sucky neighbor

[draftermatt]

Thankfully I seem to live in a great neighborhood right now and haven't had any issues other than some kids using our front lawn instead of the sidewalk, but I haven't seem them lately, and we want to add a fence so they can't anymore.

When I typed this I hoped I hadn't jinxed myself, and I did.

The next door neighbor lady, her two kids and their dog all cut through my yard today.

My wife asked them to please not do it again. Of course the lady got all defensive, "we don't do it often" and "everyone in this neighborhood works together and we all do it" (Odd seeing as how the former owner told me to keep an eye on them as they'll do stuff like this)

As my wife was leaving the lady says "We'll try, but I can't guarantee anything" so my wife said "we can remedy that" (meaning the fence).

Finally living in an HOA neighborhood paid off as I contacted the President and he said he'd post it online, mention it at the next meeting & write a letter if it persisted! Woo! I'm hoping it gets dropped now, it's been quiet ever since.

And now they've got a real problem as I've decided to run for one of the open seats on the HOA board. Ha ha!

[Gurndigarn]

Neither should I. My hubby and I are moving into our own house in a month, after renting apartments for 10 years together. It's starting to freak me out a little.

As a rule, house living is much less risky than apartment living. There are fewer neighbors, and they're not as close.

[Hello Kitty]

So my husband started to trim the mimosa tree in the backyard yesterday. At least I thought it was just a trim, but today he starts up the chainsaw and cuts it down! Kinda sad, our pine died, then the acorn, and now he cuts down the mimosa. Anyway, he cut off a big piece of tree and *crash* it falls right on the fence, breaking it like toothpicks. I stick out my head and said "OOOPS". Sometimes you just gotta laugh! Luckily it's the cool neighbor side, not the sucky one. I guess it's our turn to be the sucky neighbor!

[blas]

I shouldn't have read or posted either. Cuz I forgot about where I live now.

I have to deal with psycho outdoorsman next door, who comes home around 5 pm every day, wakes me up with him slamming his door and throwing stuff everywhere.

There's Tommy Lee and Kid Rock downstairs, who are running a brothel or dealing drugs. People coming, going, coming, going.....surprisingly they always know when Mike the maintenance man will be here, so no one's here then. They have been known to grill out in their boxer shorts in the summer (and they are both disgustingly gross looking), and they've recently taken to dumping their ashtrays and empty beer cans by my car.

And of course....Sheriff! This neighborhood wouldn't be complete without the neighborhood stalker, or as I sometimes call him, The Peeper. Always looking out his window for someone outside to go talk to, he won't leave you alone once he gets you outside...............oh gosh...in the spring summer and fall it's worse because he's ALWAYS outside and always hunting someone down to bother. Add to that that he walks around with the cordless phone ready to phone the police for just about any reason!

[Primer]

Neighbors? What are these strange things you speak of?

I love living out in the boonies!

Actually, we live on the last 3/4ths mile of a dead-end dirt road. There are 4 other places beyond us, and everybody is great with the exception of the folks at the very end, and the way things are going, she should be in jail here pretty quick for a rather extended time for various physical assaults, and verbal terroristic threats against a federal judge.

Everybody on the road knows us as the folks with the cannon, and after last Saturday, they all know it's fully functional. We held an artillery school at our other piece of land up the road, and invited (almost) everybody to come out and watch. We did have 2 other neighbors come out an join us, and they sound like they may be interested in becoming regulars at reenactments. They caught the "Black Powder Fever!"

[KaeZoo]

The neighbor/tree battle reminded me of this link: Clicky Clicky.

Basically, a California couple is being forced to cut down the redwood trees in their yard, because they're blocking the sunlight from their neighbor's solar panels.

[Antisocial_Worker]

Oh let's see...

When I was growing up we had Carl, who lived across the valley from us. He liked to patrol the community looking for animals to shoot. Cat, dog, something wild -- it didn't matter. If it wasn't a person, he killed it. Everyone had animals that ran loose outside because it was the countryside. You don't keep your animals inside in the country, and we lost several cats to Carl. Plus, he poisoned our dog. The last straw came when my mother was taking a walk, and Carl, as he always did, came creeping along in his truck. He spied one of our cats, rolled down the window, and shot it with a rifle right in front of my mother, who then saw the cat crawl toward her yowling piteously.

