The Wrong Squid: Merry Christmas from the Macaroni Grill The lady across the street from us is crazy. We always sort of knew this, but as time has passed she went from "kind of nutty" to "borderline, if not fully, batshit." She and her husband invited us over for dinner last winter during a blizzard. My brief interactions with her prior to this had left me thinking she was a little weird, but nothing too unusual. She had kind of a forceful way of saying things, but some people are just more intense than me, so I didn't really think much of it, until our visit to their house.
I should mention that Frank, Shumai's drummer, once answered the door when she rang the doorbell, and then could not stop talking about how huge her boobs were. This is important.
So, we ate dinner, and had some drinks. It was a blizzard outside, so even though we only lived across the street we weren't really in a rush to go. Until she started breastfeeding. While drunk. And she was pretty hammered. And the baby didn't really want to feed. So she would sit there, huge boob hanging out totally unconcealed, talking to us as though nothing weird was happening. It was a little awkward. But we left it at, ok, she's pretty strange, and kind of an exhibitionist, but whatever.
Not too long after that, she told me about how she had gotten in trouble for breastfeeding at the Macaroni Grill. I feigned surprise.
Later, she very aggressively invited me to a skating/cocktail party a charity she worked for was putting on. It was really the angriest invitation I have ever gotten.
A day or two before we put the For Sale sign out in front of our house, she was yelling to me from her yard as I was walking from my car. Nothing major, just neighborly chitchat. I suppose I could have told her then that we were planning on moving, but I didn't want to shout it throughout the neighborhood, it was kind of off-topic, and I figured she'd find out soon enough anyway, and it would be no big deal.
The day the sign went out, I was out of town. On my way back to Providence, I called Collin to see if any of the neighbors had stopped by to ask what was going on. One had. Guess who it was? Apparently she didn't ring the doorbell, but Collin heard someone stomping around on the porch, and opened the door to see what was up. "I was just talking to Erik the other day and he didn't say anything about selling the house," she barked.
"Maybe he just didn't feel like getting into it," Collin replied.
"Very strange. Very strange." She kept repeating "very strange" to herself and then just walked away. The only thing she has said to me since then was a very angry "Happy Thanksgiving."
Oddly enough, none of the other neighbors, even ones I had talked to in the week leading up to the sign going out, had any problem with finding out we were moving this way.
I only bring this up because it's trash day, and her trash is mainly a large pile of pine branches. Anyone else, and I'd assume they had to trim their Christmas tree down to make it fit in the house. But with her history, I'm assuming she just found out Santa isn't real, and in a fit of rage, let that tree know what she thought about being lied to.
