Goodbye treehouse. Hello tree mansion!

As a parent, there are certain things you can't and won't tolerate.  One of those things is dickhead adults screwing over your children.  Yes, that's right.  Nine full months later, I am STILL blogging about my a**hole neighbor.

Two weeks ago, an inspector from the Town of James Island came out and told us we needed to remove the ladder to the treehouse and that one support was too close to the fence.  We hired a contractor the next day and complied.  When the contractor finished, the inspector came back, took pictures, told me we were now in compliance, and that we would not hear from him again.  He also apologized multiple times for the stupidity of his visit.  He made it very clear that he did not agree with what my neighbor was saying/doing and that kids should be able to have a treehouse.  Period.

But an hour later, the inspector returned, and this time there was another man with him as well.  As I watched them go into the backyard, I noticed my neighbor was out by the tree, up on a ladder, with a measuring tape.  Yes, he seriously drug an enormous ladder across his 5 acre property to show that one board of our treehouse was still 3 inches too close to the fence.

Now, I'm not one for confrontation, but I almost lost my sh*t on him.  And Teague snuck out the side door and I heard him tearfully yelling 8 year-old obscenities at said neighbor.  And when you make my kid cry because you are destroying his 8th birthday present that his grandfather built for him, I am going to make you pay.

You see, I'm from Mississippi.  And I have a little bit of a trashy, redneck side that makes me want to punish you when I'm forced to destroy something I love.  I love to blow stuff up, and my dad and I LOVE to cause mayhem.  We like fireworks, and potato guns, and paintball.  Maybe if we could have honored the treehouse by sending it out in a blaze of glory, all of us would be a little happier.  But instead it was totally dismantled in a routine manner today and now lays in pieces next to the driveway.

 

 

 

 

And as much as I would love to bombard my neighbor's house with potatoes, or paint, or something else fun, I have found a much better way to punish him.  You see, I overheard him tell the inspector that he really just didn't like looking at the treehouse.  So I have decided to build a new one.  With a permit.  Three feet from his fence.  Tripled in size.  With the side facing his house painted neon orange.

And in the meantime, I left him another little note:

And I didn't even cuss in this one.