Thank you W.E. for letting me be your guest poster… YEAH ME! Today I had to give the visiting teaching lesson. It was on being “of one heart and one mind” with all people. Ironically, we have had more problems living next to someone in the last 2 years than we have ever had before.
Scott and I are both peace loving people. We don’t really want to rifle any feathers. We just want people to get along. Unfortunately in our married life, we have had bad luck with neighbors. I won’t go into very many details, but we just haven’t had really nice, normal neighbors. Two years ago the people the owned the empty lot next to us, finally decided to build a house and move here. We were glad to be rid of the weeds. So we were excited. Boy was that a mistake.
Our neighbors are the kind that love to be in your business. They love to ask you about ever little thing that you do. They love to ask every day for a month. They love to borrow things, things that you may or may not ever see again. We have had to stop them from taking part of our yard and landscaping it into their yard, had to keep track of what we loaned them and had to stop them from putting plain gas into gas/oil mix yard machines. Overall it’s been a normal neighbor relationship. A little nosy, but fairly normal.
Until we decided to build a shed in our yard. They have whined and complained about every single thing we have done with it. The location, the height, everything. Then later I found out that they were telling everyone in the neighborhood how they hated the fence we had installed and the color and everything. I just told everyone that approached me about it, that if they had paid one dime for the fence then I might actually care what they think. We have worked with the city on the construction. We have worked with the utility companies on the construction and it’s all this mess that shouldn’t even exist. It was been very frustrating to try to work with them. It has been hard when we have really tried to be neighborly. We made sure that we talked to them before, during and after the construction and have tried to compromise and help. We paid our contractor $300 to move the shed to see if we would be okay with having the shed in another place on our lot (It was horrible so we moved it back yesterday– which of course started the arguement all over again) I have worried and stewed. I have tried to think of ways to make them happy. We have bent over backwards trying to please them and they are just mad at us because we won’t just yield and do it their way.
Other neighbors around don’t mind our shed at all . They thought it was very wierd when we asked them if it was okay with them that we have it there.
As we have worked with these neighbors more and more we have realized that they are very different in many ways. Very extreme political views. Very extreme social views. Even though they are very active members, have extreme religious views. I have always believed to each his own. I don’t mind if they have some very different views. But I am starting to wonder, how do I be “of one heart and one mind” with people like this?
I want to get along with everyone but how do you get along with those that aren’t cooperating?
I love that you have found another place to vent your frustrations. We have been very lucky with our neighbors, they are so laid back and even put up with our yappy dogs. I feel so bad because you guys are so laid back yet you have such uptight neighbors. Tell them they need to pull the stick out of their… Did I really just type that?
Do they realize it is YOUR yard and you can do whatever you want in
YOUR yard as long as it is zoned for it. They are taking advantage of
your good nature. You have tried but you have to do what is best for you
in the long run. You have to live next to them but not with them.