[life] Grumpy old woman

So, we own one half of a duplex and my brother in law owns the other. He used to live there, but moved out after he broke up with his fiancee - who stayed in his half and now lives there with another couple and pays him rent. It's a long story, and illustrates how very forgiving and giving my brother in law truly is.

Anyway. One half of this couple is in a band. For a short period they had rehearsals in their basement over there - which is seperated from our basement by a wall with the approximate sound-baffling qualities of a threadbare sheet. They tried to be civil about it, but I still felt a bit assaulted by the way that only the base and the beat would come up through the floorboards in my office, just loud enough to make my eardrums vibrate irritatingly. It would almost have been better if we could have heard the whole of the music. They apparently found new rehearsal digs and moved the drum set out. One guy practicing guitar is easier to overlook, although I still find any noise that I don't choose to be irritating.

I come home early from a visit out to the in-laws, settle in to a quiet evening, and suddenly bambambam bam! The drums have made a return engagement. WTH. It's ten at night on a Sunday. Granted it's the long weekend, but still.

Part of me feels enraged, because this qualifies as an invasion of privacy, to my mind. I want to say, you can't practice in the basement, it annoys me no matter what. The other part of me feels like I'm auditioning for the harridan in a head kerchief who comes after the fiesty young heroes with a broom. I'm 29 for gods sake, I don't want to be all "get off my lawn!" just yet.

I can't wait to get into a real, actual house, where the only people on the other side of the wall are in my immediate family. I think that someplace out in the country, with about an acre of land, is going to be the final solution. This current state of affairs stresses me out.