Love Thy Neighbor..Even if She's a Bitch.

Let it be known that I live on an Army post. Filled with Army wives. Filled with hormones. We got here in October and had pretty much everyone on our street moved from then to now. We got a new set of neighbors two doors down. I had "met" her on a Facebook page for wives at our post. Once she moved in I took her over a plant and invited her over to the coffee club I was hosting the next day. Not too long after that someone moved in next to her, so 3 doors down. She had a little girl about the same age as mine and they would play together. Never saw the mother, ever. We get a new neighbor to the right of our house (everyone moved in within a 3 week period) and it's the house that the bus stop is at. I figured since I would be at this woman's drive way every morning I should meet her. She is standing in her driveway, perfect opportunity. Grab the plant, walk over with my friend Marissa and introduce ourselves, blah, blah, blah. Everything was good.

Fast Forward about a month. It's memorial weekend. John is out working on the grill. Jessica and I are inside cooking the other dishes. The older girls are outside in the grass area in front of the house (the loop) and "unicorn girl" was also outside playing with them. Everything is going good and then "unicorn girl" (her bike helmet is a unicorn so that is what Penelope calls her) is shaking her finger in Penelope's face because she wasn't playing duck, duck, goose correctly. So I go to the front door and tell my kids to come inside we are not playing outside with her right now and make them come inside. I was expecting people to arrive at any moment and was still cooking. While John was outside with them  I thought I was doing good by just diffusing the situation by bringing my kids inside. Psh, wrong.

The sun starts going down and we get the fire pit going in the middle of the loop and set up the badminton net up. Samantha's husband was trying to get the net up and us ladies are just standing around talking. Neighbor lady storms out of her house and into the loop, this is about 4 hours from said incident, and ask if her child did anything wrong. I simply said "no, she was in Penelope's face and I don't fool with other people's children so I told my girls to come inside". It later came to my attention that I wasn't talking in a friendly tone which I know is probably true since I really didn't want to talk to anyone other than my guest that I was entertaining. I just wanted to get the conversation over with. Anywho, she goes on to talk about how she hasn't been "welcomed to the neighborhood" and that I had met the other two neighbors and didn't come to met her. I'm not joking. She is truly upset that I did not bring her a plant and say "welcome" to her. Although when her kid fell off her bike and was bleeding I had taken her to her house and gave her to her father and introduced myself and told him what happened...Not good enough, this woman wants a plant.  She wasn't happy with the way that I handled it but she wasn't even there to handle it but okay in her eyes I was wrong. She goes on to call me a "snobby little bitch" and I say "you take care of your kid and I'll take care of mine" and at some point she leaves. I tried my best to stay classy but I guess my classy comes off snobby. 

Moral of the story, take a plant to everyone on the street. I'm stuck in a place now that I kinda want to buy her a TON of plants and leave them on her door to be a bitch that she thinks I am or taking her one realizing either A. She is "that army wife" and she is crazy and you can not deal with her no matter how hard you try or B. She feels guilty because she knows she wasn't watching her child so she took it out on me or C. She was under a lot of stress from moving and had a little breaking point. Right now I just ignore her. If she thinks I am a snobby bitch why try to change her mind? I harbor no bad feelings, she can think what she wants. I'm not going out of my way to try to change someone's mind. It obviously bothers me enough to blog about it so maybe I should bring that up to my therapist friend :). Said neighbor will still get baked goods at Christmas from our family and we will continue to be the same neighbors that we always have been just having more plants on hand.

Be neighborly!