God Meant It

As I was driving East on L Street on our way back home from picking up Addison from preschool, I saw a billboard that stated, "When I said, "Love They Neighbor" I meant it. -God."

As you all know, we struggled with whether or not to move, with selling our beloved home that happened to be next to the worst neighbors on the planet earth, and then our move was the most stressful and dramanic experience ever! Once we moved into our new home, we uncovered things in the home that we overlooked when looking at it. Perhaps we had to live in the home and experience it to see the shortfalls of the home. Chris and I are both struggling to be happy with our new pad. Yes, it is bigger, and yes, it is newer, but we are missing a lot of things that we just expected in any home (like a coat closet! or maybe a door on the bathroom! or even a linen closet!). I know, what picky ****s! No home is perfect. We know that, but we struggled to get into this house and it has just fallen short of our expectations. We now have a long list of to do's that need to be done to make this home more functional. Some of the shortfalls are repairable, where some just are not. We are just sad that we thought we were buying a home we would be in until our children were grown, but now we are not so sure we can stick it out in this house until spring! Okay, we will last that long...just not sure how much longer after that.

For now, I will see about mounting our TV above the mantel in the family room,booking contractors to build a coat closet and maybe find some shutters for the windows so we can take a shower without a crowd of home building contractors watching from outside the window. Ahhh...home sweet home. On the bright side...we do not have any neighbors and we can watch the geese outside while we eat our breakfast. And, from now on, we will just "Love The Neighbor."

 

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It Only Takes 1 Hotdog

...to get me raging mad. At least when it randomly appears in our yard, is 2 inches smaller than our hotdogs and our hotdogs are all accounted for within buns, and we have neighbors that we are less than fond of that we KNOW threw it into our yard while they were grilling.

Okay, let me explain. Tonight we were out grilling hotdogs, and then the neighbor came out and started grilling. I was pushing Addison on the swing and Chris was in and out of the house while tending the grill. I ran up to the house for something, walking over a fresh hotdog. Hum, I thought. I actually assumed it was ours. So, I went inside and asked Chris. I counted the hotdogs on the grill vs in the package and they were all accounted for. I took the hotdog and put it up to the ones we had and that hotdog clearly was not from our package. I was majorly mad. I walked out to Chris at the grill and asked him, "Are you going to the door or am I?" talking about going to our neighbors' home. Chris said just to wait until the neighbor came back out.

When the neighbor came out, he had a guilty grin on his face. The hotdog was cool and freshly thrown and I knew he had thrown it. Chris asked him about the hotdog as well as the dog feces, and he of course denied it. I was SOOOOO MAD!! I went and got Addison from the swing and went inside to eat.

After dinner, I cleaned up while the kids went back outside with Chris to play. All of a sudden, I saw Lisa, the neighbor next door that we have hardly uttered a word to for 3 years (quite pleasant), out on their steps talking to Chris over the fence. I quickly dumped my cleaning up and went outside (looking back, perhaps I would have been better off staying inside). Needless to say, I vented my 3 years of feelings and thoughts about the neighbors and their not so kind, immature behaviors. Chris took the kids inside so they did not have to hear Mommy get mad.

Lisa reported how the entire neighborhood hated us. Lovely, especially considering Chris and I did not talk to any of them but were nice and waved to them. She went on and on and I jabbed back. She was in tears, which I found interesting. Tears? Were they tears of guilt? Seriously, I should be crying! Afterall, she said the entire neighborhood did not like us and that I was labeled as the witch on the corner. Lovely. I found all of this funny considering I had never been formally introduced to the people claiming to call me a witch. Were we or were we not the ones that put our home on the market all summer for many reasons but kept it on the market because we wanted to get away from them?  I thought it was most funny when I said that we know how they celebrated after we put our FSBO sign in the yard. She denied this until I told her Chris saw her, then she confessed in part to the cheering, clapping and the gossiping. In the midst of all of this, Jason, the neighbor husband, peeked his head outside to ask, "Should I call the cops?" Okay, for what? Because I am talking to them from my yard? Walk inside if you do not want to hear it! Seriously, call the cops. They will laugh at you! Anyway, Lisa was going in circles and wasting my time with her dishonestly and reports of gossip, so I went inside. I was seriously still mad, but felt better that I had told her everything - caught her in all her lies.

I went inside and reported to Chris, who had listened to my conversation with Lisa. We decided, if we are going to live here, we have to clear our name. So, we decided to go door to door up our dead end street and then to the homes behind us reintroducing ourselves, 12 homes in all. Yes, I know, they probably all thought we were crazy. But you know what, crazy is probably much better than what they had heard from our neighbors! We even went back to the neighbors house next door, introducing ourselves to them like we had never met! We just hope the people up the street think we are nice, but quiet people that live on the corner. Crazy...that has to be better than the witch and whatever name they had for Chris.

