And You Thought You Had A Bad Neighbor

From the Minneapolis Tribune: Their kids have heard the taunts, and seen them, too, on signs and banners erected across the street from their White Bear Lake home by a neighbor taking digs at their mom's alcoholism.
Don't read the words, Kim and Greg Hoffman will say. Ignore the shouted obscenities. Yet it can be hard for a child to turn away, especially when father and daughter make the rare foray into the front yard and the neighbor stands with arms folded on her lawn or in the front window.
"She's staring," Kylie Hoffman, 9, will say.
To many, the neighbor, Lori E. Christensen, 49, is a bully making hell out of life along the tree-lined cul-de-sac of Homewood Place. But even bullies can control their behavior, Police Chief Lynne Bankes said. The charges are piling up against Christensen, an executive assistant at the Metropolitan Council, and she's scheduled to be back in court Tuesday.
"In my 35 years as a police officer, I have never met or heard of anybody who is so persistent in their negative behavior toward their neighbors -- or anyone," said Bankes, who's consulted with ministers and psychologists to try to understand the woman whose behavior has triggered at least 80 calls to police over three years. "It's unconscionable."....
About 15 years ago, the Hoffmans moved to Homewood Place, drawn by the prospect of raising children in a safe, quiet cul-de-sac, Kim Hoffman said. Christensen moved in about three years later. Their daughters played together until an incident about five years ago during which they say Christensen's daughter poured nail polish on one of the Hoffman girls. Greg Hoffman went to tell Christensen about it and was greeted with an obscenity-laced directive to take care of his own kids.
"I said, 'Lori, you may intimidate everyone else, but you don't intimidate us,'" he said. "Those were the last words we spoke to her for two years."
A detente of sorts was reached later, but relations broke down permanently in 2009 when Kim Hoffman -- a recovering alcoholic who had been rushed to the hospital that year after mixing alcohol and prescription drugs -- tried to pull her daughter away from Christensen, who was screaming at the children.
Again, she said, Christensen directed an obscenity toward her, and then said: "Why didn't you have a little more Scotch? I wish you had died," court documents state.
The aggravated stalking charges cite six subsequent incidents during which Christensen is alleged to have erected a banner stating, "I saw mommy kissing a Breathalyzer," and also made masturbatory gestures toward Greg Hoffman. She also twisted the lyrics to the sea shanty "Drunken Sailor" by singing aloud, "What do you do with a drunken mother?" and feigned drunkenness while operating a remote-controlled car in view of children celebrating their son's 13th birthday.  http://www.startribune.com/local/155189395.html