Responding to Comments

Just wanted to respond to a couple of the comments from last night's post.

I told her she's the only neighbour I've had a problem with, and I'm considerably older than she is. LOL.

She does seem to have a great fear about me creating trouble. I swear on Annie's and Chum's spirits that I never thought of social services, that she mentioned it herself in April as being her biggest fear, then asked me if I had called them (on Monday). The kid doesn't need social services, it's the parents who are being abused.

I told her again that I liked her, that I thought parenting has to the be toughest job, etc. Every single thing I said last night was calm and was said to placate.

I have work training today, through our HR...How to deal with aggressive/violent customers. I signed up just to take something, but it might be timely. Not that I think she'd be violent, she doesn't seem that way to me. Whacked, yes. Even the son doesn't seem to be physically violent.

But if she comes over again, then I will consider it harassment, as Karin posted in her comment. And if she does, I'll grab my phone, just in case I have to call 911!

I feel the need for spiritual/psychic cleansing and protection right now. Like I need to burn some sage and put up talismans to ward off negative energy. Someone suggested a mirror to deflect negative energy. I can't recall who it was off the top of my head. In any case, I don't have a way to fix a mirror to the outside of my unit to bounce their cosmic crap back to them. But maybe I'll Google when I get a chance, see if there's something else that's universally accepted to do much the same.

Long term I can't move. They won't be here long term. She's said repeatedly it's not an area for children, that there's really only one or two boys for the son to play with, and only one young girl for the daughter to play with. They're switching the kids to a school in our neighbourhood next year. But I really don't think they want to stay beyond a couple of years. I'm not sure why they didn't research better before buying. My previous neighbour put the house up for sale back in November, I think, though I'm not sure how long it took to sell. Something in this price range, though, $150- 160K is hard to find. You can get a decent home for around $300K, but in this price range neighbourhoods are very limited. And mostly tough, crime-ridden. We're lucky here to be in a good area, but the townhouses are cheaply built and in need of upgrades. Frankly, I can't even pay off my credit card and line of credit, so there's no way I'll ever be able to take on a higher mortgage. And when I bought it was for considerably less, so my mortgage is not high.

The only thing that is more within range, at around $5K, would be to have the sound-reduction insulation done between the units. Well, it would be far cheaper than moving, but still is not doable for me at this time. Maybe down the road.

Regarding the son's "autism," what I'm gathering is that there is a list of behaviours/traits associated with it, and you have to have a certain number of them before the person can be considered to be autistic. (Extrapolating based only on what she told me.) So I'm gathering the son has a number of those traits, but not enough to say he's autistic. Or high enough on the autism scale. (Is there an autism scale?) I could be misinterpreting this, however. She did say that he does well in school, that he "holds it together" all day and then that everything comes out when he's home. Hmmm....

As for documenting everything--I had hoped this blog would suffice, but perhaps not. After we spoke yesterday, I was regretting the email to the property manager and condo board president, but perhaps it wasn't such a bad idea after all.

Anyway.

It's another day. The boys are outside, I've just gone through one mug of coffee and need more, and I have to pull myself together.

P.S. I think I'll print out all my blog posts that reference the neighbours, from February onward. Just for a starting point, in case I need it.