Crazy Neighbor Lady

Do you know how crazy a girl looks when she spends 30 minutes running around her yard after a bastard groundhog? My neighbors do, as I’m pretty sure I’ve set some sort of speed record by sprinting from my deck to the feeder dozens of times this summer.

It would probably go unnoticed if I didn’t make the high-pitched noises that I do, but I feel they make my maneuver effective.

Anyway, I thought about this the other day when I was scrubbing the bird bath and singing a song I made up about how Cinderella was full of shit and that those feathered freaks never actually helped with the chores.

Just moments before I bravely broke up a domestic dispute between two small woodland creatures, preventing a new episode or COPS: Chipmunk Edition, and then trudged up to the front of my house to fill my watering can.

As the neighbor kids rode by on their bikes, they greeted me with, “Hi, Miss Abby.” I said a very non-specific “hi,” as there are three of them in that house and even after living next door to them for five years, I can’t be expected to tell them apart and remember their names every time.

But…Miss Abby.

I realize this is a polite address and much better than “Ma’am” or “the witch that dives behind the couch when we ring the bell to sell her cheap crap for school that nobody needs,” but it still made me feel really old.

Since crazy neighbor lady passed away last year, no one has moved into her house yet and things have been relatively quiet. There’s no sound of her smoking and hacking into her bushes at 2am or yelling at her well-dressed dogs to “make poo poo” in the middle of the night before stealing my tomatoes.

Yes, you could say things have been quite uneventful.

But it was the combination of the “Miss Abby” and the fact that I was flinging weeds into her yard that made me realize that in her absence, I AM PROBABLY NOW CRAZY NEIGHBOR LADY!

There is mounting evidence to this suggestion.

First of all, I’m a single woman living alone who doesn’t bring home a bachelor every weekend. I spend a lot of time outside in my yard and get ticked when the kids play basketball at midnight. I have a cat. I’ve been known to yell at inanimate objects and rearrange my yard gnomes so they get a new view from time to time.

But that’s all normal, right?

In my defense, I don’t drink or smoke, so you won’t find me passed out on the porch with a smoldering cigarette threatening to start a small fire. As for the cat thing, I have one—which is more than enough—and I don’t dress it in a sweater and put it on a leash like SOME people I knew (may Crazy Neighbor Lady RIP, of course.)

I also don’t expect the gnomes to talk back, which I really think is the true deciding factor in this situation.

So for now, I will continue to believe that I’m just “Miss Abby,” the single gal who cares for her garden and interacts with the wildlife in a reserved and dignified fashion.

Right, boys? Right, they agree.

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Side note: I will be traveling for work Saturday until Tuesday, so try and get by without my constant tweets and updates while I’m gone. However, if you are in New York City, I will be signing books outside the Barnes & Noble on Monday from 10-11.

But seeing as I don’t have permission to be signing books outside the Barnes & Noble and they don’t actually carry my book, I’ll probably only be there until they kick me out or I get arrested.