Hmm...

So, I'm in an interesting position. I'm not exactly a big fan of our new neighbors. I'll admit it, the initial impression that they were 'ok' is progressively getting tainted with each fight I hear thru the wall, the stream of random people coming to the door, and a myriad of other little things. I'm doing my best not to be judgemental, but it's not exactly easy. Today, as I was getting back from my walk, I paused to see if I could meet up with the manager.

The same manager who has been conspiciously absent from the premises of the apartment complex we moved into for a while now. According to the other residents it's been almost a month now and they've been unable to reach her by phone for two months. I know that for the past week since we moved in, I have had to call the owner of the complex to get a maintenance guy to come over and kill the hornets nest outside my son's bedroom window and resolve an existing drain problem. Again, I'm doing my best not to let the situation be colored by emotion or false impressions. Moving in to a place that had mold of some sort growing in the cupboards and needs a fair amount of cleaning, when I was told prior to our moving in that it was going to be cleaned, however, is making it difficult to do.

Sooo... in the midst of all this, I've been trying to get ahold of the manager to find out just what my husband and I are supposed to do about our storage unit. The storage unit assigned to us had some one elses stuff in it. That makes things a little difficult to put our things in there. As I was going to talk to the manager, however, I met up with the person who had their stuff in our unit. I then heard an interesting story about the entire situation.

That story kinda made me a little wary but it was having the big guy who lives across the complex from me (who was helping his signifigant other put some of their stuff into storage) offer to talk to the neighbors if they caused problems that made me uneasy. According to reputation, the neighbors are drug dealers and users. I generally don't have a problem with other people's recreational habits. I do my best to make the drug use of others a non-issue when it doesn't directly impact me or my own. After all, what they do to their body is their business and I've no grounds to tell them otherwise.

It was hearing about how they had been moved from one side of the complex to here on the basis of multiple complaints from their neighbors that made me mentally say 'oh? this is an interesting development.' Now, as my son is napping (theoretically napping, he's in his crib with the fan blowing on him and playing in actuallity), I sit here and I wonder just what to do. On one hand, it really isn't my concern just what these people do to or with themselves. At the same time, I've been warned multiple times over the last week that these people are a potential problem, specifically the male half of the equasion.

I've been doing my best to keep the advice of my Father in mind here. Keep my eyes open, my ears open, and my mouth shut. But I really don't know what to do with the information I'm learning. I've been told these things about the one set of neighbors immediately next to us, specifically warned that they get into loud fights and have called the police on each other multiple times, for example.

I'm finding out increasing evidence about the manager's tendancy to avoid complicated situations. To the extent where it looks like she won't come to work in order to avoid dealing with upset residents who have a genuine complaint (like that only one of the three washing machines work) and will actively avoid being available to contact by phone. I look at all of it and I see a situation where ... well... I have a bad feeling that I'm not going to be making any friends soon.

You see, unlike alot of these other people who just sigh and laydown when their legitimate complaints are ignored, I tend to stand up and start forcing the situation to get resolved. I suspect that may make me a trouble maker and several social/political enemies here. I don't like being in that situation, it's always a headache. But I can't help the burgeoning feeling of anger at this whole mess that we've seemingly landed in.

I'm trying, I'm really trying not to view it this way, but there's an increasing pile of material that's pointing it in the direction of actually being that kind of a mess. I so don't want to have to deal with an outside mess ontop of all of the domestic concerns and craziness that comes with raising a kid.