Another Pair of Whackos

After the child psychologists moved out, we had some nice neighbors for a while, a young couple with a dog. But once they had a baby, they decided to move to a different neighborhood to have a bigger house and yard. When they sold their house, they actually apologized to us because they said they knew already from the husband's behavior during the house buying and selling phase that he was a jerk.

This assessment was proven true pretty quickly. The new neighbors had decided to remodel their kitchen to enlarge it. We didn't think much about that since it was their house, but when they took down part of the fence separating our two backyards, we asked them what was going on. They flat out told us that they didn't think we would mind since our yard was so big (.50 acre) and theirs was so small (.10 acre). We corrected their thinking and they replaced the fence but clearly did it grudgingly. Then over the next several months even more encroachments occurred. The husband climbed over the fence to screw a bird feeder into a tree in our yard. When I asked him what he was doing he said it gave him a better view of the birds from his front porch if it were in my tree. Then he hired a tree trimming company to cut the branches off my trees that overhung the fence. Now most of that is entirely legal at least to the property line but he still has to get permission to enter our yard to do the work. Being such a nice neighbor the way he got permission was to remind me that he was a lawyer and that he would sue me for all I had if I didn't give the permission. He tried to get away with leaving the cut limbs on my property but I fixed that right away.

The final straw for me was when he mowed down and dug up about six feet of the parking strip on my side of the property line because he didn't like the plants. Of course, the city is the actual owner of the parking strip, at least where we live, so there was very little recourse for me. Then he actually had the nerve to ask me why I didn't like him.

All of the above took place over six months so it felt like a constant assault. It was also happening while the other neighbor was being threatening and right before the financial meltdown. So I told my husband it was time to sell the white elephant and leave the neighborhood. That was one of the best decisions I ever made.