Meet The Neighbors

One of the (many) drawbacks to condo living is that oftentimes you don't just share a wall with you neighbors, you also end up sharing their musical tastes.  Whether you want to or not.  I suppose it could  be worse. We could have been subjected to rap or hip hop.  Or yodeling.  Instead, all we have to deal with is...

Barbershop Quartet.

Honestly, I didn't know this existed outside of Disneyland.  Our neighbor on one side is a member of one such group and they practice.  Infrequently, mercifully.  And luckily this building is well built enough that you can't hear it through the walls, so you only have to deal with it when the windows are open, which is rarely.  They don't sound half bad, as far as these things go, not that I'm in any position to judge.  And it's certainly better than what's happening on the other side.  Because on the other side we have... Hector.

Hector and his wife moved in in August, buying the condo next door right out from under the elderly hoarder who was renting it.  Any way you slice it Hector is just odd.  He's probably in his early 30's and is what we used to call "husky".  I'm not sure he has a job because I run into at all hours when I'm walking the dogs.  Hector has a uniform of sorts, wearing the same ensemble every time I see him:  black button down long sleeve shirt, black poly-blend slacks, black wingtips.  Rain or shine, even when it was 105 degrees, he's the man in black, like a pudgy Johnny Cash.  I even saw him out gardening one day in that outfit.

I ran into him the first time shortly after they had moved in.  He seemed a little anxious and amped, which I've come to learn is just normal.  For him.  He introduced himself and then blurted out "just let me know is the music bothers you."

What music, I thought?

I hadn't heard a peep out of them.

"The music.  Just let me know if we're too loud.  We sing.  My wife and I like to sing.  Just let me know if we're too loud.  We sing a lot."

Got it.  Singers.  Good to know.

I never heard any singing, but it was late August or September and we had the windows closed and the AC running most of the time.

A couple of days later I ran into him again.

"I hope I didn't scare you last night" he said.

Huh?

"I was crawling under your living room window".

WTF?

Before I could say anything, Hector explained.

"We have bunnies.  My wife and I.  We have bunnies.  We keep them on the patio and one of them escaped.  I found it under your window.  That's why I was crawling under your window.  Didn't mean to scare you."

Got it.  Bunnies.  Good to know.

Hector was officially creeping me out now.

Sometime in mid-September I ran into Hector again.  I was setting off on a walk with the dogs mid afternoon and I could see Hector walking towards us.  Dressed all in black, as usual.  And carrying a full blown Santa suit.  As he got closer I could see he had a demonic grin on his face, ear to ear.

"I can't believe I'm already getting calls!" he exclaimed.

You're a Santa? I regretfully asked.

"You bet!  And I'm already getting bookings!"

Yikes.

The next time I ran into him, he was apologetic again.


"Hope we didn't disturb you guys last night.  My wife and I really got into it.  The singing.  We were really into it last night and we got a little loud.  Singing."

What the fuck is with the singing???  I still hadn't heard anything and didn't know what the hell he was talking about.  By then I had learned to just smile, nod and jerk the dogs in another direction.

Then the hot summer weather started turning fall-ish, the AC was turned off and we would open the windows.  And then that's when I heard it.

The singing.

What to say.  I wouldn't call it classical voice, exactly.  It kinda sounds like he's aiming at opera.  More than anything else it reminds me of a trash compactor we once had.  Screeching, that the word.  Dear god, and loud.  Hector evidently fancies himself the Fourth Tenor, but seriously, that voice could etch glass.  And the poor dogs.  That just might qualify for animal abuse.

They were just getting around to butchering the holiday classics when the weather turned again and we were able to close the windows.  Hopefully, forever.  With a little luck, we'll be long gone from here before the weather warms up.

Pack Rat Jenga

I didn't get her name, the Hoarder.  I was walking the dogs through the condo complex when we rounded a corner and there she was.  She was in her 50's or so and looked like a less well preserved version of that horrible Kardashian woman, the woman who's spawn are a blight on every last checkout counter.  She was standing in front of a garage clutching a worn Walmart bag that was heavy with... who knows what.

"So how do you like it here?" she asked.

"What?" I replied.  We live on a fairly busy main drag and the traffic noise was deafening.

"You just moved in, right?  So how do you like it here?"

This time I heard her.  "It's nice" I replied.  I'd never seen her before so how she knew we had just moved in was a mystery.

