Cookie Mystery...solved! (maybe)

Call me Encyclopedia Brown...I think I have the great cookie mystery solved (see earlier post if you don't know what I'm talking about).

Before I tell you about the possible solution, I need to "introduce" you to our condo community and one of our neighbors.

We live in a condo community that used to be a senior living community. Most of the homes are owned, and although it is not officially senior living, at least half of the residents are seniors. The buildings are only one or two stories, with attached garages. The townhomes/condos (is there really a difference between condos and townhomes? I am using the terms interchangeably). There are 3-4 townhomes attached in each block. The front doors in our block are all facing the same way as the front doors in the next block over, and our back doors and garages are facing the back doors and garages of our other neighboring block. In the front there is a sidewalk, and in the back there is just the parking lot and street within the complex.

The landscaping around the blocks of buildings is professionally maintained, with grounds crew coming at least once a week. With that said, let me describe one of our neighbors.

She daily polishes her wind chimes and garden art. She sweeps the street outside the garage areas. She VACUUMS her landscaping stones to remove the stray leaves and petals. She prunes the shrubbery around the entire building. She waters all the greenery around the entire building. She does all of these things at about 3 AM (she ostensibly says that she does it at this time because it is cooler, but I theorize that she does it at this time so the other neighbors don't turn her in for overusing water or prevent her from messing around in their yard area).

I went, with Cam on my hip, to give her the cookies we had made to introduce ourselves. Upon reaching the sidewalk leading to her house, I caught a wiff of industrial strength cleaning materials. Right outside her door she had a little shelf loaded with cleaning supplies. When she opened the door, I was almost knocked over by the fumes of orange glo, tilex, bleach, lysol, etc. Cameron sneezed. My eyes watered. Our sinuses were cleared.

I quickly introduced ourselves and offered the cookies before she chased us away with mace, or Formula 409. Although the neighbor seemed friendly enough, she kept the storm door (which was a fairly dense screen, so I could only make out her outline) shut for most of our 15 minute conversation (she filled me in on her health, her perception of the state of decay and apathy of the neighborhood, her illegal-according to the community's rules-ownership of 3 cats--one of which she "took in"...aka stole... from one of the neighbors because she felt as though the neighbor didn't take care of it, and the neanderthal nature of the previous owners of our townhome--apparently they tracked mud all over the street and into their own garage frequently). As our conversation drew to a close, our neighbor (I will call her Gloria) finally cracked the screen and accepted our paper plate of cookies.

Just as we were leaving, Gloria opened the door and called "Oh, and I don't know how, but some of my landscaping stones are by your front door. I don't know how they got there, but I took them back." Oh. I had noticed that the stones I collected from the beach and placed in our front garden area were gone, but I figured it was the grounds crew that took them away, owing to some community rule about rocks in the gardens. Who knows.

At any rate, I responded that the stones were ones that i had collected from the beach. Gloria then replied "Oh, I noticed they didn't quite match mine! I'll return them." She had "reclaimed" the stones and placed them in her landscaping area. I told her not to worry about it, that I collect tons of stuff from the beach and could just get more.

The next day I noticed that my unmatching rocks were placed again by my front door.

Last week I left our neighbor a wire flower garden ornament with a thank you note acknowledging all her hard work in the neighborhood (it does look nice and I know she cares about it, even though we would all be okay if our street was not swept and every stray leaf removed). She stopped by later to thank me (I must admit I was paralyzed when she came into our front foyer area...it is clear that a baby lives here and i could already imagine us making it onto her pigsty list).

Yesterday I noticed that she had placed the wire flower IN OUR YARD SPACE in the back. There is no equivocation, no gray area, no blurry line. It is in our space, put there sometime in the wee hours.

So she returned the flower, and I am betting that she also returned the cookies. Anything we gift her with returns to us like a boomerang. Why? I have no idea.