Monday, October 29, 2012

To My Neighbor....Have Fun Raking Again on Friday!

*I'm posting this Tuesday post now, as we will probably lose power at some point tonight.  I hope I don't see Antie Em and  Miss Gulch on her bike sometime tonight.*
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We have a neighbor who is not on friendly terms with us.
Meaning he wants nothing to do with us......as in he never initiates conversation, nor does he wave or smile or even acknowledge our existence.

I don't know why he is this way.  I'd like to think that it isn't his being a foreigner and wanting nothing to do with American ways and customs.  Our sons were friends when we moved here and remained friends through about the 3rd grade.  This kid's mother and I were Kindergarten parents together and she use to send her son over here to get homeowrk papers and forms he forgot from school.  Yes, I was suppose to scan and print out copies of homework papers for her kid but she barely spoke to me(her English is VERY good)and I never got a thanks either.

When our kids were young, they would play in their yard or ours.  Their kid had strict orders to never come inside our house and never eat or drink anything we offered to him.  Ok, I knew they were strict vegatarians and would never had given him a hamburger or something and I know how to read the labels on snack foods for gosh sakes!  But I didn't get too offended by him not drinking a juice box, etc.

But this not allowed inside our house?  I guess they figured we had a regular house of sin and decadence that would lead their son off the path to Allah.  Being typical Americans they probably thought we ran a house of prostitution or maybe even a Crack House.
Playing Pikmin on the GameCube in our den is just the epitome of evil, is it not?

My oldest asked their daughter out on a date many years ago.  She declined not because she didn't want to go, but because her parents refused to let her date.  I believe she has an arranged marriage but don't quote me on that.
It was to be a group date thing....more a teens going out together rather than pairing off, but even that she was not allowed to take part in.
I understand folks hanging onto their cultural identities but sometimes, if you refuse to mix with those in your community ON ANY LEVEL, who are not of your faith or racial group or cultural heritage, it appears that you don't want to belong to our American society.  You want all the perks but you don't want any of the responsibilities of being a member of that society. 

Anyway, relations went awry with this neighbor some time ago.

And He is anal about his yard.  That, right there, drives a wedge between him and us. lol
It's not so bad, except in the Fall when the leaves start falling.
If this neighbor had his way, he'd cut every tree in his yard, as well as in a 2 mile area around his house down.
He has taken down a couple of trees already.....small ones he's been able to cut down himself for free. 

There are some very large trees though and they are right on our joint property line.  He wants them taken down but he's too cheap to pay to have them removed.  I know because he asked us to take them down(meaning we should pay to have them removed)and he said he'd be "ok" with that even though the trees in question are partly on his property.

It wasn't broached as, "Let's do something about these trees together."  No, he clearly doesn't want the trees and he isn't concerned with if we want them to stay but he wants someone else to pay for the pleasure of having the trees removed.

Because of this, I am all for keeping those trees into eternity.  Even though one of them releases an ass ton of leaves into the swimming pool.  If we still live here when I die, I might just have a trust fund set up for the trees here, you know, to keep them happy and healthy and dropping leaves every Fall onto his yard into perpetuity.

So Mr. Neighbor gets out there in the Fall with his noisy ass leaf blower.  He can't be bothered to rake leaves, he has to wake the dead with that infernally loud machine.  What a waste of fossil fuels too!

And he blows the leaves into a long pile and then bags them so the municipality will cart them off.
When he blows, he starts about a foot or more inside his property line and blows them into a pile toward his house.  And that foot or more at the property line he doesn't blow into his pile?  He blows that over into OUR yard.  I guess he figures that since we have more trees on our lot, most of those leaves were ours to begin with anyway.
He doesn't think I notice but oh!....I do.....

We try to coordinate with our other neighbor who's property borders ours, so that we attack the fallen leaves on the same timetable.  What's the point of raking leaves, when your neighbor hasn't done his/her leaves yet, so that the next wind storm you get more leaves in your yard and you have to spend another day dealing with the leaves again?

Since we've been gone for the last week on a beach vacation, we came home to trees that look like this....



And here is what our yard looked like....just one little piece of it.....


And here is what our uncommunicative neighbor's yard looked like on Saturday.....


It appears that he is rimming his yard with bags of leaves now, huh?  Maybe he thinks he bags of leaves will act like sandbags against Hurricane Sandy's winds?

Notice how the other neighborhood adjoining his yard hasn't raked his leaves either? lol  I bet he blows a foot or so of his leaves onto that neighbor's yard too!

