Fences > Neighbors

Remember last Summer when we had movie night & someone called the cops on us for a noise disturbance at 9pm? On a Saturday? Well, that same lovely neighbor yelled (from two houses away) at Josh & Dash for making too much noise in our backyard yesterday at 4:45 in the afternoon. We have never even met this woman (her house is actually behind ours and one over, so she lives on an entirely different street), but she feels free to yell to my husband and son to "knock it off," when she deigns that they're being too rowdy. Christ.

And so this is when being a grown up is hard. When being a parent is punishing. Because what I wanted to do more than anything when that happened was stomp over there and explain to her that she is a terrible bitch who hates fun and children and laughing and that she ought to take some time to reassess her position in the universe before everyone and everything she holds dear escapes her bitter grasp. But I couldn't. Because I have a child and it's my job to model decent behavior for him, despite my absolute disinclination.

So here's what I did instead. I baked her a batch of chocolate chip cookies (I resisted the urge to wipe boogers on any of them) and wrote her a note apologizing for the noise, giving her all of our phone numbers and email addresses so she could let us know if we're too loud in the future, and inviting her to our next movie night. I did this after explaining to Dash (who announced that he was "very concerned" about being yelled at by a total stranger) that everyone is fighting their own battles and that she was just probably having a bad day.

I took the high road even though I didn't want to. I did the right thing even though that wasn't what was in my heart. I tried to show Dash that kindness is usually the answer, even though all I want to do is set fire to a bag of shit on her stoop.

Fuck. Little turd had better appreciate our sacrifices. Also the resulting ulcers.