Complain About Your Neighbors Thread

[GRITS80]

Oh, this is going to be fun because I live in a sea of crazy.
We were transferred 4 times and I always wished for a neighbor I could be close to. I came close just once - most of the time we’ve been around some mighty strange folks.

I live on a corner so there are a number of homes almost adjacent to us. I’ll start with a neighbor across the street from one side of my back yard. A few years ago I had a fairly big Friday evening party for an organization I’m active in. Most of the members of this group live in the neighborhood and husbands were included. This neighbor happened to see people she knows coming into my house so she decided to come in too….with her dog. She walked in, plopped her dog on my living room sofa and went to get herself a drink in the bar. I was in the back yard with guests so didn’t witness that part although I had quite a few folks give me the blow by blow. By the time she got outside with the dog, she was clearly out of it and wasn’t making any sense. The next day she rang my doorbell multiple times and I ignored her. She finally reached me by phone to ask if I was upset with her. I explained that I could understand her excitement to see old friends, but my own dog isn’t allowed on the furniture and I didn’t appreciate her putting Teddy on my sofa. She continued to deny she had done that although I had quite a few eye witnesses.

A couple doors down – Early one weekday morning there were multiple police cars at the home. Later it was all over the local news as well as TMZ, RadarOnline and the NYPost (I live in FL so that isn’t local) that a prominent trial attorney was arrested for domestic abuse after firing a gun in his home. There was an unidentified woman in the home, most likely not his wife. What made it “newsworthy” is the attorney’s connection to a Real Housewife. It was speculated he was dating her, but then it was reported he was her attorney. I had already heard stories about this man from the guy who installed all the AV equipment in both our homes. He told me that the wife was very nice, but the attorney wouldn’t speak to him directly. He always had an assistant with him and would pose all his questions through the assistant with the AV guy standing right there.

I am getting called away for a grandchild emergency, but will post later about my across the street neighbor who has another neighbor suing him and everyone else fed up.

[abasket]

Hope your grandchild is ok.

[sbinaz]

I am 100% all in for this thread. Here begins the true tale of my Nosy Neighbor. We’ll call her Nina, or NNN for short. (not her real name)

We moved into our current house 7 yr ago. NNN lives directly next door to us in a big 3600 sq ft 2 story home. Knew we were in for something interesting when Normal Neighbor across the street told me, “Yeah, she’s something else. When she moved in, there were 2 full size big rig moving trucks of stuff they moved into her house. It’s just her living there. Oh and she’s having painters repaint every room in the house. Even though the house is brand new.”

oh boy…stay tuned…

[sbinaz]

In the first 6 months after we moved in, it became obvious that NNN was almost laying in wait for me to be out in my front yard because within a min or 2 of me going out front, she would suddenly appear and act as if it was totally spur of the moment. And the 20 questions started. Pushy, imposing questions that you wouldn’t normally ask of somebody you don’t know very well, like:

• How come I never see your husband? (she stopped asking when this one time, I said, “I promise he really does exist.”)
• What does your husband do?
• How come I never see your kids playing out front?
• How come I never see your kids playing in the backyard?
• How come you haven’t put curtains up yet?
• What church do you go to?
• Whose car was that from California parked in front of your house?
• What school do your kids attend? Why do you have them go to THAT school?
• I ordered some packages that are going to get delivered when I’m out of town for a couple of weeks. Go and get them when I’m out of town and store them in your house until I get back. I’ll be back in about 3 weeks.
• Are you going to take out those yellow lantana in your front yard? Because I don’t like the color yellow. (I’ve planted many other yellow things in my front and back yard as a result of her rude comment)
• What’s the name of the people who live on the other side of you? Is he married? Does he have kids? (I have no idea, lady, go talk to him yourself and ask him)
• What are you going to plant next in your backyard? I just love looking out my 2nd story window to see what you’re doing.

