another reason I hate living in town

Homegrown Tomatoes · January 08, 2008, 08:13:08 PM

This evening, I'm sweeping the floor and some lady stops out in front of our house and rolls down her truck window and casts a disgusted look toward me (the lights were on inside and it was getting dark out.) Then she backs up to our driveway and motions me to come out in the rain, which I do. I walk out and she starts chewing me out that our dog doesn't have a dog house. (He does, and it is completely accessible, but he seems to like the cold and the rain... besides, it was 50 degrees or more out today.) I told her that he did have a house. I've never seen this woman in my life. Then she starts in about how he can't reach it!! I said, "Look, ma'am, he's on a 50 foot run, and he can go anywhere in this yard he darn well pleases, and that house, as well as his food and water, are completely within his reach. Then she looks at me like I'm some sort of liar. I point to the cable run and tell her it stretches the length of the yard and he can go anywhere within 15 ft. or more of either side of the run. I wanted so badly to ask her which was more humane, to let him sit in the rain with his tongue hanging out and thoroughly enjoying barking at passing cars or to bring him inside and put him in a little kennel because he is incapable of being housebroken. For crying out loud, he's a spitz, and he loves to be outside, even more so in cold weather. When we first moved here, we had at least 5 locals stop and tell us that the "coyotes and raccoons" were going to get him (we probably had way more coyotes back home and he was never bothered by them!!!) and nosy people stopping to ask if our dogs had their shots because they didn't see their tags on their collars (I don't put the vaccine tags on their collars because they are too prone to getting caught or lost.) GRRRRRR! I was a little miffed.... we've even had a couple of nosy people insinuate that we did something to harm the dog because he only has one eye (he lost the other in a fight over dog food more than 5 years ago, at which point we rushed him in the middle of the night to the vet hospital and spent several hundred dollars to get him patched back up.) I hate living in town!!!!! That dog gets attention, fresh food and water, shelter, and if it is too cold, he comes in and sleeps on a pile of rugs in his kennel with a chew toy and food and water... he's cost us an arm and a leg in vet bills ever since we rescued him more than 7 years ago, and it ticks me off when people around here don't seem to recognize that dogs are dogs....seem to think that it is somehow more humane to leave an animal locked up in their houses while they're gone all day than to let them have free run of the yard because something "might" hurt them. My kids smother that little dog with attention, which he just eats up. Just because he wants to lay out in the rain and get soaked, I'm being cruel?

ScottA · January 08, 2008, 08:26:35 PM

I had a golden retriever years ago. When he was a pup he had this thing where he'd foam at the mouth when ever he rode in a car. No idea why I guess he was excited or something. I can't remember how many people came up to me and told me he needed a drink of water or to go to the vet or whatever. Acted like I was abusing him. He was fine he just freaked out on car rides.

January 08, 2008, 08:34:47 PM

No I do not think you are being cruel.

How much you want to bet that the same woman has on many occasions passed a homeless person and has not given that human being a second thought? I wonder if she would open her home and house someone who was out in the cold rain with no food or shelter?

Next time someone does that to you, stick your finger up your nose, move it about, remove it from the nostril and flick towards the person annoying you. Repeat if you think it would help.

Sassy · January 08, 2008, 10:58:23 PM

Gee, the gall of that woman - like StinkerBell says, she probably doesn't care about the human race, wouldn't life a finger for them. I don't like living in town either - glad both our places are way out in the country.

Homegrown Tomatoes · January 08, 2008, 11:13:34 PM

Quote from: ScottA on January 08, 2008, 08:26:35 PM
I had a golden retriever years ago. When he was a pup he had this thing where he'd foam at the mouth when ever he rode in a car. No idea why I guess he was excited or something. I can't remember how many people came up to me and told me he needed a drink of water or to go to the vet or whatever. Acted like I was abusing him. He was fine he just freaked out on car rides.

