Baking

I made chocolate chip cookies yesterday. Whenever I make cookies, I whip up a full batch, drop the dough by spoonfuls onto a cookie sheet, then chill them in the fridge. After, I portion them into bags. I can keep the drops of dough in the freezer for a couple of weeks.

Steve and I would make ourselves sick trying to burn through this batch before it goes bad, so I'm going to bake them next week, and send him to work with them. I know what a load of disgusting pigs the employees at Siemens are, so these cookies won't last 10 minutes.

I baked the cookies for Steve. He'd been in California for a few days, and with business travel being horribly exhausting, I thought it would be fun to have a bag of these waiting for him when I picked him up at the airport. A little taste of home. Although, since I don't often bake, I guess it would be a taste of someone else's home. In fact, it has been so long since I've baked; I can't even remember the last time. 

Whenever I bake, I like to listen to Christmas music. I don't know why, probably because when I was growing up, the only time we did much baking was at Christmas. What do I know? Anyway, I'm not a "Christmasy" person, but I L-O-V-E Christmas music. Seriously, I love to listen to Christmas music whether it is a child's choir, sophisticated adult choir, symphony, professional performer, I don't care. My only caveat is that I don't like the Rudolph, Frosty the Snowman, kiddie type songs. The exception is the Chipmunk Song. At any rate, I don't hate kiddie Christmas songs, I just don't like them. I like Ave Maria, Away in the Manger, that sort of thing. 

Last night was the annual Halloween in the Drive at my neighbor's house. She sets up a buffet in front of her garage door, then invites neighbors to bring a chair to sit in, and their bowls of candy. Instead of knocking on our doors, the kids walk around the circle of drunk adults to load their goodies.

We didn't go for a couple of reasons. The first is that Steve was coming home from travel and we weren't home for the first two hours. We could have walked across the street once we were home, but we're no longer speaking to our next door neighbor. She's a bitch, and it wasn't worth it.

Last February, when she returned home from vacation, she came over to my house huffing and puffing that SOMEONE had adjusted the flood lights in the rear of her home. While she phrased this, "Did you and Kathryn get tired of our flood lights shining into your bedroom window and move them?" as a question, it was without a doubt, an accusation.

Naturally we answered that we hadn't. Because we hadn't. But, her charge against us stung. I didn't know that she had such a low opinion of us. I didn't know why she had such a low opinion. I'd always liked her well enough and wondered if I'd done something. It wasn't long before I came to understand that she is kind of a crappy person.

I was disappointed to realize that she'd always known that her lights shone directly through our bedroom window, and that the lights were very likely a nuisance to us. That was extremely disappointing. The lights were and still are annoying (especially when they forget to turn them off at night), but not enough for us ever to have said anything or done anything about it.

Actually, at the end of last year, I finally persuaded Steve to let me order blinds for the window. He'd always liked how light and open the room felt with the window naked, but agreed to the blinds anyway. I ordered them in January, and coincidentally, they arrived the week after Ann returned home from vacation. To Ann, the blinds were some sort of smoking gun, so there was no convincing her that we hadn't messed with her stupid lights.

The lights thing wasn't really that big of a deal to Steve and me. It stuck in my craw a little, but not long. I later learned that it was a BIG deal to Ann (the effing nerve).

The next bitchy thing was Ann and her husband's reaction to their rat problem. 

They had a bush that was growing wild over and through mine and Steve's fence. Two years ago, when Ann asked if we minded if she planted something against my fence (in her own yard, of course), I had no idea that she was going to neglect it. Lesson learned. 

This bush and their home became infested with rats. Her husband cussed Steve out, and blamed us for their rat problem. Nevermind that when they finally did prune that bush, they left the rat nest intact because they mistook it for a bird nest, nevermind that Steve and I didn't have rats, nevermind about a thousand other details. In the minds of Ann and her husband, their problem was ALL OUR FAULT. 

Historically, Ann and her husband have blamed Steve and me for everything that goes wrong with their house. If they found weeds in their yard, they blamed Steve and me, claiming that the weeds creeped over from our yard. The absence of weeds in our yard did nothing to influence their opinion. The Jackson Pollock style bird poop treatment on their chimney is our fault because we put out bird feeders; the feeders they put out are immaterial. The neighborhood cats pee in her flower beds, and it's our fault because we feed the neighborhood cats. Actually, I guess that one is our fault. The point is, nothing bad happens to them that isn't our fault. It is tedious. 

I read this and wonder why I tolerated their ugly behavior for so long? I suppose that I didn't really care because I thought that they were idiots, but I didn't think they were mean. They are my neighbors, and it is better to get along. We weren't friends, just friendly, and I was okay with that.

Back to the rat problem...

The decided to solve their rat problem by throwing handfuls of highly toxic rat poison in the bush, around their yard, and in their eaves. When Steve answered that we hadn't seen any dead rats in our yard, Mike (Ann's husband) accused Steve of lying and then cussed him out. The next morning, when we put Turner out to the bathroom, we found our yard littered with dead rats and rat poison. It was obvious that the rats had been put in our yard, because rats don't die in the middle of a yard; they go to dark, cool places.

The last straw was when Turner ingested some of the poison that they'd thrown into our yard. We didn't know what was going on, and we got the poison away from him as quickly as possible. He got sick, didn't die. But now, he has a liver problem.

Steve talked to Ann & Mike, told them how irresponsible the poison was, and how if they ever trespassed again, he would call the authorities. They claimed that they'd warned us about the poison (LIE), and that they didn't know what we were talking about regarding the trespassing accusation. I am assuming that in their mind, putting dead rats in my yard is the same as me adjusting their flood light - only I never moved their flood light.

In the telling, I have dialed the hostility from them back about 100 notches. 

They suck.