After that last one, I started gardening in the backyard in shorts and a sports bra. And I’m not a small lady, if you get my drift. She stopped talking about that with me after that, so mission accomplished there.

[sbinaz]

NNN made a big deal to tell me about how she was engaged and that her fiance visited every other weekend, but that while he was in town visiting, he wasn’t spending the night. Like, dude…lady, no judgement here. Your bedroom activities are none of my business and I really don’t want to know all of this.

Her fiance was weird, too. 2 successive winters, he would walk into our front yard and check to see if our desert willow tree in the front yard was dead or not. NNN even TOLD me that he did this. And neither of them thought anything of it. Had to flat out tell her to not walk through my yard ever again without my permission. Oh and she had no idea what a deciduous tree is. Had to explain that to her.

She was also convinced that I must know of her brothers, who own & operate a successful chain of car dealerships in Salt Lake City. Um no, I’ve never heard of them. I’ve only been through the SLC airport once or twice and never traveled to Utah for business or fun, so your brothers could both be the pope for all I know. I was supposed to be impressed by her car dealership brothers.

She mentioned several times the name of the city that she grew up in and lived her entire life in before moving here. It was apparent that I was supposed to be impressed by the name of the place. I was polite and everything, but I didn’t know her home town from Adam, so what the heck…

[momofboiler1]

We have a version of NNN too. She complained that we didn’t change the color of the house when we had to restucco after polar vortex. She suggested I go look at the updated Tudor’s. Mind you it would have required painting all our brick and going through a six month process with the preservation society to get approval for the change. And I like the traditional look. And it would have cost us double to change everything. And she kept it up for a long time!

And btw, annoying neighbor did drive through the block party. The only saving grace is that the barriers were down for the police car that came for the kids.

[1214mom]

The neighbors have both painted rock “stations” and unpainted rock stations in their yard. The painted sections of rock are the ones that have black edges or whatever between the rocks (but only some of the painted rocks).

[sbinaz]

Every time we have a visitor from out of town and visitor(s) are getting in or out of their car, parked on the street in front of our house, she suddenly appears in her front yard and pretends to pick weeds that don’t exist.

She now stops and scampers inside because I head outside and wave excitedly at her and say in an insanely happy voice, “Oh HI, NNN! How ARE you?” You know…Stepford wife style.

couple of years of the weird fiance (who gave my kids the creeps) suddenly wasn’t in the picture anymore and she had remarried her 1st husband. Um…what? That’s…different. Congratulations?

And then there was the epic year in early December when the Indian neighbors on the other side of her were celebrating Diwali and she: (a) hadn’t ever heard of Hinduism before; and (b) said that she thought literally everyone all over the world, regardless of religion, celebrates Christmas and believes that Jesus is the son of God. Like, she didn’t even KNOW that there are polytheistic religions. Um…what?

And THEN there’s the epic time that she invited herself along with me on a walk around the neighborhood and then got pushy and asked, “How can your husband ALLOW you to walk around the neighborhood alone at night like this?” Um…because the neighborhood is super safe, I have a cell phone with me, there’s street lights and it’s really safe, and if something bad went down, I’d call 911 like a normal person, AND I don’t ASK my husband’s permission…I TELL him what I’m going to do.

[WayOutWestMom]

I have to tell you how I got my [sort of] revenge against the obnoxious neighbor.

They sold their house, but still lived in the area. One day I was eating lunch at a local, one-of-a-kind fast casual restaurant. It’s the kind of place where you order at counter and they bring your food out, but it’s self serve for drinks. It can be loud, but it has wifi and is a funky, eclectic place where college students camp out between classes.

Anyway, I’m eating my lunch alone but with my laptop out when the neighbor stops at my table. I can see his wife seated a couple of tables away. He asks how I’m doing (checking up on the poor widow eating by herself…) and then asks what my daughters are up to. He has always thought D1 was hoodlum since she once stole a political campaign sign out of his front yard on a dare. I tell him she’s a doctor working at Yale. Which she was.

