Neighbourhood Stories

As mentioned before, I am a freak magnet. So what should make my neighbours any less freakier than the every day people I must encounter?

I can remember being age 3, and the plague of bizarre neighbours began.The people who moved in next door were neither loud nor obnoxious, but they were filthy.The way we found out was by seeing them throw their bags of rubbish not in the bins by their house to be collected, but simply, out the back door. Lovely. My mother, as I recall, was horrified, she being an equally obsessive clean freak, and she told my dad either they go or we go. After frantic calls to the city to whomever was in charge of that type of thing, down to just ringing the police, it did not cease. Soon their entire garden round back, literally, was filled with black bin liners of smelly, rotted rubbish. So, we moved. My mother was terrified we would receive an infestation of bugs, rats, or even worse, contract a rare incurable disease.

So all seemed well and fine neighbour-wise until I was in jr. high school and we were living in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia.The neighbours on one side of us divorced (she was seeing the construction fella who built their new huge barn-like garage while her husband was at work during the days as a postman)which meant... new neighbours. We waited with baited breath to get a good look of every interested party who came by with the realtors. It was bad enough we had a very odd stuck-in-the 70's family living across from us (their two sons eventually became drug dealers and the mother stayed hulled up inside like a vampire doped up on prescription meds...the husband...well he wore polyester and conveniently worked at a pharmacy...oh their house was totally encased in thick ivy and they never did yardwork), but now the question at hand was who in the world would we get right next door. Soon our question was answered, it was a family from West Virginia. I am not slagging off folks from West virginia, but unfortunately these people fit the bill to a tee. At the time they had one child, a daughter they nicknamed "Punkin" and she was approximately 4 years old at the time. The mother was massive, the dad was stick thin. Three people living in a two story house. The reason: the dad like to buy old cars and fix them up, the huge barn-like shed was perfect.OK fair enough. Again, these people were filthy. Apparently it is my curse in life to deal with filthy disgusting people. Being 13 at the time, I was curious about them, as was my other next door neighbour (who was a year younger than I). So about 2 months after the West Virginians moved in we convinced the daughter to give us a house tour. Did we get the shock of our life. Lawn chairs for furniture, a card table in the dining room, plates of mouldy spaghetti on the counter all piled up, water in the sink with some sort of scum floating around on top of it....most interesting we noted was a pair of blue jeans hanging out of the dishwasher, men's knickers in an open dirt-encrusted microwave, and car parts seeping in oil in the only bath tub in the house. Oh dear. Not to mention the rooms were never properly "unpacked" so to speak, it just looked like bombs had exploded in each one. Paper, rubbish, old envelopes, photos, magazines, you name it, it littered the floors. I panicked and had to leave immediately. Of course as soon as I reported what we saw to my mother, she went hysterical and in turn threatened my dad that if she caught him over there he would be hosed down in our front yard. One odd thing we noticed while being their neighbour for about 14 years (well I wasn't there that long, but my parents were, so I could check on the neighbours whenever I'd visit) was the fact that not one time did they ever open their windows. Now in Virginia it gets nice in the springtime and autumn and some days in the winter too, enough to not have heating or air conditioning on and you can just let the house "air out" as we'd call it. But these people lived in constant stuffiness, added with their lack of cleaning skills, so you can imagine the stench must have been pretty foul in there. My mother did report in 1999 she went into the house, as she sold my old teenaged bunk bed set to them for their son. So they asked Mum to come over and have a look. Apparently cleanliness or decor had not changed since I had been in there at age 13. Mind you, this family was by no means destitute. Both parents worked and the dad got heaps from the restored cars he sold, also the neighbourhood was nice, not slummish at all. Just brilliant.

Now since that time, I had moved all around, lived in Williamsburg among other college people, amazingly, none horribly filthy or obnoxious (admittedly tho I would have liked to strangle some of my past roommates). Moved to Ireland, where everyone seems to be equally as clean as I am and respectful of their neighbours. Well at least where I lived. Back to Virginia, to Richmond, everyone seemed ok, hearing the occasional gunshot was distressing, but, perhaps the curse was broken. But now, years later, it has resurfaced. Neighbours...horrible, filthy, mental neighbours.

At first I thought it could quite possibly be the altitude, not affecting them per say, but myself. Maybe I was being inflicted with some weird altitude thing and not everyone was nearly as bad as I had thought.But now I have come to the realisation that it is not me being overly picky, it is not me being unfair or insane, it is THEM, and sadly they are all alike.

