No one was using it – his cat was smart but did not turn on the tap – so it couldn’t be a problem caused by someone in that apartment. Instead, the clogs were caused by the people upstairs who dumped cooking fat, coffee grounds, and other nasty debris into the drain in their kitchen sinks. I don’t remember how many times I had to  call my client’s elderly mother to tell her that the sink was clogged and that she needed to call the plumber to fix it. Ugh.