A woman writes in to tell me her neighbour has measured the property line between their yards. With string. And stakes. Like an archaeological dig. Like she's about to find a Viking ship under the hydrangeas.
And what did this woman discover, after all that surveying? That the garden bed is over by four inches.
Four. Inches.
Girl, put down the string. Nobody has ever laid awake at three in the morning thinking "I gave away four inches and it ruined me." That's not a boundary dispute. That's a hobby.
Welcome to Bitch Fest!
I'm Joseph Tito. Gay dad of twin girls, bestselling author who peaked so early my career is legally a flashback, and your friendly neighbourhood truth-teller — which is ironic, given today's subject.
Coming at you from King City, Ontario, where the houses are close enough that I know what my neighbour had for dinner, and he knows what my husband and I argued about on Tuesday. It was throw pillows. It's always throw pillows. We're at six hundred and counting.
Today's theme: neighbours. The only relationship on Earth you didn't choose, can't leave, and cannot block. You can divorce a husband. You can quit a job. You can ghost a friend. But that woman across the fence? She is there. She'll be there when you get home. She'll be there when you retire. She will outlive you out of spite.
And every street has one. If you don't know who yours is —
Girl. It's you.
Let's get into it.
This one's signed "Four Inches From Losing It," and she writes:
"Dear Bitch Fest, I live in a nice quiet neighbourhood with exactly one problem, and her name is Lorraine.
Lorraine has a survey of her property. Laminated. She has measured the line between our yards with actual string and stakes, and she has informed us that our garden bed encroaches by four inches.
She photographs our garbage bins on days she feels they're presenting into her sightline. She left a note about my son's basketball net casting a shadow on her driveway. When we hung patio lights, she asked whether we had considered how that reads from the street.
Last month she knocked to tell me our tree was planning to drop leaves on her side. Planning. My tree has intentions now.
My husband says ignore her. But I'm outside at ten at night sweeping my own driveway like a criminal, because I can feel her watching. I've started parking down the block. It's my house and I'm hiding in it.
How do I get my yard back?"
"Considered how that reads from the street."
Ma'am. It's a string of lights. It reads like people live here and they're having a nice time — which I suspect is the actual complaint.
And the tree. The tree is planning to drop leaves. Lorraine has assigned criminal intent to a maple. In her mind that tree sat down with a lawyer and worked out a strategy against her. She thinks the tree is coming for her specifically.
Do you understand what you're dealing with? You don't have a neighbour. You have a woman who has been assigned a nemesis by her own brain, and the nemesis is photosynthesis.
But here's the turn, and it's the same as it always is. This is not about your yard.
Nobody who is happy owns a laminated survey. Nobody with a full life is out there at dawn with string. That woman has taken every ounce of ambition she has left and pointed it at four inches of dirt — because four inches of dirt is the only thing in her entire life she can still win.
You're not in a property dispute. You're in somebody's retirement plan.
Let me tell you exactly what Lorraine is doing, because it has a shape.
She has standards, and no audience. That's it. That's the whole disease.
She has spent decades perfecting a lawn that nobody compliments, edging a driveway nobody notices, and existing at a level of tidiness that has never once been acknowledged by another human being. So she has drafted you as the audience. Involuntarily. You are now performing in a show where she is the critic and the theatre is your backyard.
The garbage bins aren't a problem. They're material. They give her a reason to come out of the house with a purpose. That note about the basketball net took her forty minutes to write. She had a draft. Somewhere in that woman's kitchen is a first version she decided was too aggressive.
And when you sweep your driveway at ten at night, she wins. Not because she got a clean driveway — because she got a reaction. You have confirmed she is the most important person on that street. You've made her the weather.
She doesn't want your four inches, honey. She wants to matter. And you've been paying her in the only currency she accepts, which is your attention.
Now. In the interest of full disclosure.
I am not writing this from the moral high ground. I'm writing this from the other side of the fence.