Scott, I had a dog that did that too. She rode from OK to TN with me one time and seemed to get a little better with it after that... she was just nervous. I've never had anyone act like that dog was abused, though. This is a new thing once we moved up here. There's a hound and a chow I see roaming around loose every now and then, but our dogs are always on our property. However, every time some neighbor finds dog crap in their yard, we get accused of letting our big dog run loose...we've even had hate mail tacked to our front door one time (ironically, during the time our big dog was being accused, he'd been with us on a trip back home!!!) Our big dog, the beardie is in the house most of the time. The little one is not at all a good house dog, and I figure if he's ten years old and not housebroken, it isn't likely to happen anytime soon. He is happiest when he's outside as long as he gets some petting and such every day. If he's inside, he has to be in a little kennel because that's the only place he won't pee. The girls are crazy about him even though he's a little neurotic and blind as a bat... I don't know what this gal's problem was. (I was concerned that she was driving because she obviously couldn't see the bright orange 50+ foot cable run that the dog's 15 ft. leash is attached to, which wasn't more than ten yards from where she'd stopped her truck. Grrrrr. I can't wait to move. I don't care if we have to move in 2 ft. of snow, I want out of here before winter is over.

January 09, 2008, 11:04:53 AM

Quote from: StinkerBell on January 08, 2008, 08:34:47 PM
No I do not think you are being cruel.

How much you want to bet that the same woman has on many occasions passed a homeless person and has not given that human being a second thought? I wonder if she would open her home and house someone who was out in the cold rain with no food or shelter?

Next time someone does that to you, stick your finger up your nose, move it about, remove it from the nostril and flick towards the person annoying you. Repeat if you think it would help.

May have to try that, Stink. Our neighbor just to the south of us doesn't like my garden because she claims it attracts mosquitoes in the summer (go figure, they're the state bird, and it is not like there's a place in this state where you DON'T get mosquitoes.) She is also the one who hinted that if we got chickens, we'd be "breaking the law". Of course, there's no such law, but these are all city people who moved here to get out of the city and want to turn around and make it just like the city!!!!!

StinkerBell · January 09, 2008, 02:55:49 PM

Other fun suggestions to make your neighbors talk.

Buy the biggest pair of undies ever made. I am talking tent size....Hang this undies out to dry in the yard on a clothes line.

Paint your house polka dots, I suggest a color combo or orange and purple.

Place a few headstone in your front yard. For fun you can place names like "I.M. Gone"

You see I value my neighbors so very much that if they want to talk about me, I want to make sure they really have something to complain/gossip about. I wouldnt want to make a liar out of them.

Sassy · January 09, 2008, 03:15:54 PM

I'm glad I'm not in the city anymore... my house that is rented out was in a neighborhood - we all had wooden fences around the back yard. The people directly behind me put in a doughboy pool in the corner against the fence next to my backyard - they dug a big hole, unreinforced, so the pool would be deep & then put decking around it. When people would walk on the deck, they were looking over into my back yard all the time - that wasn't so bad, but my flower bed started eroding into their hole, making the fence start to fall down... they sold & the next people who bought it had 3 large German shepherds - these dogs barked non-stop - you couldn't walk in your house or backyard without them lunging at the fence, making it more unstable. One time some friends & I were talking to that neighbor, standing next to the fence - one of the guys had his arm resting on top of the fence - while we were all standing there talking, one of the dogs jumped up & bit him in the arm - right next to the owner. I should have reported the dog but trying to be a good neighbor, didn't say anything... anyway, I worked 12 hr nights in ICU & slept during the day. One day the dogs were barking & barking & my oldest son (10-11y/o) was afraid they would wake me up so he got a can of hairspray & pointed it through a knot in the fence - when the dog came up to it he lighted it the same time he sprayed at the dog. The dog was barely singed (I don't recommend doing that, but hey, he was just a kid) you can imagine, the police were called immediately & he was charged with something, don't remember what...

I had a neighbor next to me who kept his yard meticulously... I kept my yard pretty nice, too. We had sycamore trees in between the houses on the property line - well, they were messy, all these sticker balls would fall off & leaves - he would rake them all up & into my side of the flower bed in my yard - after it got to be a foot tall I asked him, politely to stop raking all the stuff into my flower bed, he continued to do it - I must have asked him at least 3 different times over the matter of a couple years... one day he had just finished "manicuring" his yard & flower beds, raking everything into my flower beds & I saw him drive off... I was so angry, I got the rake out & raked all that crap all over his lawn & flower beds... never did see his face when he came home or talk to him after that - probably was priceless

He was the one that would yell at my kids if they happened to run across his lawn into our yard... neighbors...

