“I’ll let my husband know.” Who says this in 2023?

Most recently it was my female neighbor who is younger than me.

Sometimes it’s necessary to call in experts. (Image: Kathryn Reed)

I wanted to throttle her, but her pre-teen daughter was standing next to her. Because her daughter was there I wanted to throttle her even more.

It’s one thing that this woman thought she needed a man to handle the issue I brought up with her, it’s another that by default she was teaching her daughter this is how to deal with things.

I will be the first to admit I don’t know how to fix much. I’m not even always curious to learn how, but know I should. Thank goodness for YouTube. I’ve always found a video about what I needed to figure out how to fix.

I’ve even asked repair people through the years about what they were doing to see if it might be something I could do on my own in the future. Sometimes I can, sometimes it takes a trained, licensed professional.

What I was letting my neighbor know is I was hearing a lot of water coming from the side of their house. Mostly I heard it at night lying in bed. When I investigated I saw a gentle stream of water from the swamp cooler collecting in a puddle, as well as water spraying from a hose attached to the device.

The woman said the cooler dripping water is normal. I said I know it does this every hot season; this is my third year to put up with it. I told her water was coming from places it shouldn’t and that it was much more than a drip.

I don’t know if she looked at it. She certainly didn’t in that moment.

Husband came home and fixed it. I know because I asked him when I saw him out front.

This incident reminded me of when I was in Tahoe and a tree in my neighbor’s back yard was leaning to the point two other trees were supporting it. I thought if the weight pushed one tree over, that tree could crush our shared back fence and possibly damage my deck. The other looked like it would go into the middle of their house.

I did the neighborly thing of telling this second homeowner about the tree issue. She was not thankful of my arrival at her front door, which was not the case with my current neighbor. The Tahoe woman said she would have her husband look at it when he came into town in a few days. I hoped we had that long. How hard would it have been for her to call a tree service to assess the situation. That hardly requires a spouse.

She exhibited zero sense of caring, and instead was clearly irritated I was on her doorstep.

Eventually the leaning tree was removed.

I realize every household has divisions of labor, but taking no action until your husband deals with it, well, this concept just baffles me.