Since my douchey neighbours are such a hit on Facebook, how could I not spread the love?
Mr. Ford & I bought our house from a handful of travelling gypsies in October of 2011. When we went to see the house, we saw a pile of sand in the front yard, multiple cracked windows & bumpy plaster walls.
We looked past all of that because we also saw a lot of character, the most space our money could buy & a sizable back yard for the dog we knew would be in our future.
We brought along our realtor, an ex-realtor family member & a contractor to steer us in the right direction.
The neighbourhood wasn't our first choice, but it was close to where I grew up, easy access to downtown/work & in a really weird/interesting transitioning faze.
On one side of our house we noticed a run down, poorly maintained house with children's toys littered all over the front yard. Little did we suspect, these would be the 'good neighbours'.
To the south of us was a newer house. Certainly nothing fancy but good windows & siding. As we viewed the 2nd floor sunroom on our house, we got a glimpse of a younger couple (late 20s early 30s) getting in to a newer car. This was it, we thought! These look like normal, decent people & maybe we can make friends. HA!
We spent our first Halloween in our house still plastering walls & getting eaten out of house & home by the 8 zillion kids that trick-or-treat in the West End. Weird, we thought. Their car is in their parking pad & the lights are on in the back but their front door was closed & the front lights were off. Maybe they're sick.
It's been two years in a row now. They are home but not giving the kids any candy. Mr. Ford commented that 'of course they wouldn't. That would involve the mole-people venturing out of their mole caves to be decent & civilized.'
Then came the noise complaints. People tend to get brave on the condition of anonymity.
According to the by-law officer 'someone' reported we were working on our roof at 11:00pm. In all actuality we WERE using hand drills to fix up our master bedroom INSIDE our house. So needless to say I am now paranoid to take out the vacuum past ten.
The by-law states that you cannot make an unreasonable amount of noise past 9:00pm.
I take this to mean that you can't mow your lawn, jackhammer your foundation or anything else outdoors that omits a din. I still don't think someone using a hand drill/saw inside their insulated home to make a house better & in turn possibly increase the value of the neighbourhood is a terrible thing.
Obviously neighbours do. Because once the by-law inspector's visit didn't allow them to hear the sound of a pin drop as soon as it got dark (in the west end!) they started to call the cops.
On numerous occasions I could look out my window to see a squad car casually park in front of my home, two officers step out of their vehicle, get right back in & drive away.
On a day that stupid dumb-head left the door open when coming home from Home Depot & then started to drill, I got to speak to two VERY handsome officers investigating the complaint. After they concluded that I wasn't a psycho, we talked about my dog & I apologized that they were forced to get called out to waste their time talking to me whilst there are rapists & paedophiles & drug dealers running around (THIS IS THE WEST ENNNND!!!)
On the weekend Mr. Ford & I were in the kitchen on the slippery tile practising our hockey fight reenactments after a particularly high intensity Jets game. Neighbours 1 & 2 pulled up in to their parking pad & our immediate thoughts were 'For craps sakes if some more cops come to our door because you two can't mind their own beeswax & look inside our house to see what we're doing, we're really going to have a problem'.
Model citizens next door don't kill the half a billion weeds in their yard (which is also a by-law infraction that I could report however some of us reasonable people would rather think of a tactful way to bring it up instead of making an anonymous call) and in turn I have to work harder to keep my lawn weed free. They don't rake & they don't shovel snow (I feel so bad for the mail lady).
What also confuses me about crazy neighbours is that they know who we are. We are not high turnover renters or people in a rooming house going in & out. We are owners just like them. They have talked to us & I would assume that they know we are reasonable people.
One day male neighbour sees Mr. Ford exit the house & asks him if we could put an extension on our downspout so that water would drain away from their property. He said that he had had some flooding in his basement.
Basement flooding? Now let me make two things clear. If we were draining water from on top of our house in to our own yard, wouldn't we be the first people to flood? (we didn't). And the other thing: If darling neighbours had had their property graded properly, there would be no way water could 'climb' up a perch to seep in to their foundation. Gravity doesn't work that way.
None the less we immediately agreed, went out, then & there to buy a hose extension & later that summer paid $3500 to have our whole eaves system re-done. Your welcome neighbours, according to your logic we just stopped your house from flooding, I guess we're good people!
If I've learned anything from this, it's that living in a community means you have to be conscious of other people. Even people with a crawfish up their ass.
It also means that you have to respect the diversity of the people that live around you & realize they might not have the same values or lifestyles as yourself.
And finally, I'm learning that when dealing with most social situations in life, you have to pull up your panties & confront things. It's might seem less stressful to take the easy way out but it seldom ever ends that way.
You don't want to have to live beside people who turn on the TV & immediately scream "SHHHH DON'T TURN THE TV ON, THE NOISE MIGHT FRIGHTEN THE MOLE PEOPLE"
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