Remember Creepy Walking Couple? That fashion-challenged, straight-out-of-1988, crazy-haired, scary-grin man and woman who held hands and walked around my old 'hood day and night? She had hair down to her petite behind, he had a rainbow-coloured windbreaker and a beer gut. I really missed their eccentricity for the first two days we were here.

Then along came Glaring Hobble Man and I instantly felt at home!

On that fateful day I was outside with my little dog, Spazzerella, trimming some brush around the front yard. You know, cleaning the place up a little. Spawnling was exploring the grass. As I was pulling a twig out of his mouth for the fourth time, Spazzerella starts yipping at a man walking down the street. He was hobbling, really. Ok, not total hobbling, but all those traits are emphasized when you don't particularly like someone, ok?

I removed the twig from a disappointed Spawnling (who then crawled over to make mouth friends with a rock) and ran up to Spaz and the old man she was barking at. I picked her up and apologized to him, smiling and saying 'Her bark is worse than her bite. She's quite nice, just pretends to be a ten-pound guard dog. Haha!'

The hobbling man kept walking and smirked at me.

What? Did you just smirk at me, new neighbour? Oh, I don't think so. Nobody smirks at me and gets away with it.

People react in very different ways when they're faced with rudeness. Some are rude back. Others ignore the perpetrator. Both are acceptable when met with injustice, I say. However, I like to throw my niceness in their faces. I relish being as polite and kind as possible so they feel even more jerkish at the end of the day. Besides, being mean to someone who's being friendly must have serious karma repercussions, right? I love helping people make bad with the universe.

'Have a nice day!' I say with a smile sweet enough to rot his eyeballs.

Does he say 'You too?' Or even, since we're in a rather French-speaking area of the country, ' Merci, Mademoiselle. Et vous aussi'?

No. He glares as he walks around me on the road. Not a hint of pleasantness in sight.

When I die and become a goddess and he dies and I force him to reincarnate, I'm going to send him back as an ant that spends the last days of its life searching for food in the bottom of a diaper pail and having poopy baby wipes thrown on top of it until it suffocates.

But until then, I need to formulate a plan to make him either respect me as his equal, worship me as his superior (preferable) or, barring that, give him real reasons to despise me. For starters, I'll give him a name and shame him on my blog.

Glaring Hobble Man lives three doors down in an impeccable little bungalow. And I mean little. It's so small it looks like my house threw up some bricks and they happened to land neatly a few doors down in an empty yard. I guess he doesn't need a big house though, because he spends all his time walking and glaring at people. He also has perfectly trimmed hedges, which leads me to believe that he either hobbles over and trims them himself or he hires someone to do it (probably in lieu of adding any size to his existing home; Square Footage Girl would frown upon him.)

I spoke to the previous owner of this house, who said GHM never liked her, either. On more than one occasion he commented that her yard wasn't kept up enough. I think it had to do with the ditch in front of the house not being mowed to his satisfaction. I believe he may not like me because, while I was out beautifying the yard not 48 hours after moving in, I was not, in any way, shape or form, mowing the ditch.

I have made his poo-poo list for all eternity.

No matter. I shall win his heart, force his worship or, at the very least, make it well known that I could kick his ass and throw him into his perfect hedges. In the meantime, I almost don't want to mow the ditch. There's something ever so satisfactory about pissing off hobbling old men.

And yes, I am going to Hell for that and many other reasons. I'm ok with that.