Another One?

I have never lived in an area where there have been so many self-centered individuals. Maybe it's a symptom of the times. At first I thought that it was parents not being parents. You know the type, have the kids and then let them do whatever pleases them. We have 4 or 5 on our street that think they own the neighborhood. They choose to cut through anyone's yard, play wherever, ride their motorized scooters (yes, motorized, and they travel faster than the cars on the road) and the like on anyone's property, and then look at you like your nuts when you politely tell them it's not acceptable. I'm amazed that there hasn't been a major disaster. On several occasions I've had to come to a complete stop with my car as one or more children have been approaching from the opposite direction, in the middle of the road, at about 20 mph, looking behind them at their friends rather than the direction they are heading. And who do you think would get blamed if there were a resulting accident?

So, we've done what we could to discourage them. They have been told (numerous times) to stay off our common way. We have a small 'road' behind our property which joins with our neighbor's driveway and the general public tries to make it an official road. It isn't. We own it and our neighbor's own their driveway. Sheesh.

Anyway, this bunch of kids hate us.

But wait, there's more!

Over the past several months, our neighbor across the street has been renovating their property. Inside and out. There have been trucks, big ones, maneuvering about to get on to their property. Not a problem except that they have torn up and rutted a rather large section of land in front of our house as they have twisted and turned massive tires. Our property. We like to keep it nice looking. My dad had cleaned up and seeded the whole bit so that it would be easy to mow and look neat. The workers had made a mess, created a mud hole. We had lost soil to the deep treads of the tires. Their trash was strewn about.

We were not happy. We had thought that maybe they would fix the mess they had created on our property. If it had been us or guys working for us that had damaged their property, we'd have been there with fresh soil and seed....and an apology.

No such luck.

So a couple days ago I headed to the front, rake and shovel in hand, and at least got it smoothed out. I also strategically placed some large granite boulders along the edge of our property so that my hard work would not be destroyed. (note: these pieces of granite had been there years ago but we had given permission to have them moved aside when a developer was bringing in house sections. we hadn't moved them back. mistake.) Guess what? We got grief from a neighbor about the rocks. This person had wanted to park there while some work was being done on his driveway. Well, park in front of your own house, I say. Pull in to your own yard and mess it up, not ours. Oh no, that can't happen. He's put a fence up so that people can't park in front of his house!

I just don't get it.

So...the kids hate us, one neighbor that my mom had given many garden plants to no longer speaks to us (huh? haven't a clue as to why), another's dogs aren't allowed to use our yard as their bathroom, and a third is angry that we don't want our property damaged. Then there's the one that we "threatened" by telling them that their dog was barking ALL DAY.

I think we have one household left that might like us.

I've never, never, never had neighbors like this!