Won’t You Please, Won’t You Please Be My Neighbor?

We were in a drought beginning late last summer and certainly last winter when we couldn’t buy a snowflake. Now the spigot won’t close and the rain just keeps pouring out.

When Joe and I crossed the Mississippi River going into the Minneapolis this morning, the river, which has been basically a creek the last few months is almost overflowing its banks. We have so many green and leafy trees around here, I think I’m turning into Kermit the Frog.

It’s not easy being green, believe me.

I was hoping to cut the grass today, but every time the sky starts brightening just a bit, we hear the claps of thunder, see flashes of lightening, and then the rain comes pouring down. My newly planted garden is loving all this rain, but I start hyperventilating if my grass starts getting too long.

Speaking of long grass, my trailer trash next door neighbors finally cut their grass after waiting for five or six weeks. Since cleaning up their area takes a lot of effort for them, they make a big production out of it, which means all six of them, four boys, and a fat man and a fat woman (the fat definition means that the woman carries all her weight in her belly. She has skinny arms and legs, but a beach ball stomach. And then she loves to display her gorgeous body by parading around outside wearing her shortie PJs. Ewww!) are outside raking, mowing, and generally acting like they should get a medal for doing something that most of us take for granted.

They have a fire pit in the backyard, which they like to use at night. Well, it’s rained so much lately, that the wood is wet. It doesn’t occur to them to maybe they could put their wood in the garage or cover it with a tarp to keep it dry. So they try to get the fire started with wet wood. It doesn’t work real well. What does work? Well, they decided to use gasoline from the lawn mower gas can. Smart. I’m waiting for the explosion any day now. Thank goodness my garage and their garage will be barriers to any damage to my house when that explosion occurs.

I haven’t had to call the police on the neighbors since that one incident back in March. They’ve managed to figure out how to park their two vehicles so they don’t have to utilize my driveway and they’ve stayed on their side of the property line.

It’s just painful to watch them live their lives, but I remind myself that the way they live is their choice, and I try not to obsess about them too much, even when I see them doing something stupid, which is like all the time, so I do end up obsessing about them.

I’ve always got along with my neighbor on the other side. He’s an older guy, probably in his 70s, divorced, and has one adult daughter with two children of her own. He’s also a hoarder. His garage is full of worthless stuff he keeps buying, and I can only imagine what the inside of his house looks like since he is a chain smoker and he probably doesn’t just hoard in his garage. His house is falling apart, and I bet when he dies, the house might just be knocked over. The back porch is coming off the house. His roof is way beyond serviceable.

When we first moved in, Ray thought he might go over and help him get his house together, but then he looked carefully at the damage, and told me that the house was too far gone, and it wouldn’t be worth repairing. Plus, I don’t think Ray really liked him that much.

My neighbor does keep his yard picked up. He plants flowers and vegetables every year.

A couple of years ago, he slipped on the ice and broke his hip. His recovery was long and painful. I cut his grass a few times and blew out the snow on his front sidewalk.

Well, I got my payback for being nice. Any nice evening, this jerk comes outside and sits in a lawn chair pointed directly at my house. His view is into my kitchen. I have a large patio door which goes out to my deck and I know he can see right into the kitchen that way. I don’t have curtains or blinds on that window and I’m not going to put them up either.

This behavior is something new which started about a year and a half ago. He never used to do that. He’d have his lawn chair situated so that he looked at his yard and not into my house.

He’ll sit there and stare and stare and stare. Most of the time when he comes out in the evening, we’re just finishing dinner, so he doesn’t really see much. That’s why I can’t figure out why he wants to look in my house. We’re not doing anything interesting at all except eating, cleaning up the dishes, and sometimes we’re on our laptops.

I haven’t addressed it with him, because I avoid him at all costs. I’m so angry about it, that I’m afraid I’ll assault him if he says something to me. If he’s in the yard when I’m in my yard, I try to stay away from our common border, and if he does say something to me, I ignore him. I really don’t want to go to jail for assault.

I’m not sure what to do about this. I asked Joe if I was being excessively paranoid, and of course, Joe, who is one of most paranoid people walking the planet, totally agreed with me. I joke about getting a grenade launcher, but that’s not very practical, is it?

That’s the curse of living in the city. The neighbors are really close. I share a common driveway area with the trailer trash crew, which is why I think they had a difficult time initially with staying on their side of the property line.

And my other neighbor . . . I don’t know what’s up with him. Thank goodness, my deck is shielded from his gaze. I have a thick lilac bush hedge that he can’t see through, so I can sit on my deck, and he won’t know I’m there. I love summer and my garden and my yard, especially when it’s not raining, so it’s difficult to enjoy my area because he’s there, lurking, waiting, watching.

Asher always tells me no matter who my neighbors are, I won’t like them, and I won’t be happy unless my neighbors are at least five miles away from me. He’s right.

I do like my privacy. Somehow having neighbors who are bomb specialists in training or Peeping Toms do not meet my definition of good neighbors.