My neighbors are weird.

I'm out on my stoop. It's a sad little stoop, all concrete and brick. Still, it faces south and there's a spot for my coffee so it's a stoop I've learned to love. I can hear the chirping of the birds, the flapping of the little round wings of the ladybugs and the charming gurgle and sputter of the sump pumps. While there was no boat evacuation this time around, our road was again marked with a high water sign and our yard was again a pond. One of our fellow apartment building dwellers saved us from total devastation. Dan calls the guy Nature Boy not only because he looks just like the Bugs Bunny character but also because one day when a deer ended up on our front lawn after being hit by a car, Dan and I watched from our bedroom window as Nature Boy dragged the carcass to the side of the house, used a rope to string it from a tree, and proceeded to skin and, well, bone the thing. Right. Outside. Our window. It was an entire day's work and Dan I took turns peeking through our shades to see what stage of the dissection he was heading into. It felt like we were doctors looking in on a surgery. "Now you'll see Dr. Nature Boy make a lateral incision directly above the cute little white spots." It was all very bizarre and funny---"Yeah, the guy is still out there lynching and mauling the deer"---until we remembered that we share a home with this guy and, wow, is he good with that knife. (I'll save for another entry the story of how I once watched our slightly, well, touched, upstairs neighbor packing rifles into the trunk of his car. I've since told Dan and Matt---and now I'm telling you in case they don't take me seriously---that if I go missing, the questioning should start with him. And put my prom picture in the newspaper.)

So, Nature Boy (whom I met during the evacuation and who seemed nice enough despite the fact that roadkill is his sport) saved the day on Wednesday night when our driveway was almost completely under water. I watched through the window as he stood in water up to his knees clearing and bagging the sticks and sediment that had been blocking the nearby sewer and saved us all.

I'm realizing that it sounds like I spend an awful lot of time peering out my windows at my neighbors. Here's the thing---our apartment is on the first floor at the front of the building (come get me blog-following rapists!), so just opening our blinds means being a snoop. While I didn’t love this at first, it has certainly enhanced my detective skills. I not only figured out that the neighbor with whom we share an entrance (a girl whom I really like and wanted to be friends with so I made the first move and gave her a bottle of wine for Christmas but I apparently couldn’t buy her love and it seems as though we'll never be more than chatty breezeway friends) had a new boyfriend, but that he was a co-worker and that it was under wraps at the office. (Wonder why she didn’t want to be my friend...)

As you know, I sit by the window to write every morning. Well, one day I noticed a foreign BMW in the parking lot at the crack of dawn and minutes later heard our neighbor see some guy out and tell him that she'd see him at work. (Shared breezeway, remember?) So I figured if they work together but weren’t driving in together, it was the stuff of undercovah office lovahs. (Let us not forget that Dan not only worked in the main office but was also helping out with some management shifts at the restaurant I worked at during the summer we got together. I know a thing or two about separate cars.) My theory was confirmed during Evacuation Monday as she and I chatted (but did not exchange phone numbers): Dentist and hygienist are, indeed, drilling. (I had thought about telling her about my blog so she could see some of the flood pictures, but now I really can’t. Did I just throw out a potential long-term friendship for a short-term joke gain? Have I forgotten that we're not really friends? You’ll note that I have neglected to say her name which is perhaps indicative of the hope I have that we will someday become friends. Maybe when that happens one day and I forget that I wrote about this and tell her all about the blog, she'll think I'm talking about the other dental hygienist with whom I share a breezeway.)

The evacuation really was a bonding experience though. We were on the ship together, we disembarked and trudged toward safety together and at the fire department we sat and talked together while waiting for our rides. (I was waiting for a rental car, she was waiting for a friend to get her…another friend who was not me…the dentist? This is all sounding very Single White Female, isn’t it? Well, get ready to go a little further on this crazy train.) When it came time to say good bye to each other ---and you have to remember, we didn't know when we were going to be able to go home again after being evacuated by boat---the atmosphere was somewhat heightened. While I didn't say, "Be well and God speed, new friend. May your head stay above the torrents and may we meet again in dryer days," there was a moment of hand holding. Okay, hear me out. She reached for my hand. (Oh my, do I sound crazy.) But she did. She reached for my hand with a warm and affectionate and utterly cool, "Take care, girl." (She says girl a lot…you know, in that way that friends do. I'm only now realizing that she probably doesn't know my name. I didn't know hers either until a note she left on the door for the UPS man said it...not helping myself here, am I?)

Anyway, again, she reached for my hand. I participated, equally engaged in the good bye handhold as she, but with perhaps a tad more enthusiasm due to my innate spazziness. This is where the story turns ugly. Her ride was waiting. She had to go. She was backing away towards the door mid-handhold and somehow (I don’t know how!) the handhold became me standing there clutching her pinky finger like a five-year old not wanting his mom to leave him with the babysitter, as she tried to escape. For a few interminable seconds, I held onto my neighbor’s dainty pinky as though I was engaging her in an unreciprocated game of pull-my-finger. I eventually let go---the Chinese finger trap released---but it left me flushed and uncomfortable in the wake of her Speedy Gonzales-like exit. I stood there in embarrassment, knowing that my overeager handholding and near finger dislocation had just cost me a new friendship. Telling Dan about it moments later, he could only shake his head and laugh at me. (He thought I had come on too strong with the wine in the first place. I thought that this was relatively reserved considering that I had wanted to leave a copy of Eat, Pray, Love on her doorstep after one of our first hallway chats revealed a recent breakup…I won’t tell you where I hid his body.)

Oh my god, I’m the crazy neighbor! I’m the craziest of the crazy neighbors! I’m the woman who sits at the window watching everyone.

“I hear she nearly took off that sweet girl’s limb during the evacuation,” they’ll whisper to each other at the mailbox.

No, couldn’t be. I’m not the crazy neighbor. I’m definitely overreacting. There’s no way they think I’m the crazy neighbor. She couldn’t possibly know that I’m the one who outed her and Dr. Beemer at the office. (He was never good enough for her.)

P.S. I just sent this to Dan to, again, get the “Is this just funny to me?” check. He not only approved, but wrote this in response:

"By the way, for the record, she was picked up at the fire station by a woman."

My very own Jeff Gillooly.