Remember how I said this place was loud? He either didn’t hear what I said or doesn’t believe it. He asks me to repeat my answer. So I repeat: she’s a doctor’s working at Yale. He asks me to repeat that again so I yell SHE’S A DOCTOR WORKING AT YALE. I’m so loud that everyone for several adjacent tables had to have heard me. His wife clearly did. He says “Oh” in a kind of small, embarrassed voice and leaves.

I didn’t even get to tell him my other daughter was in med school.

[FallGirl]

@sbinaz - your neighbor sounds weirdly like a neighbor in our prior neighborhood. I have enough stories to write the proverbial book.

One of my favorites was when my older child was in elementary school and I was walking back from the bus stop with another (friend) neighbor. She walked out of her house and suddenly said “ I would clean toilets at night before I would send a child to that public school!”. Her only child was long grown and she had never set foot in the school. She did a lot of things like that. Her dogs ran unleashed and peed all over everyone else’s yard but she screamed a a little boy who lived across the street who accidentally stepped off of the sidewalk into her yard. Called the police when someone visiting a neighbor parked in front of her house for a few hours. Her husband threatened at least two neighbors (once with a gun!) in front of several of the kids who were outside playing…etc. etc. etc.

The best part was that all of the other neighbors were lovely people.

[sbinaz]

This other time, the house on other side of NNN had been turned into a rental by the Hindu owners. And there were a couple of police cars parked in front of NNN’s house due to them being called to the rental house.

NNN came over and knocked on our door to complain about it. Wanted ME to go ask the police when they’d be leaving. They’ll leave when they’re done. What’s the big deal? They’re not blocking your driveway or anything.

NNN said, “But what will all the neighbors think? What if they think the police are at MY house?!”

Oh good grief. They’ll think, “Oh I hope everything’s ok” and go on about their business.

[anotheroboemom]

This thread about challenging neighbors reinforces my belief that SOME people’s parents did not teach their kids to play nicely in the sandbox.

[sbinaz]

all the rest of our neighbors on the block are totally fine, normal people. It’s just Nosy Neighbor Nina who’s the odd ball.

NNN’s 2nd husband, who’s also her 1st husband, goes to the gym in the HOA community clubhouse/building either early in the morning or in the evening. I see him occasionally walking to or from there. Like his strange wife, he, too, marches to the beat of a different drum, such as walking down the street with a towel on his head. Like my D26 says in situations like this, “That’s a choice!”

And then there’s the 6 months of Caesar’s Palace construction in NNN’s backyard at the height of the pandemic. When the COVID pandemic resulted in the whole world shutting down, NNN cornered me out in the front yard this one time (and by the way, the woman has no sense of personal space, like she’d be 12" from my face while speaking to me) and declared that she was so excited about the pandemic because it’s a sure sign of Armageddon and the end times, so that means that the 2nd coming of Christ is at hand.

And then in the next breath, she told me all about the massive backyard construction project she was starting. Um ok, so if you think the world is coming to an end soon, why are you building a $100,000 pool?

Start to finish it took 6 months. 6 months of jack hammering that would start in the 5-6 am time frame. 6 months of her construction crew throwing their trash and leaving their construction debris and supplies strewn over MY yard. I regularly would throw it all back into her front yard. This bothered her…the fact that I threw it back.

I have a fountain in my backyard that does a great job of drowning out background noise…noise from the road behind our house and noise from her feral grandchildren who sound like they’re murdering each other at 10:30 pm in her pool.

So when her backyard Caesar’s Palace was all done, she had Spousal Unit & I come over so she could show it off. We did the polite oo’ing and ah’ing. She was super excited about the huge metal tortoise statue she put in the backyard (she called it a turtle). She showed us HER fountain and said, “Now your fountain and mine can compete with each other!” Oh…wait…what?

It’s a competition? Apparently.

