Bad Neighbors

First of all, I'm starting off this post with this cute picture because the post is nothing but a compaint and I wanted something to offset the negativity...I'm sorry about this but hey, it is my blog and I so need to vent and see if it is as bad as I think it seems!!

I hate my neighbor. OK, I take that slightly back…I don’t hate her because I don’t know her. I hate her actions and the childish way she is in her dealings with me. Considering she’s late 30s/early 40s she could be adult about things, but she doesn’t seem to understand the concept and I’m a bit fed up with it. I’ve lived in my condo for almost 7 years (it will be 7 years this July) and she has been my neighbor below me (I’m in a manor home, 2 up, 2 down) has never introduced herself, never acknowledged me personally other than to complain about something…her husband (now ex) was always pleasant, friendly, etc…makes me understand why he left (OK, not knowing the whole story that was mean and I really don’t mean it, but if she was toward him the way she is to me, then I can understand). All of her dealings with me she has been NOTHING but nasty, and as far as I can tell I have done nothing to her other than being a female. When my dad and my cousin were doing work outside she was talking to them and pleasant acting, but when I was dog sitting once, she all but yelled at me for walking too close to her bedroom windows (her reasoning she’s on the lower floor and it’s bedrooms and it’s only courtesy to keep a wide berth, she could’ve been more pleasant about it but I did understand, even though it is common property and I can walk where I want to) after her request though I adjusted to walking to the end of the driveway and around the tree to then get back out to the grassy area to have them do their business instead of going across the rocks and closer to her windows. Another time I had her leave me a nasty little note about not throwing things off my balcony when she found a cigarette pack off her patio, like I’m a two year old that needs to be reprimanded and even though I had lived there for 2 years by that time and had never done that before, obviously I must now. I simply replied by saying I don’t smoke and I don’t throw things off my balcony (hey, this is my property too, does she think I want to litter on it??). Yet another time she sent her ex up to complain to me about my overflowing a planter and water dripping down onto her metal table and chairs that were on the patio and they were having people over and now wouldn’t be able to sit outside to eat (cause you know, it can’t be wiped off with a towel). On a few occasions I’ve attempted to talk to her on the rare occasion that we are outside at the same time, just to say hi or be pleasant and try to get an amiable relationship going, but I’ve always been met with a glare and silence… and I know it’s not me, my neighbor across the hall expressed sadness when she saw I was attempting to sell because she likes having me for a neighbor. She asked me recently if I was still trying to sell and I said yes and she said she understood why (the association and all the crap) but was glad I was still living there. So, obviously I’m a good neighbor…I get along with a few others too, talk to them in the summer when we are out, pet their dogs, have nice conversation…

Anyway, that is all the background of my dealings with her. Now there is a new thing. Last April my toilet was clogged (I know the exact day due to having an out of town guest, and another friend that stayed after a party we went to) and I used the plunger to unclog it. The neighbor called the caretakers to complain about water dripping down and staining her ceiling…she said she heard plungering and obviously I overflowed something and caused an issue. I explained to the caretaker that yes, it plugged, but only a small amount splashed to the floor and it wasn’t leaking anywhere in the bathroom. The caretaker just wanted to warn me but I never heard anything more about it.

Fast forward, 10 months later, and this past weekend. My toilet has been a pain (filled very, very slowly, 10-15 minutes, and you had to hold it 10-15 seconds to get it to flush) and my dad and brother fixed it for me by putting new guts in the tank, namely a new water flow valve and now it fills fast!! Prior to doing this, in case we needed to turn water off (which we didn’t, we just had to turn it off at the toilet) I called the caretakers to find out if there was a way to turn water off other than at the main thing to the whole building. There isn’t, and they told me to warn the neighbors (I explained to them what was wrong and what we might do which we didn’t need to shut it all off anyway). After the replacement of the guts, the tank isn’t leaking and there was no leaking around the base or at the shut off valve (4 years ago, we lifted up the toilet, and had to put a new seal in back in, which apparently was fine as I never heard a complaint about leaks then, when we put ceramic tile down and last time it the valve leaked a bit). All was good. Or so I thought.

On Saturday, after I had left, my parents came back to pick up the dogs and she caught them and started complaining to them about the water leaking in her bathroom. They told her I owned the place (which she knows) and that I wasn’t home till tomorrow…she knew I wasn’t home, but opted to get on them anyway. Mom asked to see what was going on and neighbor said no, took a picture though and showed them, but the picture was hard to tell anything.

I got home yesterday (yes, Tuesday, she talked to my parents on Saturday) and had a message from the property management company saying that my neighbor had an issue and that I probably knew about it, but that I had apparently been doing plumbing work, which the city requires licensed plumbers to do any work like that (first of all, not for do it yourself stuff and how did they know I didn’t have a plumber anyway!!) and that I should’ve had that handled by a pro (the guy had no clue what I had done and was hearing it third hand so that irked me he was making assumptions) and that I needed to get a plumber in there as it sounded like a toilet seal and that if I didn’t handle things soon, that I might have liability from not mitigating the damages…The woman (she probably doesn’t know my name but I know hers is Jeanette) apparently has not called anyone herself to come look at what is going on in her place, she had to have had this stuff going on on Friday if it was anything to do with what I was doing, yet it was Tuesday before property management called me, and she didn’t do anything about it from back in April…talk about not mitigating damages (oh yeah, she had told my mom there had been a problem a couple of months ago, 10 months isn’t a coupl)!! Anyway, I called back the property manager, told them I didn’t do any plumbing over the weekend, that something had been replaced inside the toilet tank, that there was no need for a plumber, that my toilet has not overflowed nor is it leaking around the base so it can’t be related to that and the only other thing I had been doing was related to the appliances (which I had professional installers handle). I also said that I thought it was ridiculous that she is bringing everyone BUT me into it, that she attacked my parents that don’t even live there and she can’t contact me in a civil manner to discuss. That there is nothing on my end that is having a problem and I think she needs to understand that she owns her place and there isn’t a rental manager to come in and fix problems that she should call a plumber and figure out what is going on. There is no reason I should call one because there is nothing that is a problem in mine. She claimed to my mom too that it’s my pipes that her pipes run underneath. Umm, doubting that. My guess is that there are pipes in her ceiling/my floor and splits off for both units. It would not make sense that they run two sets of plumbing would it? And even so, I’m not ripping up my floor because her ceiling is leaking. Ceiling is easier to go in through anyway…and nothing I’ve done should cause any of this anyway!! See why I wanted to move so bad?? Between her and the property management and stupid stuff from the association. Sigh…I have so many complaints I could make about her and what she’s done (like having a woman stay with her for a few weeks with a young child that was outside screaming early in the morning on the weekends and the woman was also a smoker and would smoke right outside that wafted into my place) but I haven’t because you know, it’s an association, shared common space etc so you have to have tolerance and understanding and allow some leeway on that stuff!! She needs to move out!! My thought, if you can’t get along with others, don’t live in an association!!

I did have a revelation on a run on Monday though too...I'm going to flat out tell her, if I ever get a chance, she does avoid me it seems, that unless she can come to me directly, since I am the owner, and speak to me in a civil (I'm not even asking for friendly), adult manner, then she might as well not bother because I'm going to not listen to anything she passes through anyone else.