Unlike a Good Neighbor October 30, 2007

On Saturday night, we invited a handful of our closest friends to come over for a BBQ, a bonfire, and a few beers.  During this time of year, it is the norm for us.  We all bundle up in warm clothing and stay up way too late, just having a good time.  Saturday was no different, until our crazy neighbor decided to invite himself to the party.  But this is no ordinary neighbor — he’s about 30 years older than us, drinks constantly, and looks like he should be playing a cover of ZZ Top.  No lies.

So as we’re standing around the fire, here comes Don the Neighbor, over the fence and strolling into the yard.  At first it was no big deal — we figured he was just wanting to say hi.  But then he wouldn’t leave.  And he started drinking our beers.  Then he went into this rant about how he got fired from his job because they allegedly tampered with the urine in his drug test and he tested positive for amphetamines.  Like they had to frame him!  I wish I had a picture of him to show you all.  Anyway, from there he continued to butt into our conversations and be his normal rude self.  He mentioned a few times how he had just crashed our party, but we nicely shrugged it off.  After all, he lives next door, so what can we do?

Then the man starts talking about how he can’t stand his wife anymore because she’s been going through menopause for well over a decade and she won’t take hormones.  From there he tells us that she’s brainwashing their 13 year old (accident ) son by messing with his epilepsy medication.  It felt like we had Dale Gribble from King of the Hill in our yard!  But the icing on the cake was when he reached onto my plate and ate some of my food!!!  He didn’t ask or anything, just swooped in with his nasty ZZ Top hands and stole my chicken!

Soon after he left and we were all relieved, but it was short lived.  Don returned not only with more beer, but with this 13 year old son in tow.  The later it got, the more I couldn’t stand it, so I said goodbye to our friends and came inside to go to bed.  According to The Hubby’s story I got the next day, Don and his son stayed until everyone else went home or came inside — around 3:30 in the morning!

So now we not only deal with their stupid dogs, but now the humans are jumping the fence as well.  I probably can’t get by with chasing them off the way I do the dogs, so I’m going to have to come up with more creative methods.  It’s funny when I think about it, but it was just plain annoying and weird at the time.  I made sure to stress the point that I own a handgun, so he wouldn’t even think about messing with me when The Hubby is gone!  Maybe I’m overreacting — I’ve always trusted them — I just don’t want to have to politely try to get rid of him again!

Guilty Until Proven Innocent June 20, 2007

We have this neighbor (and I use that term loosely in the country) who lives behind us. We’ll call him Marty. He is probably about 20 years old and he lives with his father. He used to run around with The Hubby’s brother Casey when he was alive and we talk every few months when we run into each other at the store or when we’re getting our mail. He’s the kind of kid that people describe when they talk about their murderous neighbor: he’s quiet, normally keeps to himself, strange….

I never had a problem with him until talking to another neighbor one day. He said that Marty molested their son about 6 years ago. This totally freaked me out until I dug a little deeper into things. I found out that the whole issue went to court and that Marty was found innocent. But it still kind of nags at me that he would even be accused of such a thing. Ever since then I’ve been a little leery of Squeaks. Of course she’s never outside alone, but when she’s of that age, I’ll still be watching her like a hawk.

Last night, The Hubby and I were out mowing the back acre of our land. Our back fence butts up about Marty’s and he was out mowing, as well. We all kind of stopped at the fence and talked for a few minutes, then told him that we had to get back to our work before dark. The Hubby and I worked until we had no light left, then we were driving the mower and edger back to the front of our land to the shop. I looked over and noticed Marty was driving our way, but I figured he would just pass by. Nope. He pulled into our (loooong) driveway. When we met him in the “road” he said that he was just coming over for a visit. So we sat there in the drive and chatted with him for a few more minutes. I finally mentioned that I needed to get the mower put up and get back to the house to listen for Squeaks (she was already in bed. I had the monitor with me, but I wanted an excuse to get away).

When The Hubby finally got rid of Marty, he told me that Marty kept hinting around at an invitation to come up to the house. This kind of freaked us out. Here’s this kid that we never talk to, and he’s suddenly trying to come snoop around the place. Even weirder was the fact that when he left, he just drove back to his house. I could see his stopping by if he was on his way somewhere else and we were outside. But he drove to our house just to be nosy.

I’m sure the kid is fine. He’s probably just lonely. I’ve heard he doesn’t have many friends and I’ve even heard that he might have some mental problems. Either way, this whole encounter still isn’t sitting well with me. I told The Hubby that people like him were the reason I have a gun. It’s my way of protecting my baby when The Hubby is not at home.

But it still makes me wonder when he’s going to appear again.

