I Think We Were Just Voted Off the Island

Friday I rode my bicycle to work. It is between 12 and 15 miles one way, depending on how much time I have to ride. Since it is our anniversary weekend I decide to take the shorter route so we could go out to dinner. I arrive home and walk in the door and the Chief is in a somewhat agitated state. I wonder what I did to upset the balance but it turns out this time it was not me. It was the letter sent by the "neighborhood." This letter was folded up and placed into our mailbox.

To be honest, our yard was a little "out of control." The crab grass had put up some seeders and it definitely needed to be cut. That being said with our little problem with the water company and the visitors at work for the last two weeks, I was planning to mow on Saturday morning. I also wanted my lawn to be a little taller than normal because I want to bag it and use it to finish mulching the garden. I did not save enough leaves last fall to cover the entire garden... I must be a n00b.

The Chief was royally pissed off. Initially I was not too excited. I agreed with the neighbors but the more I thought about it the more agitated I became.

I have some serious issues with people telling me how to be a good citizen. I discussed this with some coworkers and it was decided that some female in our neighborhood does not care for the appearance of our house very much. No normal man would ever put something like this in one of his neighbor's mailbox. Here is what a man (Howard*) would do:

1. After being repeatedly bothered by his significant other about the state of the neighbor's yard Howard would begrudgingly agree do something about it and go into the garage.
2. In the garage he would remove a six pack of beer from the man-refrigerator and walk over to the neighbor's house
3. Howard would knock on the door (if the man was not in the garage with the door open) and explain the situation and offer the neighbor a beer for the inconvenience. 
4. If the neighbor was having some problem, physical, mechanical, or monetary, Howard would offer his assistance with yard upkeep or recommend a service that could take care of the problem.
5. Howard's significant other would be discussed in a not very nice manner over the last 4 beers.

After my cooling off period, I decided the best response to the letter is to just give them a thumbs up and say, "Good For You!" or GFY for short.

The Chief posted a response to the letter on our mailbox and here it is. You can click on it to make it larger.

As you can see, this annoyed the Chief a little bit. She even looked up US Postal laws... that is some dedication.

Also, quit looking in our windows with the shades half way up and crooked. We don't really care if you are looking in at us. The issue is that we don't want to see you. Plus, our front windows face the road and that is our TV room and the passing headlights make TV viewing difficult if the blinds are up.

As nearly any cat owner will attest, the blinds may be straight for a while, but after a cat climbs them it is unlikely they will ever be straight again...

Another problem I have with this is that we are singled out because we are on the corner of the subdivision. There were other houses with worse lawns than ours. In fact 2 houses down they did not really have any grass, just weeds. Not that our grass is great. We are being overtaken with weeds. I was planning to do something about that this spring by using some chemicals to prevent the early takeover. I ended up going to Korea or something and wasn't able to put my plans into action. So I am planning to eradicate the weeds this fall, continuing in the spring, and then reseeding some select areas of the grass. 

If I was a PITA** to my neighbors and decided to stick my nose in their affairs I think my letter would look like this:

Dear Neighbor,

We have noticed that your yard has become somewhat overgrown in the last few weeks. We realize that sometimes it is difficult to find the time to do the everyday chores of keeping up a house.

You may have fallen on hard times and not be able to cut your grass, pull some weeds or trim trees. If that is the case please let me offer my assistance. I will be glad to help in any way that I can. If you lawn mower is out of service, you may borrow mine. If you cannot physically take care of your lawn I can also do that. We have organized a team of your neighbors for just this type of situation. We call this team: Assist Neighbors In Need, Just Ask. We call this organization ASSNINJA.

You can call them and they will work in your yard. Results are guaranteed and you might not even see them in action. They will get the job done.

Sincerely,

TurkeyToad (The house on the corner)  

Now, when it comes to our neighborhood we like to play along. There is a sign with the name of the subdivision at the main entrance (which is not the entrance next to our house...). A couple years ago some of our neighbors decided the sign needed to be replaced. It was put up in the early 1990s and was starting to look a little shabby. They sent out a letter to the entire neighborhood asking for donations to help repair the sign. We donated to this effort. The sign looks great, or maybe it looks the same. I never noticed it looked bad and I couldn't pick the old sign out of a lineup next to the sign that is there now.

After a few months fighting with the water company about the water supply to our neighborhood/street, the letter in the mailbox is the icing on top of a fun couple of weeks.

*Howard is ficticious and any resemblance to a real person is a concidence. If you live in my neighborhood and your name is Howard and you are offended by being named in this post, GFY.
**PITA = Pain In The Ass = don't be one