You may live next door to a redneck if......

My husband was rather concerned when he saw the title of this post. He was worried that our neighbours may see it and recognize themselves. To this comment I laughed rather rudely and maybe a tad to long. It is a risk I am willing to take!

We have been extremely lucky with neighbours over the years. There have been a few odd ones here and there, but they have always been very friendly, considerate, law abiding folks. The neighbours on the right of us moved in a few months ago. It has been interesting to say the least.

In a previous post I mentioned a strange sound coming from their backyard that sounded like a bicycle pump on steroids. My daughter came into the house the other day after jumping on the trampoline. When she jumps, she can see right into our neighbours yard. We have a wooden fence that surrounds our backyard, the previous neighbours painted their side of it blue. Jessica observed that the fence now has bright neon green splats all over it. They paint balled the fence. Why, we know not. Why, in the middle of the night when people are trying to sleep, we know not. My husband was away when this first started to occur. One night we were sitting in the living room and the strange whoooommmpp, whoooommmpp noise started again. When my husband asked what the heck that noise was, my daughter and I calmly stated, "Paintball tournament."

I did try and get pictures for my blog, but couldn't get them without being to conspicuous. I think they would have wondered why I was hanging over the top of the fence, camera in hand, saying, "Why? Why? Why?"

So, you may live next door to a redneck if you have experienced any of the following.

• Each morning as you make your way to the kitchen to make your children's breakfast, you are greeted by the neighbour's pit bulls as they sit at your dining room sliding glass doors.
• Your fence has huge gaping holes that the above mentioned pit bulls have chewed so they could get to your glass doors.
• You repeatedly tell your neighbours about the pit bulls and each time you do there is a different story - they belong to a friend who is in prison, we are looking after them for him, they belong to my mother and are going back to her tonight, we are sick of them as well and are taking them to the animal shelter.
• The pit bulls make a break from the animal shelter (yeah right), chew another hole in our fence and slobber all over our glass door again.
• There is at least 10 cars parked next door at all times. At least 2 of them have "For Sale" written on the back window. One must have the front window smashed in. They all need mufflers, this is even more obvious at 2am. They ALL have excellent stereo systems and speakers, also very obvious at 2am. They all also have car alarms (???????), the alarms go off at least twice a day or night.
• There are at least 3 permanent residents. All others, and their cars, rotate through at an amazing speed.
• Brawls break out occasionally in the front yard. It is strictly a hair pulling, face slapping affair with words that would make a sailor blush. I watched the whole thing peeking through my bedroom blinds.
• One gentleman who lives there, I truly cannot understand a word he says. To be fair, he doesn't understand my Australian accent either. Though, he did move so fast he had to hold up his falling down his rear end shorts when I raised my voice at his blank stare and said, "Get your dogs out of my yard now or I am loading them into my car and I will take them to the animal shelter for real!"
• They hang their clothes over our fence to dry. I really had to resist the urge to push their clothes of the fence.
• The once very tidy, cute house is now overgrown. Screens off windows, trash piled up and strewn all over.

When we have spoken to our neighbours, they seem very nice. I think they want to be good neighbours. I think they just don't know any better. They are getting better. They aren't as loud for as long in the wee hours of the morning now. After seeing us out working in our yard yesterday, today they picked up some of the trash and mowed their grass.

Maybe we can paintball together? If we unpatch the huge holes in our fence, we could have quite a paintball range. Maybe not. When I read some of the other blogs out there and the wide open spaces where some of these ladies live, I think YES! that is for me. Then it will be just my laundry hanging on the fence!

Oh well. Appreciate good neighbours and good friends.

Sally-Ann