Guessing Game

Sit here listening to neighbor John's noises playing a guessing game. Whatever can he be doing to make so much noise, so often, for such long periods of time.

Tonight, May 29, 2012, I thought maybe he is rolling marbles across his kitchen floor. The noise does not sound like marbles, but might explain the sound. Aha, maybe he plays dice, rolling them against the kitchen wall. Heard him talking to someone earlier. Might have been on a telephone.

Maybe he has a cabinet next to our connecting kitchen walls; rummages through it or drawers looking for a pot or a lid, shoving stuff aside, as he searches. He could not possibly be rearranging cans on shelves, could he? Putting away groceries?

I know one of the noises was him taking the wheels off the bike he now has chained to fence in front of side entrance gate. Why there would be that much noise doing so is beyond me.

The good news is Tweety gone, the loud music and television late at night has mostly stopped. Yet I still get down the moment I hear noise coming from his apartment. Like today making an awful racket for an hour, followed by, I assume cooking, followed by rolling marbles across the floor. Silence only to be started up again an hour or so later. A different noise that  then previously.

It is just noise, I tell myself, yet bothersome. It is like someone in the other room disturbing my peace even though I live alone, not in a house with other residents. I have lived in houses with other people and have never heard anything like this constant racket he makes.

I have also lived in complexes identical in construction to this one and have never heard an adjoining neighbor make those kind of noises. Only occasional sounds coming from the person or people next door. I know part of the noise was cooking because I smelled it. Not the first time. That does not make sense to me, unless he had his door and/or kitchen window open and the smell wafted in through my open windows.

I used to think someone was BBQing. Looked in courtyard, then out back. Nada. I know prior neighbor, Corey would cook spaghetti on Sundays, yet no recall of smelling any of his cooking. Strange.