37. Anyone home?

I live in a house. To the left of my house is another house. To the right of my house is yet another house. These houses are all very similar. They occupy about the same amount of space, they are designed almost identically (it's that whole suburban thing), and they are all being lived in... well... sort of.

My mom and myself live in this house. In the house on the left lives a older couple (about retirement age at this point). We've always been friendly with them. Both my house and the house to the left see a fair amount of activity... people going in and out on a regular bases, cars coming, going and changing positions etc. This isn't quite the case for the house on the right.

The house on the right is occupied by an old woman. Well actually, before this morning, I wasn't really sure if it was occupied by anyone anymore. Unlike my house and the house on the left, the house on the right sees almost no activity... ever. When I say this woman is old I mean REALLY old. Like could die any day old.  She never goes in or out and no one ever comes over. I don't think I've seen her in a good year. I don't really know how she survives in there. I honestly wouldn't have been surprised if someone knocked on our door one of these days and told us that she had died in there like 6 months ago. It may be mean but I was kinda hoping that was the case.

This old woman's name is Mrs. Smith. She kinda looks like this.

A seemingly lovely old lady.

Except her personality is more like this...

For as long as I can remember, Mrs. Smith has despised my family. Her husband actually used to live in this house before they got married. I guess you could say she was the 'girl next door'. He moved in with her after they got married and my parents moved in to this house. Sometime between when my parents moved in and when I was born her husband died and she became an evil old woman.

She literally used any excuse imaginable to call the police on us. Actually sometimes she called them without any excuse whatsoever. I remember riding my big wheel up and down the sidewalk around my block and her coming out of her house as I was passing by yelling at me to get off her sidewalk or else she would call the police... kthanks lady.

Another time, the police showed up at our door with no warning at all. When we asked what in the eff we could have done this time they told us that she had called them because our dog had gone #2 on her lawn. First of all, it wasn't even on her main lawn. It was on that little strip of grass that sits between the sidewalk and the street. Like c'mon. Who really cares about that section of grass. Second of all, our dog hadn't been out in the front of the house all day. So we knew for a fact that our dog DIDN'T take a shit on her lawn... although we kinda wish it had.

What had ACTUALLY happened was that the house one more down from the house on the left also had a dog (actually several houses on the street had dogs)... and that dog had gotten out earlier that day... and while he was roaming the block he decided to take a dookie on her lawn. But instead of knocking on our door and asking us if it was our dog that had shat on her property and then telling us to take appropriate action to rectify the situation, she just assumed that it was us and called the cops.... kbye.

So you can see why we haven't really been 'saddened' by her disappearance in recent times. But, alas, as I was leaving for work earlier today, I actually saw her step foot outside her house. Our suspicions (and/or hopes) that she had died in her sleep were crushed.

But we can keep our fingers crossed hehe...