So, Chris saw my spine front and center tonight. I think I held out good for 3 years. Will we be friends with the neighbors next door? Probably not. I do look forward, not backward. I will try harder to love the neighbor. As for the rest of the neighborhood? Time will tell. Many of them probably heard the conversation I had with Lisa, so the truth is out. We will see where it goes from here.

Let's just hope we do not find anymore hotdogs!
 

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Neighbors!

“Once relationships between neighbors turn nasty, they are extremely difficult to untangle and the problems frequently become worse.”

When our neighbors moved in 3 years ago, they asked us if we planned on moving. Humm, weird question, "No." Now, looking back and oddly remembering their question, we wonder why they were asking. They would open the door and have their then 5 year old and 2 year old kids run over into our yard to play on our new playset and with our then 2 year old Alivia. The mom or dad would run in to do something, and oddly never return, leaving me alone or Chris and I alone with our 2 year old Alivia, 2 week old Addison, and their 2 kids. Lovely. It got to the point where I would close the blinds so that Alivia would not want to go out and play because I was just too tired to babysit all night, or I would elect to walk up the hill to our neighborhood park where we could just be alone! But, 90% of the time, we would let all the kids play and we would babysit.

Chris and I are pretty private people. Does that make us mean? Well, I guess to some people yes.

The following summer, now 2007, I caved and let Chris get a fence. I never wanted one. Chris wanted it for safely reasons. I now wanted one so we could go into the yard without having the entire neighborhood to babysit (we now had one other neighborhood kid as well). So, we forked out a few thousand dollars for a fence. Mind you, the new neighbors had mentioned that they wanted a fence because they wanted a dog. However, they were waiting for us to get one (so they could just get one for free). So, one would wonder, were they being annoying so we would buy their fence?

Anyway, Chris measured out the lines for the fence, flagged in, and had the neighbors agree to where it would be placed. They were fine with it. Then, the fence was installed and all hell broke lose! NOTE: ALWAYS PAY THE EXTRA MONEY TO HAVE THE LEGAL LINED FLAGGED! They then protested where the fence was and threatened us to tear it down. The fence was like 4 inches on their lawn in the back and like 6 inches inside their line in the front. Oh please...go right ahead, tear it down, but you are putting up the next one. At this point, they really needed one because they had already gotten their dog! In the meantime, they put up a bright orange snow fence to keep the dog in their yard (instead of buying a gate to their house which would have been free if they would have just been nice to us or asked to attach to the fence). I told a neighbor/friend out of fury that OVER MY DEAD BODY WILL I BUY THEM A GATE! I was mad, because afterall, we did just put in $2200 for just their side of the fence! Well, my "friend"/neighbor who was Addison's Godmother, told these new neighbors what I said - just causing fuel to an already growing fire. I also, emailed our association over the bright orange fence, which made them even more mad (we were not on speaking terms with the neighbors or I would have talked to them. But after the Mr Neighbors scary behavior, I was not going to tell them anything!). But, they thought Chris had done this. So, Mr Neighbor FREAKED OUT on Chris. Okay, if you know Chris, he is a quiet, calm man on most occasions and does not deal with this kinda crap.

Nice Chris was now done. He had mowed/shoveled out friend/neighbor's lawn/walks for free most the years leading up to this (the snitch neighbor that is). He was done with her, too. I am not so sure Chris and the neighbors have spoken since actually. (The New neighbor now mows her lawn and shovels for our old "friend" and she pays him).  I, on the other hand, have done some things to try to fix the problem. I have apologized for any misunderstandings, annoyances. I have baked for them. I have "Loved the Neighbor" to actually overloved them two Lents with No Love given back (some people are just not lovable). On the other hand, the neighbors have been more or less malicious. They have turned the entire street against us. We were not close friends with any of them previously, but we were friendly. Those same people jumped up and down in the street, clapped, and sat around gossiping about us after we put our FSBO sign in the yard. Needless to say, having neighbors may be one of the main factors in our wanting to move. We want peace at home if anywhere. I can go to a dark alley and get treated better than I do around here!

This is what we are dealing with and how to fix it, I guess, since moving does not appear to be our answer:

"Things got off on the wrong foot from the day you moved in, and it's been downhill from there. Whenever you reach out to them, you just wind up mad at yourself for bothering to make the effort."

"How to Handle 'Em: Sadly, there are some people who simply weren't meant to be your pals. If they're malicious or doing something illegal, report it. Otherwise, make all interactions brief and civil and be glad you get along better with your other neighbors." Unfortunately, they have made it so very few people on our street will even wave at us!

So, let's just hope their little boy is not in Alivia's Kindergarten class or Alivia gets into private school!

Here's to Loving The Neighbor!

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