Equation

Car alarm + ice cream truck + baby next door screaming its head off for, as of right now, 18 minutes = Hell.



Well, actually, the dogs next door barking would really make it add up to hell. So let's just call this the seventh circle.



South Philly has its advantages—low rent (we've got a two-story, three-bedroom house for $700 a month), convenient to public transportation, great pizza shops on every other corner—but then, well, there's the Hell Aspect. When you're in a rowhouse, there's about twelve inches of lathe and plaster between you and...God knows who. You can't hear everything (thank God), but barking dogs, crying children, loud TVs or music, people arguing, or, for that matter, people engaging in noisy sex—it's all right there. (I, personally, once had sex so noisy that it made the dogs next door bark. But for once I didn't give a damn about the dogs...)



Oh, hey, since I started writing this, the baby's stopped crying. But there's a dog yipping—two houses down. At least the Next Door Dogs haven't picked it up...