The Exorcism Is Near

Y'all want to hear about the time my drunk ass was caught throwing shoes at a guy's window at two thirty in the morning and then I shot a dude with a gun? 

Sure ya do.

Seriously though, did I call it, or did I call it when I said that my only hope was now that the female nutcase neighbor was pregnant that maybe they would move? Hell yes, thank you very much. I've written about them so much I don't even know what link to include here, so if you are new scroll to the bottom of the blog and click on the tab that says "neighbors" if you want to get caught up.

I honestly cannot even begin to explain how relieved I am that they are leaving. Seeing them on a daily basis is a pain that has yet to ease, time has not been healing this wound. Everytime I see them I am reminded of not only one of the worst nights of my life, but the pain of being thrown away because of it. I just want it over, I just need them gone. I need, I want, to feel comfortable in my own home again, to feel comfortable in my own skin. I’m appreciative for some of the lessons that dealing with them has taught me, but my life will be easier with them gone. The kids won’t be confused as to why they won’t talk to us, I won’t always feel on edge, and the rift that this has caused between our tight knit neighborhood should be healed.

I am so happy.

It didn’t always used to be like this. I was actually friends with Mr. Nutcase Neighbor before Mrs. Nutcase Neighbor even existed. He moved into his house when my daughter was about a year old and he worked an overnight shift at his job. Because I was a stay at home mom and he was home all day, it wasn’t uncommon for us to hang out. We’d sit outside and watch the girl child play and just shoot the breeze. We actually spent a lot of time talking about his dating life and dreaming up new ways to secure him a long term girlfriend. There was one day when my ex came home to find the two of us in the middle of a water hose fight and let me tell you, I thought my ex was going to kill him. Later I found out that Mr. Nutcase Neighbor thought the same thing.

When Mrs. Nutcase Neighbor came around I was pretty excited for him. I offered up my zoo membership so that he could take her and her daughter and helped him clean his house for when she came over. She moved in pretty quickly and that was the first time I really met her. 

Mrs. Nutcase Neighbor and I soon became what I thought were good friends. Nearly every night of the week you would find us sitting outside under the stars or during the winter sitting around a fire just chatting it up. The girl would seriously drink like 15 beers every single night. I’m not even kidding; I actually started counting because I couldn’t believe it. I don’t know how she ever got up for work in the morning or how she even still has a liver. Now I like drinking, don’t get me wrong, but not every night, not even every week.

The closest that I’ve ever been to even getting drunk was one particular night last summer when we jumped the gun and started partying on a Thursday night. We were all sitting outside and at one point I remember looking at Mrs. Nutcase Neighbor and realizing she looked a little blurry to me. At almost that exact moment she tried to hand me another shot to which I replied “No thanks Hun, you are starting to look a little funny,” to which she replied “Hey! Don’t judge me and I won’t judge you!”

Alright, she’s gone.

That same night I just happened to be sitting under her second floor balcony, which turned out to be a very bad move. I looked up just in time to see an earwig fall from the balcony, land on my chest, and slip down under my shirt. I let out a scream like you wouldn’t believe. Not only had I seen this happen, but Mrs. Nutcase Neighbor saw it happen as well, as is evidenced by the fact that before I could even react to the bug being in my shirt, she had leapt from her chair, grabbed the bottom back of my shirt, and pulled it clear over my head. I’m now sitting outside in shorts and a bra and you know what? I don’t care, just get it the hell off of me.

This is my house, I was at their house next door, but do you see that dangerous bug bungee jumping platform that they call a "balcony" protruding over my driveway? Yea, theirs is the same way. My mistake for sitting under it after dark.

Both of our eyes zero in on my now nearly bare chest as we see the earwig, STILL THERE, fall into my bra. NO FUCKING WAY. Now I leap from my chair, still screaming, and turn around to run into my house so that I can strip down and annihilate this little fucker. Now let’s not forget that Mrs. Nutcase Neighbor is quite trashed at this point, so as I am running, she is trying to unclasp my bra and I’m yelling “wait! Not yet!” As soon as I turn the door handle to my house I feel it unclasp. The two of us lunge inside where I begin tearing off my clothes like they are on fire while the two of us are screaming “WHERE IS IT!! OHMYGOSH WHERE IS IT!!” We spot it now on the floor, obliterate it, and then collapse onto my couch to catch our breath from that near death experience.

Forget already being a little bit tipsy myself, I now need a drink. We go back outside, send the men off to get more firewood, and are left all to our lonesome. Whatever will we do out here, over intoxicated, and left to our own devices?

Well, it’s now about two am now and you know what happens outside at two am? You start to hear scary noises. “WHAT WAS THAT” comes out of Mrs. Now Trashed Nutcase Neighbor. “WE NEED WEAPONS OF DEFENSE” she boldly states before disappearing into her garage and reappearing with two “weapons.”

