Oh wow, it’s autumn. It just crept up like a possum and suddenly we wonder where the sweaters are in the basement. The kids are back at school—back at their computers in such a way that I don’t feel crushing guilt–and cooking in the kitchen is less of a chore.

Maggie has been quiet. Her special friend from the alley has weed whacked the dirt and scrubby plants of her front lawn into submission. He even poured wood chips on a third of the lawn so there is no chance anything can grow back.

It looks better and that is a relief. Her quiet is a relief as well. But she’s not gone.

For example, on the very last day of our cleaning person, a woman who shop-vacced gallons of water out of our basement when we were upstate, Maggie struck. Now Tania never seemed to doubt what was going on, but I do wonder if she thought maybe we were exaggerating some of the more special things about our torture. But on Tania’s last day, she left the house and ran right into Maggie.

“Oh, are the Ditmarstons away again? Are you the cat sitter?” Maggie said, all smiley and friendly, in her Connecticut grande dame mode.

“No, I clean their house.”

“Oh, so you work for Wendy Ditmarston?”

“Yes, she’s great.”

“No, she’s a fucking cunt.”

Tania texted me this right after it happened. After cleaning our house for at least 5 years, she finally ran into Maggie on her very last day! What are the odds! Vindication pour moi!

More disturbing is that Maggie has blocked Calvin from PaulsSexKitten Twitter account and deactivated her PaulsSexKitten Instagram account! We check them every day so this morning was quite a blow. I am on Twitter with my maiden name, and this has apparently never occurred to Maggie. Her internet snooping abilities are not so good. (You know I’m going to be blocked within the week for just typing those words).

However, Maggie has moved on to Next Door, the more-paranoid Facebook-like app. I found our basement contractor through Next Door in the most pathetic social media post I have ever done, all about music through the wall and the mentally ill neighbor and I needed someone to sound proof. Our contractor was the first responder, and he has been wonderful.

Of course, sound proofing moved lower down the list of projects after the basement flood and ugly leaks appeared on the ceiling from our broken roof, but the contractor pivoted and did a great job.

But back to Next Door. A week ago, Maggie appeared looking for plumbers. Her major plumbing disaster has not been healed and the insurance company, which is also our insurance company who went after her for our damages, is not cooperating, she says. She needs a really good plumber who cleans up after himself and can do insurance forms.

Calvin and I believe that this plumbing disaster was caused by Maggie leaving the sink or tub running when she was taking to the mental hospital the second, and last time, for six days. That was also when she left her car’s sunroom open and boy did it rain. I have several photos of it raining into the car’s open sunroof. They are not exciting or interesting to anyone but me and the rest of the Paul McCartney Hate Group, which is also the name of the family text chain.

But something terrible happened at that time, something that involved a collapse of a ceiling and water raining down. I got this from a terrifying Instagram post, that I sent to her ex husband. He informed me that this was from a month ago and he had paid to fix whatever it was.

But it is not fixed. I wish I could sneak in and look, just for spite’s sake. I do wish misery upon her. Even as things are quiet and we wait for the courts to start moving again, the miasma remains. I got the “your case was unfounded,” letter from Children’s Protective Services about the second investigation, and they have not been summoned to the house in a while.

This last weekend the drag racers ran amok on the avenue down from our house. There was screeching brakes, traffic jams, revving engines, and men shouting. Calvin and I went down to check it out. The drag racers like to gather in parking lots, and the one for our now-closed supermarket was apparently the destination.

We walked over to take a look but we were too late. There was just one cop car, lights flashing, squatting in front of the entrance, and all the muscled-up cars were cruising past, onto the next Queens parking lot.

But seeing the cop flashed me back to the one cop who came in our house after Maggie called them, did not wear a mask, and sat at our kitchen counter and wrote up a report saying we were not having a drunken knife fight in front of children. That cop was a blond husky young man, and I wished I had told him to put on a mask and stop acting like an asshole.

But you don’t talk to cops that way, even though they never helped us and they barely showed up.

Back to now. As soon as I saw Maggie’s Next Door post, I deleted my crazy neighbor post. I am as paranoid as the Next Door app. Calvin joined Next Door and then deleted his account in a frenzy of fear. But we all enjoyed Maggie’s post about replacing her “lost” passport, and wished her safe travels, as well as far travels. Go very far away, Maggie.

Happy fall, hello Next Door, and a farewell to Pauls Sex Kitten Instagram. May your CSA shares be fun, without a ton of kale and acorn squash, and may the trees turn soon.