Good Riddance!

[blas]

Everyone wave goodbye to the old witch downstairs!

Winter may be the worst time of year in my book, but 6 months without her makes it more tolerable.

Oh, in case anyone wanted to know our latest incident with each other....

A few weeks ago, I got my oil changed and asked the tech if he could pinpoint where the leak in my transmission fluid was coming from.

That following Monday, I took my car to get it fixed.....it would be an easy fix that would only take a few hours (since I didn't make an appointment).

The guys were nice enough to loan me a car for the day so I wouldn't have to get a cab (and spend nearly $20 to get home and back to the shop later) or a ride from my dad, since he was going out of town.

The car they loaned me was a lot more.....sophisticated than mine. It had power everything and a car alarm! So imagine the fun I had when I got home...I set it to lock the car and whatnot, it did the little toot toot......

Old Witch immediately opens up her door and sticks her nose out. Fighting back anger, I say "It's ok, just locking it up for the day!" and she huffs and shuts the door.

Unfortunatey, when I went to walk to my mailbox and was fumbling about with the two different sets of keys I have (the one for the loaner car, the other with my house key and mailbox key and key for my parents' house) I accidentally hit that button again. I didn't even realize how sensitive those things are.

No, it wasn't the panic button....the car just toot toot'ed again....and of course, Old Witch opens the door again and starts making some comment, but I totally ignored her and muttered to myself about all kinds of stuff I shouldn't even repeat, and walked upstairs.

I returned the loaner car that afternoon and got Baby Boy back, so I hope that stupid old bitch was happy that Toot Toot was gone.

(Now at this point I will ask if anyone remembers here how I've posted before about how Old Witch has a car alarm and she CONSTANTLY sets it to the warning chirp when people walk past her car and any time she is being nosy and peeking out the windows at night?! Yup, that's ok....but not if I do it by accident!)

So let's fast forward a few days. The nutjobs who live next to Old Witch....the Warbling Toad and the woman who got the keypad installed on her Dodge but didn't know how to use it and left her windows down with the doors locked and struggled to key in the code to unlock the car....yep, them. Now I'm not totally sure what their deal is with cars....they got rid of that Dodge and they had a newer Kia for a couple of days....then they had a larger sedan.......now ever since they've had a newer Buick (maybe they lease or keep renting cars?). Anyway, that woman kept setting off her damn car alarm.

For at least three days straight, any given time of day when they'd go to go somewhere, she'd set off the car alarm (I say she because the man doesn't drive, just to clarify). A couple of times it was when I was trying to sleep, once or twice it was later at night.

One morning I was out for a smoke before bed, so it wasn't like it stopped me from sleeping, but Old Witch and the other Parking Police and Old Foagies were all outside wasting the day away sitting outside (this was before everything froze and it snowed and it was still in the 60s or nicer). I specifically heard Old Witch and her usual witch cackle, and her say "Those things are so touchy, aren't they?" and other stupid jokes. Oh, so it's humorous and understandable that SHE keeps setting her car alarm off, I accidentally set it to chirp and you flipped out.

GOOD RIDDANCE, BITCH! Do us all a favor, and just stay down south and don't come back!

[tropicsgoddess]

Ding dong the witch is gone!

[Greenday]

Yay! Party at blas's place!

[JustaCashier]

We had one of these neighbors next door to the house I lived in, as kid, up until I was nearly 11. This was back throughout the '60's. Her husband was actually very nice as I remember, if not quite reserved. Poor guy probably knew it was best just to STFU.

My family became good friends with the family in the house on the other side of hers. They had two sons the same ages as my older brother and myself, so not only did she have the opportunity to bitch about us kids in general, but the older boys especially would actually taunt her. Even my dad would do stuff just to piss her off, such as tossing morning glory over the fence dividing our back yards (the stuff takes root and will grow like crazy just about any where it lands).

We had two dogs, and she would often feed them treats. They would "thank" her by then going over to her yard, (no fence separating the adjoining front yards) and taking a crap. Then of course, she'd scream about that! (Although I can understand not wanting other people's dogs crapping in your yard, it just seemed, in a way, that by feeding them, she was granting them permission to be in her yard.) She finally grew tired of it, about 7 years after we got the first dog, and put up a chainlink fence between the front yards. My dad remarried, and we moved a short time later. 40 years later, I remember dad gloating about that fact!

She had her good moments though. Although I'm sure she was pretty much pissed of at the whole world most of the time, sometimes she'd actually be pretty decent to one neighbor, while still being pissed off at the other. Then, something would cause her to be pissed again at the neighbor she'd been nice to for awhile, and would start being friendly to the other. I was too young to know if she was actually trying to play one neighbor against the other, but tend to believe she had too be pissed of at at least one of them at any given time.

One very nice thing she did, which I vaguely remember, and still have a picture she took (and a color one at that! B&W was still the most common back then.) of friends of hers that dressed up as Santa and Mrs. Claus. They all came over to our house the Christmas that I was around six, I think.

Even after moving away, I would still visit the neghborhood, on in to the mid-2000's. It never really changed, she always had to be a total bitch to at least one neighbor. Our house, hers, and the one on the other side of hers were all built by the same developer back in the late '20's to early '30's. The water meters were all grouped together, in front of her house as luck would have it, on the parking/planting strip between the public sidewalk, and the street. The parking strips are city property, but the adjacent property owner is resonsible for mowing/maintenance. In most cases, the water meters are not grouped together like that, but are actually in directly front of the house it serves. She bitched about that for years, and made several calls over the years to the city about it.

There was also a telephone pole, at the corner, near the street, on "her" end of the parking strip that ran continous, from our driveway to hers. So, essentially, half was ours, half was hers. She bitched about the pole for years too, and by around the late '80's, or maybe early'90's was finally able to cajole the phone company into moving the damn thing, right smack in the goddamn middle of the parking strip, where it looks stupid as hell. Of course she didn't (I think) have to pay for it to be done.

The relatively short, private driveways belonging to her, and the neighbors on the other side, were adjoining. In the mid '60's the other neighbors had enough of her bitching about the kids playing on her part, or whatever, they put up about a four foot high concrete wall between the two. It became known as the "Berlin Wall".

In about the early '80's, a couple moved into our old house, and the guy would sometimes taunt her, much like my dad did, by doing stuff such as washing his car on his half of the parking strip. Then, OOOOPS! He'd get soapy water over on her side, evoking screams out of her front door from her.

She passed away somewhat suddenly, around twelve years ago, and I phoned my brother, who had long ago moved out of state, to let him know. When he picked up, I started singing "Ding dong the witch is dead....." (mean, I know! ), and he knew immediately what I was talking about!

Mike