2007-11-20

My Neighbors - Gross.

I'm am back to hating my neighbors,
Really, in the Ghetto, I didn't hate my neighbors all the time. There were only a couple of times I hated them and it was sort of a limited, incident-related kind of hate.

This time, it's like a mushroom cloud of hate.

Here's why.
And who.

First, there's the little old Mexican lady with the four rabbits and two guinea pigs. She barely speaks English, and I do mean barely.
She was very close to her immediate-left next-door neighbor. That neighbor was a very open, very sweet woman who was working on her doctorate in Spanish and Latin American studies. She totally spoke Spanish and was home all the time and had a very small, very well-behaved dog that was not-unlike a rabbit.
When the old lady's daughter was still in college, she lived with her mother and hung out all the time with this neighbor.
The daughter graduated and moved to Phoenix, which seemed to have left the old lady so bereft that she had to have her other children and their children over every Sunday, for all day.

I live across the courtyard from the old lady and, needless to say, this was an imposition.
I'm single and I'm quiet.
I work all day long and live for the weekend.
On Sundays, I want coffee and peace and to not hear stranger babies crying during my frequent naps. I want to not step over children on my way to the laundry room during movie breaks.
I want there to not be a constant stream of strangers, which makes my dog bark protectively all day long.

When the grad student was preparing to move to Mexico, I totally ever-heard the old lady lamenting that she was leaving and that I was the only other young woman there. I saw the grad student gesture toward my door and say, "Oh, she's very nice - she's just quiet."
For the record, I'm not the only other young lady who lives there but if, for some reason, this old lady thought I was going to be the one to help her translate and to call maintenance and stuff all the time, she was correctly right to assume I would not be a good candidate.

One Sunday not too long ago, I came home from the store and parked in my usual spot. The old lady's son asked me to look at the garage because the old lady thought it was falling down in one part.
Wait.
Rewind.

We do not have assigned parking but there is the usual assumption of where people park their cars everyday.
Since I've moved in, in March, I've parked in roughly the one of two spots.
Neither of those spots is under that part of the garage that the old lady thinks is falling down.
Mostly, I've parked in one spot and it's the one directly under the light. I get home late from practice and from dinner and obviously, parking under a light is the smartest thing a woman can do.

So I get out of my car, I've not showered, my arms are loaded with groceries, I want my couch, and I've got a giant coffee drink begging for attention.
"My mom wants you to look at the roof of this garage."
"Okay, I'll take a look." I headed toward my door.
"She meant, 'can you look at it now?' because she thinks it's going to fall on her car."
"Now?" By then, I was losing my balance and my coffee was spilling and burning my hand. "I'm sort of.... "
"Well?"
I made a big production of putting down all of my stuff and showing how I had to set the coffee on the GROUND instead of on my car because it was drippy and who wants coffee on her car?

Also, I didn't think the roof was going to fall down. It really doesn't look like it's going to fall down. It's not perfect but it's not caving in and it's not losing nails.
"It's fine."
AND THEN THEY ARGUED WITH ME ABOUT IT.

For real?
Fuck you.
If you think there's a problem, call maintenance. I don't think there's a problem, I'm not calling. The great location, great price, and allowance pf pets comes at a premium and the price is that maintenance kind of sucks. It takes forever for anything to get done and it takes a lot of phone calls. I have an issue in my apaartment that I've not discussed but suffice it to say that maintenance and I are not skipping down any lanes hand-in-hand antime soon. Or ever. I am not going to pester them for osmething I don;t see as having a problem when there's stuff that does need work INSIDE MY HOUSE. I explained this to the son and he rolled his eyes at me. He thought I was being dismissive of his mother's problem. And to top it all off, why he can't call is completely beyond me.

That witch has taken to parking in my spot, directly under the light.
I have never once seen her leave her home or return to her home after dark, not one time in eight months.

To me, this is completely opportunistic, vindictive behavior.
She seems to have thought that the part of the garage where I was parking was somehow better, or that I wasn't concerned for the healthy of her vehicle because mine was just fine so she ganked my parking place and unapologetically.
I've decided that the next time she has the entire extended family over, I am going to ask them to keep it down and I will not be apologizing for doing so.

Another neighbor, the one to my immediate right, is really into R and B. He is generally not annoying.... well, I take that back.
He sucks at picking up the dog shit in his backyard and in the summertime, when it's 9 degrees hotter in Tucson than it is on the surface of the sun, the dog shit smell is over-whelming.
I asked him to pick it up, with a very sweet note and..... nothing.
Next summer, I won't be so sweet.
And here's why.
He has a tendency, once every couple of weeks, to BLAST Mariah Carey and R. Kelly for like, 2 hours at a time.
I'm not down with blasting anything but I understand the need to turn up the volume here and there, I do.
You have to hear your jam - I can dig it.
But for two hours?
I know I don't want to know what's going on in there and who else is aparty to it.
Hopefully, he's got his back windows shut and it doesn't smell like dookie because nothing could set a less romantic mood than Mariah and then smell of dog shit.

So what am I gonna do about it?
well, retaliate of course.
I'm going to have a party some night and it's going to be big.
With a keg and a gigantic stereo that, if I have to, I am willing to rent for an evening.
And I'm going to be loud.
I'm going to turn up the volume as far as I can tolerate it and let my drunk-ass friends slobber through Ani DiFranco songs and then let their husbands go crazy with Kiss.
It's going to be beautiful.

When my awful neighbors complain, I'm going to tell them that karma is a bitch.

arizonasarah at 3:46 p.m.

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