You can pick your friends, you can pick your nose, but you can't pick your neighbors!

Neighbors are inevitable.  We all know that, but being in a townhouse makes your neighbors a bit more involved in your life.  We have good neighbors.  We have weird neighbors.  We have old neighbors. And we have a total bitch who lives next door of all places.  (Sorry, Mom, but there isn't a better adjective...)

I won't bore you with the background to our hostile relationship, but the short version is that we argue with her about once a month related to "her parking spots."  In protest to our insisting that there are not assigned spots, she parks over two parking spots every day because she claims them as her own.  She's old and ornery, lives alone, and never, ever has visitors.  What a surprise.

Our most recent interaction was her raining on my parade as I cut our grass for the first time (I'm all about females being just as capable as men, but I had never had the occasion to mow before).  Here I was using a lawn mower, and did the unthinkable.   I mowed her 18 inch rectangle of our shared lawn.  The horror!  She was outside not 3 minutes after I cut and was sweeping her sidewalk.

I told her I was just about to sweep, which apparently invited her to chastise me for cutting her portion.  She went on and on about how it was her grass and that I cut it too short, and my doing so somehow leaves bare portions in her pristine patch of grass.  She further questioned why we haven't signed up for the community lawn service, so that our grass could be cut along with the hers because "it looks bad when one part is cut and another is longer."

"They only charge $20 a month.  Why don't you sign up?  I'll get you the number."

"We have our own lawn mower, so we are not interested in signing up."

"Well, it looks bad.  I'll get you the number."

After telling our dear friends, who are reasonable neighbors, Brandi declared that she was going to put weed killer on Meany's grass in the middle of the night for us.  How kind.  Truthfully, I might do that...  I have often wished for her demise and then feel guilty, but attempt to justify these thoughts because she's lived a long enough life.  I'm horrible... and feel guilty again...