It's Not Christmas

We don't really have much of a relationship with our neighbors.  On our kitchen side we have a family that we chat with mostly because the husband is a Chatty Cathy and they have two dogs, so they (the people and the dogs) have enjoyed our revolving door home for wayward dogs the past six months. 

Directly across the street we have a family with three grown children all living at home.  We are perplexed by them because it's a small house and at night you never see any lights on in any of the windows.  It's just weird.   Since we have a large picture window that looks right into their large picture window, you'd think you'd see someone go into the kitchen to get a glass of water every once and a while, but no that's not the case.

On one side of them is another extended family that includes grandchildren.  The granddaughter does Irish step-dance and is taught by my friend Erin, but otherwise, we don't really know them.  And on the other side is Boat Guy--named such because he had a boat for two years that he worked on in his yard but never took to water.  Then he got rid of the boat and got a pool and was temporarily renamed Pool Guy, and then he got another boat so he's Boat Guy again.

And on our bedroom side is a house that we think has 2 or 3 apartments.  It's not that they are transient (we think there have only been two tenant changes in 6 years), but they are just weird.  Since it's our bedroom side, we notice them leaving at odd hours of the night.  But not like going to work because they'll be back in 15-20 minutes.  I can only think that they go our for cigarettes or something.  We notice these comings and goings because the cars are old and noisy and the people talk very loudly.  I've been woken up after midnight on more than one occasion.  It's quite obnoxious.

However, they've been driving Dave crazy for the last few months, and now I've started to become annoyed.  Every night, we get a little glimmer into our bedroom from this:

There are so many things wrong with this that I don't know where to begin.

• There is no rhyme or reason to this display.  It is haphazardly cast through the yard, not even remotely outlining the actual building or part of the structure.  Although I will stop there because there used to be a string of multi-colored lights too, but sometime between Valentine's Day and St. Patrick's Day, those disappeared.
• They manually turn on these lights, so it's not like they forget every night until the timer switches them on.  We know this because they don't come on at the same time each night.  But they always come on.
• In addition to the strings of lights, they still turn on their beacon of a porch light each night, making the display that much more of a monstrosity.
• They keep them on all night.  I regularly wake up and find these lights still on at 6 am or later.
• And finally, it's April.  Even people who leave their Christmas lights up all year round have the forethought to stop turning them on sometime in mid-January.  

Dave is trying to figure out if he can cut the strings with hedge clippers or something "accidentally."  Because these people clearly didn't get the memo that Christmas comes but once a year and never in the spring.

Maybe I should be blaming them for the long, cold, snowy winter we've had.