I would banish my next-door neighbor if I could banish anyone.

She is a 40-something school personnel who is recently single. We live in a very nice neighborhood. Per the county tax records, her house is worth about $340K. Ours is worth quite a bit less because it is quite a bit smaller than hers.

I would like to banish her from our lives because she throws wild, loud parties at her pool, which disturb our sleep. During the summer, she does this on random nights. She also allows her 17-year-old daughter to do the same, underage drinking and such included in the deal with all 30+ of her friends. She even told my husband, in front of a policeman, that she didn't feel that it was her problem that we cannot sleep and that she truly believes that she and her daughter "have a right" to throw parties as much as they want. Thankfully, the policeman agreed with us and told her that the curfew was 10:00 and that after that she needed to have her guests either talk very quietly or go inside her 3,000sq ft house.

She also owned a dog who barked constantly in the evenings and at night. The very first night we lived here, we knew that we had a problem because the dog started barking and would not shut up. We went over to talk to the husband (at the time they were still married), and he was really good about keeping the dog quiet. When they divorced, however, she thought it was her God-given right to let her pet disturb the neighborhood without recourse.

This was our "dream house". We both had been in bad marriages previously, and we had saved a lot of money and paid down our previous mortgage to sell high and have enough to afford a very nice place. We both work year-round; she's works at a school so doesn't have anything to do in the summer, apparently. This neighbor has truly turned my dream house into a nightmare.

We have called the police, filed reports about the dog, and will continue to do so until she either moves out or they arrest her for disturbing the peace. We are also looking into filing a lawsuit based on our neighborhood covenant/bill of assurance and state/local nuisance laws.

You can probably understand, now, why I would love to banish her from our lives. She needs to live in a place like Destin, FL or in an apartment building full of younger people, or even out in the country. She does not need to live in a nice neighborhood where people mow their grass and keep their lawns looking nice. Her lawn is almost completely dead because her watering system has a $50 issue that she has known about for almost 2 years and hasn't fixed. The rest of the yard is grown up and some weeds are almost 8-9" high. It's an embarrassment to the neighborhood, an eyesore, and it will bring down property values.