Sandi writes:
I came across your website after many frustrating weeks of dealing with a neighbor behaving badly. My fiance and I bought a townhouse in a beautiful location over a year ago. This townhouse is absolutely what people would envy us for ...only if they knew!!!
When we first moved in, all the neighbors came to us to welcome us, especially a middle aged couple who we quickly bonded with. We would share a beer with them, our kids would play with their son and we noticed after about a month they were bad-mouthing alot of other neighbors, including the ones that they have known since the development was built.
They complained about how people wouldn't mow their grass, how lazy this one was, etc. Of course, my fiance and I were suckered into it, because we were naive and started to speak our opinions about neighbors also. The kids played non-stop with them and my children called their son "their adopted brother".
I started to notice in the spring that when I would talk to the wife, she would be staring at my fiance and when I was outside, she wouldn't come over but when my fiance was out, she would. When I mentioned something to him, he thought I was crazy and it brought about alot fighting in our house, needless to say.
However, we were putting a patio in the back of our house (we should have gotten a permit but did not - we were too anxious to start the project) and we needed to use the common ground in back of the houses to transport materials. The husband told us that it was ok for them it is common space we don't need anyone's permission to walk on common ground. Knowing that we didn't have a permit, we were nice and thanked them.
Over time, my fiance was taking things back and forth when the wife copped an attitude and would stand in his way, claiming that it was "matting down her grass". My fiance offered to fix it and she barked "that's not the point" in front of my son who picked up on her attitude. From that point on, we knew something was going on. On the final day of the project, she stood in his way and actually put the sprinkler in his direction so that my fiance couldn't get through.
A few days later, when my fiance confronted her husband about the tension with his wife, he stated that she was just having a bad week. When pushed for an answer, he said that his wife said we hit her fence when working on the project which is an absolute lie!
Then when my fiance asked her husband about why she is copping an attitude with me, when I never did a single thing to that woman, the husband stated that his wife didn't like the fact that I chased kids off my property with a hose (another lie) and that she doesn't like the fact that I won't let all the neighborhood kids (10 of them to be exact) in my house at one time. Her husband suggested to my fiance that I talk to her to straighten things out. In my opinion there is nothing to straighten out. All of her claims are lies and I, nor my fiance, will defend ourselves against lies.
I have been advised by legal counsel to stay away from the woman to avoid anything that this woman is capable of claiming. A few days after this, the wife speaks to another neighbor who we had previously complained about and tells her what we said and the other neighbor, because of being furious about what was said, calls the township to report the patio that we put in without a permit.
The ones who get hurt the most in this ugly situation is the kids. Why people, especially neighbors, act this way is beyond me. All I want to do is live my life in the manner I have always lived. I have learned one very important lesson through all of this: neighbors are just that neighbors and I will no longer have any communication with them other than the civil "hello".
Thanks for letting me vent.
I am going to post video of what my crazy neighbour does from now on. From reading what hell everyone else has gone through I realize I have it quite good, but man oh man she drives me around the bend! We live in semi with a shared driveway. She leaves her recycle bin at the bottom of the driveway in between our houses so we don't drive on the driveway. She does this each winter, as obviously you can tell when someone drives on your driveway in the winter - however, it's the newspaper lady! But she is never around to see that. And anyone with an ounce of sense can look out their window and see the tracks and match them up to the appropriate car. Anyway, garbage day is Thursday. She put her garbage out last week Wednesday morning. It was a very cold very windy day. Needless to say, her garbage blew EVERYWHERE. Not only my driveway and front lawn, but the entire street. And her bins went all over the road. She did not pick them up. Some other neighbour who is nicer than she is did. Tell me: what is worse? Tire tracks on the bottom of your driveway or your garbage strewn across all your neighbours' yards?
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