neighborhood

Unplowed Side of the Street

/ rachelgoes262 / Leave a comment

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We’ve all heard the phrase “the wrong side of the tracks.” It is usually used to indicate that a person has grown up in a rough part of town – typically one that is high in poverty, and sometimes high in crime. I have no problem owning the fact that I am one who definitely grew up on the wrong side of the tracks.

Now, as a homeowner, I apparently live on the unplowed side of the street. We had a snowstorm last week that dumped about a foot or so of snow. What made the storm even more challenging was that I was home sick at the moment with a fever and a few other nasty symptoms. Spending an hour or more outside trying to shovel 12 inches of wet, heavy snow was challenging to say the least. 

I used the snow sleigh that I got last winter, which is way easier than a normal shovel. With the snow sleigh, I only have to push the snow. I do not have to pick the snow up and throw it as you do with a shovel. The only challenge is that the snow sleigh is rough on my knees. After pushing the snow, I have to get it off the snow sleigh. Both knees were bruised on both sides of each knee and I had trouble walking the week after. Not great for an athlete that is a runner.

I will admit I am missing my neighbor who helped me last year with the snowblower. They moved, so I am on my own.

Shoveling the sidewalk and the driveway are not too awful bad. The biggest problem is that I also have to shovel the road.

Yes, you read that right. I had to shovel the road.

Welcome to America, where I live on the unplowed side of the street. 

Even though the village snowplow has to drive both up the street and down the street, they have decided to only plow one side of the road, and it is not the side I live on. So not only does the mail carrier and the newspaper carrier have to try to get through half a street’s worth of snow to get to my mailbox, but I have to try to get through half a street’s worth of snow to get to my driveway.

This happened last year. The village had me in tears. When I called to complain, they said they would come out and plow my side of the street, but if they had to do it again, they would charge me. Charge me to plow the street? I’m a homeowner! Isn’t this why I pay taxes?

This fight is not over, as I will be attending a village board meeting and doing everything possible to become a major pain in the ass until my side of the street is plowed.

Hey, just because I am low income, does not mean I should have to live on the unplowed side of the street. In fact, I need to be able to get to work more than some of the higher income people on the plowed side of the street. I need the income! But, I supposed that people in American society who earn more money must do more meaningful work, so even though we pay the same taxes, they must be more deserving of snow plowing. 

Right?

That’s how the village seems to think.

I thought that by purchasing a home when I have never even lived in a house before was a sign that I was moving up in the world. I guess the only place I moved was from the wrong side of the tracks to the unplowed side of the street.

For the record, I have also now contracted someone to plow my driveway this winter. I cannot physically take care of the snow. I thought that snow was easier than grass/lawn maintenance. I was wrong. I am not cut out for homeownership, but it is better than being homeless. Owning a home is definitely cheaper than rent in my area.

Anyone else live on the the unplowed side of the street? Welcome to the neighborhood. 

Hopefully by the end of this winter, I will be able to convince the village that my side of the road is as worthy of snow plowing as the opposite side. 

 

How to Escape the Neighbors

/ rachelgoes262 / 1 Comment

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The horses of the apocalypse thundered through the heavens as if millions were stampeding across the sky. It started as a low rumble that gradually grew to overtake you, steamrolling you until your body quivered with the force of their power.

Then, total silence.

No birds.

No rain.

Suddenly, a crack as if the Devil himself snapped a whip so sharp that lightning turned dark into day.

One drop.

Two drops.

A light pitter patter.

The heavens opened as if all the angels were wailing tears upon the earth. Rain so hard and so fast that flash flooding was instant. It went on for hours. A storm so passionate, it was as if you were fighting for your very soul.

Meanwhile, I’m laying in the backseat of the car wrapped in a fleece blanket waiting for a break in the storm so I can run out and pee. I’m wondering if the same storm is happening at home and if the cats are okay. Simon is terrified of thunder.

Through the haze and above the noise, pierces a heavily accented French voice “the weather for the rest of the day …”

The French was coming from the radio, as I was about 20 miles from the Canadian border.

