Are Your Neighbors Ruining Your View?

In the ten years we’ve lived here, there have been three, no, make that four, owners of the house adjacent to us. Nothing against the neighbors house. It’s just the side of the house. The driveway doesn’t stop at the garage door, it winds around the garage on our side and insists on being used for “storage”.

I hate that patch of asphalt. It’s right outside our only south-facing window in our living room. While no one lives in the house it’s not a problem but when someone lives there, the view is ruined.

The first owners parked a boat so large it might have been a yacht. I’m not sure what classifies a boat to be a yacht, but with a blue tarp over it that noisily blows in the breeze, it might as well have been IN our house. An eyesore, to say the least. Not to mention the blue tarp didn’t go with my decor.

We loathed those neighbors. They introduced themselves as bornagainchristians. All one word. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But it was a little strange when they bragged that they have a float in the Upper Wonderful July 4th parade. Apparently, that is a big deal. Being newbs to the ‘hood, we didn’t realize what a big deal that was to have a float in the parade. It baffled them that that was lost on us.

At the height of when the nextdoor neighbors with the big blue yacht in my living room were getting on my nerves, I was big into the second season of The Sopranos. An impressionable girl, I was beginning to talk like Tony, pick up his mannerisms, his attitude. I talked like I had backup.

One day I was on the phone that had been dropped too many times. I had to shove it into my ear canal to hear the teeny tiny voice inside. I was sitting on the porch talking to a painter, trying to smooth her over because she’d hurt herself the first day on the job. The second day on the job she showed up late and stayed for two hours, and the third day I fired her. I was trying to smooth her over because she was friends with my friend and former client. I didn’t want her to go spreading rumors about Amy the Bitch.

In mid-backpedal, the neighbor’s son pulls up in a truck, gets out to go inside, and leaves it idling. I hate when men do that. Turn it off. Noise pollution! Helloooo! I’m edgy because I can’t hear the painter. She’s making me work too hard. Her feelings are hurt, still, and she’s talking quietly even after I asked her twice to speak louder.

“Can you turn off your truck, please? I can’t hear!” I yell to my neighbor.

“Well then go inside!” he yells back.

“Turn off your freaking truck!” I yell, forgetting that I’m not Tony Soprano, that no one is afraid of me, and there will be no consequences for anyone who crosses me.

“Jeez!” I say into the phone, while the neighbor is still in earshot. ‘Jerk wouldn’t turn off his freaking truck.” So much for backpedaling and smoothing over the painter. I handled that brilliantly.

I got sick of the blue tarp out my living room window and called the City. It’s against city ordinance to have the boat stored there. As if the blue tarp made it invisible. Boat? What boat??

The following Sunday when they came home from church, the bornagainchristians thanked me for narc’ing on them. We acted like we didn’t know what they were talking about. Boat? What boat?? Then later we found out that all you have to do is call the City and they’ll tell you who filed a complaint. My dumb blonde trick doesn’t always work.

The neighbors after the boat people were renters. The house was bought by a mortgage scammer for twice its value. No one looked into it for two more sales. Its final sale was over $700,000. People used to drive up and down our road of ranch homes under 2,000-square feet looking for the mansion.

The renter’s son was a hockey player. A really good one. He played hockey in that asphalt space, hitting my aluminum siding with pucks every now and then. He was really cute and I had the hots for him in a Desperate Housewives sort of way, so I didn’t complain. But once the grandfather started parking his bright yellow parts car there I put a voodoo on the house. I refused to call the City to complain about the car because I liked these people. They were the perfect cliches. They drank like fish, smoked like chimneys and fought like cats and dogs.

When they fought it was all under their breath, through gritted teeth so their cigarettes wouldn’t fall out. Keith, the cute teenager, used to come out of the house saying, “I’m never going to be like them.” I felt sorry for him. He was a ladies’ man with a car. High school girls with waists no bigger than my pinky dug him.

They’d come over to the house and pick him up and his mom would come out. Kiss of death. Breasts so large no bra would fit. She’d wobble out to the car to give him one last instruction, a breast under each arm as if she was carrying produce that was left on the vine too long. I wasn’t sure if she was wearing a jersey dress or an oversized t-shirt, but either way, the effect was What Not to Wear. Ever!

James went through girlfriends very quickly. I wasn’t sure if it was because he was a player or if it was because of the kiss of death, when his mom came to the door.

After the Cliche’s moved the house sat vacant. The third owner was Mayfold Mortgage. Suckers. While the house was empty and no one was looking, I snagged 10 bushes from the backyard garden that were planted by the Cliche’s. I transplanted them along the side of the asphalt patch, still on their property, just in a spot where I hoped that one day they’d grow so tall I wouldn’t have to see that patch of asphalt or whatever the next family “stored” there.

I mulched the bushes over with ground leaves. It took me an entire day to plant and mulch and I was hurrying. I didn’t want anyone to see me moving the bushes. I was hoping the mulch would protect the shallowly planted roots through the winter.

The house sat vacant for a year until the people who live there now bought it for less than its value and began renovating. In the midst of the renovation they are using the asphalt patch out my southern window for construction storage. But the stuff seems to be moving each garbage day.

What’s distressing is that the first thing they did when they bought the house was rake the yard and trim back all the plants. I looked out one day and saw all the ground leaves I’d used to protect the bushes raked up. Now the roots are exposed on the surface of the dirt. I’m hoping they mulch soon. How am I going to explain why I’m watering their bushes?

“Oh, I just love to water!”

I’ve met the new owners. They didn’t introduce themselves as bornagainchristians. I didn’t introduce myself as the lady that rearranged their bushes before they bought the house. Maybe I should lift the voodoo. I’ll wait on that. There’s some construction debris that has the look of something they’re not sure if they want to keep or discard. The voodoo isn’t working. Or there’s a vortex out my southern window that no voodoo can touch. I bet that’s it.

The things you can’t know about a house until you’ve lived there for a while. Things the most anal home inspector couldn’t catch. “Uh, ma’am, there’s a debris sucking vortex out your south-facing window. You can’t see it now, but the longer you live here the more it’s going to affect you emotionally over time.”

Not a lot of inspectors will be that honest with you. That’s the real problem.

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