There was a white haired woman standing out in the street with a broom chasing the hell hounds from next door (which got out again) earlier when I left to go to the post office. I didn’t recognize her, but seeing as she had a broom, I just assumed she belonged to one of the houses on the street even though I’ve never seen her before. There are lots of people living on this street I have never seen before. When I got back from my errand, she was puttering around in Pat’s yard. In my mind, I then placed her in the category of belonging with Pat’s house. I mean, who putters around in a yard they have no business puttering around in?

Skip to an hour ago … I opened the shades on the front den window to let some light in. It’s something I don’t often do, because it makes hiding from strangers standing on my porch and knocking on my door more than a bit difficult, if I am sitting at my computer. When I opened the shades, I noticed the same white haired woman was still toddling around the area. I made a mental note that she may be mental. I watched her for a few minutes and determined she wasn’t stark raving mad and therefore not a threat of any immediate sort. I went back to wasting my time reading Metafilter.

Skip to a few minutes ago … I was sitting here hunched down in front of my computer monitor playing a stupid flash game when someone dared to ring the doorbell. Have I mentioned lately how much I hate my doorbell? It sounds like cats being strangled while their claws are being drug over a chalkboard. Anyway, I hunch down even more in my chair, in order to not be seen by whoever it is that doesn’t know I hate my doorbell. I peeked around the edge of my monitor to make sure this person wasn’t in front of the window. They weren’t visible, so when they knocked on the door, I made a dash to the kitchen and began making my way to the living room window as stealthily as I could to get a peek at who it could be. Please do note that at the very moment I am made aware of your presence on my front porch, often before you even bother pressing that ugly pink doorbell button or knocking on the door, you will be vetted thoroughly from several locations within the house. If I don’t know you, the chances of you ever even knowing I exist within these walls are slim to none.

I poke my eyeball up against the blinds. It’s the white haired woman, and I determine that not answering the door is the best course of action. If it’s important, she’ll be persistent or leave a note. She does neither, and I watched as she stepped off my porch and headed across the street to Pat’s kid’s house and rings their doorbell and knocks on their door. No one answers, which is no surprise. We all peek through our blinds before answering our door. I think this behavior comes from living within two miles of 75 churches (I wish I was exaggerating) and having to deal with a weekly onslaught of people selling religion door-to-door. As she stepped off the porch of the house across the street, she took notice of a small fallen branch, not much bigger than a large twig really, and she starts kicking it into the air for whatever insane reason she seems to have. My suspicion that she’s insane grew exponentially at that point. This prompted the man of the house to answer the door. I couldn’t hear what they were saying (too bad I didn’t have the living room window open), but she pointed over to the house the hell hounds come from, or maybe the house where Sewing Woman used to live, and a few words are exchanged. She held up something black she was carrying that she didn’t have before. I couldn’t make out what it was. The man shrugs, shakes his head, and goes back into his house. The white haired woman proceeds out into the middle of the street and wanders off down the road.

So now I am left wondering who the hell she is, where she came from, where the hell she got the broom she had earlier, why she was chasing the hell hounds, and whether or not she is, in fact, stark raving mad. For a moment, I thought maybe she was a census taker, seeing as I have neglected my lawful duty to report my household details for that census test and have received the obligatory letter telling me “someone will be contacting” us soon. I dismissed this as a possibility though, because that certainly wouldn’t explain why this somewhat crazy-acting person has been hanging around on my street for most of the day … unless she’s stalking those of us who haven’t filled out our forms yet. It’s all just very weird, and I am going to begin periodic surveillance of the street now. I have even put the chain on the door. If she rings my gosh awful doorbell again, I will have to answer it just out of curiosity.

With my luck it WILL be a stark raving mad census taker, and then I’ll have to act like I don’t speak English. No one ever expects someone to only know German, and it’s a rare day when you run into someone who also speaks it (around here anyway). In fact, never once has my ploy of “Ich spreche nicht Englisch” not worked perfectly. All the same, it just doesn’t seem like this person has any official reason to be meandering around on our street and puttering in our yards. She seems altogether nuts to me.

I’m telling you, there is never a dull moment around here.