Now first off we do live in base housing, so you do tend to get "all types". But it seems they are all one type, and I am quite another. Noone seems very interested in yardwork. I worked very hard this spring turning my dirt filled yard into a living, breathing, plethera of green grass. I planted flowers and herbs, we made a rock path, we planted pear trees and shrubs. OK, some people don't do yardwork. Moving on to interiors....just by peering at the carports you can see how filthy and pack-rattish these people are. I've had the luxury of having to go inside of the house next to us, thankfully it was not the one attached to our house, and let me tell you I had to take a shower once I came home. The saddest fact is, these women do not work. Why? They are not ill. They are capable of working, even part time. But I suppose the thought of being home all day is much more alluring. But are they cleaning? Are they minding their children? No. They are not.

What's worse is the girl 2 doors down actually got approved for doing at home daycare. (I will call her TH#f) She is younger than me, has 3 children, is FILTHY and minds other people's kids. Meanwhile her kids are running wild screeching all day long outside, accompanied by the kids she daycares, and she is often nowhere to be found. I'll tell you, she is NOT inside cleaning her house!I have seen her outside and even out in public once, her clothes are filthy, full of holes and unkept.This I do not understand. Even if you don't have money for new clothes could you not at least wear clean ones?

What makes it even more interesting, and the thing that bothers me to no end, is the fact her rubbish is always in my yard. She apparently told another neighbour she has a son who is capable of bringing out the rubbish, so that is something she will never have to do. The catch is, we live in the mountains.They had to install bear-proof dumpsters out front. Me, even tho I am 30, am of slight build and cannot for the life of me lift up these dumpster lids. Therefore, what do you think happens when her 12 year old son, who is half my size, takes the rubbish out? He cannot lift the lid, so leaves the bin liner full of icky rubbish either A) next to the dumpster, B)on top of the dumpster, or C) halfway hanging out of the dumpster. This happens every day since we moved in back in March. The magpies LOVE to pick at the bags until they get them open, then the rubbish is strewn across my yard. CONSTANTLY. The best was back during the summer days, since they don't have air conditioning installed in these homes (Oh you don't need AC in colorado...yeah right!) the smell of old rubbish exposed to the sunlight was fabulous. And our bedroom window faces the dumpster. Awakening to the lovely aroma each morning was delightful.And then there is me,with not only my absolute fear of anything dirty, but also with my bone marrow disease, counting the hours for my husband to come home and collect the offending articles out of our yard. I have strict instructions from doctors not to get around anything germy anyhow, so do you think I am going to run out there and touch this stuff? Ehm, that is a big NO. For some reason there is always glass in their rubbish, and it inevitibly winds up at the end of our drive. Which in turn TH#f's oldest kid, yeah the one who is 12, loves to break. I watched him this summer... bored, doing asinine things, such as break glass, hit hammers into the concrete, pick bits of grass and throw them into the air. (do kids these days not read?)Some of the broken glass resulted in us having to patch a tire. Then, this past weekend, he is at it again. Breaking glass. In our driveway. I, being apparently insane and sick and tired of everyone, yelled out the window..."HEY! What do you think you are doing? Are you mad? DO NOT BREAK GLASS BEHIND OUR CARS UNLESS YOU HAVE MONEY FOR NEW TIRES!!" Then I had to go investigate, and sure enough, shards of glass are everywhere. I gave out to him again, to his beautiful reply..."I thought it was plastic." Oh please. I got so upset I took a huge piece over to their house, rang the doorbell (made sure to cover my hand with my sleeve...the button for the doorbell was FILTHY)and gave out to the very unresponsive mother, Miss TH#f herself, who looked very bored and simply did not care.Then proceeded to rant and rave about useless neighbours and their heathen kids for awhile once I came back home. We also had to go clear up the glass ourselves.

TH#f also has these "parties" where you can order and make scrapbooks and buy "interior design" things for your house. So she is forever getting shipments of whatever delivered, the boxes never get broken down, they are simply left outside filled with receipts, papers, those little packing peanuts. This past weekend the whole lot of this stuff wound up in my yard (why can't it go anywhere but my yard!??) turning it into a sea of green styrofoam packing peanuts. In turn our younger jack russell consumed some while being taken outside,mmm,special treats!, I had to try to get it out of her mouth, too late, she ingested and later, threw it up all in my Jeep. Damn TH#f!!!!

Now you see part of the reason my daughter stays inside, away from these kids, away from the germs of the neighbourhood. But I am sure IF she was out and about and causing havoc like these other kids, I would be the first to hear about it.

Oh there are loads more stories to tell, like how TH#f's kids play on top of the dumpster, lick the dumpster,etc....how I have to hide everytime I see the other next door neighbours even peering thru their patio door, ready to strike like pythons and keep me trapped outside for hours.....but there is plenty of time and webspace to make for useful topics some other evening. For now, I am going to bed and try to sleep before the screeching begins again at 7am from the daycare kids....