Bad Vibrations

I have lived in apartment buildings all my life. I’ve never had the experience of living in a home that belonged to me or my family where only they lived beneath my feet. And I’ve always been being told to live my life worrying about what I do will affect the people who live beneath and on either side of me. “Don’t run.” “Don’t walk too hard.” “Turn your radio down.” “Stop jumping around.” “Lower your voice.” We wanted to be considerate and courteous neighbors. Our neighbors upstairs weren’t exactly trying to do the same and actually seemed that for the 28 years I lived there, they would always have a young child run the length of the apartment through out the weekdays and all of the weekends. We’d go up there and beg them to please have mercy on us once in a blue moon and they’d claim to understand our pain but would resume pretty much by the time we got back to our apartment. From what I understand, my brother who current lives there is victim to the loud living styles of the upstairs, next door AND the downstairs neighbors at this time. He’s gone to talk to them. He’s called the cops. Nothing works. And he doesn’t sleep.

With that being said, I currently live in a 4 apartment brownstone in Brooklyn. It’s a 100 year old building with hard wood floors. We are on the top floor. So we experience the spoils of nothing really making noise above us. However, we try to be mindful of our neighbor downstairs. (next door doesn’t seem to be an issue because we’ve heard them at their loudest and it hasn’t been so bad that we felt the need to bang on walls). My neighbor downstairs has been a little sensitive to our presence up here. Before we got here, the apt was on the market for about 8 months. That’s a lot of time to get used to all the quiet. When we got here, there were a couple of slight suggestions made about getting an area rug (which just wasn’t in the budget), she mentioned to the hubby that she can “hear him getting up at 5 AM for work” and most recently one day when Max-i-mus was here keeping me company on a friday afternoon, we were blasting music and singing loud and off key. At 9:15, my neighbor came up and asked us to turn it down because she couldn’t hear her own television over it all. Which is fine – but it was with a tone that implied that she was holding her tongue all this time and really? to her? we’re always loud. (When we truly aren’t).

Since on disability and able to start really moving around again, I’ve rediscovered my Wii. Yoga mostly. But as the days went on and I started to feel stronger, I wanted to incorporate more of a challenge. I started doing the stepping. Which is fine. And I WOULD do the hula hoop if it wasn’t for the concentration of movement being all around where I just got operated on. So I said… lemme try the jogging.

And I? FELL. IN. LOVE.

I LOVE IT… it revitalizes me… it makes me feel good… and I really feel that I’m working my heart and my body. It, to me? is the best exercise on the Wii.

So what’s the problem?

You guessed it – it means that I’m jumping up and down over my neighbor’s head. The hubby SWEARS I’m not making so much noise to be accused of disturbing any peace. I fear causing so much vibration that her paintings fall or her light fixtures collapse onto her head. I’m hypersensitive about it but mostly because of my upbringing coupled with the past few subtle complaints mentioned above sprinkled over the last 2 and 1/2 years.

So I turn to my blog audience… what shall I do? Do I go ahead and get my work out in and never mind her till she complains? Do I augment what I have to do for the sake of peace keeping? Does anyone know of any noise / shock cancelling pads I could purchase for the floor? I do need rational suggestions so that I can continue down the path of health and physical well being.

Thanks in advance all!

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