Loathe Thy Neighbor

Yes, I know that the correct quote from the Bible is Love Thy Neighbor but if you lived near my current neighbor you would loathe them as well… if you continue to read please be prepared for A LOT of swearing because it is What the What Wednesday aka my weekly rant post!

When you live in an apartment, you have to deal and adjust to living around other people. I have lived in tons of apartments and dealt with all kinds of people. None of them acted like our current downstairs neighbor. This man is off his rocker crazy, weird and attempts to be domineering towards women. (He met the wrong woman to try to dictate anything to, just ask my husband haha!)

When we signed our lease, we made sure that our dog was included because Max is as much a part of our family as the girls are our children. We knew that we would have some adjustment with Max going from living in a single house to an upstairs apartment next to a main road. We bought a bark collar (big waste of over $100!!) to help with the transition because Max LOVES to bark at everything because he is a Plott Hound mix.

First of all,  everytime I see this man, instead of saying hello back to me he starts to bitch about something which usually is about the dog or noise. Doug will walk by him and he is polite and says hello. He sees me and basically gives me shit that our dog barks too much, our dog shits (mind you in the abandoned house next door’s yard) to much, we have to lock the front door (so no one can hear someone knock and we can’t have visitors?!) or an array of other shit. The one that topped them all… he tried to tell me that I have to stay home with the dog more because the dog barking and running around when I am not home is just annoying to them. Oh fucking well dude you live on the first floor of an apartment! Plus, do you think I am happy that your kids are running through the house screaming at midnight waking my 3 month old baby up?? Do I say anything, no because we live in an apartment and we adjust to our surroundings!

When we were doing the walk through of the apartment, our realtor told us that the family downstairs is home all day because they are a homeschooling family. Oh that is cool because so are we and don’t meet many homeschooling families. Well, the kids only go out to play when its getting dark or is dark already and they are unsupervised. Plus, he allows his unsupervised kids to play in the yard next door which is full of crap like wood, shingles, nails and other stuff from the owners trying to fix up the abandoned house. First, if your kids are homeschooled then why are you having them play when its dark and only have an outdoor light to see (or not see) instead of during the day? Second, why are you allowing your kids to play unsupervised next to an intersection of 2 major roads in our area? Third, why in the hell do you allow your kids to play in a yard that is filled with dangerous building materials and then bitch at me that we let our dog poop where your kids play?? Duh, you don’t let your kids play in that yard? (which the owners of the other house know that we walk our dog over there and don’t care)

Next, the yard is supposed to be a shared yard which I was planning on putting a garden in soon. Well that is not going to happen because our yard is the neighbor’s junk heap! I swear this man goes around and collects other people’s shit and dumps it in the yard. There are 3 grills, a rusted out open fire pit (totally illegal in jersey, especially when you have houses only feet from each other, a ton of different chairs (some of them dining room chairs), plus other things that I don’t even know what they are. Oh and the kids have their toys all over the yard (how about teaching them to clean up all the little water balloons they have EVERYWHERE?!) which drives me nuts trying to navigate to just walk to my car. Now I have to figure out creating an indoor herb garden and then create the rest of my garden from pots that I sent on our back steps so that I can have Danyella’s supply of summer tomatoes. So much for “shared” yard….

Brace yourself for this last part… This man loves to stand in his back door and smoke his pot aka marijuana. Having a little brother that struggled with drugs and ultimately lost his life to his struggle, I do NOT want my kids exposed to drugs of any kind. Now, we can’t even walk from my house to my car (or visa versa) without them being exposed to this drug. Now, in New Jersey medical marijuana is legal but this is in a pill or oil form not to smoke so he can’t try to pull the “I have a medical marijuana card” out to justify it. Plus, there are times that I walk into my house and that is all I can smell so I have a candle always burning to mask the smell. I don’t want to be exposed to this and I don’t want my kids to be exposed to this. If he wants to smoke his crap then go do it in his car or in the garage or somewhere we my family doesn’t get affected by his illegal hobby!

This rant is over for now but with 10 months left on our lease, there is no saying what else will happen and what other rant I may need to write out of my system. Thanks for listening to this week’s rant!