Are your neighbors normal?

[marcy]

And if not, what very odd or slightly odd things do they do?

[marcy]

Ours seem very normal... but Tuesday night about 9 PM I said to Justin "Is that Joe's lawn mower?" Sure enough, our neighbor was mowing (riding mower, with headlights) his lawn at 9 PM. Thought that was a bit odd. He gets home at a normal time of evening so I'm not sure why the late yard work.

[TtownAnne]

Ours are generally pretty normal. The family behind us, the lady is hoarding birds I think. There is a flock of ducks/geese that mosey around her yard, and when she opens the front door you can hear the deafening tweeting and chirping. I'd bet she has over 100 birds in cages. Can you imagine the stench? :dead:

And our neighbors next door, who were practically one of the reasons we bought this house, have turned a little nutsy about parking. D completely freaks out if anyone else is parked in front of his house - even if HE himself is parked in front of someone else's house! We keep one of our cars out front parked about three inches over the "line" between his house and ours just to stress him out. :devil:

[madison817]

Our neighbors probably all have children my age. As for odd - I have 1 who hates water in his driveway. Last spring he actually put up sand bags at the end of his driveway and used a sump pump to pump the water out and keep it out. It was really weird.

[Eleanor]

Ours are very normal- we actually hardly ever see them...but our one neighbor plows our driveway for us every winter :)

[Shel]

Our psycho neighrbor filed bankruptcy and lost her house, and the neighbors got together in adjoined backyards and we toasted her leaving. A new couple has since bought the house, and they are fabulous. We have great neighbors, other than the college age kids next door who only mow when the neighborhood association sends them a letter....... (but they are quiet, so we'll take it)

[Michele]

Ours are all kind of odd.

On one side next door we have a couple who moved up here from New Orleans after Katrina. The husband is probably 55 and the wife is probably 35. They have their living room set up as an office, and he works from home, the wife doesn't work so they are always home. They have a poodle named Mike, that she takes out about 500 times a day - she is always wearing sweats or PJs, I've never seen her in real clothes. Also, she has a really high pitched voice. I can hear her talking to the dog outside sometimes and I always think it is Jackson. She actually just walked by my window with the dog as I was typing this.

On the other side is a couple about our age. They seem nice enough, but they aren't very social. A few times last summer when we had friends over we invited them over for a beer (they moved her from CA last spring) but they never came.

On the other side of the old guy/young woman was a couple also about our age that were really nice. However, it appears that they broke up about a month ago. One Saturday morning her Dad showed up with a Uhaul, and moved all her stuff out. He moved out last week.

Across the street from us is a house that has been turned into apartments or condos. I'm kind of sketched out by it b/c there are people in and out of there all day. :dunno:

[~Deborah~]

On one side we have pretty normal neighbours...I just don't agree with the time they are away from their dogs during the day. I admit that the dogs do have a door on the side of the house so they can go in and out of their *pen* that they built in part of their garage but still. They always go away on the weekends too and leave them :( Why have dogs if you are never going to be home is what I say.

On the other side we have a single mom who is super anal. She is out there with scissors cutting the grass if it wasn't cut evenly and she uses q-tips to get grunge out of parts of her car. Also, during the winter when snow would fall down onto her driveway from the piles, she would be out there making sure it went back up....Yet she has no problem leaving a blob of snow in the middle of our shared driveway:screwy:.

[Hilary]

The lady across the street from us is a little nutty. She lives with her older uncle who has a heart condition and takes care of him. We think she's an alcoholic. Her sister lives next door to us and she seems normal. :lol: Then the guy next to her has about 8 dogs, but he and his wife are really nice. Their daughter baby sat for us once. The people on the other side are awesome! :up:

[Hannabanana]

