...my horrible, teeth-gnashingly evil neighbors.

I have learned to hate my neighbors. Before I just thought they were stupid stoners who I could easily enough ignore, but now I know differently.

They are evil.

They are hateworthy.

Backstory:

Starting Wednesday, I began to develope some sort of mouth pain. At first I thought it might be caused by my wisdom teeth cutting into my gums, or something caught back there, or little gnomes poking at my molars...something like that. I wasn't quite sure what the problem was, but I definitely wished the stupid, useless wisdom teeth would just go ahead and evolve away already. Now I think that maybe I strained my jaw or something because it really just hurt when I chewed and got better after I rested my jaw for a bit. But really, the cause of the pain is irrelevant. The point is it hurt like hell at night. And so Wednesday night I slept very little. I did lots of:

• tossing
• turning
• popping Aleve
• applying Ambesol

but very little actual sleeping. So by the time Thursday night arrived I was very, very tired.

Middle Story:

(this is where the action happens)

It's now Thursday night. So what you should go ahead and imagine is that I am trying to fall asleep through lots and lots of pain (tossing, turning, moaning...can you picture it?). I can't find any way to get comfortable and my jaw is killing me. Finally, about 11 o'clock (maybe that's early to you, but I get up before sunrise) I figure out that my jaw doesn't hurt if I let my mouth hang open like a 12 year old seeing his first Playboy. Maybe not the best look, but the pain was not so bad like this and I finally fell asleep.

So this is me:

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

when I get woken up at 2 am by screaming and laughing. Ha ha, no problem guys, I'm hip. It's just a bunch of kids having a good time, except that it sounds like it's in my kitchen. My evil, evil neighbors are having a party (and on a school night!) and it has drifted over to our side of the porch (because, you see, like with most Chicago apartments, we share a porch). And so now the Wife and I are unwittingly hosting a party that we weren't invited to.

So I turn on the lights to put some pants on (I think bad things would happen if I yelled at the girls while pantless), but as soon as I turned on the lights they scuttle away like little cockroaches. And so that problem was solved. Or so I thought...


I went back to bed, got all settled in and tried to get the cat to stop being annoying. Finally, about a half hour later, the cat stops head butting me and purring and I can get some sleep. I almost drift off and...

gah! One of the jackasses going to the party rang our door buzzer from downstairs. My thoughts were murderous, to be sure. It was going on 3 am, the alarm was set for 4:30, and I had yet to get any sleep. Gah!

End Story:

The upshot of all this is I hate my neighbors and they are evil. They spend all their day smoking pot and drinking and somehow still have money enough to pay rent on a $1300/month apartment. And I know for a fact that they only work part time. I guess it pays to have rich parents in Schaumburg. Or maybe it just turns out that dealing pays better than graduate school.

No!

Yes!