Bye, Bye, Olga

Olga was our downstairs neighbor for almost three years. I remember the day she moved in. It was the evening of Good Friday. It seemed that her boyfriend of the instant had moved them into the place while she was out of town. She arrived and started screaming at the top of her voice the minute she arrived in the building, swearing and throwing her belongings in the hallway. I went out and asked her what was the problem and she told us that she was "expressing herself". I'm all for self expression, as long as it doesn't interfere with others, but in this case, the calm of the building was destroyed. Until now.

She infringed on us in a myriad of small ways. She played the same phrase on the piano, in a minor key, over and over and over. Many times at 2 or 3 AM. Then, she would bang on the keys and slam the cover closed and start to scream.

Many of the things she did violated the rules of the building, including leaving a lot of "stuff" in the hallway and posting her photo (above) on the front door. She had so much stuff outside her door that I had to kick it out of the way to pass. Shoes, a baby stroller, boxes, a small table, a motorcycle chain, grocery cart, umbrellas. It was a hazard for everyone, yet no one complained. For awhile, she left her baby stroller in front of the ground floor apartment, blocking their door plus the door to the cave.

One of the most annoying things that she did was to install a flood light on the kitchen window ledge. It pointed up and flooded our kitchen with light. Terry tried to stop them when they were installing it and got into a verbal tit-for-tat with the (new) current boyfriend. Terry accused her of being Russian and the boyfriend accused us of being American. Hmmm, kind of embarrassing, now that I think about it.

So, her stuff was all over the hall, her photo was on the door, her piano was clanging and her light was illuminating our apartment. Oh, I almost finished this post before I described the plants. She put huge planter boxes filled with tall climbing plants on every window. In the winter, she covered all the plants with white material. No one complained.

She smoked, holding her cigarette out her window, so the smoke wafted into our open window. I started leaving that window closed to avoid dying prematurely of second-hand Olga smoke.

Now it's all gone. She left while we were gone and the new people are calm and quiet.