Erin · January 09, 2008, 06:08:24 PM

The last time I lived in town was over 10 years ago.
DH and I were still in college and lived in a trailer park with a bunch of other college kids.

No one ever paid attention to us. We paid our rent on time, parked in our own driveway and never had loud parties.

January 09, 2008, 08:09:57 PM

Over the years I have been very blessed with mostly goo dneighbors but once I rented from a lady whose daughter was a crack dealer and she had dobermans, which were kept inside until I paid the deposit and rent. Well the dobermans would chase my kids every day when they got off the school bus. I made planty of complaints to no avail. I moved within 30 days. My other evil neighbors liked to call the dogs and then shoot at them. My dogs are not stupid so they jsut stayed home. One day they were actually locked inthe porch all day because I forgot to let them out befor eI went to work. Well low and behold that crazy lady said my dogs killed her cat and her two BF's testified to the same thing. She took me to court fo the vet bill and al the expenses of raising the cat. Now this is the same woman who stole a kitten from me a year or two earlier and I didn't mind I was giving that kitten away anyway. But anyway I said I am NEVER paying tha old bag told the judge that too, so now I have a judgement against me for the crazy cat lady's bill I don't care. BUt then after I moved that damn crazy lady and her BF started coming here on my new street calling the dogs and trying to get them in trouble again. I live in town now so I do have to be way more careful. Well my other neighbors all have kids and cats and dogs and my dogs don't bother them at all, the game warden watches them sit peaceable when the wild turkeys are eating my yard bushes to nothing and the deer make themselves at home here. So that stupid crazy cat lady is out of luck but I still put the dogs inthe hosuse when I am not home because you never know when she might just make another false accusation against them. There is another crazy lady who thinks I am the MOST horrible person in the world for using a tick collar instead of the expensive drops. I tried the expensive drops and my dogs have such thick long hair it didn't work they were still covered in ticks so after a long and miserable evening listening to her tell me what a horrible pet owner I was I said oh yeah well the tick collar is bad but I think the ticks are far more harmful. Then there was the time another neighbor lady said I was starving my horse, now this horse is in the same pen with the other two and she actually eats more. BUT she has something wrong with her that when she doesn't get the selenium salt block she gets really skinny really fast as soon as she gets her salt she gets fat again. So I explained to her that I got the salt and she would be fat again in a day or two, now this lady was actually pretty nice and kept offering to give me a bag of grain and I knew it would be better donated to anotehr person who actually was having trouble buying feed, so I declined her offer but she stuck with it so long that I finally said OK I will take the grain well she came back in a couple of days because a friend of hers was thinking of getting a horse and mine were up for give away to good homes. The horse was fat already and she never brought the grain after all. I did give away the horse to teh lady's friend who I made it very clear that the selenium was a strict requirement and what would happen if the horse didn't get it. So that was a ggod ending. Now if the neighbor who puts their little dog out at 4 am and lets it bark until daylight would just shut that damn dog up everybody would be happy. I am so lucky tht my neighbors now are reasonable people!!! They do have a crazy beagle though it comes over here acting all tough to my big dogs but they know better than to bite it so they just walk over to the door so I will let them in. I am always worried though that they will bite it.

Homegrown Tomatoes · January 10, 2008, 09:30:17 AM

Strange thing about this place, too, is that this was "country" and has become more of a suburb. I don't understand why folks move out of the city to get away and then want to make it JUST LIKE THE CITY. I consider it a "town", but most of the locals do not. Listening to the radio yesterday, I heard Chicago's mayor talking about shortening the city's curfew to 10 PM. (ie. No minors on the streets after 10 PM.) Suddenly it just went all over me and I was furious that this was even an issue that the city of Chicago would waste time and taxpayer money on. My beefs with it were: 1) even minors are US citizens and should be given rights as such, 2) It is the job of parents, NOT THE GOVERNMENT, to keep kids off the streets late at night, and 3) the money to enforce the rule would come out of taxpayer's pockets. Living this close to big cities like Chicago and Milwaukee, I feel like I am in a Communist country.