“Which one do you want” she asks me. “The spatula or the tongs?”

Well gee girl, what are we going to do, flip some scary guy over and then tong him to death?

“I don’t need a weapon” I tell her. “I just need to be able to run faster than you.”

She is not amused.

Ok, onto the next logical plan. We need a not-scary-guy to defend us. We look around and realize that one of our single male neighbors is not outside with us. Obviously, we must fetch him. It’s now 2:30am, so it would be ridiculous to ring his doorbell that late at night, right? So what does someone do in this situation?

You throw rocks at his window obviously.

So the two of us are throwing rocks at single guy’s window and Mrs. Nutcase Neighbor is yelling at the top of her lungs, “Come down! We neeeeeeed you!! Come out and play with us!!!”

After what seems like an eternity and at the point where Mrs. Nutcase Neighbor and I are now throwing our shoes at his window, Single Neighbor Guy comes to the window with a big grin on his face. You know who isn’t grinning? The girl standing behind him.

I guess he wasn’t as single as we thought he was.

Crap.

We apologize and crawl back to our houses, half mortified, and half laughing hysterically.

The men return with the firewood and we continue drinking until roughly four am. Or, until roughly the time that Mr. Trashed Nutcase neighbor looks at me in a slurred voice and said “Eden, you have the most beautiful eyes I’ve ever seen. I’ve been meaning to tell you that for a couple of years now.”

I look at Mrs. Nutcase who is glaring at me and I say “Uh…thanks, but they have nothing on your girlfriend’s.”

He did not take the hint.

“No, no, yours are way better.”

Sorry, I can’t help you out of this one buddy.

She slams her beer down, storms into the house, and thus ends our evening.

The next morning I woke up snuggling with one of the patio chair cushions in my room. I didn’t just “wake” up, but rather I was jolted from my nice little slumber by Mrs. Nutcase Neighbor pounding on my front door. “Eden, wake up! You’re car is still here, I have an aspirin and an alka seltzer for you, it’s only Friday, go to work!”

Apparently she is a professional at this.

That next night I get outside and a good majority of the neighbors are having target practice with an air soft gun. I’d never touched anything that resembles a gun other than a water gun, and even then I lack experience, so I had absolutely no idea what was going on. You better believe Mr. Nutcase Neighbor picked up on that right away and before I knew it I’m holding the gun and he is standing backwards, three houses down from me and yelling “Shoot me Eden, just try it!” Boom boom boom. Two to the head and one to the back. Apparently I’m a natural.

Mr. Nutcase Neighbor came running back over yelling “Wtf Eden, I thought you never shot anything before! You weren’t supposed to actually hit me! Now it’s my turn to shoot you.”

No. Hell no. Hell fucking no. I did not agree to that.

“Eden, come on, be a good sport.”

Ugh, fine. “Ok, listen Mr. Nutcase Neighbor, I will run from that end of the street to that end of the street. I am not stopping. You can shoot at me all you want from the minute I yell go until I reach the end of the street. No cheap shots while I’m walking there or back, ok?”

He agrees and since I am only wearing yoga pants and a tank top he feels it’s a good idea that I wear his ATV helmet. Cuz that makes sense. It also smelled really, really, bad and my head felt like it was about 25 pounds, not to mention that I could barely see where I was walking.

I get to the far end of the street, yell “go” and you had better believe I broke a personal best in sprinting. I made it to the other end of the street without getting shot, because yay, that would have probably hurt.

As I’m walking back to the house I get about ten feet away and another neighbor grabs the air soft gun and shoots me. "What the hell! That freaking hurt!" Mr. Nutcase tries to grab the gun from him and the two of them start arguing “come on man, that’s just mean” and “hey, I didn’t agree not to shoot her.” I get about one foot away and the stupid thing goes off and hits me right in the thigh, with only yoga pant protection. You had better believe I had a bruise the size of Texas for a week.

After we decide that we have had enough gun fun for one evening, we pull our chairs into a circle, piling various BB guns on the table in the middle. The two Nutcases waste no time in getting trashed off their asses and a few minutes later Mr. Not-So-Single Neighbor pulls into his driveway with his really unhappy looking date. The two of them walk over and she is glaring at us as if she could will our hearts to stop beating right then and there, she would. I waste no time apologizing to her for the misunderstanding and promise her that it will never happen again. She looks me dead in the eye and says “It had better not.”

Yikes.

She walks back to her house and we all burst into laughter. It’s just then that another neighbor announces, “well of course she doesn’t like you girls, you look like white trash. The first time she met you, you were running amok at 2:30 am, and now you’re sitting out here sharing a bottle of whiskey, while seated around a pile of very real looking guns.”

HAHAHA. Oops.

Well, it was a good summer, but that’s in the past and the present hasn’t been too peachy, so granted I can figure out a way to still live here myself, I’m excited for the future.

Without them.

I declare my front lawn a Nutcase Free Zone