Day 88 – Neighbors

Next door to use lives a man.  A single man.  He is in his 60s, I think.  He lives in the unit closest to our house in a quadplex.

I have a love-hate relationship to this guy.  He loves kids.  He can be kind.  And, he cares about his unit and how the front of it looks, etc.

But, he acts with a sense of entitlement that drives me crazy.  For example,  how many cars do you think a single guy needs?

See the three cars – the Jag and two Mercedes?  Yep, those are three of his four cars.  He believes he should be able to park all four vehicles in a row on this side of the street.  The problem is the fact there are other people with cars that would like to park near where they live.  Hell, I’d like to park in front of my house occasionally.  But, if I do, I get attitude from the guy.  So, I park halfway down the block and walk to my house.

Because he doesn’t drive these three cars – our street doesn’t get cleaned in the summer and fall which means the leaves don’t get swept up, drains flood, and cause issues all the way back past my house.    Then he will leave passive aggressive notes on our door about how it is our fault somehow.

I think he reported us to the city last summer because we hadn’t trimmed the tree in the picture.  We hadn’t been able to trim it because his car was always under it.  After getting the letter taped to the door, I went out and trimmed it anyway.  He moved his car after that – too bad it didn’t last long.

I think there are a lot of us in the neighborhood fed up with this guy.  I noticed that his cars are getting tagged for towing because they haven’t moved.  This only happens when someone calls and complains.  Someone is beating Garbanzo to it because he normally makes those phone calls.

Last summer, the owner of the quadplex and I became friends.  A tree from his backyard fell into ours & miraculously caused no damage (this was a huge tree too – it missed our deck, the kids swing set, the raised beds, our fences – everything.).  While he was freaking out, I was the one calming him down and telling him to get it out of the yard when he could – and not to worry about the minor damage that was done to a pretty old and rickety table that was back there.  He told us a couple weeks later that he was blown away that we didn’t freak out and demand immediate action and compensation.

I may have to use this to my advantage and ask him what is up with this neighbor who has recently decided to start his own thrift store out of one of the garages.  There is now a makeshift shed near our property line, and we are starting to get concerned about it attracting crime.  It wouldn’t be too hard to steal that stuff.  It would just take a sharp knife and a good kick.

We love our other neighbors.  But maybe it’s because they don’t act as though the world owes them.  I’m sure that helps.

What do you think?

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