Where we lived in OK, even though we had a few nosy neighbors (one old man two doors down kept telling everyone that we were living together, but weren't married, which wasn't true) most of them were really good folks and we got along great with them. Nobody told anybody else what to do with their property, or what they could/couldn't build or do. The wacky neighbors two doors down in the other direction were always building some weird addition to their house that they never finished... including building a peaked roof over their low-sloped modified gambrel roof, which has to be one of the strangest looking houses I've ever seen. The neighbor across the street had a little goat that ran in and out of their house. We had chickens in our back yard that roamed our yard, the alley behind the house, and the vacant lots behind the house. If you have to live in town, it wasn't a bad place to live...in spite of being really hard to sell a house because of the neighbors with the weird roof who didn't mow their lawn.

tanya · January 10, 2008, 10:38:28 AM

We have a curfew but it isn't enforced unless the cops see a kid they want to harass. And it is actually doing more harm than good because the predators jsut offer the kids a house to go to where they are out of public view.

desdawg · January 10, 2008, 10:49:01 AM

The world is full of people who don't have enough business of their own to manage so they will try to manage yours. They congregate in communities where there are lots of people, therefore lots of business to manage. If you see this person again you should nominate her for President of the HOA. If you don't have an HOA you should form one just for her.

Drew · January 10, 2008, 11:47:09 AM

I used to be the chairman of our neighborhood association. It started when the city was planning to renege on a promise to develop a park in our neighborhood and instead sell it back to the developer that gave the land to the city in exchange for a zoning variance. Yah.

I served as a wartime chairman. We organized the neighborhood to go to city counsel meetings. Dan and I did the legal research on this sort of thing and I was the mouthpiece. We got a grant for some playground equipment and got our park.

But after that the monthly meetings became whining sessions. The seniors in the neighborhood came to the meetings saying "Someone" (Meaning me) should get this done, get a traffic light, get them to stop doing this, etc. I thought of making buttons that said, "I am Someone!" and handing them out before the meetings.

Maybe I should have collected protection money.

January 10, 2008, 11:50:15 AM

Desdawg, there is a HOA, not that I want to belong to it, but they demand money from us annually anyway. No, before I have a chance to nominate her, I plan to get the heck out of here. Besides, I don't have anything against most of my neighbors and wouldn't wish that on 'em! I've tolerated it for almost three years now... just about more than I can take. I was raised in the sticks and want to go back so bad I can't stand it. Civilization is somewhat overrated (OMMV, as Don would say.) When we moved up here, my husband and I struck a deal that if after two years I hated it, we'd move. I figured he was happy with his job, so I didn't want to complain, but last February, he came in from work one day when I'd just spent three hours shoveling snow so that he could park... he got stuck trying to get in the garage and had to get out and spend another 45 minutes clearing the little path to the garage. He came in and threw down his stocking cap and announced that he'd rather be a shade tree mechanic in the south than a mechanical engineer in the cushest office in the north, and he's been looking since then. He quit looking in June when he got an offer from our alma mater, but then they withdrew the offer at the last minute (after us packing more than half our belongings, etc., and waiting 6 months for the official word to move.) After that, he went gung ho and really started putting resumes out there. He's had 6 interviews already this week, and another one today, and two between tomorrow and Monday. At the moment, he's courting at least 7-8 different positions in and around OK, and I think he'll surely get at least 2-3 offers out of it, and then hopefully we can move for Valentine's Day. I think it'd be quite a romantic gift... next to doing dishes, the fact that he and I are on the same page with where we want to live and what we want to do is about as romantic as it can get.

desdawg · January 11, 2008, 09:38:10 AM

Homegrown, I wish you luck. It is not the best time to try to sell the home you have right now but some are doing it. Living in the City is kind of like taking a beating. It sure feels good when it ends. OMMV.

StinkerBell · January 11, 2008, 11:16:42 AM

What no one liked my ideas? sheeesh

glenn kangiser · January 11, 2008, 11:20:55 AM

You'd do well in a Home Owners association ruled community, Stink.

