Today my husband and I received a... blunt... email from our downstairs neighbor. I'm including it here with my own commentary in parenthesis. For context, we live in a really old building with a lack of insulation, meaning we can hear a lot of creaks, doors and steps from all throughout the building and a bunch of our neighbors. Not unexpected from an old building and something we just deal with since we knew upon signing the lease the shit that comes with old buildings.

&amp;#x200B;

Here's her email-

"I am at a loss as to how to get you to understand the amount of noise that I have to endure daily from your apartment.  I've sent a couple emails but nothing has changed; in fact, I find it is worse. (She has sent us one email in the past and we have tried to be accommodating- walking as quietly as possible, not moving furniture or dragging anything across the floor, not wearing shoes in the house, etc).

The noise coming from your apartment wakes me up daily long before it is time for me to awake for work.  Thursday morning it was 4:45AM.  If you are scheduled to work early or whatever,  please do not disturb me before it is time for me to start my day. (Unfortunately, I have to wake up at 4:30am for work. I try to be as quiet as possible to not wake up my husband but I don't really have a choice as to when my job needs to me to arrive.)

I would also like to ask you to stop slamming your doors. (We actually never close any interior doors- save for the bathroom- let alone slam them).

Also the amount of knocking and moving around heavy objects as well as dropping them (it seems) is very disturbing.  The noise constantly frightens my dog and starts him barking as it is noise out of the ordinary. I had minor surgery a couple weeks ago and found it difficult to rest well and  recover because of the amount of noise from your apartment.   I also have overnight guests that are disturbed by the noise from your apartment. (We don't move heavy objects around and, unless we're especially clumsy people, don't drop things a disturbing amount. Also, i'm not exactly sure how we can anticipate accidentally dropping something in order to rectify this particular problem. Her dog whines a lot- we can hear him from her apartment. We've never complained because it's just par for the course living in an old building).

Please be respectful enough to understand I, too would like to enjoy my apartment.  I have a day off every other week and it would be very nice if I could enjoy being home and getting my business done without distractions of noise from your apartment, as I have been able to do in the past.  The  apartments are not well insulated and there is nothing to buffer noise, and I hear everything that happens in your apartment and I don't need to. (We can hear her too. She has loud conversations every night and again, we've never complained because we know it's an old building- there's not much that can be done).  
I appreciate your understanding that this email is to address/complain of the noise that I cannot ignore and affects my comfort in my apartment."

I'm not really sure how to to be a good neighbor to her so I plan doing absolutely nothing else to make things better (although, what I really want to do is stomp around all day every day). We've already tried to be respectful of her but at this point she is asking for the impossible. Does that make us asshole neighbors?