Summer has arrived! Time to dust off the grill and start obsessing how our arms look in sleeveless tops.
We’re out of our caves, rubbing our eyes, and marveling at the way the sun feels on our faces.
Our neighbors are coming out as well. After spending the winter months tucked away in our houses and practicing our hermit skills, we find we must interact with other humans.
Sometimes, it’s nice to reconnect with the people who dwell closest to us. Other times, not so much.
We had months to ourselves. We cultivated our introverted nature and grew to enjoy the solitude. Now, there are neighbors everywhere. You can’t throw a rock without hitting one. By the way, they hate that.
Here are 39 thoughts we have all had about our neighbors:
- Did they get a trampoline? Here come screams and fighting siblings accompanied by a chorus of ‘Hey mom, watch this’.
- Oh, there’s Bob. Also, known as ‘the guy who can’t hold his bourbon and puked in our koi pond’.
- Why can’t everyone adjust their mower blade height to the same height as mine?
- There’s Mr. Dwyer mowing again. It’s about time, it’s been at least 36 hours since he last mowed.
- Wow. You’re. A. Small. Talk. Expert.
- They’re having another yard sale? Still trying to unload that salad shooter, I see.
- Great, the douchebag next door parked his big stupid truck in front of our house again. Way to take up both spots, numbnuts.
- Of course, here comes Sally with her lawn beautification tips. Like her lawn could get in Lawn and Garden.
- No. No, we do not want to host a block party, neighborhood gala, or a “Night Beneath The Stars” celebration.
- Because he’s all about that bass..’bout that bass..’bout that bass.
- You know what? I like my pink flamingos, but that dressed up concrete goose of yours looks dumb.
- What are their kids selling now? Chocolate eagles? Oh my, these taste so sinful.
- Fireworks? How about you wait until the fourth of July? Or at least July.
- I swear to all that is holy, if their dog craps in my yard again, I’m painting their cars with it.
- What the hell is that smell? Burnt hair? When neighbors grill, the neighborhood shouldn’t smell like a grilling accident.
- Yeah, I see your binoculars through my telescope.
- So, what do we have? 3 more months before your entire front yard gets lined with political signs?
- Oh, look, the kids across the street have another new ‘Uncle’.
- Do not give him a beer. He will never leave.
- That above ground pool never makes it until Labor day before the sides cave in. Heathens.
- The leaves are green now, but won’t be long until the lady next door is bitching about our leaves in her yard.
- Sure, it’s completely normal to hang 5 dozen wind chimes in your back yard. When the wind blows, the neighborhood sounds like angry Santa is flying overhead.
- Stone armadillos at the end of your driveway? That money would have been better spent on a new cornhole set.
- I don’t care if you listen to music outside, but would it kill you to give Taylor Swift a rest? Have you even heard eighties and nineties music?
- If that leaf blower comes out before 8:00 am on a Sunday one more time, I’m setting annoyed honey badgers loose in his yard.
- Oh look, shirtless Frank sitting in his folding chair armed with an electric fly swatter.
- A karaoke machine in your garage? Great. Loud weekend parties with an abysmal soundtrack.
- Where did that kid go? I know I saw a kid. Dammit. I just want to back out of my driveway.
- Ah, with nice weather, we can look forward to the Smith’s taking their weekend fights out into the yard. Mrs. Smith, undefeated in three summers, sounds to be in top form.
- Oh hell, shut your blinds.
- I can feel you judging my dandelions, Judgy McJudgerson.
- Where did the new neighbors go? They left at midnight? And didn’t even say goodbye.
- Another set of new neighbors? Wow, neighbors rotate in and out of here faster than rotisserie chickens.
- I’m impressed with your motorcycle revving skills. I’m more impressed you never seem to ride the motorcycle. All the sound, none of the mileage.
- Ummm, your cat keeps crapping in my flower bed. Your pathetic statement, “Well, he’s the neighborhood cat” doesn’t wash. Maybe, we could send a horse over to shit in your driveway. Of course, when you squawk, we’ll say, “Well, he’s the neighborhood horse.”
- Yip and yap, the canine record holders for continuous barking. I feel for you. We can hear your dogs barking from inside your house…250 feet away. Leaving them outside from sun up to sundown achieves nothing other than making your dog problem our noise problem.
- Christmas ended. Feel free to turn off your twinkling lights, pull down the fake icicles, and, for crap’s sake, deflate wheezing Frosty. Wait, where’s the neighborhood cat when you need him?
- Why are you waving? Does this look like The Truman Show? Oh, and if you ever say “Good morning, and in case I don’t see ya, good afternoon, good evening, and good night!” again, we’re calling the cops.