Drew · January 11, 2008, 01:06:01 PM

I left the race for VP a while ago (which I was not very good at), and became a project manager contractor (which I am good at). I never have to worry about getting a corner office or if that content-free brown-noser made Director. I get paid overtime, though I rarely have to work it. I don't get to go to the company picnic. Boo-hoo.

The kids will be going to college soon and Dan and I will ditch the house for the farm. Then its a studio in town close to the client and back home on the weekends. The more telecommuting the better.

The three hours to get home on Friday (Or Thursday) and back again is offset by having a close apartment and a nothing commute during the week. I'd get mileage and the apartment is an expense as long as I follow some simple rules. The point is that this is all part of the "Go to Hell" plan. I own my farm free and clear and the small house I build there will be paid in cash. I manage my own retirement plan and can switch clients to keep things fresh and interesting. In my line of work, moving around is a good thing.

City politics won't matter, just like that corner office. I'll rent, so I don't need to be in an HOA separating pepper from fly - um - pepper. The more I can look at in town and say, "That's not mine," the better off I will be.

Maybe I can get a mini CSA going with the employees of my clients. Here comes Drew with this eggs and lettuce! Let's extend his contract!

fishing_guy · January 14, 2008, 09:20:02 PM

From one of our local papers:

http://www.mankatofreepress.com/local/local_story_014002029.html

Don't you just wished you lived in that city?

January 14, 2008, 10:06:44 PM

As far as 'junk' cars go the only ones around here that have ever bothered me are those that people park in the front yard where most folks have landscaping. We had one of those once. The old car sat crossway for over a year collecting dust, bird droppings before the owner finally had it hauled away to a ~~scrap~~ ~~salvage~~ recycling yard.

On the other hand, I hate regulations; city hall never seems to be satisfied with status quo. When they introduce new regs, or start changing the old permitted things I get agitated. When we were looking to buy in the 80's we bypassed one subdivision as they had an ordinance against shop compressors and air tools! Criminey!! It's a good thing I read fine print.

I don't like billboards but tolerate them along highways and main drags. My city doesn't allow them at all and limits business signs to 32 sq. ft. I used to think that was dumb, but at least everybody is on the same playing field. There's no competition to have a bigger sign than the next competing business.

The landscaping permit dollar limit stinks.

As for the city owned boulevards requiring grass only, that stinks too. Especially because the city probably requires the home owner to mow the grass. I wonder if you have to water it too? I don't see a problem with rock, but then rockscaping is common in the SW.

The white stuff near the house is snow.

glenn kangiser · January 15, 2008, 11:33:15 AM

Quote from: Drew on January 11, 2008, 01:06:01 PM
I left the race for VP a while ago (which I was not very good at), and became a project manager contractor (which I am good at). I never have to worry about getting a corner office or if that content-free brown-noser made Director. I get paid overtime, though I rarely have to work it. I don't get to go to the company picnic. Boo-hoo.

The kids will be going to college soon and Dan and I will ditch the house for the farm. Then its a studio in town close to the client and back home on the weekends. The more telecommuting the better.

The three hours to get home on Friday (Or Thursday) and back again is offset by having a close apartment and a nothing commute during the week. I'd get mileage and the apartment is an expense as long as I follow some simple rules. The point is that this is all part of the "Go to Hell" plan. I own my farm free and clear and the small house I build there will be paid in cash. I manage my own retirement plan and can switch clients to keep things fresh and interesting. In my line of work, moving around is a good thing.

City politics won't matter, just like that corner office. I'll rent, so I don't need to be in an HOA separating pepper from fly - um - pepper. The more I can look at in town and say, "That's not mine," the better off I will be.

Maybe I can get a mini CSA going with the employees of my clients. Here comes Drew with this eggs and lettuce! Let's extend his contract!

Sounds like good planning, Drew.

Homegrown Tomatoes · January 15, 2008, 12:04:57 PM

We had one of those junked car yard ornaments for a few years.

