My new neighbor, Cal, was the definition of annoying: never returned a wave, lurked in his yard, and even implied I\u2019d stuffed my trash in his bin. The last straw came when a new security camera appeared on his garage\u2014aimed straight at the spot on my deck where I did morning yoga. Furious, I marched over to confront him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When he opened the door, Cal didn\u2019t act smug\u2014he looked exhausted. Out on my deck, he saw the angle and flushed, explaining the camera wasn\u2019t even connected; he\u2019d put it up because living alone after a divorce felt scary and exposed. The house had been his aunt\u2019s, the fence overwhelmed him, and he\u2019d worried I\u2019d think he was a creep whenever he looked over to plan repairs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The anger drained out of me. I build beautiful, odd things for a living, so we decided to redesign the fence together. Within a week, the old barrier was gone, replaced by curved cedar, wrought iron accents, and ivy pockets. The camera disappeared too, and Cal turned out to be a good listener with steady hands once he stopped overthinking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One evening he brought pizza and beer, calling it a peace offering \u201cfor being a disaster of a neighbor.\u201d We ate on my porch, admiring our fence. He admitted the trash-bin drama was a clumsy way to start a conversation. I laughed\u2014because I\u2019d had him pegged as unhinged. Turns out, it was just two awkward neighbors who needed one honest talk to become a solid team.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My new neighbor, Cal, was the definition of annoying: never returned a wave, lurked in his yard, and even implied I\u2019d stuffed my trash in his bin…. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"views":264,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6278"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6278\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6280,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6278\/revisions\/6280"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}