Dear Amy: My husband and I moved into an apartment a week ago. It is a garden apartment, and our windows open up onto the lawn areas of our small complex of eight apartments. We have only been here for a week, and there have already been several times when children, adults and dogs have come right up to our windows and looked in at us and our home! One woman runs a day-care business out of her apartment (I don’t know if it is even legal), and every morning there are kids looking in our windows. One morning a child was hitting our screens and windows with a stick.
My husband was sitting at our computer one afternoon. He was taking a sip of beer when the next-door neighbor was picking up her child’s toy right next to our window. She looked right in and said, “I see how it is – you sit around at the computer drinking beer all day.
Don’t you have a job yet?” She was not joking! He just chuckled at her.
There is an extremely large open yard behind our place. There is plenty of room, so I don’t know why people need to hang out near our windows.
I don’t even want to have the windows open because of this.
I don’t hang out in our neighbors’ windows, staring in and commenting on what they do. It is so rude! We want to be good neighbors, but what gives?
– Heather in Wisconsin
Dear Heather: It is somewhat surprising that you didn’t anticipate any of this before signing a lease. When you were looking at the place, didn’t you notice the legions of little legs prancing outside its windows? Garden apartments can be charming but are often less expensive than higher floors, partly because of this drawback.
Interior shutters or shades that raise from the bottom (depending on the height of your windows) could help let light in while maintaining some privacy from little nosy parkers. Your landlord might be willing to install a decorative fence 2 or 3 feet away from your windows to create a barrier.
No amount of fencing or shading will prevent close-quarter neighbors from occasionally surprising you with their rudeness, but that’s life in the big city. Privacy shades, asking adults and children to keep their distance, and a sense of humor will help you cope.
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Dear Amy: I have three friends who are selling high-
end clothing from their homes.
Even though I have told them that I don’t like to shop this way, I still get the invitations, followed up with a phone call or e-mail, noting available time slots for shopping.
This is when my blood starts to boil. I feel betrayed and used, and yet at the same time I feel guilty that I am not supporting their businesses. After being coerced to just “stop by and see,” I am pressured into buying things.
I feel like these “parent” companies are brainwashing my wonderful entrepreneurial friends, which further infuriates me.
I need some sound advice.
– Not a Clothes Horse
Dear Not: When these high-end parent companies brainwashed your friends, did they also zap you with their evil death rays? No one is tying you to the retail railroad tracks. Your friends are in business. As long as you can be pressured into buying clothing from them, they will continue to see you as a potential customer. If you don’t want to buy this clothing, then you are going to have to say so.
It takes two parties to engage in “coercion,” so ask your friends to take you off their mailing lists and tell them that you’d like to get together for coffee instead of shopping. Future solicitations should be tossed.
If these people continue to see you only as an open wallet, then they are not really friends.
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