It sounds like a weird dream, but this is, in fact, real life. It is one of the top 3 worst thunderstorms I have been through while on a camping trip over the past 20 years.

This past weekend, I had an ADK intermezzo. It’s been about 8 years since I have had an intermezzo. Hopefully, this will be followed at some point by the real mccoy, but that concept is highly doubtful this year.

While the goal is to create a life you don’t need to escape, I had not had a vacation in almost two years, and I was ready to slap someone. Typically my annual August/Labor Day camping trip has served as a sort of reset button for me – a refreshing change of perspective for 3 days that helps me to successfully power through another year. Since I am running a half marathon over Labor Day weekend this year, I decided to go camping over Memorial Day weekend so I could have a break.

I have successfully minimized and slowed my life down to the point where I was able to navigate the many challenges that have come into my life over the past 2 years without completely losing my mind. That is a definite win.

In the time span between my last vacation and this past weekend, I lived through these changes: my dream job decided to close the New York location, so I had to take a new job (one of the worst I’ve had with a $7,000 pay cut), Kitty passed away, we adopted Simon, I went through my housing crisis from hell and bought a house, and I have been having yet to be determined neurological issues.

I’m not sure how I’ve been able to make it this long and through all that still intact. I credit it to my minimalist lifestyle philosophy.

Still, there comes a breaking point for every person, and I have pretty much reached mine. This past weekend I had an Adirondack (ADK) Intermezzo, to put a pause button on life and to take a breather.

Thus, the tale that started this post of the epic thunderstorm on night one of my camping trip. I was reserved, paid for, and scheduled for a typical two night camping trip. I ended up coming home after one.

There was nothing wrong with the trip itself. Epic thunderstorm aside, I was having a great time, and felt immensely safe. Therein lies the problem.

Since I purchased my new house last fall and have moved in, I have to admit that I do not feel safe in my own house.

I moved from a rural, isolated apartment community comprised primarily of senior citizens. I was the longest tenant in the building. I knew all of my neighbors. No one was a problem. I felt safe there. I never had an issue with leaving the cats for a camping trip over a 3 day weekend. Someone always had a key to my apartment to check on the cats just in case. I would just go off in the woods with absolutely no problem.

With this camping trip, I was apprehensive to leave the cats. No one has my spare house key. All the people who were helping me will no longer visit me. The house is 7 miles father away from most of my friends than my apartment was, and I now “live too far away” for them. It was my first time leaving the cats alone in the house overnight.

I set them up with the automated cat feeder, so they would still be fed at their usual times while I was gone. I left 12 bowls of water. Both cat pans were clean.

I went camping and had a great time. Epic thunderstorm aside, I slept better camping that I sleep in the house.

That’s when it hit me.

I feel more safe sleeping in a tent outside in the middle of nowhere alone than I do inside my own house.

Then I panicked because my cats were alone in the unsafe house without me there to protect them. No one has a key if something goes wrong because either people are too far away to know something is wrong, or they straight up don’t care.

I could not in good conscious stay the second night knowing that I was in a completely safe situation and my cats were not. If something happened to them while I was gone, I would never forgive myself.

So I cut my trip short and came home a day early.

This sucks epic-ly, because I never fully got the chance to completely relax on my trip. I did not have enough time away.

I came home and the cats were fine. For the moment. Things were not fine yesterday when I was home and someone decided to break one of my rain gutters and remove the door to my crawl space.

I have a problem with the neighbors where my house is located. To be exact, I have a problem with the neighborhood children. I am not anti-child. I taught pre-school for over a decade. I like children in general. I just loathe the children in my neighborhood.

To make matters more complicated, I don’t know their names or what house they all belong to, but I’m sick of things being broken, my space being violated, and having them scare the shit out of me literally.

As scary as I made out the thunderstorm at the beginning of this post, the neighborhood children are more scary. They are creepy.

I came home from work last week and one of them was standing about 5 feet away from me staring at me as I put my key in the door to let myself in the house. He didn’t say anything. He just ran away when I looked at him.

The kids are constantly on my property without asking. They move things. They play on the fire pit after I yelled at them not to, they go in my garage. They hide just outside my house windows and stare at me or scare me when I am sitting on the couch reading a book.

