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!