I like my house.
It's free...well...not exactly, it's part of my husband's salary, but the rent is taken out before we even see his paycheck, so it feels free. It's plenty big for our family. I like all the storage space. I like that we have a backyard big enough to play in but not so big that it's a hassle. I like the big sliding doors in the dining room. I like the wooden cabinets. I like having 2 and a half bathrooms.
I like my house. Let me make that clear. I'm very satisfied with/grateful for my house.
But does it really have to be wedged in between two other houses?
(Yes, I know it does, that was rhetorical whining.)
On one side of me I have a family that I know very well and have spent lots of time with. I've been in their house and they've been in mine. I've watched their kids, and they've watched mine. I even spent Thanksgiving with them last year.
All drama aside, they are good neighbors.
On the other side of me I've had two different sets of neighbors...the old ones who moved, and some new ones who've been here for several months now.
I don't know what it is about that house or the Army or what, but that patch of land beckons the most careless, messy neighbors or compels the Army to place pigs there or something.
My last neighbors had messy kids who left juice boxes and candy wrappers and even decomposing panty liners in the shared portion of our front yard. I can't tell you how many times I had to move a crappy bike or skates from smack dab in the middle of my meager front yard over to their sidewalk.
They were slobs with a stinky trash can and no concern for neatness whatsoever. And that's something considering that this was pre-privatization, and the Army enforced yard orderliness (I got a citation for not having the water hose rolled up properly).
When I got new neighbors, I looked forward to a fresh start.
I'm not asking much, really. I don't care about the inside of their house or even their backyard. All I want is to not have to pick up the icky leavings that an able-bodied family has strewn all over the shared portion of our front yard.
When people drive by, I don't want them to cringe. When the FEDEX guy comes, I don't want him to have to walk around banana peels and dirty diapers. I don't want my kids to slip in a festering coffee sludge and V8 cocktail that's been spilled across the sidewalk in front of our house. I don't want to see cigarette butts stuck in the tread of my car's tires, and for the love of all that is pure and good, I DO NOT WANT TO HAVE TO NAVIGATE AROUND A USED PANTYLINER!
The new neighbors are ok. They are dual military. The guy is friendly, the wife is pregnant and not sociable. They have a son just a little older than my kids and he played at our house for a while until he started making school friends. They're fine as people.
I just don't understand how they can feel good about their front yard (or backyard for that matter). I realize she may not need to be bent over picking up trash in their yard, but there's still the dad and the son.
We all leave our shoes outside by the front door. It rains a lot here and the mud is bright red. That's cool. That's expected. Line 'em up neatly by the door mat. That's not so unsightly.
What IS unsightly is nasty ass muddy PT sneakers thrown into the shared Brazilian bikini wax of a yard we have directly between our two homes. And if that's not bad enough, there's a filthy, stinky ball of several days' worth of dirty socks in the yard, about a foot away from the shoes.
Their water hose has been unraveled and sloppily thrown out so that it hangs over the sidewalk that's nestled up beside our house. There's candy wrappers and shredded mail in the grass. One day they left a used plunger in our front yard, and when my youngest ran to play with it their son swooped in and began plunging the grass as if it were a normal childhood playtime activity.
They leave empty boxes in their front yard. Metal pieces of this Wal-Mart furniture and that. Pizza boxes and soy milk cartons. One day I backed up over a half full carton of orange juice they'd left in our drive way. They haven't trimmed their hedges since they got here.
I mean, they recently bought a nice little cubby organizer to put all their various shoes in, and yet they didn't touch the nastiness in the yard and STILL threw shoes on the lawn. What's the point of a cubby organizer if the rest of your yard and sidewalk looks like closing time at the State Fair?
Adrian's pissed off, and we're both tired of cleaning up after them.
I'm honestly not trying to be pious or holier-than-thou. We're not a super clean family. I believe in hygienic chaos. There are toys lodged in the sofa and crayons on the table and the laundry room looks like a fabric shop threw up. But we don't inflict our mess on other people.
I don't think it's unreasonable to expect our neighbors pitch in and help us keep common areas tidy.
I can't imagine what we'll find out there when the baby comes. Umbilical cord stump? Runny diapers? Breast milk splatters on the sidewalk?
Ugh. I'm grateful for my home, and I won't even complain that it's a duplex (more like a fourplex). I just want to be able to walk out into my front yard and not step in toxic waste. Mark it down, Santa Claus, that's what I want for Christmas.