Having read your other thread about her, my opinion is that your neighbour is hot wet bat guano insane.
Having kids does weird things to people. My best friend got really strange after I had my first child. I stayed the same–same twisted sense of humor. I figured that any kid of mine would be used to my eccentricities because they grew up with me. My friend would constantly tell me I shouldn’t say certain things, or act certain ways–basically, I shouldn’t be me anymore because now I was A MOM.
Now, she has a child of her own and she’s tried her darndest to morph into June Cleaver and it’s just killing her. She tells me all the time how inadequate she feels as a mom–well, yeah! You’ve set this unattainable ideal as your goal and no one could ever live up to that!
So, the moral of the story is to be your weird-ass self. And if your kids don’t like it, at least they’ll have some funky stories to relate in therapy.
I was just kidding about that last part. 
Basing my opinion on the description of the neighbor in this thread and the others mentioned and on my perception of this world, the neighbor’s perception is as such:
Neighbor has no real self esteem. Any self esteem she developed was killed by the people that raised her because of her failures.[ul]
[li]She probably did well in school but wasn’t top of her class.[/li][li]She was a cheerleader but never made captain.[/li][li]She was on every girls team which didn’t interfere with chearleading but none of those teams won the season and she was never named in the All-State/Conference/Division teams.[/ul][/li]
Not sure if she ever went to college but she probably repeated those same failures there.
Mr. Neighbor is the first “successful” man she became involved with.
Her house is spotless and looks just like rooms featured in design magazines. This is every room including the kids room and the bathrooms.
In other words, dragongirl is actually fairly normal and is may wake up one day to the press beating on her door looking for comments and background on the neighbor.
Neighbour sounds as mad as a friggin’ badger. But not as mad as MarkofT who sounds like Hannibal Lecter.
Given all the responses so far, you probably don’t need mine as well, but I’m in the “weird mom” club myself. I’m wildly popular among my kids’ friends, probably because I don’t try to fake being a “proper” mom. This isn’t to say that I don’t make them behave when they’re with me, but if I have an arbitrary rule or I just need them to go outside because I can’t stand the noise level anymore, I just level with them. My older daughter is 14 now, and she still likes me, so I figure I’m doing something right.
I’ve actually run across this sort of thing a couple of times before, where my kids couldn’t play with someone because of issues between the adults. I just explained to them that it wasn’t anything they could help, and that it was really unfortunate, but that it wasn’t their fault. They were able to accept that and move on.
Besides, the next time she needs free babysitting, she’ll probably change her mind.
Hmm. While it definitely sounds like a cool thing to do, next time keep this in mind if you want to keep out of trouble with the law:
I agree with most everybody else here.
You’re not weird.
You sound like a good mother.
Read A Girl Named Zippy: Growing Up Small in Mooreland Indiana by Haven Kimmel and then tell us if you think you’re a weird mother.
My application for the Weird Moms Club:
Every day when my daughter and I come back from the tube, we play ‘tortoise and the hare,’ racing each other all the way home (she’s getting to be a very fast runner because of it). The other day we changed it to ‘the tortoise and the alien,’ and I made up a whole language.
When she was younger the kids would all want to walk back from nursery with us, because I’d play monsters and rear my bike up at them. I used to be hoarse from roaring all the way.
We do lots of painting at home. Our routine has always been: get paints ready. Put newspapers on floor. Run hot bath. Strip to underwear. Paint as much as you like, not worrying if it goes all over you - sometimes we’d do tribal body art in addition to painting on the paper. Then get in the bath, which immediately turns green.
My daughter’s older now, and we do more ordinary painting these days. But we will be making a large canvass to go on the wall soon - all of us - me, my daughter, my flatmate and her GF) and I’m sure that will get messy.
This thread makes me miss having a kid around.
Were you doing Up on the Rooftop and doing a verse for each kid? My Mother-in-law does that and hey I married her kid.
Coach a kids sports team. They’re not your kids but they’re kids.
I’ve been waiting a long time to advise someone to do this, and I believe this is the time.
Inspired (or stolen from) by this thread.
Should you feel so inclined, I suggest you get a whole bunch of lanw gnomes. I don’t mean three or four – I mean thirty or forty. An army of lawn gnomes. Buy them little rifles or uniforms. Or dress them as Roman soldiers.
Once you’ve got them kitted out, arrange them in an appropriate fashion (ie: if they’re dressed as Vietnam veterans, crouched in jungle flora; if they’re Romans, have them in orderly rank and file), and every night, advance them just a little bit towards your neighbor’s house. Six inches or a foot.
This should really freak her out. Eventually, they’ll make it all the way up to her doorstep and she will think she’s gone crazy(ier).
Since you’re a mother, you could let your kids help you. I know that when I was little, if my mom had asked me to convince my grandparents (who were our neighbors) that they were going insane, I would have jumped at the chance. Especially if it involved lawn ornaments.
Alternately, you could use flamigos or porch geese. Now, porch geese would be creepy, what with their beady concrete eyes.
Oh, man, that’s BRILLIANT!
That is TOO damn funny Lillalette.
Gosh, I’m always struggling to be as weird as possible. I’m drowning in suburban mediocrity out here.