“Remoted – Hybrid” – Day 834 (Monday) – fun times award

We did Father’s Day today at my sister’s house. We didn’t forget, we planned it this way last week. My sister made biscuits and gravy, always impressive, but even more so today after learning her stove died on Sunday. Thank goodness for electric hotplates and her extensive camping experience. Dad, Sis, and I dined and talked for a couple hours. There were stories of the old family house and cool stuff Dad found in the walls and the yard during various stages of improvements.

This was the nice part of the day. The preceding part was a bit more stressful.

At 9:00 am, I sat in my driveway programming Waze so I could get the important alerts along the ride. The alerts today were mostly “roadkill on road ahead” and “vehicle on side of road.” While setting up the address, a UHaul truck came down the one-way, dead-end street, backed into my driveway on the other side of the house, turned and backed down the rest of the street, stopping in front of the Nuisance House. It didn’t seem wise to pull out of the driveway at the same time a truck was backing down the street towards the same driveway so I waited. 

The award goes to ...

When the truck stopped, it did so in the middle of the street, blocking me from getting out of my driveway. I tooted the horn and waved to signal the driver (who was not someone who lives at that house) to let me out. Instead of moving the truck forward or out of the middle of the street and closer to the destination house, the driver turned off the truck and hopped out. Then he started gesturing that he felt I had plenty of space between one neighbor’s three trash cans in front of my house for pickup today and the UHaul he had just parked in the middle of the street.

This escalated into a gesturing and shouting conversation that lasted three to four times longer than if he had just moved the truck up a few feet so I could leave. In the end, because he was clearly not going to move the truck, it was him gesturing and me executing a 27-point turn to navigate the hard left into the narrow space between the barrels and the truck.

Then, he stood in the street in front of my car so I still couldn’t leave. This is when he chose to deliver his loud sermon about how he was “just trying to enjoy his day” (as was I), and that he “doesn’t even live on this street” (um, no kidding), and that I “need to relax” (ok, that is true), and something about how I must be “that asshole neighbor that complains about everything.”

That one hurt. A lot. Because from where I sit, I have been exceedingly patient with the exceedingly self-absorbed people who come calling at the Nuisance House across the street. And I might bitch about the Nuisance House and its visitors in a blog, but it hasn’t gone any further than that. But it could.

If I really was “that asshole neighbor that complained about everything,” there would have been a stream of texts to the property owner and/or calls to the police during any othe dozens of pool parties when the driveway was blocked by the many Nuisance House guest cars blocking the entire end of the street. And definitely all the many Friday nights at 11:00 or 12:00 when the 10 or 15 cars arrive and park three across and three or four deep in the end of the street as if it was a private parking lot and then finally leave on Saturday mornings around 4:00 am with great fanfare when the guests spill out of the house and into the street, yelling and slamming car doors and revving engines during the very long goodbyes and departures. Or all the weekends when a UHaul truck arrives and parks in the middle of the street for 30 to 60 minutes as the dirt bikes are ceremoniously rolled out from the back yard and into the truck, and later in the day when they are wrangled back out of the truck and returned to the back yard. And every day when the neighborhoodlums from the Nuisance House are in my driveway throwing the basketball into their hoop across the street, and again at 11:00 or midnight when the late-night game commences, now accompanied by a whistle.

I might be wrong, but if any “asshole neighbor” awards are being bestowed, the crown will at least need to be shared with the Nuisance House across the street.