She'd had enough. She marched to the truck, grabbed the rifle barrel and yanked the gun out through the window. This caused Carl to get out of his truck, and a shouting match ensued. The neighborhood gossip happened to be driving past just as this little exchange took place:

Carl: Honey, it weren't nothing but an old cat! It weren't worth nothing!

Mom: You ain't worth nothing either, but don't nobody shoot ye for it!

Then she threw the rifle as far as she could pitch it into a field, and in doing so, immediately gained a community-wide reputation. Everybody who knew her and her family just shrugged and said, "Aw, it's that old Hill (*the mean branch of her family tree*) coming out in her."

When Carl finally died, mom went to the cemetery not long after he was buried and danced on his grave. To this day, he was one of the handful of people she has ever honestly hated.

Now as for me, I live in a house that has two apartments stacked up behind it. We've had a neighbor in the upper apartment who was so filthy that you could smell him in my bedroom if I had the windows open, and we've had lots of people with kids live in those apartments over time. Not so bad, unless you're like me and work nights. You rue the fact that those kids are not your typical American, fast-food-addled slug-children content to stay inside and play video games until their ass cheeks spill over the edge of the sofa and hit the floor hard enough to leave dents. No. They have to be outside running and laughing and playing and being healthy at all times. It's just sick.

Of course, it's also fun when you're lying in bed staring at the ceiling unable to go back to sleep because two of the children are holding bicycle races up and down the driveway outside your bedroom window.

One shrieks, "You always win!" Tears aren't far away.

The father kneels and a Full House moment ensues.

"Well, son," he says, "that's because you give up too easily..."

You almost expect the studio audience to let loose with that sort of sighing, "Awwww..." that indicates they have collectively just seen something adorable.

But the studio audience keeps quiet because it knows what's good for it, and it also knows that you, sleep-deprived, are about two seconds away from setting fire to someone in your rage.

That being said, before too long hopefully, I'll be moving. It's a townhouse complex in a neighborhood that includes a porn store, a pool hall, several banks, a Mexican restaurant and bar, a funeral home, a bunch of factories, a coal-fired power plant, and a Lutheran church. The townhouses back up to a small swamp.

Wish me luck!

[Andara Bledin]

Ooooh.... Tell me where Carl is buried so I can dance on his grave!

^-.-^

[myswtghst]

Not so bad, unless you're like me and work nights. You rue the fact that those kids are not your typical American , fast-food-addled slug-children content to stay inside and play video games until their ass cheeks spill over the edge of the sofa and hit the floor hard enough to leave dents. No. They have to be outside running and laughing and playing and being healthy at all times. It's just sick.

I know the feeling. My building has a number of kids, who are often to be found running up and down the hallways and stairs in the building, or outside running around the parking lot when the weather is nice. Especially fun when I'm trying to sleep before work, or when I'm trying to drive without running any of em over.

[rerant]

I could write a book on sucky neighbour stories. Seriously, I don't even know where to being.
I'll give one since I'm too tired to type out more than that.

The trees

We HAD a crab apple tree and a cherry tree in our very small backyard. Now to give an idea of my backyard I live in a three-apartment building (a "tri-plex", if you will) and the back is mostly parking, with spaces for four cars. Our backyard is about 150feet wide by 50 feet deep and we've managed to maximize the space to include a small vegetable garden, a small collapsible gazebo in the summer, and we USED to have these two trees.
At one point we had a woman, her 30something year-old son and his 19 year-old girlfriend living in the middle apartment.
The son LOVED his shitty Mustang and would wash it, literally, every day.
And not just wash it, but wash it, wax it and detail it. Every. Day.
The trees hung over the parking area and birds and squirrels would, as such creatures do, make a mess from the trees.
Long story short, Mr. Mustang was tired of the cherry pits the squirrels were spitting on his car the leaves that were falling on it, and the bird droppings that were left behind.
This is the car he washed every day regardless of these messes, so logically you would assume this would be no problem.
Nope.
He bitched and moaned long enough until the landlord cut BOTH the friggen trees down.
They moved out less than three months later.

