Still working on the nuisance

of course still dealing with the neighbor's, which we don't expect to take care of overnight, but are at least making some progress (or maybe it's more like two steps forward, one step back). It was basically to be expected, that his attitude and actions would increase once the house owner told him to get rid of all the junk. Each night the past few nights he's taking it a bit farther. Saturday night was a pressure washer running for about a half hour after 9pm. Sunday night was the "backyard party" going on until 10:30pm and the lady across the alley flashing her porch light off and on at them. Monday night he was working on his race truck thing in his garage (with garage doors open). About 11pm all of a sudden he starts the thing up (first time we've heard it). Super loud, open headers, no mufflers. Woke me right up. (we are what, like 30 feet apart from each other?) DH was still up. He ran it about 30 seconds and shut it down. DH went out the door on our porch and yelled "hey! c'mon man, it's 11pm". He started it right back up for a bit, shut it down and DH went out again and yelled over " really, that's enough". He never did come outside his garage but started it up a few more times. It would be annoying enough to have to listen to it if he did that during the daytime but at 11pm? and he has little ones sleeping in his house attached to his garage...

All told he started it up like 4 or 5 times between 11pm and 11:30pm. It's hard to explain in writing how loud it was. It's not like he was just starting up a regular vehicle and revving it up. If you've ever been to car races, you know how loud they are - especially when they don't have any exhaust/muffler system on them.It's like rattle the pictures on the walls loud.

So, DH called the sheriff's office to put in a noise complaint. Told them it's not an emergency by any means, but apparently something we're going to have to have to address, as we have discovered the previous owners did too (many times apparently), and we are not going to put up with that going on all the time. A nice young deputy stopped by yesterday. He actually lives just across the street from the corner of our street, so he's familiar with it and also said he's familiar with some of the history of problems with the previous owner of our house. DH said well....then it appears they are the constant in this equation, aren't they? if they bothered the previous owners that bad and now have started doing it to us. DH told him we've been patient with all the problems with this guy for 7 months, but at some point we have to have the covenants followed (most likely a civil matter) and not live next door to a loud nuisance (law matter). He said he would talk to him soon, as he noticed the guy is usually getting home from work about same time he is later in the evening. He said he will also be checking into codes and such to see what they can do if he doesn't comply. He said there might be some city ordinances he can use. DH also told him what the guy said a couple of weeks ago about "knowing how to make people's lives miserable". Deputy said well, I kind of take that as a threat. I said, well at a minimum it was definitely a warning from him that if we start making complaints about him he knows how to make our life miserable. The deputy also said that they may be able to also do something to enforce the covenants and he would check into that avenue more.

He was a sweet nice guy, has a wife and two little ones (I've seen her taking walks with them) and said he had considered buying this house when it was for sale......but....the dispatcher kinda warned him away....because of the neighbor! I told him our situation with buying it, but we plan to build in a year or two. He asked if we were going to sell or rent and I said probably sell because you never know what kind of renter.... I said I had told my husband why couldn't one of you nice young deputy families that live down across the corner have been the ones that lived in this house next door! He said he'd love to rent our place, if we decided to rent and would take excellent care of it (providing the neighbor isn't there anymore LOL). He said they plan to rent here a few more years, but have decided they want to buy a place outside of town when the time comes.

The neighbor across from us, who we are getting to be friends with (and going out to dinner with on Friday) stopped by in front of our house yesterday morning as he was going somewhere (dh was out with dogs) and they chatted some more about this neighbor. He said feel free to pass along to the homeowner when you talk to her that my wife and I are tired of their crap too.

DH got to talk to the homeowner on the phone for a few minutes yesterday morning, but she was at work and got a call coming in and had to tell DH she'll call him back that afternoon (she did not). She said she wants them out of there, but she's now worried they will trash her house. DH did tell her that currently there are 4 adults and 4 children living at the house and the night before another adult stayed the night. She was like "OMG, where do they all fit in there?!"  DH did end up asking her if she covered their water bill or they did....he said I really don't mean to pry, but if you cover it, then I wanted to warn you to expect a huge bill....they have literally been running two sprinklers probably 12 hours a day for 4 days straight. We watered our newly seeded lawn and new plants really good one day before the last meter reading (then luckily we got several days of rain) and our bill was $10 higher than normal, just from that extra one day of watering for about an hour. They are probably running a $40 a day water bill up! We don't get it at all. It's not like the established lawn that they have would even need watering right now. It's not hot out and there's been enough rain off and on. So strange. The only thing we can come up with is they think they are annoying us by the sound of the sprinklers and some of the water coming into our yard? They said the previous owner would get mad if their sprinkler watered her property, so maybe they think it will annoy us? Bring it on....less water I have to pay for LOL! Thanks for watering the little trees I just planted along the fence, haha. Just one of the things that make you wonder....that and how does someone work a full time job all day, then go to another job after work for another 4 hours, come home (a 45 minute drive each way) and stay up in his garage until like 1:30am and then leave for work at 6am the next morning....how do you even stay awake doing that day after day, 5 days a week?  (mega amounts of coffee? drugs?)

Early yesterday evening the deputy called. Said he actually called neighbor on his cell phone (small town, easy to obtain, LOL) and talked to him. Said he admitted to running the engine that late. Deputy said he told him he can't be doing that and that they also cannot be parking IN the street anymore. They need to be in their driveway or on the shoulder (they parked in the street because they had their big driveway and shoulder all filled up). He said he also warned him that if the nuisances continue, they will charge him.

Neighbor got home last night at 10pm, left at 6am - barely heard a sound over there and as they had yet again parked a vehicle in the street, it got moved to shoulder.

DH tried to trim our black dogs bushy tail to get some knots out and made it look worse, so when he went to do an errand in town yesterday he stopped at the cute little dog groomer place we noticed and dropped him off there. For $10 whole bucks she spiffied him up nice! She said he's the best behaved flat coated retriever she's ever been around. I guess they aren't usually well behaved? DH also bought a brush she had for sale that works on his type of coat and gave her a $5 tip :)  While pooch was getting trimmed he went over to the county building to talk to the county planner about our property. He had some questions about where the short plat shows the drain field should go (which doesn't really work for us) and had heard this guy is a bit hard to deal with...unless you kinda kiss his butt...so that's what DH did LOL DH said they got along fine and the guy was very cooperative and had no problem with where DH said we wanted to put the house and the drain field.

DH still keeps in regular touch with our old "good neighbor". He sent DH a text last night. The water stopped working again last night. The well owner couldn't get a hold of slumlandlord, who usually "fixes" it for her, so she called good neighbor. He went down to the well house/shed (which sits on the corner of her drug house son's property - the one that deals all the drugs out the bedroom window) and said the blackberry bushes were so grown up around the little building he couldn't even get the door open and said obviously no one has even been in this well house since she had the pump replaced a couple years ago. He finally gets the door open and OMG! all the insulation that is in the walls and ceiling was all just hanging there and rotting out. He sent DH a picture. I said oh man, she should so be reported to the county! WE ARE SO GLAD WE DO NOT HAVE TO DEAL WITH THAT OR HER EVER AGAIN! I can just hear her now....ohhh..I don't know what to do...I don't have any money for it.....I'm still paying off the credit card charges on the pump 2 years ago.....

Other than that all is fine. I put a hummingbird feeder that sticks to a window on my office window and got to sit and drink my coffee watching a hummingbird this morning. DH had his breakfast out on the porch, as it was a nice sunny morning. The high school kids were outside in the area across from one side of our house, where there is a big lawn area and a town "frisbee golf" area and they were all playing that for gym class, it appeared. Kinda fun to watch, too. Small town life.