All I could think was, “There she goes again.” My youngest had just left for work, not thirty seconds before when I saw a shadow move across the front yard as I stood washing dishes. I looked up and it was the neighbor, with a rake.
This neighbor is very nice and well meaning but also very nosey. She knows everything that goes on in every house in a three block radius. The second Thursday of the month is street sweeping day in my neighborhood. On Wednesday, the Neighborhood Watch president sends out an email reminding everyone to move their cars off of the street and into driveways so the street sweeper can have a clear path and the street will be cleaned. On Wednesday night I returned from a NaNoWriMo write-in at 10:30 and moved my car into the back of the house so my daughters could move their cars off of the street into the driveway. I came in and told them they could move their cars into the driveway for street sweeping. They nodded in acknowledgment. I was so tired that I went to my room and didn’t check on the car situation.
The next day I realized that the girls had not moved their cars and the street sweeper had not cleaned in front of our house. I waited for the phone to ring and for my neighbor to rub it in. The call did not come. I was surprised. That afternoon, Daughter Number One left for work and I noticed the mound of leaves left behind in the street. Then an hour later, Daughter Number Two left for work exposing another mound of leaves.
That’s when it happened. The neighbor rushed out of her house with the rake and began to rake up the leaves where my daughters’ cars had been. She did it so quickly that I am sure she was waiting, rake in hand, for the second daughter to move her car so she could come over with her rake and make a point. She looked up and saw that I had noticed her although I managed to turn my head in time so that our eyes didn’t meet. She had made her point. She dragged a rake full of leaves from the front of our house to her yard and into her green waste receptacle. The street in front of our house was still full of leaves. She had only come and raked the length of our front yard with the width of her rake once. Leaving a 30 inch area cleared of leaves and another 30 inch row of leaves on either side of the cleared path, she had made her point. She was happy.
She does this. But she’s a nice neighbor. I wouldn’t think of saying anything to her about this. If she wants to rake my leaves, let her.
Wasted Days And Wasted Nights 
That is bizarre. That is more bizarre than the bizarre neighbour that I had that trundled up and down the alley trailing ‘suspicious hoodlums’.
Hmm. Maybe it isn’t more bizarre. It is closer to functional. Learning that she can wield a rake and can plan out something so strange makes me think that she could also figure out that doing so is absurd. But, I think I’ve missed the point on how nutjobs think.
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That’s hilarious. Some people have way too much time on their hands.
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Sounds like someone needs a smack.
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She can come over and rake my leaves. That is, if she’s got that much energy. We are the only house in the neighborhood with a pile still on the grass.
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LOL … update, this same neighbor was in the newspaper today because she pretty much started the food pantry at her church which feeds almost four hundred families each week. So let’s not dump on her too much.
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This is one of those really strange things that leaves the recipient unsure of whether to be mildly grateful or mildly insulted.
I’m sure her heart is in the right place. Kind of. More or less.
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*laughing* I have one who sends her kids out to curse at my dogs when they bark.
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God, I would hate that. I don’t think I could live in a neighborhood where people were telling me to move my car for the whatever it was.
That’s like living in a neighborhood where your mom still tells you to pick up your room so she can vaccuum.
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She also returned a couple of books she borrowed … to the BACK DOOR so she could get a look at the yard! Just left them at the back door. No covering over the back door, only the front. I thought that was strange!
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I have a nice neighbour who shovels walks at random and mows our lawn at random. They also share their beer and used to have very attractive dogs that made strange barking sounds (not because they’d been de-barked — that’s cruel — they were just weird sounding dogs) but they got old and are now dead.
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Our neighbor across the street use to do random things like mowing our lawn or salting our deck in the ice, but he also started helping himself to anything in our yard he wanted. I finally threatened to turn the dogs loose on him.
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This neighbour is uniformly nice. Not only that but their kids were a great age to babysit for quite a few years. Man-o-man that was a convenience!
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