Neighbors

I have only lived in my current house since November. I love almost everything about it because we pretty much gutted it when we bought it. I chose all the colors and styles. Well, everything except the kitchen, but that's another story. The house is a little small, but it is only for the 3 of us and the HUGE backyard makes up for anything the house is lacking.

One of the things that has really been bothering me about being here is the neighbors. We chose this neighborhood for a reason - it is in the boundaries of one of the best elementary schools in town. It is a higher income area (which is why we have probably the smallest house in the neighborhood, but again we made sacrifices in that area). All of our neighbors are really, really nice but it seems fake.

We have a neighbor directly across the street from us who has race cars. When I was growing up my dad was a drag racer so I understand and even have a little patience for the HORRIBLE noise that comes from these cars. What I don't understand is why it has to happen at midnight. And again at 2 am, and again at 6 am. Do these people not sleep?? But he always says hi to me, and talks to K. Except when I ask him to keep his dog from chewing up my flowers in the front yard.

The couple next to us on the right has 3 kids. Their yard looks like a great place to play with all of the toys. She always waves to us and asks how we are doing. I saw a friendship for awhile, until we started talking more often. She is MEAN to her kids. She leaves the 3 and 4 year old inside the front door crying so loud I can hear it from my yard - just to talk on the phone (and I don't mean an important phone call, I mean gossip about who slept with who last night - she talks really loud I can hear all of that too) and smoke her cigarettes. Every time they are outside she tells the kids to not bother her. It really just bothers me.

There is an older lady across the street and a few houses down that just seemed a little strange to me. It may be a medical condition, I'm not sure. We had a garage sale in March and she stopped by to say hi and tell us HOW MUCH SHE LOVED GARAGE SALES. Seriously, she said it like 20 times. The weird part is when she took a baby doll and covered her up with a baby clothes and told her she would be happier there. THEN, she had the nerve to start pulling the 'weeds' in my flower garden. The weeds she was pulling - it was some type of plant (I am not an expert on plants - I can't even identify flowers really) that was just beginning to grow back. By the time I noticed, she was getting up and leaving. OMG the NERVE!

Next door to us, on the other side of the mad mom, are two old women. They are sisters, and moved in together when their husbands passed away. They are quiet enough, but still really get to me. I like to keep my business to myself (well at least in real life - this doesn't count) and they are really NOSEY! When we first moved in the one lady informed us that when they moved into their house they held an "open house" so the neighbors could see what they did with it. She said this as she was trying to look in the curtains of our home. I politely declined, saying how busy I was (ahem school, work, etc etc). She seemed a little ticked off. A different conversation led to a conversation about religion. She asked me what church we went to (we don't go to church) and was a little disturbed when I told her that. We live in a very religious town, where 2 churches can be found next door to each other.

Without getting into too many details, I was raised to believe in God and certain other aspects of religion, but we did not go to church. This was partially because my parents were 2 different religions, and partially because my dad has no trust in churches. When he was younger his family was very involved with the church and all of the activities. When my grandpa got sick (had to have multiple heart surgeries, and had a heart attack) they turned to the church for support. They did not need monetary support, just emotional help and someone to pray for them. They asked the pastor to come to the house and sit with my grandpa and when he refused because they hadn't been attending church (they were in the hospital) my dad lost all trust in churches. What makes it worse was the fact that this man had been a close family friend from the time he was a child.

Anyway, back to the story of the neighbor. I did not feel like I should have to explain my beliefs to her and told her it was time for K.'s nap so we went inside. A few weeks ago she told H. that we should go to church, and that he shouldn't let me run things so much because it wasn't normal. She said the devil was real and tried to kill her brother once and the same thing would happen to us if we didn't accept Jesus. We stopped having so many chats with her, but just looked at it as someone who was set in her ways.

But now I'm just mad. When we were outside playing in the pool she was peeking out of the window and shaking her head. She told us little girls (K.) shouldn't wear bikinis and that we were headed down the wrong road with her. Um hello she's 2! And it had Dora on it!! She sent her grand kids out with bread shortly after and told them to feed it to my dogs. I asked her not to feed them because they had just eaten, and she said she will do what she wants because OBVIOUSLY I didn't know how to care for my dogs; they are WAY too skinny. Which they're not. I have no idea what to do about this lady. I'm at the point of spending the money to install a privacy fence and trying to do everything to avoid her. She even had her son come over to talk to H. about the way we kept our yard (our trees weren't trimmed to her liking and we had cut our grass too short, had NOTHING to do with her).

Hopefully things start improving.