She said something else, I could see her lips moving, but the highway noise drowned it out.

"What?" I said.

"I said I like it here because it's so quiet" she said, almost shouting.

Okey dokey.

She then raised her free hand, which actually held a garage door opener, and suddenly with a snap the garage door behind her started to rise, creaking and groaning, slowly raising to reveal...

"The Great Wall of Hoarding".

It was a marvel of engineering.  From the slab floor to beyond the door frame there was a solid wall of boxes and plastic bins.  Countless Walmart bags were crammed into what little space existed between the boxes and bins, like mortar holding the whole thing together.  It looked like the garage door had at most an inch of clearance.

The woman turned from me and surveyed the wall of crap, evidently searching for a weak spot.  She then raised the Walmart bag in her hand and with both arms and brute force she shoved it against one of the center boxes.  The box lurched back about six inches and you could hear a muffled crash from the back of the garage.  The woman seem unconcerned, and really, why would she be?  It will be years before explorers reach the back of her garage and discover what broke.  With her Walmart bag now perched in it's little box alcove, she seemed satisfied.  She raised the clicker and the door started to close.  It must have caught something on the way down because there was another small thud and a crash, but the woman was oblivious.

"Have a wonderful day!" she said as she turned to leave.

When the complex goes up in flames, I think we'll know where the fire started.  Or maybe not.  I have a sneaky suspicion she isn't the only hoarder 'round these parts.

Questionable Behavior

I meant to mention in my last post about the neighbors that several of them moved out over the weekend.  Actually, that was to be the main point of the post, but somewhere around paragraph two I lost my train of thought.  More like derailed.  At any rate, that's the deal... two, maybe three neighbors moved out on Saturday.  It was hard to tell exactly how many since there was so much activity going on.

One of the neighbors who apparently moved out was the hard looking woman directly next door.  We share a wall, although I've never heard a peep out her.  She bears more than a passing resemblance to Almira Gulch from "The Wizard of Oz".  She glares a lot.  People, presumably family, were here moving furniture out on Saturday, so I assumed she was gone.  So imagine my surprise when a truck pulled up yesterday.

An "Shred-It" truck.  A big one, industrial strength.

I work out of our second bedroom, upstairs, and I had a perfect view of the truck parked below.  Shortly after it parked, men started coming out of the house with huge trash bags overstuffed with... well, that's the question.  Bag after bag came out of the house.  The shredding began and it was deafening, like being in a timber mill.  For two hours!  There had to be over a hundred bags!

What exactly is Miss Gulch up to?  I think we'll never know.  And I think that's the plan.

It would be easy to say, oh well, she's just a hoarder, a pack rat.  Listen - my father has meticulously kept every cancelled check and bank statement for the past 60 years and it barely fills a closet.  The amount of stuff coming out of Miss Gulch's place would've easily filled a bedroom, probably two here in Tiny Town.  And it was clearly all financial looking forms and spreadsheets.

The truck finally left, and evidently Miss Gulch did too.

I expect any day now we'll hear about some massive bank fraud or financial meltdown and the phrase "missing documents" will be bandied about and Miss Gulch's photo will pop up as a "Person of Interest".

The Neighbors

Well, we've lived here almost three months and we've yet to meet any of our neighbors.

Actually, that's not entirely true, I've met one, Linda On Disability.  Or maybe it's Lindaondisability.  I'm not sure how she spells it, but that's how she introduced herself..."Hi, I'm Linda, on disability."  She's probably in her late 40's and putters around the complex in a faded and worn housecoat and fuzzy slippers.  She's extremely friendly or heavily medicated.  Or both.

But other than that, the people here are pretty standoffish.  I don't think that's an Orange County thing, I think it's just the way of the world these days.  Our neighbors back in LA weren't all that friendly and neither were the hicks in the sticks.  Back in 2009, as the day for our move into exile approached,  I decided it was unhealthy to fixate on all the horrible aspects of it and instead try and focus on the positive, such as they were.  So I stopped Googling the Hemlock Society and tried to imagine the good things we could expect.  High on that very short list were the kind and gentle country folk, known for being warm and generous.  I imagined us being invited to ice cream socials or square dances or hootenannies or whatever the fuck those people do and forming lifelong friendships.

Never happened.  We were essentially shunned from the day we moved in.

So, I'm not all surprised no one's rolled out the Welcome Wagon for us here.  And after meeting Linda On Disability, that's probably for the best.