My mom had an old Astro van that died in our driveway right after we bought our old house. We tried to help her get it running, but she's a little OCD and wouldn't give up when it was time to give it up. We even offered to haul it to her mechanic (which would've cost a fortune we didn't have, but at that point we were willing to go into debt to get it out from in front of our picture window.) She wouldn't let us do that, and it didn't belong to us, so we couldn't very well sell it to a salvage yard, and yet she wouldn't take it home or let us take it to her mechanic. In the first five years of our marriage, that stupid van was the #1 point of contention, and every Saturday morning, DH would get up and look out the window, and start railing on me about it. Mom's home town had an ordinance about no junk cars, so she left it in our yard because there were no city ordinances, and she ignored multiple requests to get it out. (Seriously, that is probably the #1 reason we live in Wisconsin in the first place because DH wanted to make sure that she could not leave another junk vehicle in our yard again!) When we'd ask her when she was going to move it, she'd get defensive and angry... what it boiled down to was that her mechanic had told her he was tired of patching it up and not to bring it back to him, and she still had tons of crazy sentiment wrapped up in this doggone non-working van. Finally, when we put that house on the market and got an offer, the realtor gave mom an ultimatum that she'd either haul it off by that Thursday or the deal wasn't going to go through. She knew it was killing us to make two house payments and she finally had to do something. She made one call to a local salvage yard, and they paid her AND came and hauled it in! Shoot, if she'd done it 5 years earlier, she could've gotten quite a bit more for it!!! Even that process wasn't without tears and irrational behavior, but at least the van was finally gone. Neither DH nor I can talk about it without getting our hackles up over it because neither of us understands why we could beg her to move the thing for 5 years and she could rant and rave like it was somehow our fault it was in the driveway in the first place, and then all it takes is a realtor telling her to get rid of it and she does. We should have sold that house 5 years earlier, I guess! I don't think now either one of us would put up with that... we'd have sold it to this neighborhood kid who kept asking to buy it, or we'd have hauled it to her front yard and dropped it off and let her deal with it. So, maybe living in WI has been good for us in that it helped us develop a little more backbone about what we would and wouldn't put up with?

Anyway, we've both already given mom the talk that if/when we move back toward home, she will not use our house as a dumping ground for her yard sale finds or a free weekend bed and breakfast.

MountainDon · January 15, 2008, 05:14:59 PM

Good for you HGT.

I've owned a few cars, motorcycles and Jeeps that I was dearly attached to at the time. But I never let sentiment get in the way when common sense dictated it was time to move on. There are a couple I do wish I could've hung onto, but it wasn't possible.

Someone once said that 'you should never love something that can't love you back'. Wise enough advice.

Homegrown Tomatoes · January 15, 2008, 06:11:42 PM

Quote from: MountainDon on January 15, 2008, 05:14:59 PM
Good for you HGT.

I've owned a few cars, motorcycles and Jeeps that I was dearly attached to at the time. But I never let sentiment get in the way when common sense dictated it was time to move on. There are a couple I do wish I could've hung onto, but it wasn't possible.

Someone once said that 'you should never love something that can't love you back'. Wise enough advice.

I've only had one that I was that dearly attached to, and I bawled when I sold it. It was a 1971 Chevy Cheyenne that I bought from my Grandpa when I was 15. It still smelled like him inside it, even after I had it all those years. I sold it right before we moved up here because it needed a little work (broken carrier bearing bracket, no biggie, and a few wiring issues that really needed to be resolved.) We couldn't afford to pay our bills because DH had been laid off his secondary job, and I was staying home with the kids, and knowing that we'd be moving within a few months and would have to pay to get a tow dolly to bring it up here, and I was afraid of the salt on the roads here in the winter rusting out the undercarriage. I sold it to an old man who is a collector. He was supposed to send me pictures when he got it restored, but that never happened. I figure he got it running and sold it for a mint... kicked myself many times since for selling it, but we didn't have anything else valuable enough to sell and get tuition money/ bill money. I was so desperate I sold it for a lot less than it was worth because we lived in such an out-of-the-way place, I was afraid that no one else would drive that far to see it and I'd end up changing my mind and having to borrow money. In the short run, it was the best thing we could have done because I didn't have to borrow... in the long run I still wonder. I loved driving that old truck. It sure was pretty. Copper with white. Drank gasoline like it was going out of style, though... with that big 350 engine. BUT, it never sat dead for months/years on end in the yard. I drove it up until right before I sold it... and then garaged it until it sold. By the time the guy came to get it, the battery was dead, but it was a good truck. I put nearly 300K miles on it.