JU should have an article category labeled "bitching".

I HATE my neighborhood.

Gone is the gossip and good-natured public drunkeness that at the time seemed like an annoyance.  My family has outlasted everyone on the block.  None of the other "original" (read:  August 2004) families are left.

Privatization of Army housing has improved maintance response time, but cut out day-to-day Army oversight.  The street used to be clean.  Trash cans were not left next to the curb indefinitely.  Junked out cars weren't parked IN YARDS.  Grass was short and green.  Even garden hoses had to be rolled up or else housing occupants risked citations, and eventually, trouble with the Soldier's chain of command.

Now I live in the frickin' ghetto.  My next door neighbors are SLOBS.  Disgusting, filthy slobs.  Their house doesn't even have real furniture.  They have a trash sack next to their front door filled with dirty shoes and trash.  Packing peanuts and candy wrappers cover our the shared grassy space between our houses.  Their front yard is covered in trash and rotting newspapers.  Why subscribe when you obviously aren't literate?  And their garage, when opened, reveals a festering pile of trash that covers most of the floor, in some places half a foot high.  Of course, mixed in are various pieces of baby equipment.

On the other side of me is the neighbor I've previously blogged about.  Friendly, but scary strange.  And of course the various men that live with him or stay with him or whatever the hell they do over there.

Dogs shit in yards.  Dogs shit on sidewalks.  Broken beer bottles and Doritos wrappers and dirty diapers litter children's play areas. 

Cars are parked on BOTH sides of the street so that one has to pull into a stranger's driveway so that a car coming the opposite direction can pass.  This happens EVERY.  SINGLE. TIME. I drive down any of the roads near my house.

Dirty, barely-clothed, unsupervised children play games in the street.  Goth teens openly smoke cigarettes and vandalize mail boxes.  Stray cat piss on anything left outdoors.

It's disgusting.  And that's not the worst of it.

We have new neighbors across the street.  There are several adults who live?stay?visit? there, and it's not clear who belongs and who is Army and who is not.  There are thuggy guys who are obviously NOT Army (facial hair, earrings, etc.) over there at all hours working on a shitty hoopty that someone decided would be great to "fix up" and sell.  It's one of those old cars that have a bed, like an El Camino.  They painted this one blazing, sparkly orange.  It looks like someone poured a Minute Maid soda on it, and come to think of it, that's not a bad idea. 

First, it was buffing the damn car at all hours.  A loud whizzing sound that never stopped.  Then they installed the sound system.

These assholes play their music 24/7 and the bass SHAKES MY HOUSE.  It's like standing next to a speaker at a concert...the bass can almost alter your heart rhythm.  It doesn't matter if it's quiet inside or if the TV is turned up loud.  The bass still barges its way into my home.

A while back I went over there and talked to a skinny guy who *might* have been Army.  I told him I had a baby and asked him to turn it down.  He was nice and complied.

It's kept up and up and up and up and up and up and I can hardly take it anymore. 

Today as I was walking the kids home from school, some broseph showed up in the OrangeAidMobile and got out, left the door open and stood there fingering a small cigar as the bass filled our little military ghetto. 

I walked over to him and told him I had a baby and the bass was too much and asked him if he could turn it down or off.  The asshole never even looked me in the eye.  (This is a different guy btw, and obviously NOT military)  He finally asked me if I had called the MPs on him.

I said, "No, but I will if I ask you and you don't take care of it.  I'm trying to be nice and come to you first."

His expression was one of disdain and disbelief.  He said, "Well, someone's been calling the MPs on me everytime I come around here."

WELL DUH. 

It's a noise violation.  Of course people are calling the cops.  We can't even watch My Super EX Girlfriend without having to block out the thudding of your sparkly orange doo doo machine.

He said, "Ok, maybe I can turn it down."

Guess what?  He didn't.  I've been listening to it for an hour.  I can't leave my children alone in the house to go deal with it, and the MPs won't do anything (did I mention that I did call the MPs and they told me to call housing, which has NO authority over this shit and can't do anything?). 

Adrian said as soon as he comes home he's getting us in new housing or we're moving off post.  If he were here, this shit would have ended real quick and in a hurry.  I don't want to start anything, though, because I don't know what all these people are involved in, but they don't seem like upstanding citizens. 

I don't want trouble.  I just want some peace.