I am a nervous wreck. Silly I know, but my hands are shaking and I've been jumpy as all heck today.
Why?
Well we bought our place in Feb. of 2008. We have one neighbor next door on the left side if your standing facing my house at the street, and two directly across the street. The two neighbors across the street are all nice people. One house is an elderly couple who have lived here for 47 years and the other is a younger couple with two kids, ages 15 and 8.
The people next door were a middle aged professional couple with one older son (21) and the wifes mother who was in her 70's. Quiet people who work a good deal.
We had been here one month, March of 2008 when the couple from next door marches out of their woods where they had been hiking and onto our property towards us while we were playing tag with our three kids.
It was the first time we had ever seen them. We thought they were coming over to introduce themselves or something. Nope. Far from it. They marched up to us and blasted us that they had moved out to the country to get away from kids and animals and that our kids were being way too loud playing outside and that they didn't appreciate our dog barking ever. We were like
We live in one of the more rural areas in our state and there are farms dotted around all over the city and up and down our street. The woman looked right at my daughter who loves everyone and is quite mature for her age and said "We HATE children", made her cry and run off. Made me cry after they left and many times thereafter....
Anyway, what happened next was the worst experience of my life so far with neighbors...
They talked all sorts of crap about us to all the other neighbors.
They called the building inspector on us when we were building our chicken coop.
They called animal control everyday for months complaining that my dog whined too loudly in the morning to go out.
I caught the husband watching us through my dining room window in the middle of the night once.
And finally they called Child Services and said that we left our kids outside with no supervision and let them swim in the kiddie pool with no supervision. (Anyone who knows me knows this would never happen, I never even took the kids out to the pool without making sure both my husband AND I were there to watch all three kids AND the only people who knew I had a pool was them and child services said they couldn't tell us who called but that it was obvious *wink wink*)
It was hell. The elderly mother hated any kind of noise so anytime my kids played in the backyard you'd see her come hobbling out onto the back porsh waving her cane in the air (I kid you not!)
Come to find out. They had moved here in 2004 after looking for a house with no kids and animals around for over a year. Before they signed the final papers they said they sat in the driveway and waited for 2 hours to make sure they heard no animals or kids and when they didn't, they signed and bought. Little did they know that they picked all the wrong times to sit and listen because they hadn't even gotten unpacked yet when they learned that the people across the street had a 2 year old and a 10 year old (at the time). And a dog! They FLIPPED out! They started making all the same threats they made to us, that they would burn their house down, kill their dog, etc. Then a year later the day after Christmas in the middle of the night, their house caught fire. They couldn't find any signs of foul play at all, but they barely got out alive and lost everything. They immeadiately placed a restraining order on the bad neighbors, took them to court with handwritten notes of the threats from them, etc. It was not pretty...
They fought horribly from afar until we moved in, and what do you know, they stopped fighting with them and focused all their energy on us. They even made a big to do of making amens with them right in the street in front of our house for everyone to see.
Now on the other side of the bad neighbors was a large undeveloped lot. Well it sold. And the people who bought it started building a gorgeous home on it. The bad neighbors freaked out again, and now stopped fighting with us and started fighting with the new people!
Come to find out, the bad neighbors had had a problem with nearly everyone around them at one point or another. Suprise suprise.
They lost it and must have figured they would never have their peaceful retirement home they planned and moved out, bought another home, and put this one up for sale in December of 2008. It has sat empty for that long, until this morning when a moving truck pulled in and people have been milling around all over there today.
I am so nervous. When the bad neighbors were still here I got to the point where I couldn't even go out into my own yard because the wife would watch every move I made and she knew it got to me. I would go in the pool last summer and she would stand right over the property line and stare, I would go riding when I was leasing my horse and she would stand and stare really creepily and make all sorts of nasty comments, etc.
I got used to having an empty house next door and feeling like I didn't need to worry anymore.
I have been praying for nice people to move in there for months. Maybe a family but I won't be picky though some kids for mine to play with would be great! I just want NICE people who understand a rural area and everything that comes with it.
Sorry for the long rambling but it's been weighing heavy on my mind all day long and I'm worried about it. I also don't know what to do. Part of me wants to give them a couple of days to get settled and them bring a jar of jam, maybe a dozen eggs over and introduce myself. The other part of me wants to hide in the house forever....
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