• Home
  • Blog
  • Archives
  • Links
  • About
  • Guest Blogger
  • Contact

Tricia's Musings

Random Thoughts about life in general, living in the big city of Toronto

  • Home and Lifestyle
  • Recreation
  • Health Fitness and Beauty
  • Entertainment
  • Web and Technology


You are here: Home / Archives for Home and Lifestyle / The Neighborhood

Met the new neighbors

June 5, 2010 by Tricia

Our brand new neighbors came to visit their new house earlier today. I still have no idea when they’re planning to move in, but they were here for several hours today cleaning up the house.

They pulled out at least two rugs and what looks like some flimsy wall partitions and placed them in the backyard. There’s also a few garbage bags with what looks like broken 2 x 2’s and cheap furniture. Most of that is probably stuff the last bad renters left in the house … probably in the basement because their 14 year old daughter was living down there with her boyfriend (yep).

I guess my husband went outside to meet them sometime in the morning while I was still in bed trying to sleep. He took them in our backyard and feed them some of our fresh strawberries (picked fresh off the plants). I complained a bit about that when he told me because I haven’t even had a strawberry yet. LOL He gives them away to people whenever they visit our yard and I almost never had more than one or two of our own home grown strawberries each year.

Later when I was up we went and knocked on their door to officially welcome them to the neighborhood. My husband had gone out to a local bakery and bought $20 worth of pastries and desserts for them. We also put a few cold soft drinks in a bag in case they were thirsty working in their new hot house.

So I only met the man. I think his wife was out when we arrived at their door. He was dressed in one of those head to toe coveralls that you can buy for painting and he looked hot. He seemed nice enough. My husband who had met and talked with both of them before they were really into their clean up and were still relatively fresh found them to be quite nice.

My husband was actually quite nervous that we’d end up with bad neighbors seeing as the last two renters were so terrible. However we figured someone with the money to buy a house in this neighborhood (no house are cheap in Toronto) would probably be ok.

I don’t envy them all the work they’re going to have to do to fix up the house. When we first bought our house we started doing major renovations. I remember working about 18 hours a day continuously for weeks to get everything down .. talk about a natural fat burner ! I didn’t need to lose any weight at the time we first got our house but with all that work on our renovations I somehow managed to lose about 40 lb in a month .. oh and my Crohn’s was acting up at the time too so that didn’t help. I was skeletal by the time we were ready to move in. LOL

We still don’t know if our new neighbors are going to do a lot of renovations. I think they just want to clean up their new home, maybe paint and then move in. Apparently they gave up their apartment about two months ago and have been living with his parents while they waited to get possession of their new house. I know if I was living with my in-laws I’d want to move fast. LOL

Hopefully the new neighbors turn out to be good people. At least we made an effort to be friendly and welcome them to the neighborhood. Everyone is fairly friendly here on our street and in the general area, it takes some getting used to if you come from an area where you really don’t know your neighbors – like an apartment building, but hopefully they’ll turn out to be nice too.





Filed Under: Canada, Home and Lifestyle, Items to Try, Life with Chris, The Neighborhood, Toronto Tagged With: carpets, clean up, cleaning, cold drinks, dessert, friendly, garbage bags, get along, greeting, new neighbors, nice, partitions, soft drinks, welcomed, wood

A very close call

June 3, 2010 by Tricia

Something happened an hour ago or so that’s left me shaken.

I was sitting in my living room working on my computer. It’s cool enough today that instead of having the air conditioning blasting I’m able to have the windows and doors open.

As I sat working I happened to turn my head and noticed a little girl running across the side street opposite my house. I guess she’s about 4 or 5 years old now, but I’ve been worried about her for at least two years because almost every day I see her running across the road – back and forth, several times a day. I had a feeling that something bad might happen one day.

As it turns out today was the day that something almost happened.

When the little girl was about halfway across the street a car turned off of my busy street into the side street that the girl was crossing. The car was going fast and when the driver saw the little girl he must have jammed on the brakes and swerved at the same time. He missed the little girl by a couple of feet, but crashed into two parked cars.