I’m Dreaming of a White Easter? April 6, 2007

The weather has been so great around here lately: 80 degrees, shorts and flip-flops, we’ve even been doing yardwork and landscaping. And then today. Today came a cold front and now it’s freaking snowing! Snowing. In Oklahoma. In April. Like we haven’t had enough damn snow this year!

Because of the weather, I put the new dog out on the screened-in porch. I figured if she had to go to the bathroom, it would be better there than inside. Plus, it saved me from having to stand in the snow, waiting for her to go. But as we were sitting in the living room watching a movie, we heard an awful commotion on the porch. We both bolted to the door to find that the neighbor’s damn dog had somehow gotten onto our screen porch and was attacking the new dog! We broke up the fight and it turns out that Lucy is just fine (just a huge whiner). But the idea that that same dog killed my puppy only 2 weeks ago and is now attacking again is enough to piss me off. I told The Hubby that first thing tomorrow I’m going over there to tell them to keep their dogs off of my land. I know it’s hard out in the country to control them, but this is getting ridiculous and I’m scared for Squeaks to be playing out there with them running around. I’m to the point where I will shoot those dogs if they so much as step foot on our property!

And to totally switch gears here, I do have something to be excited about! Tonight I got to go to the bathroom and shower with a door!! It has been months since we’ve had a door in the bathroom. While there’s really no need for us to have one with just us around, I love the fact that I can close the door if I so choose! And if we have company, we don’t have to worry about them freaking out over the big gaping hole in the wall. Man, remodeling sure sucks sometimes…

I love this house, but… March 22, 2007

Not only do we have issues with one set of neighbors, now I’m pissed at some others. Know that when I say “neighbors”, I use this term loosely, as we are country-dwellers. There are at least 3 acres between us and any neighbors, most of them with more distance in between.

That being said, all day today, someone south of us has been blasting a damn shotgun all day. And when I say shotgun, I mean that it sounds like a freaking canon is parked outside my living room window and they fire it every 5 minutes. It’s that punctual. For almost 6 hours, the damn gun has been fired every 5 minutes, with only a few breaks for….oh I don’t know. Probably a fresh beer or for changing into a clean pair of cutoff overalls. Rednecks.

Now don’t get me wrong. There’s nothing I like more than going out and practice shooting my 9mm. However, I don’t fire it around other people’s houses and even if I did, I wouldn’t do it all. freaking. day.

Now if I could arrange for them to shoot the other neighbor’s dog, we might be back in business!

The Whole Story March 21, 2007

Okay, here’s the entire scenario involving the neighbor’s dog. Before we moved in at this house, our blue heeler lived with my MIL here because we couldn’t have our pets at the house we were in. The neighbors got a female mutt. We talked to them about puppy control — our dog wasn’t neutered. Because we live in the country, it’s hard to keep the dogs in their respective yards unless you build a specific dog pen. We offered to go have Spur (our dog) fixed. They said not to because they were taking their dog to be spayed in a few days.

Fast forward a few months to find a very pregnant neighbor dog. She gave birth to 9 little Spur-look-alikes. We offered to help them find homes for the pups, but they had already placed them all except for the one they wanted to keep. We had the “we’ll get him fixed” speech again, but they insisted they were fixing her.

Now what we’ve got is the neighbor dog and the illigitimate pup who think they live here. We run them off as often as we can. We feel partially responsible for the pup (Lightning), as our dog knocked the female up, but we tried to keep that from happening in the first place. We’ve even built a fence, but they find ways to get in. However, our dogs never go into their yard.

When I got my puppy at Christmas, I never let him out without a leash. Just in the last month has he been allowed out on his own. We made sure that the dogs (even the stupid neighbor dogs) were going to be nice to him. They all seemed to get along really well, so I wasn’t concerned. Until Lightning killed him yesterday. I didn’t actually see it happen, but the damn dog had my pup’s blood all over his mouth and paws. That and the dog hasn’t shown his face here ever since. I thought my husband might have shot him, but he swears he didn’t. The dog’s guilty, I’m telling you. But because of my lack of hard evidence and because we’re partially responsible for the dog, I don’t think we can do anything about it. I don’t want to do anything rash because our neighbor is an alcoholic and I wouldn’t put it past him to shoot our other dog out of anger, only he would probably miss and shoot Squeaks or something.

I think I’ll have a talk with the wife, just to warn her of his possible agression issues. And then I’ll just get a bigger dog. One that can actually defend himself if this happens again. But I think we will definitely have a talk about keeping the dogs in their respective yards. We’ve tried to keep them out, now it’s up to the owners to remedy it.