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My husband and I once lived in a neighborhood where we were surrounded by weird neighbors. They were weird to our left, to our right, and directly in front of us on the other side of the street. There was no way of avoiding the weirdness either because all of the houses were built so close together they were practically attached.

We could literally reach out and touch the house on either side of us from a second story window. We could hear snippets of odd conversations as if we were in the same room, and cooking smells would drift and mingle between the houses, so it was hard to tell what was cooking where. It was also impossible to determine by smell alone which house the cannabis smoke was coming from. It turned out behavior was not a very good indicator of who was smoking the marijuana either. Everybody appeared to be on something.

One strange night at around 9 p.m. we couldn't help but notice the neighbor on our immediate left digging ditches in his back yard. At first we thought there must be some logical explanation or practical reason for this - there was not. He just liked digging ditches. Once he had the entire yard dug up, he would fill everything back in and start all over again.

Because of his compulsive ditch digging, no matter how clean he was - and he did shower every day - he always had a bit of soil clinging to some part of his person. The neighborhood snidely referred to him as the ditch pig behind his back.

From our bedroom balcony we had a clear view of what the ditch digger was up to, and this was how we knew he on occasion would sleep in a freshly created ditch. The first time we noticed him sleeping in one of his ditches, we were alarmed that he was injured or even dead and went running over to see if he was okay.

He was not at all happy by the intrusion and screamed at us to get out of his yard. Couldn't we see he was trying to get some sleep?

We avoided making eye contact with him after that.

The neighbors on our immediate right enjoyed to let loose and partake in various illicit substances. They were in their 30s and did not appear to have jobs. They also did not appear to sleep or leave their home. Teens and young adults streamed in and out of the house at all hours of the day.

They covered their front porch and deck in heavy plastic and then cut a hole in the plastic for the chimney of their wood burning stove. Since our houses were so close together, the smoke from this chimney would often billow through an open window

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