What’s that saying, “Good fences make good neighbours”?? My hubby just had it out with our next door neighbour. Today was the last straw for me with this man. We’ve been next door to him for almost 2 years and over the last year it has gotten progressively more and more intense.

Two years ago he came to us about putting up the fence, we said great – we’d like that. $250 was our portion. The next day, my hubby’s mom died (in his arms in our house). It was obvious that my man couldn’t help this guy build the fence now – we were a little distracted. The guy came to us and said he’d take care of it. He’d build it on his property so we wouldn’t have to worry about it. Great – one less thing on our plate at that time.

He’s been an ornery little man since.

We’ve offered to pay him half of the fence cost but each time he has said, “No, it’s ok!”. Over the last year he has talked to our kids – behind our backs – when their balls hit the fence or they fall into it while playing sports in our backyard or when their ball flies over the fence into their yard. He never once came to us – he and his young son only yell at my children. Today, my oldest went outside to help clean up the toys in the yard so my hubby can mow the lawn when the neighbour told Q to get the bike lock off the fence or else he would cut it off. I had it. Enough is enough.

My hubby headed over there to talk to this man, I could hear the man shouting at Dave quite quickly. Dave remained calm as he always does! I was listening at the window and I couldn’t help but shout out the window – I’m way way too emotional at times… Dave explained that he cannot stop soccer balls from hitting the fence. The neighbour started yelling back that it was his fence over and over again. Dave offered him the money again. He said no he didn’t want it but he kept yelling about it being his fence and that we did nothing to help him put it in. Dave says, “I was burying my Mother when you put in the fence”. Dave again offered him the money to which the man said no once again. Then the man says if the kids hit the fence again he will call the police on our rental unit. I LOST IT! What rental unit? I live in the basement of my own house while my f-i-l has the upper floor. All of our names are on the mortgage. Dave told me to be quiet – I was going to explode on him.

Am I just being unreasonable? There’s more run-ins with this man and his son who has taken on his dad’s attitude.

One day my s-i-l parked on the street in front of his house – which is public property – and he parked his vehicle right up against her bumper, actually touching her new car. He did the same thing to my other neighbours van. He parked so close that he hit the bumper causing the van to rock. My nice neighbour came over to his house to ask him why the grumpy man hit his van. Do you want to know his response? “I didn’t know it was your van?!” You see…. they have the exact same mini-van as us. He thought he was hitting our van and apparently that was OK!!

Everything in me wants to send all the kids outside to run around and scream as loud as they can!! I know that is not the right thing to do but…. 🙂