Who does this? Who goes on someone’s property and does this?

Don’t tell me to close the curtains. It’s my property. People should not walk up to someone else’s house and stand in front of their window staring inside at them. It’s not right.

Who goes into someone else’s garage, their fire pit, moves things in their yard, and breaks pieces off their house intentionally because they think it is fun? It’s not just me.

There are older neighbors in their 70s on the one side of me. I have stood at my kitchen window and watched a group of these neighborhood children purposefully remove the lattice from the bottom of my older neighbor’s porch so that they can go under the porch to play. Then the 70-some year old gentleman will notice the lattice is removed and affix it. I watch this happen. He thinks it’s the wind, when it’s really the children destroying his property.

By the way, the average age range of these free roaming neighborhood children is kindergarten through second grade.

I would talk to the parents of the children if I knew which houses the children came from. I don’t know who to talk to. And what type of interaction will that be? Um, your child is destroying my property, can you please supervise them more closely? I’m sure I would piss people off.

Bottom line, I do not feel safe living in this house. I never know who is going to be staring at me through my own windows, I don’t know who is lurking around on my property, and I never know what I am going to find broken.

I feel chained to this house.

I’m not happy.

I can’t even take a two day camping trip anymore to relax because I don’t know what I am going to come home to or if the cats will be okay if I leave them alone with these fiends.

These children don’t talk to me. They don’t tell me their names. Never has anyone knocked on my door and asked if they could play in my yard.

If they knocked on the door, told me their names, and asked to play in the yard, I would probably say yes as long as they stay in the grass and not near the fire pit.

Some of these kids are out late. They don’t appear to have a curfew. When I was growing up, you came in when the street lights turn on. I have had moments when one of these kids was staring at me through my own window at 9:00 pm. It doesn’t seem to matter if it is a school night or a weekend.

I’m thankful that I was able to go camping for at least one night to escape this situation. I wish I had stayed for the full two nights. This has not felt like a vacation at all.

I don’t know how to deal with bad neighbors because I have never had bad neighbors. Even times when I was homeless and living on the streets, people were more respectful than this. Yes, there were times we were sleeping out in the open, but there is like an unspoken thing with homeless people that you respect people’s personal space when they have claimed a spot. Personal space was pretty much the only thing we had.

I have no idea how to deal with these neighbors and their evil, unruly children. All I know is that I do not feel safe in my own house.

Any suggestions?

 

Out the Door

/ rachelgoes262 / Leave a comment

I was walking out of the house to go for a run last week, when my neighbor stopped me and asked where I run? There is a well-maintained trail about 3 miles from my house. I drive to the trail head, and run there, safe from traffic and full of scenery.

My neighbor asked why I didn’t run our road? Well, I had never thought of it before. I live on a dead-end street directly off a major highway. I usually drive immediately from driveway to highway, because I know there is little on my road. I never thought to run my own street without driving someplace to run.

So, this past Friday, I did it. I laced up my running shoes and ran right out my front door. It was nice to not have to drive someplace to run.

The run itself left much to be desired. I was on a little 3 mile run, and I must have had to do at least 20 laps up and down my dead -end street to make the 3 miles. It was boring as hell. I would much rather drive the 3 miles to run the trail, where I can do a simple out and back that has diversity in scenery.

What I learned from this experience, is that in the 10+ years I have lived here, which is the longest I have lived anywhere, I never once thought to run my own street.

I was always too busy going out the door to pay any attention to what was quite literally in my own backyard.

I won’t be running my street again. I dare say that they treadmill is more exciting than running my street. The important learning part was to pay attention to what is around you. We don’t always have to go to the next town, out of state, or somewhere else to have fun. There are things to enjoy in our own backyards.

I have been hanging out closer to home lately, both due to lack of gas money, but also to spend more time with my sick family member. What I am learning this summer is that sometimes staying close to home is not so bad.

Yes, its fun to go to new places and have new experiences. Don’t forget about the beauty that immediately surrounds you as well.

I have spent the past 10 years going out the door to drive places without going out the door just to, well, go out the door and down the street. What are you missing by going out the door?