I think my room mate might be crazy/paranoid

[harmonicon]

He just called me to ask me to be quiet, and I apologized for playing music this late at night (it's almost 4am here), but he said that he couldn't hear the music, just me either moving things around or putting things away, or something - the thing is, I've just been sitting at my desk for the last hour. Strange, huh?

[applegrove]

1. I'm sitting at my computer and making certain sounds that could be mistaken for moving things around

The floor cracks as I put weight on my feet occasionally. My chair creeks. I move my elbows around alot as I type. Could be you are making little noises that are keeping him/her awake.

[harmonicon]

2. well, yeah, that's what I told him....

I feel bad for keeping him up, but there's only so much I can do. He said that I'd been waking him up every few hours the last few nights.... how? I don't know. Really, not the faintest. Apparently my only other option would be to lie motionless during the hours when I'm in the house but not asleep.

[applegrove]

5. LOL!

[csziggy]

3. Get him a white noise machine to drown out extraneous noises

So you can lead a normal life. Some clocks come with white noise type things, BTW.

[harmonicon]

4. I think he would think something like that was me being very rude

It's a strange roommate situation already - we have separate entrances to the house and there aren't actually any rooms we share on a day-to-day basis, but he comes up here to use the washing machine, and I have keys to his (downstairs) part of the house if I need to let the gas man in or something, because that's where the meters are. He's also in the same department as me at the university here, so we see a lot of each other.

Why doesn't he wear ear plugs if this is a problem? I have no fucking idea. Why doesn't he listen to white noise when he sleeps? I have no fucking idea. I would feel bad if I were being loud, but I'm not - the fact is that it's a shitty old house without much insulation, and my floor boards are basically his ceiling - things are going to be heard between the floors no matter what. That is, there are reasons why his place is literally 1/2 the rent of comparable places around town.... it's like he can't get that in his head - this house is cheap for a reason, or many reasons.

I'm kind of at my wit's end about this.... he could just move if it's so awful, but he says that he's planning on staying in the place for at least another year. Is he trying to drive me out or something? If it's so bad, does he really want to be woken up every night for a year just to save on rent? Apparently not, because he complains about it. I just don't get it.

[undeterred]

6. I think you just said the problem: old floorboards

If there is no rug down to cushion the noise, that makes it even worse. In my last old apartment in Chicago it would drive me nuts when the person upstairs came home late because she walked around with her shoes on in the bedroom above mine. I am a very light sleeper and it felt like she was walking on my head. I couldn't hear voices or music, but every step she took was painful to my ears.

I asked her to please take her shoes off when she came home at night. She thought it was a lot of nerve, but when I described to her how I could hear every step, she agreed to it and my life in that apartment was much better after that. Putting a rug down would have really helped too.

[csziggy]

7. Maybe give him one as a gift? Or tell him you heard someone talking about how noise travels

in old, rickety houses and that someone mentioned the use of a white noise machine. The rug suggestion is a good one, too. You can often get carpet remnants for not a whole lot.

[DS1]

10. I can't do ear plugs

it gets so quiet my ears seem to turn up the gain, and the ringing it amazing. Plus, if I do get to sleep, I wake up in a panic because I can't hear anything going on. Weird.

[kayakjohnny]

8. Smother him with a pillow while you still have a chance.

What? Did I say that? What I really meant was, "Some other pill low for him while you still have this dance". Wait, that don't work. Maybe I meant the original thing. Now I feel crazy/paranoid. Oh, this just isn't helping anyone.

[harmonicon]

9. this seems like sound advice

it would never work though, because he apparently is woken up "every hour" by my incredibly disruptive tasks such as walking 5 feet to take a leek, making a cup of coffee, shifting my weight in a desk chair, etc. He would hear me coming a mile away.

[Inchworm]

11. omg, you have mice!

Get thee to a cattery (err, a shelter) and get a new kitty! :)

:hi:

[harmonicon]

12. we do have mice

I know this, he knows this. ugh....