Disclosing The Neighbors

June 23, 2012June 22, 2012 ~ JodiLea ~ 1 Comment

Neighborhood Chickens

Question on the Property Owner’s Disclosure Form: Is there anything about this neighborhood the buyer(s) should be made aware of?

Are you kidding me???

How do we be honest without frightening them away? You live in the same place for 24-years and you get used to things. Like the guy down the street who revs his motorcycle several times a day. Or the retired guy that mows his lawn 4 times a week. Worst of all, the house behind us and one over belonged to an elderly couple when we moved in. When the couple moved out, The LOUD Family moved in.

LOUD is a gross understatement of the decibel level achieved by the mother in this family. Within two days the entire block knew the names of her husband, kids & pets. Sometimes we weren’t exactly sure who she was screaming at. These anonymous blastings were the LOUDEST of all. The woman could out-swear any sailor, and do it while screaming at the top of her lungs.

Did I mention this was mid-summer, and everyone had their windows open?

The night one of her kids decided to light a candle in their room is etched into my brain forever. The poor kid was called every name in the book (and then some), lectured or screamed at (sometimes both) for 2 hours. Straight. When mom had her say, she left the room. When mom thought of something else her “idiot child” needed to be told, she returned to the kid’s bedroom and screamed some more.

I could not listen to any more of this verbal abuse, and I got up out of bed and debated with myself the pros & cons of “getting involved”. If she screamed one more time I was calling the police station. What I really wanted to do was start screaming back at her. It was 11:00pm and a school-night to boot. I need all the beauty sleep I can get, and she was disturbing my peace.

It turned out that I was not the only neighbor ready to call the police. In fact, a petition was circulated and signed by the residents requesting someone have a nice long talk with the LOUD Lady and tell her to SHUT UP. I’m sure the patrolmen who delivered the petition and explained common courtesy to her were diplomatic. Everyone held their breath a couple of days, then sighed relief.

That was 5 years ago. Summer has returned and windows are opened. The frequency of the LOUD Lady’s outbursts has declined, but she has started to become LOUDer again. To add to the cacophony, the LOUD Family started raising chickens this year. I never heard hens lay before this. It sounds very painful. Also LOUD. And we have to disclose these facts, in writing, to potential buyer’s. Damn it!

Maybe a nice Deaf Family will fall in love with our house, throw money at us, and insist we move out ASAP .

It could happen, right?

😉
photo credit: Compassion in World Farming via photo pin cc

Guess Again

June 16, 2012 ~ JodiLea ~ 1 Comment

Just when (you think) the chaos in your life is at the maximum level, the post-office puts a bomb in your mailbox.

Mailbox

Not the exploding kind, but the kind that raises your blood pressure and makes the headache that you thought was already bad turn into a migraine. You know you’re in trouble because the return address is: “Internal Revenue Service” and it is not even near the holidays.

Sure enough, we made a mistake. A typo that our software should have noticed when it did the math. We were too excited about getting a refund for once, to realize something was off. The official document insisted we send them $10,000.oo. Yes, you read that number correctly. And who says the IRS has no sense of humor?

Hey! Wait a minute. There is a typo on our 2010 form and we have to pay them what we still owed. Plus interest. We were not the ones that took 2 years to find the mistake – we sent our return in on time. Now they want the interest that the absent money could have earned. Oh, Really? I want to know where the Hell they invest their money. I would like to earn that kind of interest myself!

I can understand about the interest. Almost. But a fine?? Sorry, we messed up and here’s your money + interest. Now please go away. But NO, you’re punishing us. To teach us not to mess with the IRS? We don’t. Hell, they know how much money we earn – they have the damned forms.

Thanks for letting me get that off my chest. Tax Form

We shall pay their bill (what choice do we have?), but not until the other chaos in our lives has settled down and we can find where we hid the damned thing….

photo credit(mailbox): Steve 2.0 via photo pin cc

photo credit (form): Josh Thompson via photo pin cc

This IS the News…

March 21, 2012 ~ JodiLea ~ 1 Comment

This weekend I was scanning our local paper trying to come up with a topic for “This Could Be News…” and suddenly, there it was. Not my topic, but a real story. I just have to read it to you… You can’t make this kind of $%it up!

Thieves rolling Tide detergent out of stores
by Ben Nuckols
Associated Press

WASHINGTON – When police in suburban Washington raided the home of a suspected drug dealer last fall, they found the cocaine they expected, as well as something unusual on the man’s shelves: nearly 20 large bottles of Tide laundry detergent.

It turns out his customers were paying for the drugs not with cash but with stolen Tide.

Tide has become a hot commodity among thieves at supermarkets and drugstores in some parts of the country. For a variety of reasons, the detergent in the familiar flame-orange bottle is well-suited for resale on the black market: Everybody needs laundry detergent, and Tide is the nation’s most popular brand. It’s expensive, selling for up to $20 for a large bottle at stores. And it doesn’t spoil.

One Safeway supermarket in Prince George’s County, MD, was losing thousands of dollar’s worth of Tide a week before police made more than two dozen arrests. In West St. Paul, MN, a man pleaded guilty to stealing more than $6,000 worth of the stuff from a Wal-Mart and was sentenced to 90 days in jail. Police in Newport News, VA, and other cities around the country have reported a spike in thefts.

In the Washington area, some CVS pharmacies have attached electronic anti-theft tags to bottles of Tide. One CVS in a well-to-do Dupont Circle neighborhood keeps Tide locked up behind glass.

Charlene Holton, a clerk at a CVS in northwest Washington, has seen too many Tide thefts to count.

“It’s a hot item! It’s gotten out of hand,” Holton said. “They usually take maybe four, whatever they can carry out the door. We have to fight for that. It’s rough.”

The store has put electronic tags on its Tide, but that doesn’t stop thieves, Holton said. They run out of the store with the detergent and remove the tags later.

It’s not clear how new the Tide theft phenomenon is, but organized theft has been a problem for U.S. retailers, costing them $3.53 billion in 2010, according to the National Retail Foundation.

Now that’s alota laundry 😉