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September 28, 2007
This is m-m-m-my house, I want you to m-m-m-move out...
Have you seen the episode of Winnie-the-Pooh where Tigger takes over Piglets house and Piglet is too nervous to tell him off? How DO you politely tell your neighbor "quit mowing my yard"? Especially when the whole thing has me wondering if I've been transported into some psycho parrallel universe.
It all started innocently enough, hiring a teenage neighbor boy to mow the yard for me, and it went quite well until July when he stopped mowing it. Just stopped. His mother mowed it once for me when she did her lawn, and I paid her what I would have paid him. Most of the month of August no one showed up to mow it, so Labor Day weekend I decided to buy a riding lawnmower and take care of the chore myself from there on out, applying what I was paying to have it mowed to paying off the mower.
As I started to mow, my neighbor came over and asked me if I wanted her to do the mowing, I assured her I could take care of it, but offered the use of my mower for her lawn, because she did not own a riding mower. A week later I noticed she had a new bright yellow riding lawnmower. A few days later I returned from work in the early hours of the morning and noticed someone had mowed my lawn while I was gone. She came by and told me her son had decided it needed mowing, despite knowing I had my own means to mow. I decided to let that one slide since it would have been one more thing to fit into a very busy weekend, and I paid "him".
Just over a week later, a few days before I would have mowed it again, I pulled into my driveway at o'dark thirty, and noticed my yard was, again, freshly mowed. I did nothing, made no mention of it, and two days later returned home to find a note on my door, claiming to be written by her son and male cousin, but in very suspicious feminine looking handwriting saying they mowed my yard, and I could just give her the money, and by the way, they'd cleaned my gutters too.
I'm really not sure my gutters needed cleaning since my trees haven't lost a lot of leaves yet, and I just had them cleaned in June. I don't have a ladder right now to climb up and inspect them, but I'm thinking, this is my house, I should be the person who decides what services it needs, when it needs them and who should perform those services.
Am I crazy?
Posted by Anna at September 28, 2007 6:08 PM
Comments
Ummm... No, you're not crazy. That's certainly awkward, but you're going to have to politely tell them that you plan on taking care of your own landscaping now.
Posted by: Dave at September 28, 2007 9:47 PM