Weekend Antics

What is a confronted bully to do?

Friday night, we arrived home around 10:30 to find Effie had left her favorite rubbish bin out of its "home" position.  Sweetie, in a moment of fed-uppedness, addressed the open kitchen window and Effie standing at her kitchen sink, "Thanks for putting back the garbage can."

"You're welcome," came the snarky answer.

"You didn't put it back," he responded.

"Good night," she said as she slid the window shut a little harder than necessary.

"Good night, (real first name)!" I said in the neighborlyest voice I could muster.

And then I went inside, got my hockey stick tape, and taped a simple line around the base of her favorite rubbish bin.  The tape has red maple leaves on a white background, so it looks nice and Canadian.  Added to this, as promised, I scratched in pink chalk, "It goes here, (real first name)."  And then, also as promised, I sprinkled lots of my glow-in-the-dark glitter inside the square created by the tape.  I took a couple of photos.  Thank heavens for the "night" setting on my little digi-cam.

I'm writing this on Monday evening; the bin has gone unmoved since Friday night.  It's been raining, and there's a tell-tale dry spot in my taped square.

Saturday, we were out most of the day.  When we arrived home late, again (we go to hockey games when our team plays at home), as we turned my car onto our street, Sweetie noticed the driver's side door of Effie's van was open.  I decided to drive round the block to give her a chance to go inside without feeling the need to say something snarky at us.  When I came back round, she still had her head in the van, and after we parked and headed toward our door, we could see that a man (!!) was in her doorway with either a bottle (like a beer bottle from which he may have been drinking) or a video camera in his hand.  I wasn't going to gawk long enough to figure it out.  None of my business.

That was, again, around 10:30 PM.  By 11:00 or so, we were in bed with the telly on.  I failed to look at the clock, but defnitely all the way during SNL (11:30PM - 1:00AM), there was a rythmic pounding on a wall coming from her side of the duplex.  The pounding wasn't directly against the wall that separates each units master bedroom; but it was enough to be noticeable.

Sadly for Effie, I grew up in an apartment that had been built in haste.  It had walls much thinner than these we have here.  We both fell asleep with the pounding still going.

Sunday morning, Sweetie and I got up around 10AM.  I think it was around 10:30 when we could hear Effie get up (you CAN hear a squeaky bedframe through these walls).  The pounding resumed!  With syncopation!  By the time we went downstairs to go out for our errands, it sounded like the pounding was going on in her kitchen (right next to our living room).  For a while, it sounded like she was hanging a picture.

Why hang a picture when you hate the place so much, you're planning to move?

Me, neither.