Neighbors, Vandals, KO Reaction

[Guest guest]

Well, fellow KOs, I have been mulling over putting this question to the

list for a few days and decided to, so here goes. I'll try to be brief - HA! -

we all say that, right? :-)

I am trying to figure out if my reaction to something that happened

recently is because I'm a KO, or if anybody would be as upset as I am.

DH and I own a house in a small but bustling town. We are within walking

distance of the restaurants, shops, bars, library, etc., but the neighborhood

is residential. It is historically designated - the buildings are a

mixture of styles and types. Ours was built in 1926 on a double lot, with the

house on the edge, the detached garage set back in the lot's middle and a

guest house on the other side at the back. There's an alley. The neighboring

house is also built to the edge so they are close.

The neighborhood was very quiet - pin drop quiet at night - until the

neighbor, who lives in her guest house, rented her front house, the one close to

us, to three teenagers. And all Hell erupted. Three days after they moved

in, after three days of listening to them screaming and yelling, the two

girls were having a vicious screaming fight at one a.m. and I finally snapped

and went outside and yelled over the fence to shut up, people were trying

to sleep.

Since then the noise has continued unrelenting. There is underage drinking

and pot smoking. The neighbors across the street have complained to the

landlord-neighbor about there partying on the front porch (which we hear of

course because it's close to our sun-porch) and the neighbors to the other

side have complained about the partying on the patio on that side.

The landlord-neighbor has gone out on several occasions to tell them to

keep it down but it doesn't get through. Mostly she either doesn't hear it

(um, Ambien haze? or pretends not to hear it.)

One of the girls has some kind of mental pathology. I think she may be

borderline or bipolar. She screams and yells at her roommates so much that she

starts coughing. She's completely psycho. We can hear every word - with

their windows shut and our windows shut. They run, bang, crash, yell. Slam the

doors.

So much for enjoying the lovely weather and windows open we usually have at

this time of year..

Anyway, right before Christmas the girls were having a party, screaming and

yelling as usual, and DD and I went out to the 7-11 for something. We came

home, then later went out to put out our Christmas yard lights and walk

the dog. Between that time, about an hour and a half, someone had dumped a

full tray of dirty cat litter on the sidewalk in front of our house, right by

the mailbox.

So my husband says I should sweep it up and take it back, which I did. I

just returned it to their doorstep. They never saw me do it. And we figured

it would be the end of it.

Let me be clear - there is nobody else in this neighborhood that would do

this - the old lady on the other side loves us because we take out her

garbage, etc. And yes, the teens have three cats they got from the pound.

So the screaming and yelling continued, and the landlord-neighbor told us

she was consulting a lawyer about evicting them because she was getting so

many complaints.

The bizarre thing about the kitty litter is that at that point we hadn't

been complaining to her a lot - the other neighbors were doing it for us.

So a couple of days after Christmas sometime after one a.m. they covered

our yard in fruit loops, hot dogs and torn up white bread.

We called the police and filed a report. There was a trail leading back

next door, but the cop couldn't find the wrappers.

We called the landlord-neighbor at work and told her. She said she would

" talk to them. " Well, I heard her talking to them. She told them " I know you

are good people, " etc.

Say what? Does she not hear them? Did she not see our yard? She told us

they had alibis. The psycho girl was playing Wii. Hahahahahahaha. Geez. This

woman has no children - she has not had teenagers to deal with. Give me a

break. Wii as an alibi. I'd like to see that in court.

We have installed a dummy video camera that looks very realistic on the

front of the house, and we are ordering a DVR video that is linked to a

motion activated light. This is money we really don't need to be spending but we

are so uncomfortable about someone vandalizing our cars or the house that

it is a must.

We will also be putting in a wood fence between the properties - there is

already a chain link, but we're hoping the wood will stop noise, and

unfortunately her history of renting shows that she has bad judgment about

people. She's had a couple other doozy tenants too - didn't bother us, but she

had problems. Interestingly, for the houses being so close, the other

tenants, one batch of two and the last of three, didn't make objectional noise,

either.

So to get to the point of my letter, this has upset me so much that it has

ruined the holiday season. I have tried not to let it get to me, but I feel

violated and as though my own home's sanctity is disturbed.

It has taken me back to a very bad place - a time back in 2002 when

someone did something similar to us in a condo we owned. DH and I had a party

for

a group of theater people. A male couple had it in for us because they

thought we owned a cat in the no pet building, and they couldn't prove it.

They were just a couple of old nuts. They saw us carrying in party

supplies. At 11 on the dot they called the police with a noise complaint. The

cop

came to the door, very apologetic, said he had to appear but not to worry

about it because he could hear coming up the hall that we weren't noisy.

(The cop was the hit of the party - everybody was over 40 - they all said

they'd never had the cops called on them before. They still talk about it.

)

The next morning somebody left a brown bag by our door, and when I opened

it expecting pastries or fruit, because we had a lot of friends in the

building, and were well-liked by many, I found human feces. Later the male

couple told another older couple in the building that they did it and the older

couple told the manager - nobody else found this anything but despicable.

The police were called, but of course nothing could be done.

At the time we had our apartment up for sale and I was three days away

from major surgery. So this was a real bad time in our life.

And this food on the lawn incident has taken me back there to that time

and place.

I'm trying to overcome this. And figure out how much of my reaction is due

to being a KO. I do know that depression can be anger turned inward, and

when I was battling wasps that were attracted to the sweet cereal and trying

to clean up the lawn I was so enraged I could have killed someone, which

wasn't a healthy place to be in my mind.

I'm also finding it real hard to be social with the neighbor-landlord. I

kind of want to kick her arse, ala sailor Doug, lol.

Any insight will be appreciated.

Em