Right across the street from us is a brother/sister combo who are well into their mid-70's. Mike doesn't look anything near his age and is always the guy who goes out in the winter storm and snowblows all the old lady's driveways from their church and rides his bike.
His sister, Anne, is another story :rolleyes: She's crazy. When their mother was alive (way before our time here), she kept a gorgeous front lawn/garden that Anne has kept up and to be absolutely honest, it's gorgeous and she knows A LOT about plants/flowers which is helpful but she's nuts. She thinks that there's a conspiracy theory about how everyone is out to get her. (I say "nuts" loosely because we don't know if she's actually paranoid clinically) Let's just say, when you're in your house and you hear shouting outside, you're sure to find Anne complaining to a neighbour about something :lol:

[Jayne]

We have the oddest neighbors:giggle: They never make a noise, never leave their homes and are not social at all..Not to mention they are all DEAD :lol: (no seriously..we live across the street from a grave yard :silly:

Other then that..On one side we have a chiropractor (now mind you I live in a residential area..it is just that it is an old town and these people have offices out of their home). The other side is a great guy named Gary. He too has an exterminating business out of his home :lol: We share everything with him. Down to the lawn mower, snow plow, and the kids..Every time he locks himself out of his house he shoves one of my kids through his window to unlock the house :blush:

My parents are my other neighbors and right behind the back yard is a huge field and then the High School!

I love my neighborhood except their are no kids for the kids to play with.

[WendyK]

Our neighbors are all normal with the exception of 1 family never watching or correcting their children. They run wild all day long. I can't leave my garage open without one of them getting in it and taking our toys. She would let her then 3 year old run the neighborhood and never check on her??

[Nocona]

Most of our neighbors are very normal. The ones to one side, however, are just weird. They have a son, approximately 13, who I have seen a total of less than 10 times in over 7 years!!! He's never outside and I never see him having friends over or anything. The dad is a martial arts expert and he's always practicing in his garage - with the door open. It's hilarious.

[Alyson]

We don't know our neighbors really.. but what we do know is..

The people across from us have a teenage daughter that is weird! Like, dresses totally strange. I'd almost say she's goth by I'm not really sure.. Though, they're quiet and seem friendly (wave to us etc).
The people next to us are idiots. We were warned when we moved in from the previous owners (and FIL was the guys boss for years, until he retired in Jan). They're probably in their late 30's early 40's, the woman has an 11 yr old daughter (that is VERY active in softball, so they are never home on the weekends) from a previous marriage, but G is like her dad I guess they're very close. They were super friendly the 1st few weeks and then that changed. Last summer when we were on our vacation to San Diego, she called our 2nd day into it and said that our truck was '1/2 way in their driveway, so the towtruck couldn't get their old honda out to be towed' she wasn't friendly about it and we didn't want to cause too much trouble, so we came home 2 days early to move the truck (wish we'd never done that). When we got home the very front corner of our truck was 'on their driveway' but not enough that the car couldn't be towed!! What really pisses us off is that the car is STILL there... almost a year later!!! So, it wasn't as urgent as she made it out to be!! ugh!! They also came over one night to tell me that I had 2 teenagers talking in my front yard.. umm yeah, my foreign exchange student and her friend!!! nosey!!!! AND one night my sister and BIL were here and they had their 2 dogs (small dogs) with them, so we had 3 little dogs in the backyard. G came over (we weren't home but our exchange student was) at 8pm!!.. and yelled to shut the dogs up because they were trying to sleep!!! Mind you, this was a Friday night at 8pm! I was so pissed when I got home that I took all 3 of the dogs outside and did everything I could to make thme bark! ..at 10pm. Hope that woke them up!;)
They're just lame and annoying!

There is a little old lady at the end of the cul de sac who is nice, dont' see her too much though.
The only other neighbor is this weird guy! We've been told sooo many crazy things about him. He has a yard sale like every weekend with such random crap! He goes through peoples trash (and then sells it) on trash day. We're pretty sure that he is who took our pack and play out of our garage, as it was there forever, since we movedin and then one day, dissappeared.. when I'd had the garage door open all day! We always look over to see if it's there when he has a garage sale! haha. If we go on a walk, he'll get in his truck and follow us (or anyone) for a bit.. creepy! One night last summer Matt and I were washing the truck at 10:30 pm (cause it was soo hot) and we saw him go sit in his truck and just watch us the entire time!!! He's sooo weird!!!!

