Movin' Out

I just got off the phone with Melissa, who is my friend and neighbor in one of the town houses in my little cluster of houses. Guess what? The neighbors from hell that live next door to us are moving out.

Yee Ha!!

Let's get some back story here, shall we. The house next door to us is owned by a family that moved up to West Virginia. They rent out this town house. This family moved in late last year. It is a mom and her 4 kids, and some dude that smokes a lot. We always see him on the deck smoking. He is nice enough, but you can't go out on the deck without seeing him over there puffing away. Anyway, they don't have a car and in the beginning they would always need to use our phone to call a cab. I didn't mind but one time the mom came over while Keller was napping and Lola was barking and it was just a little annoying. I guess they finally got a phone because that stopped after a while.

It seemed like things would be fairly normal with this family. They were all very nice and while the kids were all teenagers, we never really had any cause for concern.

That didn't last.

For the past several months, there have been parties and music playing at all times of the day and night. It's been ridiculous. Music thumping, base vibrating the house. We've had pictures fall, vases broken. We've had to bang on the wall several times, go over there and ask them to turn it down, etc. They would tell us in advance that they would be having parties, as if that somehow made it all right. It started spiraling out of control in May.

The night before the Frederick Marathon was the first huge ass party. There were at least a hundred kids next door all night. I was able to get a little sleep, but probably not as much as I would have liked before a marathon. John had to sleep with his iPod on to tune out their thumping. Another party the following weekend was so bad, one of my neighbors in another group of townhouses had to call the police because there were kids outside her yard. There has been a party every weekend for the last month. The police have been called several times. We never see the mom there, but the smoking dude is always there. It doesn't matter, he's probably inside bumping along with the kids. The landlord was notified but didn't do anything.

The Friday of Memorial Day weekend was another party. We banged on the wall, we asked them to turn it down, etc. Nothing happened. Well, three of our neighbors called the police. The police came, the music was turned down. Life went on. Except that the president of our HOA contacted the lawyers and evicted them! And she has made it HOA policy that no one can rent out their home without the HOA approving the potential tenants. Yippy!

I am so excited, I cannot even put it into words yet. There's a small part of me that feels bad that an entire family is being displaced. But at the same time, my family has been totally displaced on several occasions. We own our home and shouldn't have to put up with bull shit like that. This isn't a college town, this is suburbia.

I can't wait to go home and see the empty house!