The short version--updated

The main impetus for our urge to look elsewhere is that our our upstairs neighbor, who used to be annoying and kind of farcical, has now gone completely off her high-and-mighty Harvard professor rocker and is edging toward unbearable. As in, should be living in a single family house, NOT a condo where you share space with other people. My impression was always that academics could be reasoned with, but I've since learned (and been told by my favorite academic), that this is not true. She's perfectly content to pull shit that is patently false, such as insist that her leaky gas line be paid for by the entire house because "it's a safety issue" (hello, do you not understand the way condo assessments work?) and make intrusive, offensive claims, such as that her unit is being polluted by tainted air from the cat boxes in our basement and it is "affecting the quality of her life." Never mind that she is happy to stomp on our heads at 6am, midnight, whenever she decides to forget that her living room is directly over our bedroom, despite the fact that we have asked her repeatedly, politely, and reasonably to be more considerate. Or that the place she says her unit smells like cat is in her bathroom, where the previous owners stored their cat's litter box. Or that our basement is three floors below her. Or that I am OCD about cleaning our cats' litter boxes because my greatest nightmare is for someone to walk into our house, wrinkle their nose, and say "Oh, you must have cats." Or that we have complied in a neighborly way with her requests to insulate pipes and block any openings that might somehow lead to her unit. Now she is threatening to fine us $5 a day for having 3 cats. True, our condo docs allow us to have one cat, but until now no one ever gave a damn. Our condo board president has a dog that is larger than what the condo docs allow, too. So really our neighbor, who I call SMTT (which stands for a nickname that is rude enough for me to keep it to myself), is just being malicious and vindictive.

SMTT is also the woman who bought a unit in a house built in 1886 and FREAKED OUT when she discovered that the house was, gasp, imperfect. That there were spots of dry rot on the exterior walls and mold in the grout of her brick walls. Lady, if you can't handle an old house, BUY NEW CONSTRUCTION. In a single family home. Where you can be a flaky control freak and mistress of your domain. Otherwise, please check your shit at the door.