That's it for us!!

Yikes.. sorry this ended up being soo long!!

[Cami]

Marcy, headlights. :lol:

Anne, I'm surprised no one has called the health dept about the birds!

Jayne :lol:

Our neighbors mostly all keep to themselves. I wouldn't call any of them "odd" and nothing really crazy has gone on around here. One woman is a ricidulous busybody but that's a different complaint. :)

If anything, they probably think we're the odd ones. We do our own yard work and housekeeping and we keep our driveway gate open. :crazy:

[Karri]

If anything, they probably think we're the odd ones. We do our own yard work and housekeeping and we keep our driveway gate open. :crazy:

oh the horror! :lol:

The dad is a martial arts expert and he's always practicing in his garage - with the door open. It's hilarious.

A vision of Kip Dynamite popped into my head :giggle:

We have a few, but not too many that I know of. Thank pete that they just moved last month. They were the most unfriendly, unsocial, socially awkward people I've ever encountered. And their kid was one of those totally annoying know-it-all kids who grinds on you.
We have one flat on our block and the renters drive us batshit. They live across from us and they are so WT. They treat their kids (son in Jr high, daughters in college) like shit, and they get drunk and smoke pot all the time and then proceed to scream at each other. Our other neighbors and us take turns calling the police on them :shuffle:
There used to be this guy who lived around the corner, on the other block, and we'd always see him jogging w/o a shirt on :wtf: And when he'd stop and talk to you, it was weird. Plus he'd never STFU. He left his wife and kids to join a band.

[Girlo]

Deborah - I wonder why the single mom neighbor is still single??? :awink: It's a mystery.....

We're semi-rural (we have neighbors, but we're all on acreage), so we really don't see our neighbors. There's no one in front of us or to the left of us.....just woods. :) The people behind us are okay. We really don't see them ever. It's a single mom who moved into her mom's house when she died. She has 3 or 4 teenage boys, who seem pretty well-behaved. They do blast their radio in the garage once in a while and there was a time when the youngest got an ATV and would ride around their property, blasting the horn constantly. :errr: Other than that, we really don't hear anything from them.

The other neighbors (to the right of us) are good friends. :) The previous owners had a federally-licensed organic herb farm (for pharm use). When they moved, they sold the business to their partner, who still uses the property for the business...complete with intern workers.
The new owners are their best friends and they're continuing the organic farming on the property, although now it's for their own use. They have 3 kids - 2 girls (older than Alex) and a boy (younger), whom Alex loves to play with. :) They're really wonderful, crunchy people who are both schoolteachers. We've socialized with them many times and we feel pretty lucky that they're our neighbors.

[~Deborah~]

Deborah - I wonder why the single mom neighbor is still single??? :awink: It's a mystery.....



:giggle: Well she has had *cough* many suitors in the 3 yrs we have been here. Oh and she is a biatch

[Michele]

There used to be this guy who lived around the corner, on the other block, and we'd always see him jogging w/o a shirt on :wtf: And when he'd stop and talk to you, it was weird. Plus he'd never STFU. He left his wife and kids to join a band.

OMG this reminds me of our neighbor Scott and I call short shorts man. I wouldn't totally consider him a neighbor, but he does live on our street (our street is pretty long and cut in half by a main road, so I sometimes forget that the other side is still our street).

Anyway, short shorts man is called that b/c he wears really short shorts (not running shorts, more like cargo shorts that are too short for him) no shirt, and docksiders all summer - like to the park and around town and stuff. He has a son who is a couple months younger than Jackson, so we see him a lot at the park or the library or the Y. The weird thing is, I've been bumping into him a few times a month for 3 years now, but every time I see him he acts like he doesn't know who I am, and goes through the whole introduction thing. At first I'd say stuff like "yeah we met at the park last week" (I obviously remember you b/c you are the half naked freak at the playground!). About 2 years ago I stopped doing that I just go along with it and pretend I've never met him. :lol:

[Lynn]

