Y'all Hush: Hatfield. McCoy. Treehouse.

Dear Laney,

For your birthday last year, your dad built you the treehouse in our backyard. I love your dad and his ingenuity - I love that he can have the idea for a treehouse, and a day later, the thing exists. But as it was being built, I remember expressing my concern that the dang thing is too tall, that it's too hard for a grown woman to crawl into, and mostly, that it overlooks our neighbor's yard. The tree is on our shared property line, and the treehouse is higher than the fence line. I thought, "Maybe our neighbor liked having that fence because he's a nudist or a voodoo practitioner or just wants to avoid the prying eyes of a preschooler." But up the treehouse went.

I've never met this neighbor - we've just never been outside at the same time. A few weeks ago, Laney begged me to have a picnic dinner on our back porch. Per Laney, if I'm not going to take her to a REAL restaurant, the least I can do is take her to a PRETEND restaurant. As we set out our blanket on the ground, our neighbor emerged from his house in a tank top and started driving a remote-controlled car up and down our street, making a really awful BREEEEEEEE sound. He stopped for just a second, which was long enough for Laney to yell, "I DON'T KNOW WHY PEOPLE HAVE TO BE SO LOUD WHEN I'M TRYING TO HAVE MY DINNER!"

I wasn't sure if he'd heard, but I still immediately told Laney that it wasn't nice to yell at the neighbors - especially for being loud, since, let's face it, Laney likes to go out on the back deck at 6:30am some mornings to sing the power ballad from "Frozen" at the top of her lungs. "Sometimes, we're loud and sometimes, they're loud. We take turns being patient with each other." Love thy neighbor, blah blah blah.

Turns out he heard, because as he walked back into his yard, he yelled over the fence, "I sure do hate mouthy neighbors!"

So while this neighbor and I have never met, you could say that he and Laney have exchanged words.

So now - to me - because I'm southern and get all freaked out when people can't hush and be nice to each other, the treehouse has become this elevated Gaza Strip. It's a tiny piece of real estate where Laney keeps an eye on the border for her beer-drinking, "Carpenters"-blaring, stray cat-collecting nemesis, while wearing a princess dress and searching for pirate treasure with her lookout, Max: