Setting Fire to the Bridge

More in the neighbor war:

I wrote a letter. Detailing what the law ordinance was, and what I was planning on doing in the coming months to help out with the situation.

Basically, she took offense to every single bulletpoint. Even coming over to her house she found offense to. Because I said that she should come over to my house to receive schedules of our practices. She said, "You aren't welcome at my house because I have dogs."

How do strangers know this? "The mailman has enough sense, why don't you?" she said to me in a voicemail on my phone. "If you don't want to get attacked, don't come over on my yard."

Oh, damn. She di'nt.

She found it insulting that I would think to buy earplugs and Ibuprofen every month for her. "I can afford my own medicine, and why would I want to put in earplugs in my own home?!"

I retorted when I called her back, "I'm sorry if I offended you. I was merely trying to offer services to the headaches we might induce on your head by playing legally next door. You said you get migraines, and if we were the cause, I wanted to help out."

She won't have any of it. She's done. No more bargaining. My letter was sympathetic (plenty of "I'm trying my best to be neighborly, I want us to remain awesome, so I'm really trying. My house is your house.") and constructive. She referred to it as "your little note" time and time again in both my voicemail and our conversation.

I basically think that any bridge gaping the trough between Nicole and I has been burned, collapsed, and washed down river. No matter what I do, nothing will fix it. We might have shared glances, awkward at best, when I'm outside doing things around the yard, but I've tried. I've done everything.

Except . . .

1) Move out, find a new space. Which costs money and puts my band in jeopardy. I'm not sure they're willing to put down money for a space at this stage in the game. It was a battle for Scotty to be in the band, now on top of that fee there's a new monthly rent fee. Great.

2) Call the cops and really find out if I'm in the legal limit of 10db's within Nicole's house. If we check out fine, then we could keep playing, according to the law. We could stop at 9:00 still, but at this point we could go on till 10:00pm as far as I care.

3) If I wanted to get even (but I don't think it'll come to this) I could call the cops on her for the domestic disputes occurring in the house, the dog biting me on a yard with no proclamation of "Beware of Dog", the other dog she has chasing my roommate down the back alley today, and the barking dogs followed by "BEAR! STOP!!!" But this is a trifle passive aggressive and mean, and I don't play that game.

I'm not sure what to do. I'm in a real pickle here.

The only good thing is I've got some time to deal with this. Patch practices have ceased due to Scotty's month long departure to Maine for Winter Break.

Rage Against the Machine -- "I'm Housin'"