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Neighbor kitty won't leave us alone

by on January 13, 2010, in animals, I hate my neighbors, photography

Neighbor kitty won't leave us alone

This cat started coming around our house — front and back door — sometime before Christmas. He would stare in the doors’ windows and meow deeply and pitifully at our cats. And at us. We assumed that he had a home since he’s wearing what appear to be two collars, but he won’t let us close enough to examine if there are tags.

Last week when temperatures got down to single digits he was still out — day and night — which makes me wonder just who is responsible for him. If anyone. But he’s not scrawny and always looks clean and tidy, so I want to believe he’s going inside at least some of the time.

But the fucker woke us up before dawn this morning howling through the back door at Link. And then again about 30 minutes later. I took this picture (which I know is not good but it’s hard to get a good shot of a cat that runs every time you approach it) because I’m going to make a flyer to hang up in the neighborhood that says something along the lines of: Is this your cat? He’s very cute, but please keep him the fuck inside.

Update: No shit—as I was typing that last paragraph he started howling at our back door again. He’s still doing it.

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Making words with letters is not always writing

by on July 28, 2009, in around town, but in our house we never get bored, I hate my neighbors, jump aboard the crazy train

Making words with letters is not always writing

I’m not ready to fully cop to it yet, but I’m starting to think that tweeting is killing my blogging. Well that and I just never seem to have the time to put my thoughts into words, and when I do have the time I can’t ever seem to think of an appropriate way to convey correctly how I am feeling, mainly because it’s not anything specific these days.

In the span of a typical day I experience happiness and sadness and irritatedness and jubilance and frustration and passion and OMGMYCATSARESOCUTE. Some would call this crazy; I just call it being Megan. And I like it, but it’s hard to nail down to a blog entry sometimes.

If you look at my Flickr pictures you could probably get a better idea of what I’ve been doing in my every day life recently, though I’m not very good at taking pictures every day. But I do manage to take some every week, and for now that should suffice as an update into my 24/7, which I’m sure appears painfully mundane to the rest of the world.

But things are well and I’m happy, wishing as usual that the weekends and nights were longer and I had more money. The money part is mainly because I am DYING for us to find a new house that we love and then be able to magically sell our condo and move into this new abode without having to change our standard of living drastically. You know, the whole buy-what-you-need schtick. We’ve been lazily looking for a while, but lately the time that we spend at houses with front and back yards and driveways leave my heart aching for our own.

I long for the day that no matter when I come or go, I will be guaranteed a spot to leave my car that is in front of my door and nobody else besides Ian (and whoever else we invite over, of course) can park there. And if they do, I can call the cops on them. None of this having to walk across the street to a house with a driveway that parks three and ask them to please move their FIVE CARS so that my neighbors and I can park within a block of our dwelling. (I shit you not, as I typed out that sentence my sister texted me to tell me someone that doesn’t live here took my spot in front of the house AGAIN.)

But it’s not just about annoyance. Every day I imagine how incredible it will be one day to sit and pass the time with Ian and/or friends in my yard, watching the sun slowly fade away as we feel the breeze cool our skin and the grass–our grass–stick to our feet.

When we bought our condo, it was perfect for us as first-time (and broke-ass) homeowners. We have a concrete patio out back and a square section of mulch with bushes out front, and the landscaping is taken care of for us. Which is nice, even still, but I’m ready to have a yard to worry about. I even told Ian I would mow the grass (or pay a neighborhood kid to do it–you can still do that, right? Hire teenagers to mow lawns?).

We just need more living space, both outside and inside. I don’t mean need as in we’re going to die if we don’t get it, but I kind of feel like my soul needs it, if that makes any sense. I want to be able to set up a guest bedroom without sacrificing our home office. I want to be able to walk outside barefoot and commune with nature right in my own yard. I want to not be so crammed in with people I don’t really know. I want to see more green than beige when I look out my window.

And let’s be honest here: I want to yell at neighborhood kids to get off my lawn.

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On today's episode of "WTF??"

by on October 14, 2008, in but in our house we never get bored, I hate my neighbors, stupid assholes, WTF?

So our shitty property management company has been promising to pressure-wash our buildings for about two weeks now. I get home today and have a note on my door from the pressure-washing company (in Smyrna, I should’ve known they would be shitty. I kid! Kind of) saying that they will be washing my building (that’s me and four other units) and—get this—they need to use OUR water to do it!

So not only do we pay the property management company $75 a month in association fees that is supposed to cover the maintenance of the outside of the building (the roof, the brick, the siding, the landscaping, the front door), now we’re supposed to pay EXTRA for them to take care of it? Oh, and not just ours. Because we paid MORE initially to purchase an end unit, now we’re going to have to pay for them to wash the ENTIRE building?

I don’t think so. Is this even legal?

I sent an email to the property manager and the other people on the board (I love how at the meeting when they elected me to the board they talked all about the pressure washing but neglected to mention I would be paying for it), but of course have heard nothing back. We keep our outside water turned off by default (when they first built our place the building company used our water to water the lawn and we got a $400 water bill—which WAS reimbursed), but if we want them to wash our house we will have to turn it on.

