Crickets

I said I'd tell you about the crickets, and today shall be the day to tell that tale.

One day I was doing something in the apartment when I thought I heard the sound of crickets. No....not crickets, a SINGLE cricket. Odd....you usually hear them all together, not individually. And not usually so loud. Then dawned on me. It's coming from INSIDE the house!

My husband and I went on the lookout, trying to hunt down the cricket. We eventually got it cornered, but unfortunately, we couldn't reach it...with anything...at all. We'd have to wait until it came out in the open.

So we waited....

And waited....

..........waited.

It was late and we wanted to go to bed, so we thought 'screw it...we'll take care of it in the morning'. So we turned off all the lights, got into our pajamas and crawled into bed.

Funny thing about crickets....they're most active at night.

We had quite a bit of trouble getting to sleep. Every few seconds there was that individual cricket sound that sounds  a wee bit like a whistle...or train whistle even. It was loud, obnoxious and persistent. I finally got some sleep, but was again awoken by the sound of the cricket. This time it was louder.

I got up to go to the bathroom, and there was the cricket. Making it's chirping sound in the most echo-y part of the apartment, making the most noise it can possibly make. An epic battle ensued in which I finally won, captured the little cricket (I couldn't kill it) and threw it outside.


....


The cricket came back the next day. Sadly, the cricket lost that battle too and this time I was far less merciful.

Taps

I live in a cheap apartment. It's very inexpensive, utilities included, on a bus route, so I let a bunch of things slide. Like the fact that it's in the scariest neighbourhood in the city, or that the whole place is shoddily built. The biggest current concern, however is our leaky tap. It's the one in the kitchen and it's been leaking since day one. We complained to the landlord when we first moved in but nothing was done about it so we've just been trying to deal with it. The leak now has gotten so bad that it's a constant stream of scalding hot water that we have to place 'just so' so the stream of water hits the side of the sink which minimizes the sound of it. But that is nothing compared to its worst feature.

Every so often, it will be nice and quiet in the apartment and then all of a sudden, I'll hear a sound...

I don't know what exactly it's all about, but the tap makes a super high pitched 'ee' sound that is similar in quality to an old TV. Sometimes merely moving the faucet slightly makes it stop. Sometimes you have to turn it on and then off again. But it always happens when the people in the apartment next to us use their tap.

This is just one of many reasons why I've been cultivating a strong hatred of the neighbours. But I'll save that list for another post.