It Is All About What The Neighbors Think!

I can’t stand my neighbors! I have lived in this place for eleven years and not one of my neighbors has been kind, thoughtful, friendly or even tried to keep their yards nice. The “white trash” in this town figuratively and  literally are outrageous. I can’t take it anymore.

What is really weird? Most of these places are rentals always have been and they keep attracting the same types of people. What is with that? Do the landlords make the same judgments’ over and over about their renters? Or are these the only types to rent to? Whatever the case…one house had a hoarder and an alcoholic living there. The old guy had lived there a long time. The roof was no good; trees and weeds over took the place, the back yard full of junk. His grandson was living in one of the trailers in the back, grandpa finally in the hospital. No electricity and the place condemned. One of the grandsons’ friends set fire to the place. It went up in less than two minutes, never seen a house go up so fast. It was fully engulfed ten minutes later and catching the house to the east on fire.   As the firemen were cleaning things up one of them rolled out an old freezer and it opened up, the stench must have been horrendous as the fellow started gagging as the others laughed at him in sympathy. That house sat for two years, stinking and ugly before the city finally hauled the trash away.  Someone bought the property, built a darling little rancher and sold it….to a woman who is a cat lady and a hoarder! WTF?

Another big two story house has been bought and sold at least on average every two years then rented. Each new buyer has poured money into this pit. It has asbestos siding and the last renovator simply covered it with siding that is bubbling, bending and falling off. The roof was cheaped out and is blowing off (third layer) There are no gutters and the water for a year was running off the back and straight into the basement through the door outside. Every group that has rented, has been nasty, loud, rude and trashed the place again. Dogs barking, trash blowing around, screaming and yelling, kids running up and down tearing up yards, doing whatever they like, fights and drunkenness.

My neighbor next door is from Michigan (and thinks the Gov. is a great man there) they live here in Colorado and there six months each stay to avoid paying property taxes. They hate Obama. I don’t talk to them anymore; they think it’s funny to insult my views. Their yard is a moon scape derived from so much weed killer and insecticide that two of their dogs have gotten tumors. Hello! Clue!?

 There is an Irish saying: “más rud é nach bhfuil tú mhaith dom, saoire dom féin”; If you don’t like me, leave me alone. It has become my mantra with my neighbors.

The cat lady said a nasty thing to another neighbor in front of my then 8 year old daughter, she of course told me. I don’t acknowledge her at all.

Now I see the thought process behind covenants. The neighbor who screams like a “fish mongers wife” all day at her kids and grandkids threw two large ugly sofas out to the curb two weeks ago. Okay, I think they are taking them to the dump or donating or whatever. Two weeks in a row the sofas are soaked by downpours. The first big rains we have seen in years. The woman puts a “free” sign on them. OMG! I call code enforcement. I have never done such a thing. Today the fellow drives by to look and low and behold, the woman has thrown more crap out there and is having a garage sale. And to top it off, the cat lady (who btw feeds her cats inside and out so every night the raccoon parade hits the front porch with fighting and frightened howling cats)  decides to let her friend the former junk store owner also have a garage sale. One of many that will be held all summer AND they lay the crap all over the yard of the house next door because it is empty. That does it!

As far as I am concerned they don’t think. Not about the trash, the animals,  screaming horrible things, the loud music, the dying grass or trees, the dead cars, the dying dogs, the mean spirited gossip, the bigoted digs, the religious ignorance…..

It is all about what the neighbors think……they obviously don’t care about what I think.

We have a nice little house. It was built in 1900 by a local architect and builder for his own family. I call it a poor man’s Queen Anne; with a touch of ginger bread and pillars. It is well built, with beautiful carved oak mantel piece, egg and dart on thick oak doors, old growth hemlock fir floors. My husband hated the yard though. It was a desert (hello southern Colorado); five hundred year old fir trees and one tiny four foot beat up crabapple tree; which was not identifiable at the time.

I have painted every inch of this house, inside and out. Hubbie got all the “sexy jobs” the roof, the attic, the foundation. It of course is a work in progress and still needs work and after ten years it needs to be painted again. I bought a Van Briggle vase and used it as inspiration for the bright colors. I found out a neighbor hates the colors. All the houses are pale yellow, brown, tan in a word dull. Someone finally painted one of the houses adobe orange.  Colorado means land of color, literally. Yet no one uses color on their homes, their clothing, their yards. Yes I exaggerate some, there are some lovely buildings and homes here, but the slum lords who rent don’t care about this place. They rent to whomever; do as little as possible on their properties. Collect the money and live in Denver, Utah wherever.

I love this little house. We sometimes think we could just pick it up and move it to the countryside. I had a dream the other night where I had money and I bought all the houses and the crappy little fall-y down rectory next door. I tore most of the little old guard shacks down, the nasty asbestos thing, planted trees, and built two maybe three more house in the style of R.J. Okie did for this little house and sell them to the kind of neighbors I want. Nice people, without dogs, who use trash cans, are quiet and like the color of my house.

Sure, that will be the day! (Shut UP Mojo!)