She had a fancy outdoor kitchen constructed out there, too, but had them put the BBQ unit part of the outdoor kitchen literally right next to her house. Hello future house fire.

90% of her backyard is hardscape or astroturf. And when it’s hot here for 6 months out of the year, her backyard feels like the surface of the sun. Astroturf radiates heat for HOURS after the sun goes down. It’s miserable stuff.

She is greatly bothered by the aesthetic of MY backyard, which is full of natural/organic mulch instead of 50% of it being astroturf and the other 50% being marble tile that you’ll slip on and break your neck when it’s wet.

I’ve got bamboo planted in my backyard to block her view into my house. It’s wonderful stuff and no, it’s not invasive because I planted clumping bamboo. She hates the bamboo because sometimes, the bamboo leaves blow over the concrete block fence into her pool. And things must be pristine and sterile in her backyard. She even had the HOA send me a love note about the “bamboo trees” one time a couple of years ago. Bamboo is a grass, though, and therefore the "no tree w/in 5’ of a fence’ rule did not apply, as I explained to the HOA.

In the front of her house on either side of her front window, she has these 2 big concrete pots which she’s filled with fake plants. Yep, plastic plants in her front yard. For awhile, they were shaped like these round balls and every time the wind blew pretty hard, the plastic round fake plants would end up in MY backyard. I used to toss them back every time into her front yard.

And then one time, I decided, “Forget it. I’ve been tossing these back to her for over a year. Now it’s finders, keepers. And this is going in my trash bin.”

So she replaced them with other fake plants instead. They still look just as dumb.

She used to allow her feral grandchildren to run through my front yard all the time. She’d be sitting there in her driveway watching them do it and not say a thing to the kids about it. I solved that by planting a few spiny prickly pear plants on my side of the property line in the front yard.

Now nobody’s feral grandchildren or children run through the yard. AND I get to harvest prickly pear fruit every year and make prickly pear fruit syrup out of it. It’s awesome.

[OctoberKate]

After reading all of this (the “bamboo is grass” and “spiny plants that make syrup” parts especially) I kinda want to be you when I grow up…

[sbinaz]

About 2 yr ago, this one house at the end of the street was on the market and sold, and a new family moved in. Big house and they had 3-4 kids.

This was the start of what I called the Mullet Gang.

New family’s 3-4 kids had 2-3 boys and 1 girl. All of the boys had mullet haircuts. (side note: mullets weren’t stylish back in the 80s and they still don’t look good now, so that’s something that should never have returned for a round 2)

The boys were very active individuals. Lots of playing outside. I think that’s great. Get your energy out, get some exercise. They’d ride all over the place on their bikes, have Nerf gun wars, play football and whatever in this common area green space that was super close to their house. They even recruited other kids their age in the neighborhood to join.

Awesome, right?

No.

They’d leave their balls, toys, etc., out all the time. Everywhere. In the common area park/green space, in the street, and in everybody else’s yards. Nerf gun ‘bullets’ would stay in the street for days. They’d also use everybody’s front yards as their own personal playgrounds (without permission of course).

So this one time (one of many but it was the straw that broke the camel’s back), Mullet Gang left a football and non-electric scooter in my front yard. Keep in mind that my house wasn’t close to Mullet Gang’s house by any means. Their house was like 6-8 houses down the block. I waited a day and a half for somebody to come collect the football and scooter. Purposely left it out there in case Mullet Gang wanted to anonymously come collect it. Nobody came to the door to inquire about it either.

So after a day and a half, I moved the 2 items to my trash bin and a couple of days later, it went to the county landfill on trash pick-up day.

And shortly after that, nobody saw any Mullet Gang gear all over people’s yards anymore.

And then within the year, they put their house up for sale and left. Now there’s a normal family living there and they don’t have their own Mullet Gang.

ALL of my neighbors (well except for NNN…she and I don’t really speak to each other anymore if I can help it) celebrated the departure of the Mullet Gang from the 'hood.

