Playing With Fire

I have neighbor problems.

It's kind of a dramatic opening sentence, no? But it's true.

It was obvious from the beginning that The Neighbor was a bit on the nosy side, for back when my house was still for sale and when I was looking at the place - he came up and asked...no, questioned... who we were and what we were doing there.

Well, I thought it was pretty self explanatory. There was a "For Sale" sign in the yard. There was a guy wearing a suit standing next to some any old Joe Pye Weed (which is actually the name of a plant, but I'm using it to refer to myself here). The car that Suit was driving had a magnetic sign on the door that said "Remax"...

Well, you get the idea.

So after I bought the place I replaced both of the old sunfaded mismatched wood entry doors and the old wood screen doors that didn't really protect them. I also replaced the old, rotted metal gutter system as well as the old, rotten wood garage door.

And I was happy! It really brightened the place up!

But The Neighbor? Well, he suggested that I paint the place. Not that the place needed paint. Oh, no! He just didn't care for the color. (Brown shingles, creamish/tan walls, white doors and trim.)

I thought to myself...
"Hmmm... You have an all white house with a black roof. You've painted the cement blocks of your basement walls...white... as well as the boards to the deck out back. Your shed is done the same way. You have your enormous white camper, your white Buick Le Sabre, your black Pontiac Bonneville, and your black Volkswagen Beetle. You are obviously The Master of picking out The Right Color. Now please wander back to your own property while I finish planting these Daylilies. They bloom in yellow, red, peach, orange, purple, pink..." :)

I told him I was thinking about painting it green. (I hope he hates green.)

When I unloaded all that mulch I brought home earlier this year, The Neighbor was all over that. He was also very curious about what was being done inside my house when Steve was bringing in the power tools to put in the shower.

ugh.

But now we fast forward to the recent past.

I've mentioned that I've been taking out a lot of the unwanted trees around my house and at the end of my little dead-end road.

Well, The Neighbor? He likes to sit next to his enormous white camper while it's parked in his driveway. His wife joins him there, and they sit and play with their stupid yippy little house-mutt and are happily retired.

But when I was on the ladder with the chainsaw blazing through the tree branch (the one that I was worried might land on the power line), The Neighbor had his chair on the street in front of his camper so he could watch the show.

Well, I'm afraid I had to disappoint him. Like I said... the hard hat worked and the branches all landed where I wanted them to. No Glowing-Chad-Sparking-On-A-Metal-Ladder to entertain him.

Well, he's not easily deterred, so the next time he talked to me he tried to persuade me to remove more trees at the end of my little dead-end road. For clarification purposes, when I say "more" I mean "ALL".

I think he was attempting to get me to think this was somehow my idea, but there's no way in Hello, there that I would ever come up with an idea that stupid on my own.

(Yes, chainsawing a branch that overhangs a power line while standing on a metal extension ladder 30 feet in the air is not an intelligent idea. Just work with me here. It's called "The Willing Suspension of Disbelief")

Again, I thought to myself...
"Hmmm. You'd like to sell your house and move out of the state. So what your saying is that you'd like me to cut down all of the fully grown Oak trees - along with all the volunteer shit - so you can have a clear view of...what? the roof of the bank? For how long? Half a year or so? Perhaps I better set down this pickax lest I get the urge to have me one of those "Fried Green Tomatoes" style barbecues..."

(Laugh here. I would never actually eat my neighbors. Meat that old is probably really tough.)

:)

OK, then. Back to the storyline...

So as I'm clearing out the trees and digging out the roots, I'm either loading the trailer with the branches or I'm burning them in one of the fire pits. (The fire pits are handy like that. They are also much easier to carry around the property than the car and trailer are. Maybe if I were to disconnect the trailer and carry them separately...but who has that kind of time?!)

I've been doing this, now-and-then/here-and-there, ever since I moved into the place 4 years ago. In fact, friends of David and Todd have stopped by and joined me in having a fire and in eating large bowls of ice cream while doing so. David and Todd weren't even home!

The only difference is right now the fire pit is where The Neighbor can see it. (Well...If he's in the camper instead of next to it.) Apparently when The Neighbor can see a fire pit, the RISING smoke drifts downhill and bothers him.

The Neighbor complained about this.

Twice.

Once on each of the last two Saturday's.

(I suspect The Neighbor may have had some ninja training. He can kind of sneak up on a guy. It's a good thing I have an underdeveloped sense of self preservation or he might startle the hell out of me. I hope he shares my notion of "Love Thy Neighbors! Well...don't eat them, anyway.")

The first time was a My Bad. A breeze picked up in the afternoon and I wasn't paying attention to the direction of the smoke path.

Different story last weekend.

When he appeared, he asked why I always had to have a fire going. (Gee, I don't know...maybe because it's Saturday and it's the only day I don't work and for some reason the damn thing doesn't burn out when I keep adding branches?)

I told him I'd just got done grilling. (This was the truth - because I'm like that.) I then apologized and asked him if the smoke was blowing toward his house. He responded (rather gruffly, I might add) that it was...and that I could obviously see that it was...and that he doesn't like wood smoke and that there's city ordinances about having a fire in town.

Odd. I kind of noticed that it was almost a perfectly calm day and what little smoke there was was dissipating about 8 feet above the fire pit. I'm also pretty sure that fire pits are acceptable in our town (if covered) and are able to be used at any time for cooking.

So then.
He doesn't like wood smoke.
That explains quite a bit.

At least I now know why The Neighbor does his camping in his driveway instead of in an actual campground!

Now then... where's that stupid little yippy mutt?
Oh, there you are!
Think you're going to run over and snarl at me, do you?
Come here, you little *insert naughty word. nope - wrong one. THE naughty word. there you go.*
I might not eat thy neighbor, but a little barbeque sauce on you might...

:)