My neighbours in King City have not forgiven me, and they're not going to, and honestly? They shouldn't. Because my dog has a routine. And that routine involves a specific patch of lawn that is legally, spiritually, and by any reasonable measure — theirs.
And I have stood there. Holding a leash. Making direct eye contact with a man through his own kitchen window. While my dog handles his business on that man's grass.
And I gave him a little wave. A wave. Like we were friends. Like we were in this together.
That man has watched me let a dog defile his property, and then greet him like a mailman.
The stares I get on that street could preserve meat. In winter, the only thing colder than an Ontario January is the temperature of my neighbours' faces when my garage door goes up.
And here's where it gets worse, because I want you to understand the full picture.
I have never once handled it. Not properly.
There's been no conversation. No apology. No moment where I walked over like an adult and said, "I know about the dog. I'm sorry. I'll fix it." Zero.
What I have done instead is develop an elaborate system of scheduling. I now walk that dog at hours specifically chosen to reduce the odds of human contact. I am running counter-surveillance on my own street.
I have looked out a window to check if the coast was clear. In my own neighbourhood. That I pay taxes in.
So Lorraine has a laminated survey, and I have a tactical dog-walking schedule, and I want to be honest with you — I'm not sure which one of us is doing worse. She's at least being direct about it.
I roast this woman for being obsessed with her neighbours. Meanwhile I've built an entire covert operation to avoid mine. Girl, we are the same animal. She just has better documentation.
Okay. So how do you get your yard back?
Three lines, and not one of them is an argument.
One — for the next complaint, whatever it is: "Thanks for letting me know."
That's it. That is the entire sentence. No defence, no explanation, no fix. It's warm, it's polite, it is completely hollow, and it gives her absolutely nothing to work with. Complaints need oxygen. Don't feed it any.
Two — for the four inches, once, in writing: "If you'd like a formal survey, you're welcome to arrange one, and we'll go by whatever it says."
Send it, then never raise it again. You've now handed her the responsibility, the cost, and the paperwork. Watch how fast four inches stops mattering when it comes with an invoice.
Three — for the driveway. And this is the real one. Stop sweeping at ten o'clock at night.
I mean it. That's the actual instruction. Go to bed. Let a leaf sit there. Let it sit there all weekend, and let that woman look at it.
Here's why "thanks for letting me know" beats every argument you could possibly make.
You cannot win against Lorraine. Not because she's right — because winning requires the other person to have a limit, and she does not have one. She has time. She has a laminate machine. This is her whole thing. You have a job and a kid and a life. You will run out of energy roughly nine hundred years before she does.
So don't try to win. Make it boring. Boring is the only thing that actually kills this, because she isn't feeding on the dispute — she's feeding on the response. Cut the supply and there's nothing left to escalate.
And now the part nobody wants to hear. Some of this you are doing to yourself. She never asked you to sweep at ten at night. She never told you to park down the block. You did that. You handed a stranger the deed to your own backyard, because you couldn't stand the idea of somebody out there thinking something unkind about you.
Somebody is always thinking something unkind about you. Lorraine's just doing it with better sightlines.
You're allowed to have leaves. You're allowed to have lights. You're allowed to have a basketball net that casts a shadow — because that's what the sun does. It's been doing it a long time, and Lorraine has never once beaten it.
To Four Inches From Losing It: it was never about the four inches, and you already know that. Buy the patio lights. Hang more of them. Put up so many lights that woman needs blackout curtains — and then sleep like a baby.
And to Lorraine. And every Lorraine out there with a survey, a laminator, and a grudge against a tree — nobody is coming to inspect your lawn. There is no prize. There was never a prize. You have spent a decade guarding a border that exists in your head, and one day you're going to be gone, and somebody is going to move in and put a trampoline on it.
Next week: money. Because somebody wrote in about a friend who always, always, always forgets her wallet — for eleven years — and I have receipts.
Until then, keep being unapologetically you. Loud, chaotic, and one Chardonnay away from flipping a table on Real Housewives.
This is Joseph Tito — and I bitch so you don't have to.