Every night is drinks on the deck, compulsory yet enjoyable. We carry our drinks on to the deck and wave to the neighbors. It breaks my heart and bruises my pride to admit that my neighbors just don’t enjoy seeing me. I enjoy seeing them but when they see us, they see the people living next door to the crazy person. Why must we remind them that we exist?

And that is exactly why we must have drinks on the deck, clinking our glasses as the occasional ripe fume wafts from Maggie’s tub. Now, someone may have been tossing Tidepods into the tub, hoping to kill some mosquito larvae using the soapology method, which is far less toxic than the bleachbyfunnel method Calvin’s therapist described.

But that is just a current added benefit of drinks on the deck. What drinks on the deck is meant to signify is that we are not going away. Yes, the neighbor is picking on us in her nasty, crazy way and we are not going to slink away. And we’re not going to hide from Maggie. We are not staying inside our house 100% of the time. We will come outside 1% of the time and whoop it up.

Tonight, for example, we discussed the newest person to come to our house and tell us what we are accused of. This person was from the Adult Protective Service and she wanted to make sure that I wasn’t beating Maggie with a baseball bat and that I hadn’t had sex with Maggie’s husband. Or was just his good friend.

I think I handled it pretty well. Only once did things go out of control and that was when I repeated quickly, a couple of times, “I did not have sex with her husband.”

It’s one of the things that really trip me up with Maggie. Someone says it, or she said it to me, and I get so outraged my heart starts pounding. When I had sex with people other than Calvin before Calvin, I had real standards. I didn’t screw married guys with upsetting spouses. I had standards.

It’s so unfair.

Today’s conversation felt like a nightmare come to life. “Why is she obsessed with you? What did you do to her?”

I said we did nothing to her. She was very jealous of my husband who worked in television and when she last had a breakdown she tweeted at his company that he was a child abuser. Now she dislikes me too.

“Oh, she’s obsessed with you,” she said. “She is obsessed. Please don’t tell her I’m here.”