First breakdown ... sort of

It is 4:00am on Saturday morning.  I have been awake since 7:00am on Friday, after getting four hours of sleep.

Since I got home around 5:00pm, the people living upstairs have been making all sorts of noise.  For a while, it was "regular" noise.  Not the kind of noise that regular neighbors make.  I mean lots and lots of noise from the noisy people upstairs going about their normal noisy business.  That means stomping, doors slamming, stuff being dropped, etc.  Around 7:00pm or so, it started turning into Friday night noise, which involves a lot of heels on hardwood, extra door slamming, louder stair stomping, etc.  Tonight, they partied pretty hard, with music and shouting.

By about 9pm, I was kind of losing it.  I couldn't concentrate on ANY work at all, but it was also much too noisy for me to be able to relax in my room, or even go to sleep.  And I was exhausted enough to sleep.  The noise worsened and continued throughout the night.  I got a second (and final) wind around 11 and managed to get considerable work done, but not nearly as much as I'd hoped to do tonight, and I didn't get it done nearly as early.

Around 2, I got ready for bed, although I was distracted because I forgot to try on the clothes that arrived today from Old Navy (verdict: everything is pretty great, but I need to have the green dress altered a bit to make it awesome instead of okay).  Then I took my eyes out, brushed my teeth, etc. and finished getting ready for bed.  I hopped into bed around 3.  But for the past hour, I have been kept awake by noise.

I can hear someone (someones?) walking around upstairs.  I think I can hear what sounds like drawers opening and closing.  I keep hearing things ... being dropped?  And furniture being pushed across the floor.

It's keeping me awake.  I have been awake for 20 hours on 4 hours of sleep, and so I've hit the point where sleep is not going to come easily.  And I have been emotionally overwhelmed all week.  The really upsetting thing, honestly, is that if it weren't for my upstairs neighbors, I would have had a quiet, productive evening.  I would have finished early enough to ice my legs,* which are very, very badly swollen, and I would have been able to get to sleep before I hit the insomnia point.  I'd wake up tomorrow, probably not feeling refreshed, but definitely feeling good enough to get some work done after my haircut appointment.

But instead, I'm crying, I'm shaking, and I'm dealing with all of those awful feelings that come with being completely out of control of a situation.  So that's fun.

Because of the layout of my apartment, and my current state, it's not feasible to knock on the door and demand that they shut the fuck up.  Instead, I have had to resort to knocking on the ceiling with a crutch.  It has not been remotely effective, which is just peachy.

A friend of mine suggested I call the police with a noise complaint.  I don't want to do that right now because the noise is so "minimal."  That is, at this point, whatever noise they're making, it appears to be "evening winding down" noise, and having the cops come over and telling them to shut the fuck up wouldn't help because they would still be noisy.  If tonight (ugh, see, this is why I hate being up so late) is as bad as this past night, though, I will gladly call the cops.

I know that as a graduate student, I will be expected to party and drink frequently.  And anyone who knows me knows that I enjoy both partying and drinking.**  In fact, for the first six months of this year, I drank considerably and spent nearly every weekend either at a party or a club (weekends where I wasn't?  I was drinking!).  But one thing has remained constant: this apartment has been quiet.  No one has parties here.  No one has big loud get-togethers.  And when people stumble in drunk at odd hours of the morning, you don't hear anything.

Up until the end of July, the upstairs apartment was the same way.  Now, it's pushing all of us past our breaking points (I guess I'm just the winner of that race, now).  This would be unbearable enough if I were still working at the lab as a tech.  As a graduate student ... well, maybe it's because it's 4am and I'm a wreck, but is there a term that surpasses "unbearable?"

* I can't ice my legs overnight very easily.  Not only does it keep me awake, but the ice packs usually end up shifting off of my calves.  And then I wake up with four warm ice packs.

** Enjoy is an understatement.  I have a bag of nips in the fridge labeled "Emergency Booze."