Everyone else's PMS... or is this some of my own?

My neighbor is majorly passive aggressive.

I also have reason to believe she is moving away soon, and therefore she might think she can get away with more crap since she's leaving anyway???

Hence the starting laundry at 11:30 PM on a Monday night. Nevermind that it's actually OUR WASHING MACHINE AND DRYER, and we're just nice enough to let her pay us a nominal fee to cover the gas & electric bill and use it, within reason, at her convenience.

I've asked her, oh, a few times, not to do laundry after, say, 11 PM. Usually she only does this when she thinks I'm out of town, since I'm a really light sleeper.

She claims she can sleep through anything, but lately she's been extremely stressed out and I think she might be sleeping more like the rest of us mere mortals. But she would never admit that, or just say simply "Hey, I'm having a laundry emergency, I promise I'll be done by midnight." For example, in this part of the world, it's not uncommon to come home late at night only to discover an infestation of rodents or bugs requiring IMMEDIATE hot water and ideally, bleach. I would totally understand if that were the case.

I'm guessing that since she apparently started the laundry and then STARTED HIDING, or worse, WENT OUT FOR THE EVENING, that it's nothing that reasonable.

I tried knocking on her door, no answer. I tried calling her cell phone, same thing. I could send an email right now, but I doubt it would do any good.

Meanwhile, the chick in my office - also wayyyyy up there on the passive aggressivity scale, and I know I've mentioned how pathologically insecure she is- is also PMSing. So I had already had enough of that crap for one day. You know the game, where everything you say is taken as being aimed at them, when it's actually not, but before you know it they're attacking you with defensive sarcastic one-liners... but you can't completely avoid talking to them, because they take that personally too and start asking why you're not talking to them...!

I didn't think I was PMSing until I realized how angry this is all making me...

There are few things that annoy me so regularly as being a girl.

And I'm finding this all particularly amusing, since over the weekend I hung out with a couple of girls, one of whom was ranting, and I mean, RANTING about how her upstairs neighbor takes a bath every night and it keeps her awake and it always sounds like the water is running forever... and I was listening to all of this and wondering why this person doesn't move, or wear earplugs, or something. I mean, she's not a dirt-poor graduate student, or a relatively poor postdoc. She's got a real job. Industry, actually, so we're talking about even more money.

In my world, real job = stop living in a ghetto. I'm not saying everyone should buy a house or get a penthouse condo or something, but when you have a real job, you can stop eating Ramen, start collecting nice dishes, and maybe have a little more choice about your neighbors. And if you're a light sleeper, like me, you'd probably pay attention to things like how noisy the building is.

Wouldn't you?

So I'm probably getting what I deserve for not being more sympathetic... but my old place was like that, with the noisy upstairs neighbors. I should have moved sooner, and my current place is, in general, a whole lot quieter. Lately. If this neighbor leaves, who knows. Could be better, could be worse.

And now I'm going to go shut off the dryer. This is getting ridiculous. After midnight, I think I'm well within my rights to just shut it off...