[wdfifteen]

My idiot neighbor – Bless his Heart. He means well but he is so inept, just total stumbling cluelessness. And he has a gambling problem.

I was renovating our wildflower garden last week, which involved reseeding parts of it. I had to rake out some patches of tilled soil and my back was killing me. I was OK with it, just gritting my teeth and getting things done, when my dear wife brought my neighbor over to “help.” I know what having him “help” leads to, but I said “sure” anyway, “rake out this area so I can seed it.” I handed him the rake, and he lit a cigarette and took the rake back to his car to get his cell phone, where he made a call. I could have raked the whole area out in the time it took him to finish farting around, but he had the rake. I then asked him to rake out another patch while I spread seed on other prepared spots. He raked it, then came along behind me raking out a patch I had just seeded! I caught him in time to stop him from doing any more damage, but damn. Just follow instructions!

So, he took off for Vegas to “play some cards” 4 days ago. He called yesterday, two days into his trip to see if we could pick him up at the airport. He says he was bored, the city is prepping for a car race, he just wants to come home, blah, blah. But I know what happened. He lost all of his money. In two days.

A few years ago he inherited his house from his father, plus enough cash to pay off the mortgage. Within a month he had gambled away $80,000 and still had the mortgage.

I am alternately furious with him and feeling sorry for him.

Here is the story of another time he “helped” that I posted a couple of years ago:

Maybe this is better off in the pet peeve thread, but people who "like to paint" but don't have a frikkin' clue how to do it piss me off.
My neighbor wanted to help with one of my projects (exterior - latex paint) because he "likes to paint."
I assumed that meant he had some idea how to go about it.
Me -I hate it. I hate the prep and I hate the cleanup, though I actually like flowing the paint on. So I said, "Sure, it'd be great not to have to do it."
So - he starts by opening the can. I had to get out the brushes and the sprayer, lay down the drop cloth, and get out a 4x4 slab of old plywood for him to work on so he didn't spill paint all over my driveway. Basically I did the prep.
What he was painting was a structure akin to a jungle gym. So his "plan" was to start on the outside and work his way in to the center.
In the meantime he managed to spill paint on my driveway anyhow, got paint on the side of my barn, on my barn floor, and left paint for me to step in - by the time he finished painting I had paint on my hands, my shirt, my shoes, and my truck. When he finished with the sprayer he put it in the shade and took a two hour cigarette break, then couldn't figure out why it was stopped up.
Took me half an hour to clean out the damn sprayer. I had to throw the brushes away.
I could have done the job myself in less time, I wouldn't have gotten paint on everything in sight, and I'd still have two good brushes.
Next time someone wants to help me paint I'm going to tell them it's too damn much work to have help.
End of rant.