I jumped up and threw on some sandals and ran out the door. I think I was on my feet before the car crashed into the parked cars. I actually made it to the little girl (who was about 200 yards from my house) before the man got out of the car or anyone came out of the house she lives in.

The little girl was ok, but naturally she was terrified after almost being hit by the car. The man who was driving the car and who caused the accident was fine, but he was shaken up too. I have a feeling his day is only going to get worse once the various car insurance companies start calculating all the damages the accident caused.

I’m so ticked off at that little girls parents and or babysitter. I’m not sure who she’s with during the day, but whoever it is, they’re not watching her well enough if I can see her out alone on the street and running back and forth across the street almost every day. Sure it’s a side street, but it leads to a park so it’s fairly busy. I think someone should always be outside watching out for her when she’s playing in the front yard.

I almost feel like calling child services. I mean I’ve been worried about this kid being hit by a car for at least a year and a half and here it almost happened today. What would you do?

Filed Under: Home and Lifestyle, Items to Try, The Neighborhood, Toronto Tagged With: accident, almost hit, back and forth, brakes, car, child services, crashed, cross street, dangerous, kid, little girl, turning, young

New Neighbors?

June 2, 2010 by Tricia

I think we officially have new neighbors.

The house next door to use, the one that was rented out to two very bad renters over the last year was sold about a month and a half ago. We’d heard from one of our other neighbors that talked to the home owners son that the new people would be moving in at the end of May … well the end of May came and went and we didn’t see any sign of the new neighbors, but we just noticed a light on in the house next door so I think they came for a visit.

The realtor lock box is off the front door now too, so I guess it’s official.

We’re just hoping that the new neighbors are nice people. We’ve been through hell with awful neighbors lately. We pretty much lived in fear with our doors and windows locked all the time with the last ones so I think we deserve to have some nice neighbors now.

I don’t care if the new neighbors aren’t really friendly. All I ask is that we don’t have any problems with our shared driveway and that they aren’t noisy or do anything illegal or potentially dangerous while they are living next to us. Yeah, my standards got a lot lower after the last renter neighbors.

We don’t know anything about the new neighbors. In fact they seem to have left the house now so we didn’t even see them. I’ve heard that they are an Asian couple which fits with the guy that I saw a few days before the sold sign went up. I think they got a three hour home inspection done before putting in a bid.

Anyway like I said, I don’t really care who our new neighbors are as long as they’re nice enough and easy enough to get along with. They could be muscle building protein powder drinking health nuts or geeks for all I care, just as long as we don’t have any problems with them.

I just hope that they didn’t buy the house next door only to rent it out again. That’s really our worst fear. Wish us luck!

Filed Under: Home and Lifestyle, Items to Try, The Neighborhood, Toronto Tagged With: get along, lights, luck, new neighbors, nice, renters, share driveway, sold

I can’t believe he did that!

May 20, 2010 by Tricia

I’m starting to wonder if my neighborhood is going downhill.

I live in a nice middle class area where most people seem to take care of their homes and there’s very few break ins or other crime … but still … it’s changed since we moved in almost 9 years ago.

I mean, the other day, after I had taken our dog outside to do her business for the last time that evening – around 11:30 pm, I saw a car stop in front of our house. As I was starting to close our front door I saw a man get out of the drivers side of the car and walk around to the back door on the passenger side.

The man sort of bent over a little bit and I wondered if he was talking to someone in the backseat or if he was leaning in the back window to get something.

I don’t know why I paused at the door to watch him, but I did. Little did I know that my husband who’d just gone upstairs to get ready for bed was watching from the bedroom window as well.

The man stood at the side of the car for a few moment and then walked around the car, got in, and drove off.

My husband called down from upstairs “Did you see what that guy DID?”

I said “no … I just thought he was talking to someone in the backseat.”

Then my husband said:

“That guy just PEED ON HIS CAR!”

“What?”

“He was peeing on his car!”

Who does that? Who pees on their own car … or well, I don’t know if the man owned the car, but still, who pees on the car they’re driving around?

Plus it’s not like I live on a quite side street. It’s fairly busy with cars going by 24 hours a day.

I know sometimes you just have to pee and you might not be in a place where you can easily get to a washroom … but why did the guy pee on his car? Why didn’t he walk into my neighbors yard and pee behind his big maple tree or walk down the side street that’s just beside our house?

