Makes me think of my situation with my neighbor. She is 83 years old and has a wicked sense of humor. But negative, my goodness. You can't do anything right with her. She has to criticize anything you do. Last year I told her my sister and I were going to a restaurant for Thanksgiving because my sister always has to work late the night before Thanksgiving and she would be too tired to run around and cook. My neighbor said, "Oh no, you don't want to do that--you need to go to the grocery store and buy a baked chicken and then you'll just have to cook the vegetables and bread and all--cause if you go to a resturant you won't have any leftovers and that's stupid." She told me how to do everything--she told me not to let my cats in the kitchen--even though the kitchen is the only reasonable place to feed them in this little apartment. She said that I should squirt them with water everytime they went in the kitchen. I told her this was their house too and I didn't want them to be unhappy in their house. She couldn't understand that. Charlie (one of my cats) likes to get on top of the china cabinet. He can jump up there and lie down without disturbing anything on top of it. She saw him do it one day and she said, "Don't let him do that!" I said, 'Why?" And she said he would break everything. I told her he liked being up high and he never had broken anything yet. She said, "Well I wouldn't let him do it."
It's like that with everything with her. Nothing I did was right. Well, we had a little situation here at the end of November. One of least-favorite neighbors was being searched for by a bondsman. I gave the bondsman his car license number so they could know when he was home and pick him up easier. (I mistrusted him enough that I wrote down his license number several months before). This neighbor told me I should get the bondsman's phone number so I could call him when the neighbor was home. I said I had it.
Well, the bondsman did a very bad thing by telling the bad guy that I had given him the license number. The stuff hit the fan and when I called my little old neighbor about it, she said "I told you not to give them that license number--I told you not to get involved." I didn't need to hear that right then so I hung up.
About three weeks later I went to give the little old lady her Christmas cookies I baked for her and she wouldn't take them. Wouldn't speak to me. Still isn't speaking to me. As much as I hate being on the outs with neighbors, it is such a relief not to listen to her constant criticism and negativity that I have done nothing to heal the breach. I'm not even sure what she is so mad about. But whatever it is, I'm glad to have her out of my life. Is that terrible?
