The Thing That Irritates Me

I was up at 3am this morning because one of the Stiletto Sisters from upstairs called.  3am phone calls freak me out.  If someone is calling at 3am I envision missing limbs (obviously not ones involving fingers needed to dial), bail requests, or a panicked voice saying, “The calls are coming from inside the house!” I don’t expect to hear a slurred voice asking me to buzz her in because she’s locked herself out.  To say I was pissed would be flat out wrong.  I was PISSED!  The Stiletto Sisters still keep up their noisy, nocturnal perambulations but now it often includes their drunken friends mistakenly ringing our buzzer, shouting in the hallway, and barking back at Dingo Girl who is also pissed at being awakened in the middle of the night. 

This is not the first time we’ve received a late night plea to let one of them in the building. It happens quite frequently. I slept through their last drunken escapade on New Year’s Eve because two bottles of champagne tend to make me sleep rather soundly.  Mr. Dingo however was the one to field the 4am buzzer at the intercom.  He calls the Stiletto Sisters Thing #1 and Thing #2 because he can’t tell them apart.  With their identical flat-ironed brunette hair, spray on tans, and noses undoubtedly sculpted by the same plastic surgeon for their Sweet Sixteen, they are virtually identical. So he’s not sure whether it’s Thing #1 or Thing #2 who rang the buzzer New Year’s Eve and who, when admitted to the apartment building, proceeded to punch the walls, curse loudly, and slap herself for almost an hour. 

At first, Mr. Dingo thought she was being attacked and, ever the hero, prepared to go to her rescue.  A quick look through the peephole, however, showed that the only person she was fighting was herself.  For almost an hour she slapped and punched herself until Thing #1 (or was it Thing #2?) came home to let her into the apartment.  If this were a movie, she’d be cast as Jim Carrey in a wig doing his worst “oh no, I can’t stop hitting myself in the face and falling down!” shtick. I wish I had seen it.  That’s probably the one time I would not have had to photoshop a picture; I would’ve posted video, y’all.

But there was no such amusement last night.  I answered the phone with my heart racing, “Are you okay? What happened?” She was okay.  Just locked out.  I was not pleased. I would have been more understanding if she had said that her-head-was-attached-to-her-neck-by-a-tiny-piece-of-sinew-and-I-really-hate-to-bother-you-but-could-you-let-me-in-so-I-can-get-some towels-to-wipe-up-the-bloody-mess-on-the-landing? If that had happened, I would have been very gracious.  I would have opened the door as she passed by my apartment and handed her a bottle of OxyClean and a mop. 

But no.  It wasn’t anything Faux News worthy.  She’d just forgotten her keys.  Again. I snapped the phone off and buzzed her in.  Of course, by then I was wide awake, fuming, and couldn’t get back to sleep until hours later.  You know, about the time that Dingo Girl was ready to go for her morning walk.  Since Mr. Dingo was feigning sleep, I did what any self-respecting doggy mama would do.  I bribed her back to bed with treats and toys and slept for an hour.

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