[sbinaz]

Nosy Neighbor Nina’s feral grandchildren love to use NNN’s expensive built-in (complete with a gas line) fire pit in her backyard Caesar’s Palace (seriously, it’s all white back there…she even had her entire backyard fence stucco’d over in sparkly white stucco paint; it’s so over the top). The fire pit looks fine. Stylish, lovely. Ok, fine.

Except when the feral grandchildren throw their marshmallows over the fence into my yard. Now when it happens, I throw them back, but toss them over the fence on the pool-end of her backyard.

When it’s past 10:00 pm and they’re screaming bloody murder outside, I turn on MY backyard lights and then I turn on our outdoor back patio speakers (which you can connect to via Bluetooth) and I play my favorite mariachi music loud enough that it drowns out the screaming next door.

Usually that does the trick because within about 20 min of the mariachi music going on, they all go inside to escape it. And then I turn the music off and peace & prosperity returns to the neighborhood once again.

Am I of Hispanic origin? No. I love mariachi music, though. It’s very relaxing to listen to and it makes me happy. I love how long the singers can hold a note…they’re amazing vocalists.

NNN has taken (in the past when we were on speaking terms) to bragging a lot about her kids & their spouses. Well, she only brags about the male relatives…she told me straight away that her 2 sons are a doctor and a dentist and then the husbands of her 2 daughters are also doctors or dentists. And I learned about how 1 of her sons lived like 20 min away. He & his spouse have 9 kids and cart their baseball team sized family in one of those 15-person passenger vans. And then guess what? He & his brood left the area to move back to NNN’s home state.

So none of her kids live in this state. But she has this enormous house here. i do think that something must be up perhaps health-wise with Husband #2/Husband #1 because she hasn’t been here since mid-January, when she returned from out of town to put away her outdoor Christmas decorations.

…which is another weird thing. She doesn’t actually ever spend any of the Christmas season here (she used to), but right after Thanksgiving, will pop into town for a few days to put up a 10’ tall Christmas tree in her living room, have somebody hang lights up on the outside of her house, and she puts out her gigantic light up reindeer that’s about 7-8’ tall in the front yard.

And then you don’t see her until about a week after the new year starts, when she arrives to take it all down.

so I guess it’s all for show? Because “what will the neighbors think” if you don’t put up christmas decorations? They’ll think maybe you’re busy or…wait for it…maybe you DON’T CELEBRATE CHRISTMAS!

She’s a character for sure. She’s pretty harmless, though. Has clearly lived in a little bubble her whole life and has zero awareness of other ways of life, other cultures, etc. And she’s not the brightest bulb in the box. I won’t be sad when she eventually sells her house.

[tx5athome]

I live in a nice neighborhood. An average 1700 sqft house sells for about $1.6 million. I have,I think the worst neighbors in the whole neighborhood.

My neighbors park 4 cars on the street because their garage is full of stuff and they have a boat, RV and toy trailer on the driveway.

The man is a contractor and starts lots of jobs on his house but never finishes. He is also somewhat of a hoarder and has at least thirty ladders on the side of his house. For awhile there was a family of skunks living under a shed he has in his backyard. Their backyard is unusable because there is so much junk under a series of easy-ups. We share a fence which was falling apart but we had to pay the entire cost of a new fence because they couldn’t afford it. But I was willing to because I needed to keep the skunks out of our yard.

The worst part is that because their yard is such a mess we get mosquitoes.

[bearcatfan]

We have lived here almost 30 years, and seen a lot of neighbors come and go. The people on one side of us are the fourth or fifth owners. We NEVER had annoying neighbors, and actually were friends with all the owners of that house, until these people moved in around 2021.