Anyway, it's a shame really.
A shame that our neighbor will be out there reblowing/bagging leaves after Sandy blows all our leaves into his nice leaf-free yard.
Friday is suppose to be a nice, partly sunny dry day.....the perfect weather for raking blowing leaves.
I will NOT be grinning evil-y......nope......not me......

Sluggy

14 comments:

  1. Maybe you should help Sandy out a bit and make sure the leaves all go in his yard.

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    Replies
    1. lol....maybe I need to go out there in the dark and start raking my leaves over onto his yard....

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    2. HAHA...you would give the poor guy a complete mental breakdown.

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  2. Some people are anal about leaves and rude. My neighbor lived here two weeks when it was time to rake his leaves on his 32' wide lawn. We do share a tree. I have two other huge trees. I guess he decided to be rude instead of doing yard work, so he just raked them all into my yard, knowing I was having trouble walking. So, I had to pay someone to rake his leaves from my yard. Oh, yeah, I had someone rake them right back, the whole stack on my side of the property line.

    What's with people?

    I have a friend who knows I clip coupons from the Sunday paper. She keeps saying she needs someone who has a printer to print coupons so she can get good deals like I do. This is said in the most pitiful of voices.She knows I have and use a computer and have a printer.

    When I told her to ask her mother, sister, grandmother, or one of her aunts, she looked like she was going to cry and said her mother was broke and could not afford ink.I assured her that I had less money than her parents who both work.

    What's wrong with some people

    My husband was a minister. Friends and acquaintances were shocked I allowed my little children to go to Vacation Bible School at other churches, denominations who did not believe at all like we did. I assured people that my children associated with these people all the time, were friends, and would someday be out of my control. I did not want them to go hog wild over something they had been denied.

    Besides, what mother does not like 6 weeks scattered through the summer where the kids are gone for four hours five days a week. Freeee time for me!

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  3. Aren't neighbors just so much fun? Can't wait to see your "after Sandy" pictures of his yard!

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    Replies
    1. Leaves were so wet they really didn't get off the ground much and fly over there.....gosh darn it!lol

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  4. Is there any way that I could donate to the trust fund for the trees? I would like for your children to get very involved in this effort too. In fact, you may need to plant more trees and if they could lean his way that would be awesome. I am also thinking that we may need to ship some leaves in and blame it on Sandy.

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    Replies
    1. Come on over and bring a rake....I've got an extra flashlight and we can sneak out back and rake tonight!

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  5. I'm sorry your neighbor is so rude! I'm a foreigner but I'm a very friendly neighbor:)At least, looks like all the leaves on the trees are gone, and you will all get a break soon:)

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    Replies
    1. Can I trade this guy for you as a neighbor? I'd like that much better. ;-)

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  6. LOL at the tree trust fund....halarious!!!! We have insane neighbours 2 doors down. In fact, we call them "crazy grandma and crazy grandpa". For 6 years we barely ever saw them. We could hear crazy grandma screaming at the very hard of hearing grandpa, but that was the most we heard of them. 2 years ago their redneck grandkids moved in and began to play with my children. Wow...the grandma went right off her gourd. Her grandkids would lie about my children and so we banned them from playing together. Thought the problems would end. NOPE!!! She called the cops on us twice. The first time apparently my husband was walking past their house and they felt threatened...what the??? Cops came, told us to basically ignore them and document any more crazy acts. 2 days later we are sitting on our porch which cannot be seen from her porch. She walks to the end of her driveway and stands there staring at us while talking on her phone for 45 minutes!! I tell my husband it would be funny to take a picture of her looking over at us. So my husband did....I am laughing just thinking about it now. She says to whoever was on the phone...."Thats it I'm calling the police!!!!" At 10:30p.m we get a call from some police officer who didn't want to embarrass us by coming out again. He said he had just listened to our neighbour rant for 45 minutes and basically agreed that she was insane(he didn't say that...just kinda implied it}. He thought it was great to take pictures of her when she was staring over. Then her grandkids moved and she is never seen outside again. Seriously, this woman is completely nuts!!!
    Funniest was my son was in grade 3 at the time and I get a call from his teacher informing me that she had to correct him for calling her a crazy grandma when speaking about it at school. I said....yeah, that's what we call her around here! Why lie??!!!

    Funny how almost everyone has at least one insane neighbour in their lifetime.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Oh, you've got a LULU of a neighbor there! Be careful because the crazy ones are unpredictable! I'd take a rude or passive aggressive neighbor over a crazy one any day.
      Funny about your son and the teacher....lol

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    2. So true about the crazy ones being unpredictable.

      I am still getting a laugh at the picture of your neighbour with his bags of leaves lined up. Too funny!!!! Can't wait to show my husband the picture.

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