Thursday, May 03, 2007

WON'T YOU BE MY NEIGHBOR?


I think of all the people that share these horror stories about their neighbors. I haven't had much trouble really. I once had a neighbor that was so competitive that he'd ALWAYS cut his grass 1/4 inch shorter than mine. Didn't matter if he cut it the day before. It was very odd. I've also had a neighbor who shot his shotgun during 4th of July (we lived in Indiana - apparently this is normal). And I had a neighbor in university that streaked on a bike through our neighborhood. That was ... interesting. But I don't have "horror" stories per say. I do have some grievances though I'd like to share.

1) Crappy little dog two doors down who's owners let it out and bark for 15 minutes at midnight. Wanna hear something funny? Once the dog barked for 30 minutes and we looked outside and could see the owners just standing by the sliding deck door the ENTIRE time. Dog is barking it's face off, it's 10pm. Finally he lets it in and Jarrett starts to yell at him from our deck. The guy tells him he had company. So excuse me; that is a reason to let your annoying dog bark for half an hour? We hate this dog. If something unfortunate happened to him; we wouldn't be saddened. We do have a noise ordinance here after 10:00pm.

2) Crappy big motor home parked in our culdesac never leaves. Imagine this ugly thing that just sits there on the side of the street, looking heinous, and taking up much of the mobility of the area we live in. The City barely ever comes by and issues him a ticket. You are not allowed to park on the street or in your driveway. It's hard to see oncoming traffic and it's hard for oncoming traffic to see our kids playing and riding their bikes. Not to mention any delivery truck or bus can't get around this thing. If this motor home was mysteriously stolen and driven off a cliff somewhere, the neighbors would rejoice. The only reason we don't say anything is because the owner is crazy! We all hate it by the way.

3) My back neighbor likes to fry fish on her deck in a deep fryer. Apparently she doesn't like the smell of it in her house. But whether or not I do doesn't seem to be an issue for her. Swear to God true story: at 11:30 at night we were lying in bed and could all of a sudden smell fish. We looked at each other and then looked out our window. Here she was, having a fish fry on her deck!!! Of course we don't have central air, so we had to have the windows open in order to not completely fry ourselves to death. Nothing more gross than lying in bed smelling oily, stank fish.

4. Neighbor on one side of me keeps throwing chicken bones into my yard. I'm not sure why this is. I've never seen them do it, but it's hard to believe it's anyone else because of where I find them. At least I think they are chicken bones...

5. We have a plastic garbage cans for putting our garbage in. We do this to prevent the magpies from tearing open the bags and spreading the garbage around. Apparently this logic isn't shared since everyone else has plastic garbage bags. So there is always garbage everywhere. It's gross.

6. I found a fish spine in my backyard last week. Take a guess as to who it came from. I chucked it back onto her lawn (that oily fish frying skank).

7. Another neighbor two doors down owns a taxi company. He always has a spare taxi in his driveway in case of breakdowns in the middle of the night. So why does he "hang" it off the end of the driveway instead of on his actual driveway? It makes it impossible for us to back out properly (remember the culdesac).

8. We get all the garbage collected in our yard. We are the back of the culdesac, and for some reason, all garbage collects against my house. I have found a discarded g-string, numerous food and beverage containers, used condoms (ew ew ew), newspapers, fliers... you name it. I'm sick of being the resident garbage dump.

You might think I hate my neighbors and they all hate me. Believe it or not, my immediate next door neighbor is my best friend (even though her four year old son pisses all over the place outdoors - kinda gross), and we also have good friends three doors down. Maybe I just like to complain. But I figured I might as well get it off my chest. I feel so much better!

12 comments:

Tuesday Girl said...

chicken and fish bones in the yad? So gross, I would die.

tulipmom said...

I'm cracking up here reading about your wacky neighbors. Thanks for the laughs ... I needed them today.

Maria said...

Ugh. Fish smells. I can't even stand the smell of tuna fish. It just turns my stomach.

And the chicken bone line... That was a good one, Elle...made me chuckle.

Queen of the Mayhem said...

Does your neighborhood have restrictions? I just made the mistake of going to a homeowner's meeting for my subdivision. OMG! These people are looking to sue residents for jetskis in the driveway! HOLD UP!

Now, I wouldn't appreciate being the garbage dump...old g string..ICK!...but suing over a jetski? Maybe a little extreme!

BTW- I did not realize I had the speakers turned up on the computer until your song started playing...and I almost jumped out of my skin! :)

RandomEncounters said...

These are so funny! I am about to become a first time home owner and I can't wait to have my own neighborhood stories!

Mrs. S. said...

We had neighbors in a duplex we lived in for a couple of years who spoke Spanish very loudly when they were mad which was, evidently, 99% of the time. They also had frequent exorcisms where someone would make very low gutteral growling noises.. Even after all that they still got mad though. Very odd.

We weren't sad when they moved.

Em said...

Some of those are funny. Some are gross. But the chicken bones showing up in the yard...that's just creepy.

Anonymous said...

I am about to post today on a similar problem which we FINALLY got taken care of and we can FINALLY sleep at night. Read the post at my blog a bit later this morning. Haven't posted it yet.

Kim Cluney said...

Hilarious! My neighbor is, shall we say, OCD. She freaks if the kids "touch" her grass. I walk on it on purpose.....lol. So you know, when the utilities people come and paint on the grass where the lines are? she goes out there with bleach and a scrub brush to remove them......lmao

The Owners said...

Thank God I only have one dipwad neighbor. The whole neighborhood dislikes this man. I pity his wife. Her sister lives two houses down and they can't stand him either. The people who sold us this house, moved because of him. They failed to tell us that prior to the sale. How convenient :)

Sounds like your City/Town Code Enforcement Officer needs to pay a visit to your neighborhood. SOON!

Anonymous said...

Thank goodness we don't have that many neighbors!! I'm glad we're not the only ones with nieghbor issues though. I love how you handle the stuff you find in your yard - just chuck it back in theirs!

Scatteredmom said...

Ew!

We have neighbors that have nothing better to do then report you to the water police if you are watering your lawn 5 minutes over the allowed time.

Somehow I could take that better then fish, though. Although doing that would just attract the bears.