Neighbors

We picked our neighborhood for a few reasons. It is an older neighborhood that is tucked out of the way but right in the middle of town. The streets are wide, trees are mature, and the houses were reasonable. We love it here.

A few years after we moved in, our quiet and friendly next door neighbors moved out. In their place a crotchety, nosy, busybody elderly couple moved in. The first thing they did was fill in the gazillion dollar Koi pond that beautifully took up a third of the yard and solved one of the “what the heck do we do with this hill?” problems. They now mow said hill with a lawn mower lowered by rope. Yikes!

They have been living next door for a little over five years now and I still cringe when I see them in the yard. Which is a lot. What I have figured out about these two is they moved here from the country, the man gets quieter and more senile every year, and the woman would kick the shit out of Ray Romano’s Mom in a nasty/nice contest any day. They are addicted to ridiculously mundane yard work, they hate animals and house plants but pretend to like kids, and they are never short on opinions. I know that they have children and grandchildren because I have listened to 74,962 “when my kids were little” stories. I also know these offspring seldom visit and it seems they skip holidays.

The woman, I’ll call her Mrs. P (for pain in the ass), does very nice things. She has brought over homegrown tomatoes and corn so it wouldn’t go to waste, offered me a beautiful orchid that was given to her as a gift (but she didn’t want), and for Halloween every year she makes my kids a special treat bag. While I appreciate all of these things, they do not buy her a free pass to be as rude as she can with a smile on her face.

With the arrival of our new puppy she had this to say: “Well, you know there is no way this one will be as good as the last one”. Ummm… I realize this could one of two things, that my last one was the best (‘cuz she wuz) or that by buying the same breed again we are fooling ourselves. The way my kids run over and strike up conversation makes my skin crawl. The subtle way they say “hey, your grass is a little long” by over-mowing the boundary in the front yard pisses me off. We may not make yard work our #1 priority but that is just wrong, besides we are not a retired team of yard Nazis like someone I know, we have lives to live.

Latest “huh'” thing to happen: they dismantled their concrete bird bath because “them darn birds were pooping all over it and it was a little moldy”. Really?! Don’t ya think maybe you should turn the hose on it every once in a while instead of ripping the whole thing apart? Shit.

I could go on for days and this is probably not the last time you will hear about Mrs. P simply because we do not plan on moving anytime soon.

Does anyone else have annoying neighbor stories? I would love to hear them so post a comment!

Gotta go mow the grass!