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Of course, it was completely fine if she wanted to make noise herself and she did exactly that many a time, which brings to mind a wake up call my boyfriend received one morning in the form of this woman swinging windchimes around in the basement, talking to herself and sobbing. Speaking of wake up calls, I recall another instance where we had a friend who'd stayed the night wake up to see her standing by his bedside to "see if he was awake". We caught her once sitting in a lawn chair in the ditch at the side of the house, talking to herself and banging on an empty coffee can with a stick. She also enjoyed coming onto our young, single male friends and would come running whenever she heard my boyfriend get out of the shower, knowing that he always walked around shirtless for a few minutes while he dried off.

She and I had many an altercation in the time that I lived there and after a particularly bad one during which I threw in her face every instance where she'd stormed around the basement, screaming about how angry we'd made her, she apologized - probably the thousandth time she'd done so since we moved in - and told me that she'd been thinking about different ways to deal with her frustrations. When I inquired about her new found anger management methods she told me that from then on, whenever she got mad she was going to walk down to the beach and vent all her problems in the direction of the water because "the lake listens". Well, you learn something new every day, I guess. I'm sure she would have regaled me with even more words of wisdom much like that gem about the lake if we'd stayed longer, but thankfully we moved out after ten months, leaving her and Alcona behind for a private apartment up the road in Barrie, where we've been ever since. As much as certain things about living here annoy me - the usual issues people have about apartment building living I'm sure, including stomp-walkers in the unit above and nosy neighbours - I am thankful every single day that when I come home from work I can lock my door and know that the nutcases are on the outside, not down a flight of stairs. And let me tell you, after ten months of dealing with the psych ward in the basement, that's a very comforting thought.

Learn more about this author, Jacqueline Dodd.
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