Like Benjamin Franklin said, “Love thy neighbor, but don’t pull down the hedge”.
So, what can you add to the list? I’m not the only one with unneighborly thoughts, am I?
Randy and I are the perfect neighbors…we will leave you the fuck alone.
I have a neighbor with chickens. Every morning I feel like someone in my house is playing Spyro. It’s possible this is the neighbor who also leaves his little dog outside yapping frantically all day. If it were my dog I would have turned the hose on it a long time ago or at least put a damn bark collar on the thing.
oh man…at least we don’t have neighbors with chickens.
Our closest neighbors are at least 1/3 mile away. That eliminates the complaints about the one man hair metal concerts in our barn on the weekend. My husband (former rock star) likes to plug in one of his many guitars into his full stack and play along… That is why we live in the country…neighborhoods would kick us out.
My husband plays guitar, too..but he just thinks he’s a former rock star. haha.
I have the typical “I like to blare my music so loud the walls shake!” Many times I have had to pound on their door at 2am and tell them to shut the hell up. Ahh apartment living. Meh.
THAT is EXACTLY why I will never live in an apartment again. I fucking HATE that shit.
Not sure I can add anything to this, apart from how grateful I am that I don’t live in the suburbs. I have absolutely no clue who my neighbors are! Yay!
Lucky!!!
Heh heh, I was just thinking that living in an apartment building actually cuts down on this a ton — I see the neighbors in the halls where we exchange cordial nods and “Have a good day”s and then part company again — no real interactions necessary!
Yeah, that’s the perfect scenario. Cordial with no relationships.
One of my next-door neighbors is a huge party girl (she’s in her early 40s, but acts like a college girl). And, she’s deaf in one ear, which tends to make her speak louder than average. So she has people over almost every night and they’re always out back on the patio, yelling, cackling, smoking, drinking and listening to music. Unfortunately our bedroom windows are very close to the source of noise. Every night we turn on the humidifier and a nature sounds app on our phones to drown her out. This year she bought one of those outdoor heaters that you see on restaurant patios, so that she can socialize year round. Yay!
Your list rocks!
Sounds like it’s time for her to slow the fuck down!
Ha ha ha, I can so relate to this, not that I have the neighbour issue now I live in here. Amazing that in a block of studio flats I can exist without actually seeing a single soul most days, which is just as well as the one I do see on rare occasions makes my skin crawl and is probably in the dictionary as the definition of ‘smarmy’ and probably ‘creep’.
Beware the smarmy creeps…they make the worst neighbors. And the guy who keeps parking his stupid truck in front of our house.
Oh indeed, I’ve been here three and half years now and my heart sinks if he manages to catch me going in or out of the building, mostly harmless to be honest, but I hate people I don’t know or like referring to me as their angel…bleuch.
Dude..I shuddered in sympathy.
Our next door neighbor prunes his trees with a chainsaw. He looks like a drunk monkey, swinging that thing around over his head, off balance. I’m waiting for a disaster. I hope my kids don’t see it.
Oh god..I couldn’t watch that..I’d be terrified.
Thankfully I can’t really see, or hear, neighbors. That will change in 2 weeks when I move into a townhouse and then? My biggest beef is those folks who like to cut the grass at 8 am on a weekend day.
Yes..that is unreasonable.
Yes..that is unreasonable.
I love the rubbing the eyes and emerging into the sun visual. Like a little neighborhood of moles.
hahah..that we are…
My cottage neighbour called the city on us for building something to code without a permit. So–We had suspected their outhouse and only place for elimination was on our property. We had the survey stake put in front of the door so they knew their shitter was now ours. Karma and I are both bitches.
HAHAHAHAHA…I love you.
We have lived in the same condo complex for nearly 18 years. We smile and nod at people, but we’ve always had a rule about distance. We found early on that the few neighbors we were friendly with, upon learning my husband is a cop, would take it upon themselves to knock on our door at all hours when they had “cop questions” or once or twice when there was a domestic dispute going on. Nothing like a sloppy drunk on your doorstep at 3:30 am.
This year, all of a sudden, the hubs is Mr. Personality out at the pool, chatting with anyone who comes along. This inevitably leads to discussions about the HOA board, politics, whatever is in the news…C’mon people, I’m just trying to soak up some rays and get my Vitamin D quota. Thank god for earbuds!
Yeah..my earbuds come in handy at work. Every day.
LOL – have some great ones to add…
– Did that douchebag purposely set their backyard motion light to shine into our daughter’s bedroom? And is that why he lets the dog out at all hours of the night to trip it???
