I am in the same situation with my upstairs neighbors. I have a pet myself, a cat. She is older so is pretty chill and when she does feel like playing I do so with her in the carpeted room to avoid disrupting my neighbors. I also often take her on walks to the coffee spot or to friends (yes you can do this with cats and no I am not a weirdo I swear!) But my above neighbors got a young rottweiler in a studio apartment in a city area with no safe parks super nearby. The dog is out of control, I have seen it and it jumps all over you (sign of bad training). As a pet owner myself, it breaks my heart to see the neglect. Pets are responsibilities! They should not have got this dog, sorry. I would love to have a dog but I travel too much and cant afford a house with a yard (I too would prefer a large dog) and do not agree that it is okay for large dogs to be confined to apartments unless you plan on having the time to take it outside for a log walk everyday since you do not have a yard. So I have my cat. They never take the dog out, it's so sad. They take it out to pee across the street and that's it. It runs around the apartment and they use a hard ball that I can hear rolling from one side to the other, this is about 8 times a day by the way. Now I understand with covid, working from home has caused these issues meaning I would not be bothered as much perhaps if I was at the office more. But I disagree that I should have to live with this, it has caused me to have a lack of sleep and is taking a huge toll on my mental health. Not to mention that often it occurs during important zooms and even they can hear it! So I have had to mute myself. I can't afford to move again, and I should not have to. Also angry at them because irresponsible pet owners are the reason pets get banned in the first place. So sure understand your point about not taking it out on the animal as I don't want to see it at the shelter but that doesnt mean its fair on us to have to deal with their neglect.

Problems like this often occur with laptops because, while typing, you can accidentally brush the touchpad with your thumbs. If you go into Control Panel / Mouse, there is usually a setting to disable the touchpad temporarily. On my laptop I have a setting that allows the touchpad to be automatically disabled whenever an external mouse is plugged in. That way I still have the mouse function, but not the annoying jumping around problem you describe. If you need more info on how to get to these settings, just ask. Good luck.

Can I make a couple of suggestions? Rather than outright removing the roses that you do not plan on keeping, that instead offer cuttings to people who can root and donate to future rose sales. And then track and share just how those bushes handle no watering. Maybe we can use the drought to find out if some roses are tougher than others and can stay relatively dormant during the dry season. They may not bloom or look great, but I think it would be valuable information for all on how rose handle the drought. Kitty, not sure which spring bloomers you have, but I found I had not put the big Felicite Perpetue on the drip system when in September she started loosing leaves. I still have not put her on it, am going to leave her off since she made it last year, is really growing like mad and she is happily blooming away. I am very curious to see if once bloomers are really the way to go in droughts for the future.

I use a rubber/nonslip drawer liner underneath the machine to prevent it from sliding around.