This evening was beautiful. I was on our deck with a glass of wine/seltzer and a good book about elves and magic. I was thinking what a beautiful day it was. Then Calvin came out and he was all wet. “She got me with the hose,” he said.

Maggie had pulled up to the front in car #1 (the green Camry), propped the door open and blasted CBS-FM. Then she set up her front garden hose to pour into our front patio and lawn. Calvin moved it and she squirted water on him.

Then he had to get on a call and I went outside and she did the same thing to me! Set the hose up to pour water into our patio, and then when I moved it using the rake so I wouldn’t have to touch her crap, she sprayed me too. Then I yelled at her and tried to keep her talking as Wyatt called the cops.

They didn’t come, forever. I harangued Maggie, on and on and on. Our other next-door neighbors were out watching. I consider being insulting to be one of my most polished skills but it is very hard to “destroy her from the ground up,” as we say in my family of origin.

I think I had one that landed. Maggie describes herself in her various Twitter and Instagram and Facebook accounts as a former dancer. She posted a video of her dancing years and years ago and I have watched it. Maybe I’m looking too closely at it, but it was very obvious: she dances with the personality she has–lazy, totally self-absorbed, tired.

So I made that point, and it bugged her.

She says the most horrible things and I counter with the most horrible things I can think up that I know are true. That’s where she has the advantage on me–she says whatever nasty stuff comes into her shrunken, maddened mind. She has turned an encounter years ago, when her children tried to convince Daisy to go run in traffic in front of me, and actually for my benefit, into the opposite story. That my daughter was cruel to her kids, who are both older than mine. It’s really so confusing when she deploys it.

I finally said, “Do you like attacking a 15-year-old?” Maggie said she did, so Daisy walked into her field of vision. Daisy, a mild-mannered kid, has an unfortunate taste in midriff-baring tops. I hate them but she loves them and I have given in. Thus Daisy was clothed in her usual crop top and I heard Maggie just about say something nasty about it, and then stop herself.

Maggie likes to say, “My daughter is LGBTQ and your daughter is a retard.”

She said this with Daisy right there, clearly an able-bodied, bright young woman–who talks like that?

And so it went on–cops finally did come just as we were about to eat so we brought our food out to watch them. Now the cops send out black officers. The white officers stay in the cars and the black cops have to do all the talking. This is new. Two weeks ago, white cops lead and black cops were silent.