– Same dickwad is out mowing at midnight on a weeknight. WTF???!!!
– Wife of above when asked to remove her dog’s feces from my backyard, “How do you know it was his? And besides, sometimes your cats are meowing inside your patio door and I don’t like it.” HAHAHAHA
Thankfully, a couple years ago we moved out to the farmhouse where my husband grew up. Now we just have to put up with his uncle driving around in his golf cart to spy on us across the field. I’d invite you to come visit, but we just got chickens! 😛
– Oh Great! The boyfriend that drives a diesel truck is staying over again. Can’t wait for him to leave for work at 4am!!!
– Is she seriously coming over here again to ask where the lot line is before she mows. It’s pretty obvious where her 12″ weeds start…
– If you live upstairs please be aware that having bare floors and a squeaky bed makes it difficult for your neighbour to sleep through the ‘makeout’ sessions you have.
-Making barking noises at my dog will not make him stop barking, it will make him worse and set off EVERY OTHER DAMN DOG IN THE NEIGHBOURHOOD! Jackass.
I’m glad you got away from that!
We have a community Facebook page where the neighbors can complain about each other without naming names. I love to tune in on Saturday nights around 11 when it becomes the Drunkbook page and things turn mean. I hate to admit that I sometimes egg them on.
THis made me laugh. I would egg them on, too. That’s fucking hilarious.
HAHAHAHA! I need to start a community Facebook group for our neighborhood. We actually like our neighbors and hang out with them but it could be fun on the weekends when it turns to Drunkbook!
Can I please have the url to said FB page? I’d like to come stalk it… perhaps contribute!
oh sorry.. I thought you said you DID start a page. Nevermind. oops!!
Here are just a few from this summer alone:
I hope you didn’t spend too much tearing down that nice small house and replacing it with a fucking ugly McMansion that now won’t sell. I’m kidding. I hope you finally have to take an offer that’s twenty grand below what you spent.
According to your dog that new “invisible” fence of yours isn’t “invisible” so much as “nonexistent”.
You have a driveway. Use it.
HAHAH..
Yeah, especially the driveway thing.
While we do live out in the country, it’s half acre subdivision. Being outside the city limits means that the neighbors can, and do, have chickens, cows, goats, dogs and even donkeys! Then there’s the guy behind us who has an old tractor with no muffler and he has to bring it out every summer and move the same pile of dirt around all summer long, starting at Sunrise on the weekends.
Don’t you all have fucking vacations to on like all summer long and leave me to do neighborhood watch
PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
We’ve lived in our current house for 12 years. There’s a woman neighbor that walks her dog…I know her last name, never learned her first…we just call her “Gossip”. If we see her coming, we just suddenly remember that we need to do something inside. On the occasions that she catches us though…she is all ready to stop and tell us EVERY. SINGLE. THING. that everyone else in the neighborhood is up to in excruciating detail. I’m talking about things I have no idea how she knows, like: “You know John over there had that awful urinary tract infection and the medicine they gave him turned his poop purple.”
And since we live in AL, our inside hermit time is only about 3 weeks long
OMG, are you my neighbor? I recognize so many of the people near us. And I laughed from beginning to end.
Our across-the-wall neighbor is a metal fabricating shop that likes to listen to the Spanish-language radio station a lot. As much as I hate advertising, the fact that I can’t understand what they’re saying has been the only thing keeping me from strangling someone on many occasions…
For the love of all that is good and holy PUT A FUCKING CARPET DOWN ON YOUR DECK… all the scraping and thumping from overhead all day every effing day is enough to drive an apartment dweller who ALSO loves her patio into a straight jacket… or into a murderous rage… you’ve been warned.
(and I agree re: wind chimes…. the sound of those things makes me want to pull out my fingernails just for the distraction… thankfully none hang near me at the moment. I think they should be outlawed in the city, personally… so effing RUDE)
I don’t mind one or two…but for all that is holy, 10 or more? That’s an illness.
My brother’s neighbour used to have… no word of a lie… about 50 different chimes (maybe 100, it was a LOT) hung on their back patio (which was huge). Used to make me absolutely SNAKEY to visit him on a sunny day when we’d sit outside on my brother’s patio (which was within easy earshot) … I wanted to go over and hurt them for being so rude. Didn’t seem to bother my brother or his family tho. I guess I’m the only truly uptight one in this clan! LOL
Hahah..well…there is usually at least one uptight person. I have my moments..as you know.