Our neighbors are okay. Since we live on a corner we get 'em from all sides. :lol: The guy directly next door to us is awesome. He will plow our front driveway/walk if he gets home first (and we reciprocate :nod: ) and generally is just a nice guy. He's single and other than playing his death metal music a touch too loud he's pretty cool. :up:

The neighbor behind us is an annoying woman with equally annoying dogs. She works 3 12 hour shifts and her dogs escape out of her yard all the time (and poop in our yard :complain: ) and bark like crazy around the clock. I've already called animal control on her once. I suspect it won't be the last time. :scan:

Mostly everyone keeps to themselves. We had annoying rental neighbors right across the street from us when we moved in and Keith and I whooped and high fived when they were evicted. Since then a nice young family moved in and keep themselves and their yard quiet.

[AmyP]

Umm....I really don't know the ones on either side. The people behind us are interesting. The ones who own the house are fine, but their daughter and her family drive me crazy! They used to live with them, and they had this dog they let run in my yard. The dog would come after me when I was in my own yard, and would poop in my yard. I politely asked her to keep the dog tied up and then she wouldn't talk to me anymore. :rolleyes: We actually used to be friendly. They'd go to the park with us, let Sarah in their pool, etc. But she hates our family now because I asked her to keep her dog in her yard. :rolleyes: I'm very relieved she finally got her own place.

[TtownAnne]

Anne, I'm surprised no one has called the health dept about the birds!

The only reason I haven't is because I don't know exactly how many it is - I'm hearing about it second hand from other people who haven't even been inside her house but have dropped their kids off to play with her kids, etc. I'm freaked out by the ducks wandering around her yard though - they've ended up in our yard scaring the life out of Caroline, they've pooped in our garage, they chase you if you walk away from them, etc.

[Jessica]

Most of them are great. One neighbor has three dogs that we call "the hell hounds" or "the Bumpus (sp?) hounds"...they scare the daylights out of me. They're all part pit bull and they run as fast as they can to the fence and growl and bark at anyone they see. And the fence isn't all that sturdy, so I always turn and go back in the house or in my car if I see them. They are only ever outside when the owners are out with them, so it could be worse, and they do listen and go to their owners when called. But still, they scare me. We've lived here for over a year and you'd think by now they'd be used to us.

The rest of the neighbors are fantastic. We had neighbors next to us that we didn't like, but they moved out last winter and a really fun, young couple moved in. A lot of the other neighbors are original owners and have been here for years and are very nice people.

[schwanda]

Our neighbors to the left are lovely. They have 2 kids who are like 18 and 20. The woman works for the local parenting magazine and is always dropping off free tickets to children's events. The husband is very helpful. Just nice, nice people.
The neighbors on the other side we've never met. They have teenaged kids who throw wild parties. At least the noise level has never been terrible.
There are a few young kids on the street but we don't really know them. One family lets their preschool-aged son play in the street which always makes me nervous....

Amanda

[kalm]

The neighbors on either side of us are, um, interesting, but at least the rest of the neighbors in our general vicinity are nice.

On one side of us are retirees. The woman, Delores, is very nice. She always comes to chat when she sees me, loves to have the kids play in her yard, typical grandmotherly type. Her husband, Ben, means well, but is as annoying as crap. Everyone on our street thinks he's a drunk and always pull the kids away from the road when he's driving. I think he's just old and maybe has had a couple little strokes or something. But he calls all the time to ask random things (this week it was to find out how much we paid for homeowner's insurance and if we were using the same company as when we moved into the house), but when I pick up the phone he acts like he has no idea who I am until I say hello and ask what he needs.

On the other side is Richie, aka the big fat naked guy. Until about a year ago, he was single and constantly had a stream of women in and out of his house (and the pool in his backyard, which we have a clear view of). And these "ladies" all looked like strippers. Lovely. He got his nickname right after we moved in here. I was in the yard with my girlfriend and she glances toward his house and sees him walking naked in his kitchen. Nice. It did serve as a good reminder to make sure my window covering were adequate!

