My neighbors moved in about five years ago. They are the epitome of the all-American family. I hate them.
OK, hate is too strong a word. But I sure wish they would move away. And they’re doing nothing wrong, or at least, illegal, or even uncommon. It’s just that everything they do annoys me.
They have a dog. I’ve lived around dogs, and owned several myself, for over 50 years, and I’ve never heard a dog like this. They put him out every morning around 7AM, and he immediately starts… I don’t know how to describe it. Not exactly barking, not exactly crying, but it sounds like he’s being tortured. I know he’s fine; I can see him over the fence. But if you heard him, you would swear that somebody is using a power drill on him. Makes it very hard to sleep. I’m retired, and I like to sleep late. I have to use a white noise generator at full volume.
They have a truck. A big fat diesel pickup. It is louder than the garbage truck, and smells worse. They start that up every morning at 7AM, too, and let it idle for ten minutes or so. They never haul or tow anything that I’ve seen, they just use it to go to work and the store. It’s completely flat around here, and the roads are nicely paved.
They do take a ski trip once a year, for about a week. So naturally, they put studded tires on it for three months a year. It has never snowed more than an inch in the 15 years I’ve lived here, and it’s never stuck more than a couple hours. Most years, we get no snow at all.
From which you might infer we have a mild climate. We do indeed. Almost constant wind, lots of rain in the winter, but very mild temperatures. And yet, they have a woodburning stove, which they are liable to use any time it’s below 60 degrees. And of course, they are directly upwind of me. I know they have wood, because they use their chainsaw on it at, you guessed it, 7AM, but it smells like they also burn their old socks and tires. Whatever, it rains a lot here, and so I like to air out the house when the rain stops, but now I have to keep my windows shut when they burn something, which is often.
Seriously, what is the difference between using a wood stove, and dumping their garbage on their front lawn? In each case, they would save 40 bucks a month, at the expense of their neighbors. The papers will blow away into their neighbors’ yards, and the crows will eat most of the food scraps. It might stink, but they won’t have to pay the 40 bucks for garbage service, which is about all they could be saving with their wood stove, even if they get the wood for free. I have electric heat, and my bill is only about 40 bucks higher in the winter than the summer (no air conditioning, don’t need it). In the summer, when they STILL burn wood when the lows are in the 50’s, they can’t be saving more than ten bucks a month. I never even have my heat on from May to October.
The constant woodpile is probably a great home for ticks and termites, too.
And of course, their kids shriek when they play, and they do their lawn mowing and leaf blowing on weekend mornings.
A weak rant, I know. They’re not really doing anything wrong. I just wish they would move away.
