Chemical Warfare

So, we have these neighbors downstairs who are really heavy smokers. I'm pretty sure they do it for a living, with lots of overtime, because I actually only ever see one of them with any regularity. There's four of them, and the only reason we know that is because Bobby saw the other three move in. Four adults, squashed in there like sardines. It's a pretty sketchy situation.
Anyway, they're heavy smokers. We've been having some trouble with their cigarette (and cigar) smoke creeping up into our home, and making it smell.
We used to have problems with them playing really loud music with a lot of base, so it was like a giant, irregular, heartbeat coming through the floor and filling our home with "thump thump thumpty-thump-thump." (psychological warfare?) We talked to them (which had no permanant effect), and then complained through the association to the homeowners (yep, these guys are renters. Who would rent to these people?! Relatives.) That had a more lasting effect.
But now there's this smoke, and while there are rules about noise and music, there are apparently no rules about smoking so much that it fills your upstairs neighbors home.
Well, the whole thing came to a head last weekend, when from Saturday to Monday they locked themselves up and did nothing but smoke pot. As rank as the regular tobacco smoke was, it was nothing to the absolute vileness of the marijuana smoke. I had every fan in the condo running, our sliding glass door open, trying to get rid of it. It was so bad, when I got home from church on Sunday, as soon as I opened the door the smell wafted out. It was as if they were in our home smoking. If a cop had come over to our house, I wouldn't have know what to say.
I kept trying to figure out what I could do. Bobby said the homeowners association would have to make a rule and vote on it before we could complain through them, and he said the cops couldn't do anything unless there was some other law they were breaking (i.e. selling pot, torturing bunnies) because smoking pot was only a secondary offense (the guy watches a few episodes of Dragnet and suddenly thinks he's an expert. No, I'm kidding. Sort of.)
By Monday afternoon, I was so nauseated, and so worried about Mabel (inhaling second hand pot smoke can't be good), and so dang furious, I called the police station, to see if there was anything they could do. I had given them all of the neighbors' information and all of mine before I realized she was sending officers (I guess to inform them of the complaint?) I was like, "Err, can I be anonymous?" which is precious little good, because I'm pretty sure they've got a fair idea who complained.
Anyway, when Bobby got home he said he saw a couple of cops in the parking lot, so I guess they did their duty. And our condo smelled okay for the rest of the day.
But yesterday, it was like they decided to "get even" by smoking as much as humanly possible. They must have smoked ten thousand cigarettes from dawn to dusk to dawn, which must have cost them a lot of money. And the house stunk, although it was not as bad as the marijuana smell. I told Bobby, they can't afford to do this too often; it's too expensive, and they aren't exactly rolling in the dough.
Sure enough, the next day: today, our home has smelled fine. They must have spent a week's worth of cigarette money yesterday (and disabled their smoke alarms). It is, in it's way, the stupidest kind of revenge--the quintessential "biting your nose to spite your face." Really, you spend a bunch of money to get yourself that much closer to lung cancer and a miserable death, so you can stick it to the upstairs neighbors with a one-year-old kid. Obviously it's that kind of brainpower that gets you living like a cockroach in your own filth, holed up with three other cockroaches, pouring all the money you have into Painful Death stock.
Was that a rant?