[protege]

Especially fun when I'm trying to sleep before work, or when I'm trying to drive without running any of em over.

There's a way around that. Usually, when I come home from work in the summer, the kids are always playing hockey in the street. I always slow down anyway, but sometimes, those fools just won't get out of the street. I found a sure-fire method that works. As the car is slowly moving forward, I'd pop it into neutral, and blip the throttle a time or two. That did the trick!

[MadMike]

I never had any really bad neighbors. I had one that was a nice guy, but had this annoying habit of blasting his stereo in the middle of the night, one or two that got loud sometimes, especially when they were drinking, and one that thought she was better than everyone else. Oh, and there was this one that got into an argument with another neighbor and threatened to "blow his fucking house up", but that was apparently an isolated incident. And since I bought a house in a nice area, all the neighbors seem like nice people.

My dad, on the other hand, has been living next door to a real whackjob since he bought the house when I was 5 years old. He seemed OK at first, and they considered each other friends for the first few years we lived there. Then one day, my mom told me that my dad and the neighbor got into an argument, and 30 years later, they still hate each other. I was little when it happened, and they didn't want me to tell about it, but I finally thought to ask about it a few years ago. Apparently, they let their three sons pretty much run wild (this much I knew), and the oldest was tearing around town on his motorcycle and almost ran over my great-grandma. My dad went over there and politely asked the neighbor to do something about it, and he got an attitude about it.

By some miracle, the younger two boys turned out fine, and work respectable jobs and are decent citizens. The oldest one, from what I heard, has done so many drugs over the years that he can barely function.

The father is apparently losing it more and more as the years go on. Apparently he ripped out a bunch of my stepmom's plants that he decided were too close to the property line (he's always had some sort of territorial issues), and he started putting out traps for my dad's cats, one of which got caught in one and ended up losing his leg.

I think when he kicks the bucket, my dad's whole side of the family will have to do a dance on his grave.

[Difdi]

As if that wasn't enough, don't even bother walking your dog down the street. (To them, every dog is going to shit on their grass...) Even if you're on the other side, they'll blind you with a high-powered flashlight. Karma got them one afternoon though--another neighbor's Newfie got out...and took a "power dump" on their grass

If they like to shine lights in your eyes, shine one back. There's a lot of places that will sell you a cheap (~$20) half million candlepower spotlight. If you're willing to shell out a bit of cash for vengeance purposes, you can get 1 million, 2 million, up to 3 million, pretty cheaply. The next time they shine a light in your eyes, shine one right back.

This started a series of constant verbal abuse from him, to both my wife and myself. He put up landscaping timbers along the line, and stretched a string across with with a 'NO TRESPASSING' sign. (Has the childishness of this situation started to show yet?).

You could always put up your own sign...I'd suggest something like "No bozos" or similar...

[Dreamstalker]

If you're willing to shell out a bit of cash for vengeance purposes, you can get 1 million, 2 million, up to 3 million, pretty cheaply. The next time they shine a light in your eyes, shine one right back.

Would this fit the bill? They also have a 10-million one (might be overkill though; the reviews say it can light up about 5 blocks) for around $60.

[InsanityInc]

My neighbors are OK, my parents..... Well they live out in the boonies, only house on the road. Sounds like no opportunities for bad neighbors right? Nooooo.

Their house is on the lowest piece of land along the road. All the fields around them are higher, but the field to the west slopes at the far end (away from their house). When it rains, the field used to flood. Well, that owner of the field doesn't like my dad, and decided to fill in the culvert between the house and the field. My parents discover this next time it rains. Major flood in their yard. I could've gone all around the house in a row boat. Ends up being a foot of water in the basement. They have a sump pump, but it couldn't handle that much water.

Water goes down, Dad goes and unplugs the culvert. Neighbor figures this out next time it rains, fills it in again. Cue next 5-8 years of them doing this, with various bad acts on both sides.

It ended when we got a new road commisioner who knew about the culvert mess. He reditched the road on both sides, put in a new culvert and told the field owner that if something happened to the new one, something would happen to the field.