Sunday, June 10, 2007

Manners - by Miss Me (Rant Warning)

I'll well aware that all of us make some gaffes from time to time. Some of them much more glaring than others. One of the things that seems to be causing a great deal of turmoil chez-moi these days is the lack of consideration some people have for the impact of their actions on others. Of particular and spectacular note these days is our neighbour...
Now we live in the country. We do not live in a city, a town, nor a village. We are part of a "local service district". What does this mean? Unfortunately, it means that we don't have much in the way of services, nor much in the way of laws or bylaws that can be enforced. Having 10.5 acres of land on a river, one would think that all that you would hear most of the time would be the sounds of nature. Not so.
The culmination of a series of bad decisions was the sale of part of our land about 3.5 years ago. We sold it to a nice school teacher who was going to build her "dream home". And it is a lovely home. The hitch with that was that she thought (apparently) that the contractor was going to become more than just a friend and move in with her... Everyone knew this - except for him that is. Upon discovering that she was going to be living there alone, she decided to sell. Enter our current neighbour...
He has owned the property for 2 years. During that time, it has been a non-stop stream of traffic. He has brought in fill, topsoil, had it hydro-seeded, built a burm, moved the driveway, built a fish pond, decided he didn't like it, removed the fish pond, built a new one... Are you getting the picture? Now this is just about driving Mr. Me crazy. I had considered suggesting that we too had dragons next door, but I have begun to fear that he would go dragon slaying, and no matter how much of a sense of humour the cops might (or might not have), I don't think that they'd buy that as a reasonable defense.
Having purchased a new tent after the tent disaster of 2005, we set it up yesterday. The instructions suggested that you should do this before you took it camping. We got it up with few problems, but it was good advice. We should be able to do this seamlessly when we go camping now. Having two little boys and a tent on the front lawn meant that they just had to sleep in it last night. Who can blame them? They got settled, but came in around 10pm because of the noise from the heavy equipment. It stopped about 10:15pm, and I went back out with them to sleep. We did all get to sleep, but there was a range of other noises and shouting of instructions that lasted until close to 11pm.
So I ask you - am I being unreasonable or is it too late to be running heavy equipment after say 9pm? And he mows his lawn until midnight, and his lawn tractor is BIG. I curse the person that thought that headlights on a lawn tractor were a good idea. When the dog (a cute little Scotch terrior named "Baxter" - a.k.a. "Barkster") is barking inside in the middle of the night, clearly the only sensible thing is to put him outside...not! And then he sounds mildly surprised when I call at 3am asking him to bring the dog in - not that he is sleeping like the rest of the world, just surprised that we can hear the dog. And these are only a few "examples"...
I am trying to rise above this, and keep Mr. Me from killing the neighbour, but I may have to resort to bubbles in the fish pond!
Rant over.

3 comments:

Stephanie Cake said...

Awww geez! I feel your pain!!

Several years ago, our old neighbors decided to do some DIY projects. The room they chose was their downstairs bathroom, which is literally right outside our living room/family room where we spend most of our time (our houses are about 6 feet apart).

Mr. DIY was perhaps the WORST do-it-yourselfer EVER. Instead of driving a nail properly (whack-whack), he would tap-tap-tap-tap each and every nail. This sound echoed off the side of our house. Add the fact that he was installing WAINSCOTTING (um, 3 million nails???) and the fact that he worked all day so he could only tap-tap-tap-tap from 9 pm to midnite.... I was ready to kill the man. It was like he was driving those nails right thru my brain! It's amazing how a person can take what seems like months to work on a little 4'x5' space!!!!

But, oh, it gets better. Shortly after completing the bathroom project, they realized there was a terrible problem with their foundation so they had to get a contractor to gut and rebuild most of their downstairs beside our house (more noise but it was during the daytime so not as infuriating).

Once that was all over, and they had spent gobs of money on this situation, they decided to save themselves some $$ and START THE DIY OVER AGAIN.... tap-tap-tap-tap for hours on end as he installed the wainscotting over again.

I seriously wondered what I did in a previous life to deserve that private hell. I had a party the day they announced they were moving far, far away.

Nancy @ the Jersey Shore said...

OH! I feel your pain. Inconsiderate neighbors I have as well. They are oblivious to the annoyance they cause others on an on going basis...but if I complain about an issue that bugged me,(i did that in the past) they become indignant and righteous...now I just ignore the a$$holes. I hope your situation improves

Delusional Knitter said...

Ahh similar to the problems you saw on my blog, but relative to scale it seems, LOL!! Since you have more land your noises are large equipment, where my nighbor is about 12 feet away I get to hear her sqwaking on the phone outside and her dog barking at unholy hours!!!

What on Earth is wrong with people?!?! Sometimes I wish I was as oblivious and single-minded as some of these people so that I would be so wrapped up in my own world that I didn't notice the nuisance that they are ... such is life I guess ...