She’s gone bonkers again.

The cops showed up at our house three times between 3 AM and 4 AM on Thursday morning.

On Friday night she began blasting I Heart Radio through our bedroom wall, and she did not turn it off until Sunday morning. At varying times she blasted different music on the first floor, but that went on and off.

We did not sleep in our bedroom that weekend. We listened to classic rock (but white bands only—she only plays white artists) through the walls of the top two floors. I’ve imagined so many catastrophic existences for myself — mostly around climate change — but to be tortured by classic rock was never one of them. Is there a study I can enroll in?

My plan with the current torture is to not lose my temper. I will speak strongly but I won’t scream my resonant rage scream. I won’t pace around grinding my teeth. It does no good! I will not get horribly angry because it doesn’t change the situation.

Calvin’s challenge is to react in the moment. We are almost exactly opposite in our reactions and spend a lot of time checking our ideas out with each other. “Should we knock on her door?” he asks me. I say we should. We pound on her door. The music goes off, then goes on again.

The next morning I catch her outside. I’m on the balcony, she’s on the pavement behind her house. “Could you turn the music on the second floor off?” I ask, in a cheery, menacing voice I didn’t know I had before all this crap began.

Maggie blew me off, and then said, “I’m ready for my close-up” and pirouetted in the alley. Then I left her a note, taped to the ground, that asked her to turn off the music. I chose the ground because 1) I didn’t want to go too far inside her area, and 2) I didn’t want to touch her stuff. The ground belongs to everybody.

Our short-term strategy (for this last Saturday) was to acknowledge this assault going on. To make clear and public that this woman was attacking us. The neighbors are all terrified of her because none of them want to be where we are.

The immediate result of this round of torture is that Calvin and I are obsessively focused on dinner: it must be good. It must be enjoyed. It must be slightly different or better than the last time we made that particular dish.

Today, Monday, the music is a dull roar and we can inhabit all our normal rooms. However, there is a new topic: Maggie has put up the loudest wind chimes in the entire world. Wyatt is plotting their demise. I suggested he use a long, serrated bread knife and saw them down, but that plan didn’t gain traction. Could we throw razor blades at the wind chime’s strings? No one liked that one either.

We discussed taking them down in the day, when she drives off to buy beer, but we really should do it night, under cover of the dark. I think only our security camera is trained on her door, and we could just turn it off. For the Ditmarstons, petty vandalism is a family affair.

I’ve had a lot of time to plan. When Maggie blasted music for those 2 solid days, I hid in the basement in the evenings. I am terrified she will figure out my hiding place, so I don’t turn any lights on. She might find me! I lay there in the dark listening to the Remains of the Day audiobook and I think (I’ve read the book before, but it is relaxing).

In the cool darkness, I hatched some plans—how about a Rottweiler puppy? It would grow into a fierce-looking dog and that would scare Maggie. Wyatt loves this plan, Daisy loves it, Calvin loves it. We all love it but we all know our own reality. We’re not a dog family. We’re lazy. Yesterday I thanked the cat for not barfing and immediately was informed by Calvin and Wyatt that she had barfed when I wasn’t around. “Thank you for not barfing when I was around,” I told the cat. The cat naps with her head in the water bowl, but that is not my responsibility. A puppy is like a baby, I’ve been told, and baby-raising was not a big strength for me.

Friday night was warm enough for the window to be open, and a brisk breeze blew through. I love breezy nights, and I thought of all the breezy bedrooms I missed. My room in my parents’ house—my cat in those years (Preggy) would literally perch on the eaves next to my window until I open the window and she would fling herself inside. Now, once inside, the cat would poop behind my bed, but aside from that, it was thrilling to have a cat risk one of her lives to get into one’s window!

In France, in this kind-of castle where Calvin’s step mother used to live, our room, which had parrots on the wallpaper, had a huge window with wooden shutters that looked over the terraced lawns and a supremely slimy organic pool where we weren’t supposed to wear sunscreen but did, secretly. Once a bat flew in the room, wheeled around and flew out. The breeze was great. The moon was gorgeous. One summer a very loud frog kept everyone on our side of the tower awake, and Calvin did try to catch it in the moat, because there was a moat. He caught a very fat frog and released it into another stream nearby but the next night the loud frog was back.

This was a cool and breezy night of the kind that I love, and I enjoyed it, hiding in my basement lair, imagining my future Rottweiler. The wind blew through and all the Ditmarstons finally slept.