Combine the left house, and the right house, remove the “for sale” sign, and that would be our situation.

VENT ALERT!

That said, don’t say you weren’t warned.

This entry could also be titled, “Why I HATE Rental Homes in Residential Neighborhoods!”

I own my home. I moved in back in ’96, and we were the first people to live in the little subdivision on the quiet cul de sac in a good school district. When people started moving in, it was great. We had the best neighbors anyone could ask for. And then the ones next door moved, and the builder bought the house back.  The home is now a rental. *sigh*

The first people to move in were a nice couple. The lived there long enough to have two babies, tend to the yard, and you never really saw or heard them unless they were out walking on the cul de sac.  Then he retired from the service and they moved away just over a year ago.  The renters that came next were also a military couple.  She was active duty Air Force, and they, for the most part, were fairly quiet.  He didn’t leave the house much. I’m not sure what the story was with him, but he would sit home all day and she would be out mowing the lawn, doing the edging, taking out the trash, etc.  She was quite nice.

Once the weather started warming up, last spring, I started walking the dogs in the evenings.  One night, the guy neighbor was pacing the street in front of our houses talking on his cell phone.  I decided to go ahead and take Belle into the house, as she isn’t what you’d call stranger-friendly.  Johnny asked me why I was back so soon and I told him about the neighbor guy pacing back and forth on the road. Now, usually, people on our little street acknowledge each other when passing, and this guy didn’t.  That didn’t set well with me. and then I went out on the front porch to bring something in and lo and behold, the neighbor was creeping around OUR yard and ducked behind the corner of our house when I saw him.  I wasn’t feeling too great about that, either, but what can you do?

Fast forward to June. Warm nights, great pool weather, which is awesome, because we happen to have a pool in the back yard. One night I decided to go for a swim, and brought the dogs out with me. About ten minutes in, the dogs went nuts. Especially Belle. She ran up and down the fence line that separates our yard from theirs. We have a 6 foot privacy fence around the entire yard, except that one of the boards was broken toward the back of the house. The dogs stopped at that corner and barked their furry butts off.  I got out of the pool, dried off, got my flip-flops and went to the fence, peeked through the space, and lo and behold…there was the neighbor scooting down his driveway with his cell phone in his hand. That night we dubbed him the Creepy Peepy Guy. I made it a point to never swim at night by myself without SOMEONE else in the back yard with me.

Fast forward to September. Creepy Peepy Guy and his wife got orders and moved out. Within a week or so, we had new neighbors.  Three of them. A pretty girl, a military guy, and an older guy.  Turns out, the military guy had not been to kind to the pretty girl (his wife), and her daddy came out from Texas to help her get her stuff and keep it in the house until the movers could come and get it. (We found this out from her dad.) Well, after about a week, the house was empty again. Then the husband moved into the house.  Things remained quiet for a couple of months.

New Year’s Eve came & went and we were surprised that there wasn’t a party at the house, because, you know…Young, single guy, military. I was a young military spouse once upon a time, and we were some serious party animals back in the day, so to say I was surprised that he didn’t have a party is an understatement.

That surprise was short-lived, to say the least.  The following night was when the fun started, and it’s just kept on rolling for the past two months.  On New Year’s night, the party started sometime after 11 pm. I had the following day off, and didn’t need to sleep right away, so I figured, what the heck, right? Hadn’t heard a thing out of the guy in three months, let him have his fun. He’s busting tail to defend our country, it’s a holiday, go for it, right?

As the night wore on, they got louder. And Louder. And LOUDER!!!!

By 1 am, they were making enough noise to not only stress Petey, our yard dog, out, but had the six Papillons barking their heads off, as well.  So I got up and decided to let the kids out of their crates (not the children, the furry kids), and I grabbed my iPad and sat on the couch and played games for about an hour.  Now, Johnny, who can pretty much sleep through anything, missed all of this.  Our bedroom is on the end of the house that is adjacent to their driveway and their kitchen entrance on the side of the house, and if someone is standing at the driveway and yelling, it’s almost like they are in the room with us, so how he was able to sleep through all that, I’ll never know.

About an hour later, the dogs were ready to go outside for a bathroom break. I let them out, and they went bananas. I think it was the itty bitty drunk girl screaming at the top of her lungs at 2 in the morning that probably set them off. While I’m trying to corral them back into the house, she’s screaming about how she could drink the big guy’s ass under the table and calling him everything but a child of God. Then she starts screaming at me! ME? I’m in my yard, behind my fence, trying to get my dogs in, and she’s calling ME a bitch and daring me to call the @#%^&& cops on her. I got the dogs in, and as the big guy is picking her up and telling her to shut up while trying to get her back into the house, I gave her a wave and a one-finger salute, cussing her under my breath the whole time.

Did I call the cops? No. I figured I’d give them a pass, given it was a one time thing. Only it wasn’t. After that night (whereupon the party went on until after 4 in the morning, with people coming and going, the bass booming country music, people yelling and whooping it up, etc.), the following evening around 11:30, it started all over again.

Now, in this case, I DID have to go to work the following morning, I hadn’t gotten a hell of a lot of sleep the night before, and at the rate things were going, I wasn’t going to get much sleep with that racket going on right on the other side of my headboard. By midnight it had gotten so loud, I KNEW there was no way I was going to get to sleep between Petey barking, the bass vibrating our walls, and all the yelling, so I did what any sleep deprived crazy person would do. I called the cops. It was the safe choice compared to what I wanted to do, but y’all already know of my aversion to County-Lock-Up-Orange. Within 20 minutes there was dead silence next door.  God bless you, Wayne County Sheriff’s Department!

It’s been this way almost every weekend since then.  Sometimes I hear them, other times I am so tired I sleep right through it, but my kids don’t. Many Monday mornings I am asked by one or the other if I heard the crazy people next door partying again. I told them if it wakes them up to come get me or Johnny and we’ll take care of it.

Meanwhile, the trash has started piling up on their deck. And when the wind blows, which it has a lot this week, guess where it all ends up? Three guesses and the first two don’t count.

Nice, isn’t it?

Our neighbors across the street  have a 15-year-old daughter who was having a slumber party in the downstairs dining room one night. The cowboy next door had a bunch of his buddies over, and apparently decided to play football in the middle of the street at o-dark-thirty.  I guess we weren’t aware, because they were more on the other side of the street, but made enough noise that the girl’s dad came down stairs to go on the front porch and ask them to knock it off.  Apparently when he walked out his front door, one of the guys had whipped it out and was peeing in the neighbor’s yard, facing the dining room window where all the girls were.

Last night I was in the bed, trying to get to sleep, and there was some kind of ruckus in their driveway again. Car doors slamming, yelling, screaming, etc. Dogs were going off, and these morons were, again, just on the other side of my headboard. Did I call the cops? No. I showed my tail. I walked right onto my front porch in my pajamas, and yelled, “Are you SERIOUS???? People are trying to sleep over here. KNOCK IT OFF!”  As I am going back into the house, I’m hearing a lot of drunken apologies, and some hate. *shrug*

Needless to say, I think it’s time to contact the rental office and make them aware that there is yet another neighbor unimpressed with the goings on at the house next door.

If you recognize this? You owe us more than one apology, NEIGHBOR.

So if you are reading this, and this is YOUR back deck, and your rental house number happens to be 104?  You won’t be surprised when you find directions to the landfill drawn out in crayon so that you will understand  it taped to your doors, under your windshield wipers, etc.  Those will be from me, asshole!