Would you ever do that? Pee on your own car I mean?

Anyway … now you can see why I’m wondering if my neighborhood is going downhill. LOL

Filed Under: Canada, Culture, Home and Lifestyle, Humor, The Neighborhood, Toronto Tagged With: busy street, Canada, car, downhill, funny, Humor, man, Neighborhood, nice neighborhood, pee, peed, peeing, strange, Toronto, weird

A great day for gardening and barbecuing

April 2, 2010 by Tricia

It was such a nice day today! My husband had today off since it’s Good Friday so we took advantage of the great weather (24 C! 75 F unheard of temps here in Toronto for early April) and spent several hours outside tidying up the garden.

We spent a lot of time working on the garden beds in the front of the house. Of course this is always slow going because we know a LOT of our neighbors so we were stopping to talk to them briefly every so often.

While we were outside we saw our old awful renter neighbors drive by a few times. They seem to be hanging out at a house down a side street that’s opposite our house so we can see them quite easily. Since our old neighbors and the people they are hanging out with are basically criminals my husband and I thinking of putting in some kind of security system … maybe one of those wireless security systems of course we’ll have to price it out, but with people like that hanging around we’ll feel better knowing we have a security system.

After we were finished tidying up the front garden beds and moving a few plants around (ever try digging up a rose that’s been in place for 10 years? AH!) we did a bit of work in the backyard and then my husband fired up the BBQ.

We just finished eating some fantastic tasting hamburgers. I was starving so it’s great to have that tasty food in me!

Did you take advantage of the holiday today and perhaps get some yard work done as well? Or maybe you got together with family?

Filed Under: Education, Gardening, Home and Lifestyle, Life with Chris, The Neighborhood, Toronto Tagged With: April, BBQ, criminals, exceptionally warm, garden, garden beds, neighbors, nice weather, old neighbors, renters, safe, security system, spring

  • « Previous Page
  • 1
  • …
  • 5
  • 6
  • 7
  • 8
  • 9
  • …
  • 34
  • Next Page »

Connect with Us

  • Facebook
  • Flickr
  • Instagram
  • RSS
  • Twitter

Categories

Sites of Interest

Useful Links

Eavestrough Cleaning Toronto

Shopping

Gifts, Gadgets,
Books and More!

Recent Posts

  • Is your home well insulated or do you have energy leaks?
  • Pet Safety Tips
  • Top 10 Most Fundamental Yoga Poses For Beginners
  • Will My Interior Décor Stand The Test Of Time?
  • Outdoor Furniture- Spicing Up Your Backyard
  • Ensuring You Have A Good Experience Staying At Hotels With Children
  • Mother’s Day Cookies

Recent Comments

  • Bill on Top 10 Most Fundamental Yoga Poses For Beginners
  • [bonus]old school new body-f4x workout on Why does my husband always bring home the wrong stuff?
  • Rodhe Stevens on 5 Little Known Secrets To Finding Cheap (But Durable) Furniture
  • Julia Carlson on How To Install A Mosaic Tile Kitchen Backsplash
  • Humane Raccoon Deterrent Idea on Helped save a baby raccoon last night

Subscribe


Subscribe to our RSS Feed It's FREE!

Subscribe to Tricia's Musings by Email It's FREE!


Follow me on TWITTER

Find us on Google +



Find us on Facebook



I have two mottos-
1. Live life to the fullest; and
2. Don't have any regrets.

Get More Traffic

Visitors since 2006

Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.org

Search this site

Tags

blog blogs camera Canada Chris computer crohns dinner dog Family flower flowers Food friends funny garden Gardening Green Thumb Sunday Health and Fitness Health Fitness and Beauty holiday home Home and Lifestyle house husband IBD Inflammatory bowel disease Internet Music neighbors pain photo photos plants puppy Shopping sick sleep spring Toronto TV Video visit website Wordless Wednesday

Blogs I Visit

  • Casual Slack
  • Captian Picards Journal
  • Say No to Crack
  • Parenting Toys
  • Home and Garden Diva

Copyright © 2025 · Lifestyle Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in