After a meal of pizza and beer I sat down for awhile, and had a second beer, trying to relax. My spirits lifted. The carpets were nice. There was some serious space here. It was dark and I didn't have to look out the windows at the dirt road or the ugly industrial style garage. At about 10PM a loud car horn startled me out of my car, almost spilling the beer I had just cracked open. The honk didn't stop. A beat up Red Chevy Cavalier was in the driveway, laying on the horn, with its lights and wipers on. It dawned on me that our cars were blocking the driveway. Ooops. The Cavalier was still laying on its horn. How fucking rude. I got my shoes on, while my father-in-law did the same, getting ready to move the cars for this wonderful person. The horn stopped, then immediately picked back up again.
I came outside looking annoyed, staring down the Cavalier. There was a girl behind the wheel, I motioned my arms up in a what gives sort of fashion. She opened her window enough to yell, "MOVE YOUR CARS, I CAN'T GET OUT!!" Her rudeness had taken me off guard. "Okay, you could've just knocked on the door, you know." We moved the cars, she sped past. We went inside, and had a conversation about how rude the first encounter with what was probably our new neighbor had just went. We all spent the rest of the night relaxing, then went to sleep.
I woke up at 2:07AM to the notoriously panic-inducing fast-paced beep of a car alarm. The blinking of headlights illuminated the room, emphasizing the panic. I got up out of bed, and dashed over to the window to see what was going on, praying that nothing was happening to my car. Looking outside I saw the same red, beat up Cavalier, blinking and honking out the familiar car alarm anthem. That must be my neighbor again. Twenty minutes passed, the alarm was still going strong. Johnny had woken up. Everyone in the house was up. That noise is annoying and panicky for any amount of time. Twenty minutes is torturous.
The car alarm went off for an hour and twenty minutes. I couldn't understand what was going on, or why my new neighbor seemed not to be bothered by this. Eventually it stopped In the morning, there was about six inches of snow on the ground. I was quickly beginning to notice that the "road" leading up to our driveway was completely unplowed. The half moon driveway twisting around the front of our house was also not plowed. The driveway I was fine with. I could understand having to shovel the driveway. The road was a quarter-mile long.
I heard noise out in the entranceway, so I opened the door to meet my neighbor. Whoever the rude, battle ax may be. She had that look that screamed of an alcohol or drug problem, she seemed to be nursing a hangover, severe withdrawal, or the worst case of PMS ever. She stared at me, I looked back. She was a spitting image of the Wicked Witch of the West on a drug bender. The only thing lacking was the outfit and the whole green skin thing. Two german sherpherds barked and jumped toward her door as I opened my own. Christ, is there no end to this? "Hi, I'm John your new neighbor." I said, holding out a hand. She regarded my hand and then proceeded to give me a sloppy dead-fish handshake.
Surly McDrugwitch was standing in front of me, leaning her weight onto one leg impatiently. I felt the sudden urge to yell at her. Not only had been rude as hell about the cars while we were in the process of moving in, she had left her car alarm going off in the middle of the night. I hadn't even known her 24 hours yet. But then realized I might have to deal with her awhile and held back.
"Hey, there was a car alarm going off for awhile last night. Did you hear it by chance?"
I inquired, trying to sound polite.
"Oh? No I wasn't here."the witch remarked.
"Oh, it was that Cavalier outside, must of been the upstairs people."
I back peddled. Even though I knew it was her car, and the other people hadn't moved in yet.
"That's my car." annoyance added an air of evil to her voice.
"Hey, by the way, I'm sorry for blocking the driveway last night, we were moving in and needed to get in and out."
"Your supposed to park on the grass on the side of your place." the eternal wench replied.
The dogs were trying to push their snouts between the crack in the door, they seemed angry.
"They aren't happy. The dogs had all of that room to play around when your place was vacant. Now they have to stay in just my place."
I saw red for a moment. This woman was letting her dogs run around and play in my apartment? "Was that door locked when you moved in? I might have forgotten to lock it when I got my dogs out. They are usually real sweeties, they must be mad at you."
Hold on a second. This woman has a key to my place. What is going on here?
"Oh, you have a key? Do you think I could get it?"
This conversation was getting worse and worse by the moment. She was noticeably offended.
"Yeah, I'll just uh, have to find it first."
I could tell by her response we were not going to be friendly, and she wasn't giving the key to me. "No rush, just whenever you get a chance." The witch was already on her way back inside her door. "It was nice to meet you." I said to her back, as she slammed her door.
Later in the day we went to Home Depot to procure a couple of things to make our apartment more liveable, blinds, contact paper, switch plate covers. There were a couple of switch plates that looked ugly, windows needed to be covered, things like that. Plows had cleared some of the snow on the dirt road out front, but for obvious reasons hadn't cleared it all. A huge pile of snow was built up at the end of our driveway. Getting out was a challenge, but the car made it.
Coming back from the Depot, we found it a little challenging (to say the least) to get back in. The hill at the beginning of the dirt road had become a slushy, muddy impassable mess. We made three attempts to climb the hill before succeeding. After doing some work, I got hungry and decided to go get us a pizza.
Driving to the bottom of the driveway, I lost my momentum. The Jetta's tires spun and slid on the snow and ice. I backed up, tried again. Same results. My pulse began to quicken. I tried to back up, only sliding sideways on the ice in the process. I tried going forward. The sound of spinning made my teeth clench. I got out of the car to try and see what was stopping me. A huge pile of snow had formed in front of my car. The front bumper had acted as a sort of snow plow. I was very hangry. Starvation and anger is a very dangerous combo for me. I walked back up the driveway to get a snow shovel. Walking back down I slipped and fell on a patch of ice. My tailbone hit the ground with a crunching thud. Pain shot up my spine. I dug at the car in a frenzied fashion, trying to create traction under a wheel, until I was very winded (about 2 minutes).
Then, the shovel snapped at where the plastic meets the handle. In anger I pitched it into the overgrown bush out front. I got back into the car, seeing if I was free. The car wasn't doing anything except spinning tires. For three minutes I floored it, seeing red, the tires spinning in a gripless limbo. I punched the insides of the car, throwing a tantrum that would put any toddler in America to shame. I punched the steering wheel, the VW symbol in the center dented badly. I punched the seat vigorously about ten times. I elbowed the window, luckily not breaking it. I punched the ceiling. I punched the built in sunglasses case in the ceiling, it cracked sending both pairs of sunglasses and plastic shrapnel into my lap. I couldn't breathe. Panic had taken over. Never in my life had I felt such a sheer sense of panic.
After about ten minutes of staring defeatedly at the dirt road ahead, stuck in the snow, I tried one more time. God had mercy on me and let me go. The car moved, I got the pizza.
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