It’s less the parents, than the kids. The oldest girl went to high school with one of mine, and she was okay and moved out as soon as she could. The middle boy, who just graduated from our local digital academy, is a pain. He has a hot rod that he likes to tinker with, and sometimes invites his friends to come rev their engines. It’s not all the time, but it’s LOUD and the parents don’t seem to care. He has no job that I can tell. The youngest drove me nuts with his constant attempts to make baskets in their driveway, which is right next to my living room. Bounce bounce bounce BAM! At the time I knew he was bored, so I really tried to ignore it. It was a happy day, however, when I saw the hoop in the garbage. None of this is major, but all together it is annoying as h–l.

Now I just hope the middle kid moves out, or someone trashes his car.

As an aside, the mom posted in our local neighbors group for people to “be careful” and not leave the keys in the car, since their van disappeared overnight and they were looking for it. She deleted the post, so I’m wondering if the van heist was a repo or an inside job and they know who did it.

They also have an indoor/outdoor cat who loves to come on our front porch and tease my inside boy. I did save that cat’s bacon one day when it looked like it was getting into a standoff with another indoor/outdoor just outside my fence. I went over and scared them both enough that they ran away. Maybe he will see me as a buddy and leave my guy alone. I don’t blame the cat, I blame the owner.

[BunsenBurner]

OMG, the fighting cats! Louder than a hot rod’s engine! Reminded me of my childhood when the neighbors on both sides got new cats, and said cats would descend onto our backyard and have these howling matches going at 2 am! I kept a bucket of water near my bed handy… I did not have a water gun but an old bicycle tire pump worked well as one.

[LeastComplicated]

We had some good neighbors in ABQ, but my adopted daughters were VERY poor sleepers until they were three or so (taking until 11 pm to fall asleep after hours of trying, waking up 4/5 times per night wanting to be fed) and both were light sleepers to boot. We had a house with no AC, just an evaporative cooler so the windows had to be open. One day, I was trying to put my oldest (and myself) down for a nap at the same time the neighbor’s young girls were out in their backyard screaming like banshees. I do not think it’s a requirement to scream like that while out playing, imo. I don’t think I’ve ever screamed in my life. So, I called them and asked them to have the girls be a little quieter. I talked to the dad, and I could tell he was a little peeved, but he made them tone it down, and he got over it.

I did it again, one night when our neighbors two houses down had a dog that was outside barking. Actually, it was the female neighbor’s side piece’s dog. He’d come over at night while her husband was working a night shift as an air traffic controller. So I called and asked them if they could keep the dog quiet. The wife answered and claimed it wasn’t her, bc they didn’t have a dog. But the dog stopped barking soon after.

Yall are probably thinking it was me who was the annoying neighbor, but I really was very seriously sleep deprived so I was desperate for a quiet, peaceful environment to soothe my girls. I haven’t been the demanding neighbor since then, and that was 25 years ago.

A more recent annoyance was that one of our cul de sac neighbors actually called the police on a young teenaged girl for parking on the street facing the wrong way. This neighbor peeved me the first time I met her - just seemed like a nosy Parker. We think she’s also an alcoholic and speeds too fast in the neighborhood. Then, right after she called the police on the teenager, she supposedly took an Ambien one night, went out driving and drove thru the guard rails at some entrance ramp. When the cops showed up, she had no idea where she was, and was incoherent. She was arrested for DUI (alcohol) and lost her license for 6 months, but continued driving anyway.

Finally, neighbors could complain about my husband if they knew about his powers of observation. He notices EVERYTHING that goes on. But I don’t think he’s trying to be nosy, he’s like I said, just very observant. He’s the one who noticed our neighbor was having an affair. He’s also guessed correctly that two women we knew were pregnant and they weren’t showing at all. I’ve never been pregnant so he really doesn’t even know what to look for! One he guessed bc she wasn’t drinking at dinner. He hadn’t seen the woman in 20 years! The other was “walking funny”. He also had clocked the guy on the corner’s son selling drugs from his dad’s house. Sneaking out the back door to people parked in the street.