Is that you Santa? No, it's just my upstairs neighbor

Click clack, click clack. From above comes the sound of hooves, or in this case shoes and paws. The apartment above me that had been empty for a couple of months has been rented. Like my apartment, I believe the management company renovated it and put in hardwood floors. I think that they forgot the soundproof layer between the subfloor and the wood though because I can hear every little fucking noise coming from up there.

It's driving me nuts! Every time the dog comes back from a walk it runs around. 10 minutes of click click click making my eyes tic. Every time the desk chair is pulled back ...screeeeeeeeecccchhhh (I guess the tenant doesn't care about scratching those nice new floors). The best is when I get the combination of Santa Baby traipsing around upstairs and my next door neighbor screaming to her friends on the phone. A cacophonic chorus of unpleasantness. But the worst, THE WORST, is that my new neighbor likes to vacuum at 2 in the goddamn morning, every morning. What could she possibly be vacuuming?? I break the thing out maybe once a month for my rug. It could be worse I suppose. The sounds have been innocent so far.

Initially I thought I was nuts and making too big of a deal about it. It's not like I live in a monastery -- I can make noise at times too. I put on my MP3 player to sing, dance and jump around like a madwoman for pete's sake. But when two of my boys who are also Manhattannites came over and commented on how loud it was, I knew I had a legitimate complaint.

My boys had good suggestions - try talking to the neighbor and mentioning that the former tenants had rugs and it worked out well. Ask her if she's considered felt pads for her furniture. And politely mention that as a dog lover I respect a dog's need to chew a rawhide and fetch, but the constant clip clopping of paws and plopping of said rawhide proves quite annoying to your neighbor down below.

Coincidentally, I ran into my new neighbor at the building's entrance. And she is quite nice. I didn't realize it was her until the very end of our conversation so I was unable to mention the issue. It's not like I blame her personally -- she probably doesn't even know it's an issue. And my management company? They're less than sympathetic.