Category: General

We’re finally getting a little rain. It’s not nearly enough to replenish the wells in town. Still, its better than nothing.

Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s going to last. We’ve been having bands of light rain making it over the mountain top. I suspect that the bulk of the rain has been falling on the seaward side of the mountains soaking the foothills, Rancho and Ontario.

I’m not complaining, like I said anything is better than nothing. Besides, as dry as the ground is, if the rain came down any harder it would just run off without soaking in.

I’ve been thinking about moving my desk to face the window. That way I’d be able to watch it rain, or snow while I’m working, then there’s also getting to watch the critters that come into the yard. 

I’m hoping that it rains like this all day long.

Anybody what to buy a slightly used house?

I’m big on people being left to do what they want on their property. But DAMN! 

As much as I hate Homeowners Associations and folks being up in my business, I can see why they exist.  Fucking Orange County has come to my mountain.  You see, my neighbors decided to build a fence.

Great! It’s cool and they have small children and are talking about getting a dog… Or so I thought.

Last year, the county came up digging and screwing up the wash, they put access paths where none previously existed, and of course, didn’t complete the access paths they started. Typical of county workers!  

It’s created a situation where people walking up our side of the wash are dumped out right in my neighbors yard. That was bad, but with them having small children and me having dogs who are trained to bark at strangers being someplace they’re not supposed to be, it created a problem.

I can fully understand the neighbors building a fence. When they broached the subject I figured they’d do what everyone else did, a nice low chain-link fence. You know something that would keep the kids in, and strangers out. A nice demarkation that said, “Hey folks this is private property, so stop tromping across my tomato garden.” You know, something that would blend in with the general gray of the ground and yet we’d still be able to see through it.

I never in my wildest dreams imagined a 7ft tall wood fence. Nor did I imagine that the neighbors would be so completely and utterly thoughtless about what their 7FT tall fence would do to my view, or their adjacent neighbors view, or the neighbor on the other side of me.

Honestly, there is not ONE single place from any of my decks or back yard, that I don’t see this behemoth no matter how hard I try to ignore it, ITS ALWATS THERE!!!!

For Gods sake you can see this Stalag 17 fence from 1/4 of a mile away I can’t even imagine what the neighbors down the canyon are thinking.

Perhaps part of my annoyance is due to the following;

We lost some privacy when the trampoline went up directly outside the slider leading from our bedroom to the deck.

I figured, no big deal, in a few years the trampoline wouldn’t be used all that much by the kids, since children tire of things in time.  So I said nothing, however I had to change my behavior in the evenings or in the early mornings.

I had a habit of coming out of the master bathroom into my bedroom naked. Most of the time the blind on the slider is at least partially down, then one day I realized, the blind really had to be almost completely down to make sure that I wasn’t exposing myself to whatever children might be playing on the trampoline.

Now, I dress in the bathroom before I come out.

I said nothing about the excited squeals of children playing. It was nice to know they were being kids and enjoying themselves.

The excited squeals meant that if I needed to make a business or professional phone call and the kids were playing, I needed to close the sliders on the back of the house.

We’ve started keeping the dogs inside since the new dog tends to like to bark at the kids, trying to get them to play with him. The dog doesn’t understand that he can’t play with the kids through the fence. The kids should be able to play in peace, without a dog barking at them no matter how friendly his intentions. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to get the new dog broken of that particular behavior. The dog is eight, and has never really been worked with. There are some behaviors that can’t be modified after a certain point.

Its cool, you adapt to neighbors in order to make everyone in the neighborhood comfortable.

But I’m feeling like I’m the one doing all the adaptation.

Regardless of how much I’ve adapted or how courteous or mindful of others I’ve been It seems like I’m asked for yet more. Now we’ve been asked to clear the dog poo every day and wash down the area where the pups pee every day because the lady of the house next door is pregnant and apparently can smell everything.

Uh really?

I’m letting my landscaping die because I’m trying to be socially responsible during California’s drought emergency. and you’re telling me I need to wash down a dirt area every day because you can smell dog pee?

Riiiiiight!

We tend to clean up dog poo daily, it’s something we do during the summer anyway. But I’ll be damned if I alter my hosing down of an area that I’ve been rinsing down about twice a week. I’ve integrated the rinsing of the pee area into parsing out water to some of the trees that would otherwise be a fire hazard.

I resent the implication that I have to spend money, I don’t have on a limited resource because a neighbor is pregnant.

This is, I think about us being too nice.

When you’re a nice person, some people tend to take advantage of you being nice.

You don’t get pissed off about the loss of privacy, and so people assume you don’t care and you have even less privacy, because you’re a nice person.

You don’t get into the HOA thing, or point out that any fence above a certain height REQUIRES a building permit.  But the same people that would build a fence above the prescribed height would be the first to demand you adhere to the rules if you built a fence or building that obstructed their view.

You get told that your dogs are offensive because someone is pregnant. BUT it’s NOT your baby, that person isn’t your wife, and you have nothing to gain except spending more money on water during a drought.  

There was a time when people knew where the limit was.

I have noticed since the completion of the fence, that I haven’t seen my neighbors around much.

Fences say a lot about the people that build them.

I guess I get the message.