Petty? This was probably petty, but I can’t state it wasn’t effective! I lived in a ground floor apartment for about five years. A neighbor moved in above me for approximately six months. She was quite the noisy night owl! She slept during the day, and around 10PM the music would be cranked so high my ceiling would vibrate. She often had people over too, loud rowdy guests screaming, laughing, fighting, sometimes very loud sex (the woman was a screamer). This would go on until about 5AM then everything would start to quiet down, and the day was silent - I couldn’t hear a sound coming from the apartment above. So she was obviously sleeping. When she first moved in it was just occasionally, but then it became almost every night.

She only lasted six months. All the neighbors with adjacent apartments were complaining about her to the landlord. I approached a couple times asking her to keep it down: that only fueled her to be even more clamorous, and loud.

I was getting pissed.

Finally I had had my fill when my daughter Maggie, newborn son Gabriel, and I were kept up almost all night. I had to let Maggie stay home from school and sleep. I know I could have called the police, but I went another route.

The next night was no different… At around 4AM things started to quiet down. My bedroom was right below her bedroom. I got all my blankets, sheets, pillows, and towels, piling them up on my bed until the mound was almost touching the ceiling. I plugged my CD player in with an extension cord, placing it on top of the pile with the speakers facing and almost rubbing up against the ceiling, which was her bedroom floor. With another extension cord I plugged my alarm clock in and added that to the top of the pile.

I got ready to spend the day away, put the kids in the car. Returned to my apartment put this CD in: “Significant Other,” by Limp Bizkit … This should give you an idea of what that was like for her. Turned the volume all the way up!

Followed by this song and so the album played on!

I set my alarm for 30 minutes thus just when the music stopped the alarm clock would go off. I didn’t go home until about 9PM. When I got home the alarm clock was still going off! I hardly heard a peep from her after that and she moved out a couple months later.