Howdy, neighbor

SO - yesterday as the movers were unloading the crates that contained our household goods our doorbell rings. R and I get to the door at the same time and when we open it, the lady that turns out to be our neighbor is standing there. Thinking that she's coming over to introduce herself, I smile widely and say, "Hello!" I'm so naive.

Instead of a hello or smile or even a friendly look back, all we get is "Y'all need to move that truck. I can't get in or out of my driveway or house."

A couple snarky thoughts have occurred to me since she said that. First, it's a moving truck. They tend to be big. Big trucks take up a lot of space. We live on a bit of a curve and neighbors all around us park on the street despite the double garages and double driveways, so it was probably a bit tricky for the movers to park in the first place. My thinking is that you work with whatcha got in these situations.

Our driveway isn't big enough for the truck to pull into, so that means they had to park parallel to the house. And, I'm so sorry but I don't think the movers should have to park down the street and cart all our stuff back up the street, up our driveway, and into our garage. Besides, now matter where or how you parked the truck, some one's driveway would have ended up being partially blocked. Now, if it was completely blocking her driveway, she has a legitimate complaint. Maybe she had to be somewhere or had something she really needed to do. It could be that she didn't know how long it would be there, or about a million other reasons that it upset her. But the truck certainly wasn't blocking her front door, and even if it had been, the front door key opens the patio door and while I'm sure we've missed a lot of technological developments, but a truck being able to wrap around a house through a gate isn't a likely one.

Before we could really even reply to her, she turned on her heel and stalked off. Oooooo-kay. One of the movers was bringing in some boxes and said, "Wow. She was rude, huh?" Agreed, Dennis. But he went and talked to the supervisor and we ended up moving our car further down the street and they cleared as much of her driveway as possible. We were busy so we didn't think too much more about it. The movers finished up around 1 pm, which worked out well since the cable people were due between 1 and 3. And, holy cow, they showed up when they said they would. Go Charter cable!

So the cable guy is here and is trying to figure out why he can't get our cable to work. He's in and out of our house trying different things. As he's getting it figured out, the doorbell rings again. And here's total proof of how naive I am - I see our next door neighbor and think, 'oh, I bet she's here to apologize for being so short tempered earlier."

Yeeeeah. I open the door and say "hi!" and she plants her hands on her hips and tosses her head around on her neck and demands, "Is the Charter guy here?" Okay, not exactly an apology. I wonder briefly if she needs help with something as I say 'yes, he is. Would you like to come in?"

I'm partially blocking the entire experience from my mind, but I think it went something like this: "NO I don't want to come in. I don't know what ya'll think you are doing, but now you've disconnected my satellite and you need to fix it."

So then I say something to the effect that the Charter guy is right there (like, within earshot) and she's welcome to talk to him. I may be mistaken, but I think at that point he was tempted to crawl into the washer from the look on his face. I mean, it was an honest mistake and I'm sure it was easily fixed. Methinks he's had a run in or two with her before.

But that was apparently the wrong thing to say because she got angry. Which means I only THOUGHT she was angry earlier. She started what I can only call fussing and all I can remember catching of the conversation was that "this is ridiculous", "this isn't going to work", and while the rest escapes my exact recollection, I do remember the tone of her voice and the look on her face. She'd be a great addition to a haunted house because she sure enough scared the pants off me.

Again, she turns and stalks off, muttering all the way. The poor Charter guy goes out and makes it right and when he comes back in tells us, "That's one great neighbor you've got there." We are getting that feeling too.

The rest of the day passed without incident. I have to say that we tried to be really, really careful what we did, and I admit that when I went to the commissary later that day, I checked to make sure she wasn't outside first. I also kept scanning the crowd to make sure I wouldn't end up with my cart in front of something that she might want or the path she wanted to travel. How's that for a first impression? Yikes!

I'm hoping that she was just having a really bad day. There's got to be a reason that she was that angry yesterday and I don't think what happened would normally be enough to push someone over the edge. We'll see.