Martin Marty

Never heard of him. Apparently the Institute for the Advanced Study of Religion at my alma mater is named after him. The Institute has a pretty cool little service they call Sightings that I'd never heard of but think I'll be paying closer attention to now that I just read two articles published therein.

My friend (at least I consider her my friend) Kathleen Flake's essay on President Hinckley's funeral.

An article rebutting the hate speech leveled at Mormon's during Romney's campaign.

Both well-written, respectful and uplifting. If all of their articles are of this caliber I think I may have found a new "regularly read".

Banging, cont.

So I thought the story was outstanding, but tonight it got even better.

I was on my way home from work and called to see how things were going in our sweet corporate apartment. "Well, I just said goodbye to a policeman". Hmmm. Our neighbors now called the police. Surely the police would look at the situation and realize these guys were hypersensitive, right? Nope. He watched Lucy practicing her new two footed hop and Porter running across the room and confirmed that we could indeed receive a citation for the local noise ordinance for that. Huh? This is the state that gave us Kelli Clarkson and my five year old running or my two year old learning to jump with two feet is citable? Good grief. The oppression of electric fence in Joburg suddenly feels less onerous.

So there are only a few ways to respond to this sort of thing:
1) Retaliate. Light a bag full of human feces on fire on their doorstop and run for it.
2) Avoid. Move the kids to the other apartment and pray the second floor neighbor is less extreme on that side of the building.
3) Apologize.

Guess whose ideas these belonged to. Katie won with #3 by a hair over my favored approaches. As it turns out the people below us are very nice. We had a long talk. I thought for sure he'd be some ornery, feeble old fart. Actually, they're from Brazil, had really crappy neighbors right before us and have been deathly ill. He also works at 2 am and goes to bed at 7 pm. We apologized, as did they. We'll try harder. They'll lay off the 911 for seven days so we can get out of their hair.

As always, Katie was right. I've got to believe that even cops in Texas would have appreciated the flaming poo bag though.

Banging on the Ceiling

So we have the glorious opportunity to live in a corporate apartment for the next week and a half until our house closes. Better said, we're living in two two-bedroom apartments. With six kids. On the third floor. Did I mention we checked 16 (two each) 50-pound pieces of luggage? So when we arrived in Dallas late Monday night and got to move into our new digs, you can imagine none of us were all that happy. The kids were sad to leave cousins and friends. Katie was being a cheerleader. I was the sky cap.

We grabbed take-out at Sonic and stumbled into our new piece of paradise. After eating, the guy below us starting banging on his ceiling. Apparently we were being too loud and it was too late. It was 10:30 and we weren't really doing anything. The kids were tired and eating. He resumed this morning at 7:00 am when the kids were groggily eating their Cheerios.

How long has this guy lived in an apartment on the second floor? Don't you think you probably hear noise from time to time? I can't tell whether we should start spending our time in the second apartment to give him a reprieve or start playing loud music and dancing to show him what real noise is.

It's been nine years since I lived in an apartment. I had great neighbors and a great place. Is this what I've been missing all these years? Jenny, Josh, I have newfound respect for the two of you. Just don't have kids, and if you do, make sure they don't crunch too loudly on those Cheerios.