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I think we are the sucky neighbors here, but its not our fault!!!
I live in a beach community in So Cal, where prices have soared quite a bit in the last 10 years. So you end up with people who paid $1.4 million dollars for their nasty POS McMansion living next to someone in an original, modest 1927 2 bedroom house that they paid only $230K for 10 years ago (or much less even longer ago). I'm sure you can imagine the potential for suckiness, but for the most part people generally behave themselves.
I do feel bad for my neighbors though. They aren't in a McMansion, but they make probably twice what we do, bought fairly high, have done extensive (and beautiful) remodeling and landscaping, and they are stuck next to me and my husband, who bought low earlier and try to save up cash to fix things before they break. The wife is, well, odd sometimes. Shes always been great to me, but goes through phases where she doesn't speak to random people in the neighborhood - completely ignoring them. Often its my husband who gets this treatment.
A few years ago these neighbors planted a bougainvillea on my property (a strip of land on the side of my house that faces their driveway) to grow over our shared wall and up their garage. I don't remember them asking, and I don't much care for bougainvilleas, but whatever. It grew and expanded and was lush and flowery over the front of their garage. They were very pleased with the way it looked from the street. Unfortunately it was also growing up into my roof and dribbling leaves and flowers into my fish pond. So hubby went to trim it. And accidentally cut the one branch that led to the garage. We showed up with bottles of wine and apologies, and she stopped speaking to my hubby again
Then there was the cat incident. While I was away at sea for a few weeks, hubby heard them out the window talking about a cat, and later he saw a live trap on the rear side of our house that faces them. There is a crawl space vent there for under the house that I thought was secure, but it turns out it wasn't. They had spotted a stray cat that looked unwell going through that vent, called the humane society, and got a live trap in the hopes of catching it. But they never told my husband anything of this. I come home about 10 days after all of this, and theres this, uh, smell coming from the crawlspace vent up by the front of the house
While I am marveling at the sheer stench emanating from the front of my house, our neighbors wander up and we hear the story of the sick cat for the first time. I ask the neighbor wife "why on earth didn't you say something?" She replies "you were at sea". With my husband standing right there
Now, our crawl spaces are *small*. Some areas under there get down to less than 12 inches and you really have to crawl on your belly. Hubby or I will go under there for a live cat that needs rescuing. We would even go under there for a freshly dead cat. We are NOT crawling under there for a cat thats been dead for 10 days and smells like that
And I discovered later that nobody will even take money to do this. So we took the cowards way out and decided to just let the cat decompose where it lay. As a biologist, I figured the smell would be gone in about 2 weeks.
We don't really use our front door - everybody comes in around the back. Only strangers knock on the front door (like salespeople and such). We don't hang around in the front yard - we hang out in the back. This corner of the house is actually closer to where our neighbors hang out (their driveway, their lovely front patio, their dining room windows are all very close to this ground zero of stench).
Sigh, they complained about the smell, and again we were relegated to the ignominy of not being spoken to by her highness. But I'd rather that then going under the house!!
geez, I wrote a book, Im sorry
I live in a beach community in So Cal, where prices have soared quite a bit in the last 10 years. So you end up with people who paid $1.4 million dollars for their nasty POS McMansion living next to someone in an original, modest 1927 2 bedroom house that they paid only $230K for 10 years ago (or much less even longer ago). I'm sure you can imagine the potential for suckiness, but for the most part people generally behave themselves.
I do feel bad for my neighbors though. They aren't in a McMansion, but they make probably twice what we do, bought fairly high, have done extensive (and beautiful) remodeling and landscaping, and they are stuck next to me and my husband, who bought low earlier and try to save up cash to fix things before they break. The wife is, well, odd sometimes. Shes always been great to me, but goes through phases where she doesn't speak to random people in the neighborhood - completely ignoring them. Often its my husband who gets this treatment.
A few years ago these neighbors planted a bougainvillea on my property (a strip of land on the side of my house that faces their driveway) to grow over our shared wall and up their garage. I don't remember them asking, and I don't much care for bougainvilleas, but whatever. It grew and expanded and was lush and flowery over the front of their garage. They were very pleased with the way it looked from the street. Unfortunately it was also growing up into my roof and dribbling leaves and flowers into my fish pond. So hubby went to trim it. And accidentally cut the one branch that led to the garage. We showed up with bottles of wine and apologies, and she stopped speaking to my hubby again
Then there was the cat incident. While I was away at sea for a few weeks, hubby heard them out the window talking about a cat, and later he saw a live trap on the rear side of our house that faces them. There is a crawl space vent there for under the house that I thought was secure, but it turns out it wasn't. They had spotted a stray cat that looked unwell going through that vent, called the humane society, and got a live trap in the hopes of catching it. But they never told my husband anything of this. I come home about 10 days after all of this, and theres this, uh, smell coming from the crawlspace vent up by the front of the house
While I am marveling at the sheer stench emanating from the front of my house, our neighbors wander up and we hear the story of the sick cat for the first time. I ask the neighbor wife "why on earth didn't you say something?" She replies "you were at sea". With my husband standing right there
Now, our crawl spaces are *small*. Some areas under there get down to less than 12 inches and you really have to crawl on your belly. Hubby or I will go under there for a live cat that needs rescuing. We would even go under there for a freshly dead cat. We are NOT crawling under there for a cat thats been dead for 10 days and smells like that
And I discovered later that nobody will even take money to do this. So we took the cowards way out and decided to just let the cat decompose where it lay. As a biologist, I figured the smell would be gone in about 2 weeks.We don't really use our front door - everybody comes in around the back. Only strangers knock on the front door (like salespeople and such). We don't hang around in the front yard - we hang out in the back. This corner of the house is actually closer to where our neighbors hang out (their driveway, their lovely front patio, their dining room windows are all very close to this ground zero of stench).
Sigh, they complained about the smell, and again we were relegated to the ignominy of not being spoken to by her highness. But I'd rather that then going under the house!!
geez, I wrote a book, Im sorry
That lowlife thief should've paid for it! Just think of the lovely things that could've been made with that beautiful cherry wood... 
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