My Caustic Neighbors – exhibit B

/in /by

NeighborBIn my neighborhood most people have a lawn service cut their grass… except for that creepy guy who never makes eye contact. The neighbors catty-cornered from me also have a lawn service, not once every two weeks like most people, not once a week like some people, but twice a week every week. Doesn’t matter if it is 7:30 in the morning or the evening, or if it is a Saturday, a militia of lawn cutters, blowers and trimmers start their offensive maneuvers with a cacophony of gas powered machinery.

From the number of men clambering around their yard and the size of the riding mower and number of tools, you might think my neighbors have at least a couple of acres. Nope. Not at all. The job should be done in about 3.2 minutes, but it takes forever! They are loud and polluting and annoying!

Caustic Neighbors B are very showy and can’t seem to actually do anything themselves – they hire a company to do everything for them (more on this in a later blog!). So twice a week, without fail, a cloud of dirt rises in the air mingling with the cloud of exhaust air pollution. Nary a rake is to be seen too. Does anyone use a rake anymore? Yes, we do. But we’re weird, you knew that, the creepy guy even thinks so. Leaf blowers are the norm.

So last Saturday, said neighbors had more pallets of sod delivered (see I told you, they hire someone to do everything for them). This is about the third time this year. Then yet another visit from the lawn company followed as they hurriedly laid down the sod on top of the thinned out grass in the yard. The next Monday the monthly visit from the poison distributors came – they spray the entire yard with pesticide every month. Then ANOTHER visit from the lawn people who mowed the new sod! and breathed in all the pesticide that was just sprayed the previous day.

Caustic Neighbors B really cannot connect the too frequent mowing of the grass with the lack of grass? When the yard guys start dropping dead from cancer will Caustic Neighbors B even stop to think that their spraying poison might have contributed?

Nah!

My Caustic Neighbors

/in /by

NeighborACan we talk about my neighbors?

It’s okay, everyone talks about their neighbors. Even the Cleavers did! Where, oh, where shall I start?

I’m on a corner, so I’ll start with my neighbors on the next corner, who today are cleaning their roof. Let me explain… I live in Coral Gables, Florida, where most roofs are covered by barrel tiles or similarly easily sullied surface. The heat and humidity here causes everyone’s house roof to become really dirty and moldy every year.

So there’s my neighbors (or whoever they hired) up on their roof this morning cleaning their roof with a water pressure cleaner. You’ve seen how powerful a pressure cleaner is, right? We use them here a lot, on the houses, the roofs, the boats. Very powerful!

Not powerful enough, apparently, for my neighbors. Because not only did my neighbors stupidly take the actual pressure cleaner itself up on the roof (hello! you leave that part down on the ground and lead the water hose connected to it up on the roof!), overkill enough, but they are also using BLEACH! They are spraying bleach on the roof tiles, while the other guy sprays water over the area – making everything airborne!

I unfortunately had an appointment this morning and had to run from my front door to my car and still got a head full of bleach-filled air. And nothing triggers my chemical sensitivity worse than bleach.

These particular neighbors are clearly very pro-bleach. The wife decided one day to spray bleach on some dirty spot on the outside of their house, holding the spray bottle above her head and spraying upward. She found out some time later (much later than when I had to run into my own house!) that “what goes up must come down” includes bleach.

I guess they haven’t learned and I can’t go out in the yard today. But I can’t wait to see the paint on their cars later today!

Laura