So do we risk a seriously expensive water bill? (Ours is normally $40-$50 a month for just the two of us—yes, this is high. We have county water, not city water, and pay about $20 more than city water peeps do) Or do we keep the water off and not get the mold and shit cleaned off our house?

We have to make our decision before we leave the house in the morning at 8 a.m. I doubt I’ll be able to get in touch with anyone at Ghertner (the WORST PROPERTY MANAGEMENT COMPANY IN THE UNIVERSE) before 9 a.m., when they open.

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Forget all your troubles, forget all your cares…

by on September 24, 2007, in around town, but in our house we never get bored, I hate my neighbors, quandaries

And go downtown… things will be great when you’re… downtown… you’ll find a place for sure… downtown…

So after my friend/co-worker drove me all around the entire city of Nashville a couple of weekends ago, I’ve really gotten in the “holy shit this is really happening we could really be moving to Nashville soon and the insanity that is my commute from Murfreesboro could almost be over!” spirit.

Unfortunately, houses are really effing expensive in Nashville. Even the ones in East Nashville, which I really, really liked (and which I had heard would be cheaper than most of the rest of Nashville). And sorry, I’m not moving to Antioch or Madison or Nolensville. I left Chicago to get away from the ghetto-ass neighborhoods, and I’m not going back to that in Nashville, of all places.

Apparently I have been taking my 1280 sq. feet, two bedrooms, two and a half baths, two walk-in closets all for under $800 a month for granted. Well, no, I don’t take it for granted. I fucking love it. But every time it takes me two hours to get to work, or three hours to get home, I love it a little less. This is our first house and I’m really attached to it, but god damn. Why can’t we just take Murfreesboro and LaVergne and switch them? That way I could still have my little college town that isn’t so little anymore, all my friends, and my cheap mortgage but not go batshit insane driving 75 miles a day to and fro work??

Anyway, Ian will be starting an internship in Nashville pretty soon, and when that’s over he’ll be graduating and most likely starting a new job in Nashville as well. And as cheap and as awesome as our house is, it doesn’t really make sense to have two people driving 75 miles a day, fighting traffic, risking accidents, and wasting—at a minimum—two hours a day just sitting in the car.

So right now we’re torn between buying something or renting something for a year until we are ready to buy again. On the pro side of renting, we have:

  • Makes the move easier (don’t have to be selling and buying at same time)
  • Can have time to save up a little more money for bigger/nicer house while not having the commute from hell, instead of just buying whatever we can afford and then have to buy/sell/move again in a few years.
  • Even if we just rent for a year, we’d rent a badass loft/apartment downtown, making it easy to live it up and enjoy the last years of our young, single, childless livelihood (not that we’re planning on having kids next year or anything, but let’s face it: We’re almost 30. It would be fun to live downtown and be able to party and then walk home. Think of how much liver damage we could incur!)
  • Wouldn’t have to worry about buying an old house and having to fix it up on a very limited budget
  • I have always wanted to live in a loft. Always. I used to daydream about it in school when I was younger.

But, of course, we have pros for buying another house right away, too:

  • We would have our own driveway (this would be a must with the new house). I’ve never had my own driveway, and I am the biggest parking nazi ever. I HATE when I can’t park in front of my own house here because some assbag is having a kegger and invited 40 people over.
  • It would be our own place, again. We could basically do whatever we wanted to it without worrying about having to paint it back to original color, etc.
  • Wouldn’t have neighbors in close corners. No banging on ceiling/floor/wall. I haven’t had to deal with that in almost four years, and I think it would be hard to hear bigfoot clomping around upstairs again.
  • No pet deposits or paying a bajillion dollars for parking.
  • Money we made from townhouse would go straight into new house; wouldn’t have to pay capital gains or whatever tax you pay when you don’t immediately reinvest your money into real estate again. I think. Does anyone even know how that works?

So anyway, I think this week we’re leaning toward renting a loft for a year (but last week my mind was set on buying a cute tudor or cottage-style house), and these are the places we’re going to check out sometime soon:

I really like what Mercury View Lofts look like, but they’re just too expensive, and I’m still waiting to hear back about Laurel House and Union Plaza apartments.

If y’all have any info or any feedback on any of these places, or know of some other cool lofts that aren’t ridiculously expensive, please holler at me!

,

Comments { 20 }

Nice parking, asshat

by on July 15, 2007, in around town, automóviles, I hate my neighbors, life etc., photography, WTF?

Nice parking, asshat

Nice parking

Originally uploaded by Megan_G.

This awesome car-parker either lives or is a friend of the person who lives in one of the houses across from us. The house has a garage plus a driveway, so three cars in all can be accommodated, yet this person chose to leave their car–parked like this–directly in front of OUR house for at least a week. (I think they went on vacation, because it never moved.) We’ve also had their Jeep Grand Cherokee parked in front of our house for so long that we called to report it as an abandoned vehicle. Their third car is often parked a few spots down from us. I wonder how they’d feel if I just randomly parked my car in their driveway??

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