Directly across the street, we have a family with two moms -- but I have absolutely no issue. Their house is the best mantained on our steet, and they're the nicest people ever, with polite kids and a great dog. The president of our homeowner's association who lives a few doors down makes slurs, which I abhor. Diagnally across the street is a family with four kids, two of which are the ages of my kids. The parents are great and I feel lucky to have them so close -- we help each other out with babysititng from time to time.

Generally, everyone's friendly and no one's throwing wild parties or anything. Few other quirky ones, but no one really wacko that I can tell!

[Darcy]

The nieghbor to our north is great. He's just a nuisance on the 4th of July when he sets off every single firework. But he's so great, helping us out with whatever we need. The couple on the other side of them, he's great, but she's crazy. I call her my stalker neighbnor since she seems to swoop down on me anytime I'm outside with the kids. And somehow I end up watching her kids while she "quickly runs inside". :rolleyes: She also lent me clothes, putting a red mark on every single tag so I know which ones were her to return once Jeremy grows out of them. I'm grateful for the clothes, but if you want them back, then don't lend them to me.

The couple to the south are fine. They have 4 kids, the youngest in high school, and they pretty much keep to themselves. We get a nice aroma of illegal stuff in the summer in their backyard. :lol: And they have a dog named Riley, so sometimes when they yell, "Riley, get in here!" it freaks out our Riley. And our Riley refers to their house as "my doggy's house".

We don't know the people directly on the other side of the street, as they only speak Polish. And the people behind us (we share a fence) are pretty nice.

[Melissa]

We have GREAT neighbors! I wish I could take them all with me when we move. To the left is a retired couple that watch their grandchild who is SUCH a cutie. They also have a huge dog that is great. The only time we hear him bark is when Katie and I are outside and he wants to play with her.

To the right is an older woman who is nice but she definitely keeps to herself. I know the other people near us and they are all great. It is a quiet place but everyone knows everyone and is friendly.

[MrsPeacefrog]

our immediate neighbours either side of us are very normal although the guy across the road from us is a hoarder, it drives us insane and we have actually written letters to the council to get it cleaned up, his backyard and garage is completely overflowing with random stuff so much that it's overspilled onto his front porch and front lawn, it's a disgusting mess and an embarrassment when we have people over that our street looks like a junk yard. One time we asked him what it was all for and he said "we go and get things from trash pick ups and garage sales then we resell them" It must not be a good business though because his inventory seems to be way exceeding his actual sales! Here is a picture of what it can look like, it has gotten worse than this, and my recent letter to the council got it cleaned up for a brief period of time.

This is on a good day :rolleyes:
http://im1.shutterfly.com/procserv/47b8dc26b3127cceb4bbbde62fc200000026108AbN2Llq0aNH

[~Deborah~]

:woa: Deb! I thought we had it bad when the people who lived across the court from us at our old house parked his boat on the grass during the summer and a car during the winter!

[Karri]

OMG!
I can't believe that they (your council) isn't all over him for that!

[MrsPeacefrog]

Karri, I do know that they went out and issued him with a "clean up or we will do it for you and then charge you for it" notice, which made him clean the entire thing up. It looked good for a few weeks then it started piling back up again, I plan on writing another letter about it to get this sorted once and for all, it's no good if he is going to just let it go back to the way it was! It's disgusting! I am just grateful that I am not trying to sell my house at the moment, although the rest of the houses in the street are in beautiful condition, that would seriously stop people from wanting to buy. :dead:

[Clare]

We don't really know our neighbours. There are only 5 houses on our street, 4 of them occupied. We know the names of the couple next door but that's about it. We've never spoken to the other two families at all.

[Kimmy0712]

The neighbors to one side of us is fairly normal. He and his girlfirend are a little younger (26 I think) and are playing house. When he first moved in 4 years ago it was HELL. He moved in with a bunch of buddy's and they partied till all hours outside in the backyard. that was not fun. He has grown up since then and has been fine.