Loved the one about the uncles! I have wooden winds chimes (one set only); for some reason they remind me of the scene in Kill Bill where Lucy Liu loses her head. Much quieter than metal ones. And if it gets too windy, they “hang themselves up” on a piece of loose bark on the tree where they hang. One set of neighbors and I are the firepit-partiers of the trailer court; everyone else is quiet, thankfully. I guess they know who the bosses of the trailer park are, ha ha. No powered machines before noon on weekends, unless it’s one big project that can’t be helped, and those better be seldom.
That is such a good scene! I know exactly the sound you’re talking about. A set or two is fine…but 10 or more?
We have a fire pit as well and we play music, but it’s not loud.
“They’re having another yard sale? Still trying to unload that salad shooter, I see.” *Cough* I think you may be talking about me. We have a neighborhood yard sale every year — and every year I box up the shit that didn’t sell and keep it until the next year, when I put it out and hope (usually unrealistically) that it sells this time.
Have I told you about our next door neighbor, who is a 75-year-old former Vegas showgirl? When summer comes, she sunbathes in her backyard topless — clearly visible from my upstairs deck. BTW, she has the most fabulous boobs I’ve ever seen on an old woman!
HAHHAHA…I would buy your salad shooter.
Beverly Hillbillies do Las Vegas 2 doors down.
Do your kids have any boundaries?
Oh shit the van is backing in the driveway what sort of crap have they hauled home this time.
It’s POSSIBLE we’re the Beverly Hillbillies in our neighborhood. hahaha.
When we moved into our house last year we we’re greeted by our new neighbors’ two lab sized dogs. One of whom promptly poo’d in our yard. The new neighbor apologized and cleaned up the mess, but then informed us that we might want to put up a fence on the side of our front yard to keep their dogs out …. just like their neighbors on the other side had done. Our response: Um…..wait a minute, aren’t they your dogs? Shouldn’t that be your responsibility and not my expense? His reasoning for not doing it himself was that they didn’t like the idea of putting up fences in their yard because it would make their property look smaller.
I am constantly baffled by the other humans and their bizarre logic.
HAHAHAHAHAFUCKINGHA!! I was seriously feeling like shit this morning after a sleepless night and every damn joint in my body aching so that I could barely make it downstairs to hit the on button on the coffee maker. And then there was this. Here’s mine:
– Hey, otherwise lovely neighbors who let our 2-yr-old grandson visit your goats anytime he wants, could you please lay off the weekend cannon fire or at least limit it to a couple hundred rounds? Especially when said youngster is taking his afternoon nap? Um, thanks.
Oh man…at least we don’t have that.
And YAY! I’m glad I made your morning better. GO COFFEE!!
I don’t have any neighbors closer than 10 acres away, now, which is CLOSE ENOUGH thanks, so they don’t do much that I notice or care about.
Thank goodness, because when we lived in a subdivision, I could hardly take a breath between un-neighborly thoughts–I’m SUPER un-neighborly about subdivision activities.
We had a neighbor behind us who had dogs who barked, NONstop, 24 hours a day. I used to wish I could take a blow-dart and shoot them through a hole in the fence!
*insert sound of blow dart here*
We had neighbors like that behind us. I celebrated when they moved.
I love “leave you the fuck alone’ neighbors! That’s what I strive to be. Unless you’re parked in my half of the driveway. Then I have to come knock.
There is a benefit to mostly living around college students. They LEAVE. But while they’re here, I feel like the neighbor on Bewitched, all “Look at what they’re doing!” and “Stay off my lawn!”
Gladys Kravitz….yep..that is Randy. Hahahah.
I think all of them were one of my neighbors.
Oh dude…that sucks.
Fortunately our house sits on 2 acres and away from the street. However on one side we could still see and hear our neighbors. Last week I had several truck loads of dirt hauled in and hired a guy to move it and make a huge dirt berm between us and them. I figure that will send the message that we prefer to be left the fuck alone!
Right there with you. I love people. I do. I just mostly don’t want to deal with them.
How the heck did I miss this? HIlarious. You’ve thought of everything. And reminded me of the horrid parent of a neighbour who kept popping over to visit and fix things. At his daughter’s. She lived next door for a year. His neverendingalwaysdroningonandonandon comment? “We’re fixin’ the house up for the kids.” Nice to hear. The first time and maybe the second. Deadly dull after the 456th time.
Long story short – he sent his son in law over to tell me they were “getting an arborist to trim my tree.” Lovely. Thank you but no. 5 days later the for sale sign went up. They just wanted a better view for potential buyers. Not fixing the house up for the kids but fixing it up to sell. Delightful. Why not tell me that in the first place?
Oh man…fucking people…