So in June of 2008, I wrote about a mini-saga I had with my then new neighbor. My lady and I noticed she had just moved in, and we decided to bless her with a good bottle of white wine (as someone had done for us when we moved in). For whatever reason, that fine bottle of wine sat outside of her apartment a few days, and I wanted to repo it, and drink it for myself, but the lady advised against that. Finally, after a few days, my neighbor came home, rescued the bottle of wine from the hallway, and kept me from raising hell. After a chance meeting in the hallway, she thanked us, promised to invite us over(still hasn't happened), and it was all good.

Since then, I have smelled the sticky green coming out of her apartment, seen her parading around her apartment in the nude with her blinds open, and watched her leave various odd items outside her apartment for weeks at a time. In other words she's the ideal neighbor right and a class act.

So this past Monday, I found myself in the elevator with this woman, and I was faced with 30-45 seconds of bullshit idle chatter, and I really wasn't up for that. So I took the bull by the horns(no clue what that means) and decided to tell her about the homeless man that had found comfort in our lobby earlier in the week. She had NO clue about that, and she was a bit taken aback that our property owner hadn't put up a sign about what had happened, and what precautions they planned on taking. Our conversation continued outside of the elevator as we went into our respective apartment, and she thanked me over and over again for my help. She also mentioned (about 20 times) that she was from New York, so she was used to such things. Why do people from New York always tell you as much? Wesley Snipes was on Jimmy Fallon earlier this week and he mentioned he was from the Bronx like 30 times? Really Wesley? How are those taxes? I was born in Manhattan in 1975, and I lived there for 2 years, but you don't see me peppering my interviews (I have none) and my blog with, "Yeah I'm from Manhattan."..even though if I did, I suspect I would have zero street cred, and ultimately isn't that what life is about? I digress...

So yesterday when I got home, there was a bottle of wine (Beaujolais) and a note that said, "Thank you for being such good neighbors." It was a very sweet gesture, and I appreciate the love, but now the games REALLY begin. Do I go over there and say thank you? Do I get a card or a return bottle of wine? And will she judge our response and then adjust her treatment of us? Or does me being a good neighbor mean that all I have to do is drink the wine, and she'll get satisfaction out of seeing the empty bottle in the trash? There are so many rules, and I'm so ill-prepared for this. She basically took the 2 year upper hand that my lady and I had from initially buying her wine, snatched it away, and now put the onus on us. Who does she think she is?

The Stylistics - Hurry Up This Way Again