The neighbor on the other side is a little weird. He is very nice and we talk to him often but he just has some very odd views on things. He is always feeding the damn birds, ducks, ect.. in the back yard and he is now turning his yard into a "sanctuary" for the animals. I can't stand the fact that when we walk out to the back of our yard there is duck and goose poop everywhere! Gross. He doesn't work ( his wife does). He is a singer/song writer so he plays his guitar alot. We heard that he won the lottery a while ago so who knows. He just bought a Harley and I tease him that the bike was his mid-life crisis. Ohter than being a little odd he is a pretty good neighbor. My FIL lives 2 houses down from us and we are pretty friendly with the rest of the neighbors for the most part. DH grew up on that street so he pretty much knows most of them.

[bunybomb]

We are so lucky to have normal neighbors. There are three families on the cul-de-sac that have girls the same age as Alex. There are 3 familes that are just couples (actually one of those are expecting their first now) and we have several families with older kids or they are empty nesters. We do have an abandonded house across the street and we are waiting for the bank to do something with it. I wish it would happen soon before the outside of the house starts to look crappy. The neighbors and I try to keep the outside looking decent by picking up newspapers and junk mail.

Now the neighbors behind us......different story.

[LISA]

Yeah they are all pretty normal, we get along fine with them or I should say Tony does..I havn't spoken more than 3 words to them since we moved here 5+ yrs ago.

[Alyssa]

The people directly next door to me and then the ones next door to them just moved in and I've not seen them, but otherwise my neighbors rock! We just moved here and we're all new to the town, and getting along swimmingly. I'm a little concerned b/c I think those 2 new families are renters and this is not what I imagined in this neighborhood, but it's a sign of the real estate times....from what I hear, both of them are just trying to figure out if they're going to move here for good, so I guess it makes sense.

[Alyssa]

our immediate neighbours either side of us are very normal although the guy across the road from us is a hoarder, it drives us insane and we have actually written letters to the council to get it cleaned up, his backyard and garage is completely overflowing with random stuff so much that it's overspilled onto his front porch and front lawn, it's a disgusting mess and an embarrassment when we have people over that our street looks like a junk yard. One time we asked him what it was all for and he said "we go and get things from trash pick ups and garage sales then we resell them" It must not be a good business though because his inventory seems to be way exceeding his actual sales! Here is a picture of what it can look like, it has gotten worse than this, and my recent letter to the council got it cleaned up for a brief period of time.

This is on a good day :rolleyes:
Wow! Was it like that when you were looking at the house, or is this a new thing?

[MrsPeacefrog]

Wow! Was it like that when you were looking at the house, or is this a new thing?


It wasn't like that when we looked at the house, but by the time settlement came around 6 weeks later there was some things on the front lawn, but nothing to ring alarm bells, over the last 5 odd months it's gotten out of control.

[Shel]

Where is Brooke with her picture of her neighrbors with the doll heads stuck in the fence? :giggle:

[Shanna]

I live in the sticks, so my neighbors aren't "close", but we do have some. The folks across the street from us are an old, retired, disabled company and are absolutely the best neighbors. She keeps kids during the daytime and he spends his days in the yard :)

Next to them is the rented trailer of teenage boys. At least that is all I ever see in/out of there. They are nice enough, ie, they don't TP people's houses or light flaming bags of poo on your front porch, but their dogs get into EVERYONE'S trash and drag it all over the road. Their dogs came up to our house one day close to easter and took off with a basket of candy that John had left on the picnic table outside after he picked the girls up from school one day. I'm pretty sure the dogs got sick after that b/c I haven't seen them up here recently :giggle:

Next to them are the rednecks. Yes, I know, rednecks in Arkansas - you must be kidding! These folks run a lawnmower repair/parts business out of their garage and have a bright yellow "custom" lawnmower parked in their front yard with their sign on it. They have built this "fence" between them and the trailer of boys to keep their dogs out. Which would be great, but the fence is only about 10 feet long.

Down a ways, we have the petting zoo. Really, monkeys, camels, pigs, cows - all that. In the summertime, you can go outside in the evening and it sounds like you're in the jungle.

We don't have any neighbors for about a mile on our side of the road, which is fine with me :)

[schwanda]

We just met another family across the street from us. Very, very nice people!!!

Amanda