Well, you can tell we have kids now, because as we’ve progressed from being single, to being married, to being pregnant, to having a baby, to being pregnant, to having two babies, the time between our updates has grown progressively longer. Now you know why.

We always disliked apartment living because of the lack of privacy; unfortunately, we’re discovering that lack of privacy depends more upon your neighbors than the thickness of your walls.

Case in point:

Our next door neighbor has decided that he hates us. More specifically, he hates Aaron. Aaron doesn’t mow the lawn with a power mower. Aaron doesn’t mow the side yard (which the neighbor can’t see from where he sits all day under his carport when he’s not gossiping about the neighbors to everyone that walks by) frequently enough. Aaron turned down his offer to use the neighbor’s power mower. Aaron’s the spawn of the devil and every word he speaks is evil incarnate.

He apparently doesn’t loathe me quite as much because he still deigns to speak to me over our chain link fence, mostly about how wicked my husband is. The other day, for instance, he was asking me why my husband won’t just buy a power mower, instead of using the [expletive] piece of [expletive] mower that we have (we use a reel mower because it’s safer around the kids and dog, who are usually out with us when we mow). I tried to explain, but of course, he knew better, so I let him claim that point.

We’d gotten a note on our door from the management, asking us to please mow our side yard. Of course, Mr. Nosy took note of the note and noted to me over the chain link fence that afternoon (loosely quoted), “Nah, nah, nah, nah, NAH, nah—I told you so!" (And no, our yard doesn’t look THAT bad; besides, even if it did—we live in a trailer park for pete’s sake—it’s not like we’re bringing down the property values or anything.)

The next afternoon, I saw him limp across the sidewalk in front of our house to look around the side of our house to see if we had performed our civic duty. Then he limped back to his usual spot under his carport.

Two days ago, Mr. Nosy again caught me unawares as I was unloading the kids after a trip to the air conditioner. Er, I mean, the mall.

“The whole neighborhood hates him," he said, gesturing vaguely in a direction somewhere behind me.

“Who? My husband?”

“Yeah. They hate him.”

“Whatever for?!”

“Because you got two kids, and he had you out there mowing the other day.”

“My husband has been busy lately.”

“There’s a hundertnsixtysome hours in a week, and he can’t take a hour to mow the [expletive] lawn?”

I rolled my inside eyes and let him claim that point, too. Anyone so cantankerous and bored of his own life that he has to meddle in ours, obviously needs all the points he can get.