A place I call home

The neighbors upstairs are being noisy again. They're always a little noisy, but lately it's been worse. She is much smaller than him, so her feet don't make as much noise. But he thumps around when he walks, and he doesn't take his shoes off until right before he goes to bed. I can tell which room he's in at all times. And I can't understand what the heck he's doing to be pacing around as much as he does. When they wake up, I wake up - when they go to bed, if I'm already sleeping, it wakes me.

Whenever I have a moment of wanting to call up there and complain, I stop myself. The key right now if to eliminate stress, not cause more. And I'm feel confident that they wouldn't accept my phone call with kind words, or promises of no shoes in the house and no thumping around.

In these moments, I meditate instead.

Just for a minute or two. I close my eyes, breathe deeply and envision our future house. It's an Eichler home, and it's beautiful. Our neighbors aren't on top of us, and we have a garden. The atrium is nicely furnished and we eat almost all our meals there. And most of all, our lives are quiet, peaceful and fulfilling.