They say misery loves company….

… and I believe it is true. The thing that bothers me most is people who are bitter or angry and insist on trying to ruin everybody else’s day.

Yesterday was my day off and I was set on trying to enjoy it despite all the things that weigh on me. I garden when I want to relax or to have some personal time so when I got home from teaching I went to check on my garden. I and was starting to clean the kitchen with the back door open. The cats were laying outside in the sun and then I heard these rustling bags outside. I have to keep an eye on my cats because sometimes they jump the fence, so I poke my head outside to see if the cats are planning an escape..

I am expecting to see the cats hopping the fence but instead I find my next door neighbor tossing plastic grocery bags over our fence and into our yard. I was shocked and angered by this rude act so I told our our neighbor she could have her bags back while handing them back over the fence. She then begins calling me names and saying I threw the bags into her yard first and that I am rude and immature and that I don’t even own the place I am living in…

This shocks me even more and I am trying to keep my cool. I said something to the effect of “you are crazy” while I gathered the plastic bags up and took them inside. Once inside I called N and told him what had just happened.

This is not one freak incident between us and our neighbor. From the time we moved in we had had issues. Our landlords warned us about the assigned parking situation in our town-home complex and we have always been courteous of our neighbors by NOT parking in their spots. Our neighbor has not done the same.

I would come home from work pretty late some night to find her car or her guests cars parked in our assigned spots. We had to knock on her door to get the car moved and a few times she would not answer her door at all so we had to leave a note on the windshield of the car and park directly behind it.

We called the cops on her once over the parking situation but they could not help us. The parking situation irritated us but we never did anything nasty to her town-home.

However, recently she has been doing everything she can to annoy us. One morning at around 6 or 7 am she set out to wake us up. First she dumped her trash on the sidewalk outside our front door, she kicked and scattered the trash noisily in an attempt to pick it all up, then she got to the trash can and slammed the lid 7 or 8 times before emptying her trash, next she went to scraping the ice off her sidewalk with her aluminum shovel and last she went inside to bang up and down our shared wall.

Some days it seems she just freaks out, yesterday was no exception. After our verbal confrontation a cop comes knocking on my door about a barking dog complaint. The cop could not contact out neighbor who placed the call and he joked with me about the situation. He recommended we try to document all that is happening either on video or through an audio tape recording… We are just not that interested in spending that much energy on something so negative.

I feel bad for the lady next door, she is alone and is angry quite often. I just don’t want to encounter the negativity anymore..