Hard as I may try to avoid it, I am late to work just about every morning. In fact, I'm hard pressed to recall a single incident of punctuality within the past six months. Oh, I try. Truly. Even still, I invoke the office's 15 minute grace period with such regularity that most of my coworkers chidingly raise an eye brow when I do manage to scamper in promptly. Okay, yes-there was that one morning where I spent the whole duration of Patsy Cline's Greatest Hits in the shower and also that week where seemingly every NHL playoff game went into double overtime, but mostly I am not late without a credible reason. Spilling gasoline on myself during a pre-work fill-up, getting pulled over for a spent brake light, tearing through the back of my closet for my right Mary Jane‹these are all worthy reasons. And this morning's reason proved no exception.

I was well past her house on my daily dog walk when a neighbor screamed at me with such ferocity and admonishment that I was certain she had channeled my very own mother.

"DON'T YOU LET YOUR DOGS MESS IN MY DAMN YARD!"

Confused and somewhat shocked, I turned around. She stood on her doorstep, the door held ajar by her slippered foot. She had a cordless phone to her ear.

"KEEP YOUR DOGS' MESS OUTTA MY YARD!"

"I have a bag! I clean up after my dogs!" I meekly offered, waving a steamy bag of freshly deposited doggie business at her.

"I DON'T CARE ABOUT YOUR BAG, LITTLE GIRL. I DON'T WANT YOUR DOGS IN MY YARD!"

"But they weren't in your-"

"I'M SERIOUS! IF YOUR DOGS GOTTA MESS, YOU MAKE ŒEM MESS IN YOUR OWN YARD!" Her tense face shook as she pumped the cordless phone in the air as if to punctuate her sentence. I felt sorry for whomever she was talking to on the phone.

I defensively bellowed back, "MY DOGS HAVE NEVER USED THE BATHROOM IN YOUR YARD, LADY! THEY'VE NEVER EVEN STEPPED FOOT IN YOUR YARD!" It was the truth. I had no idea what prompted this accosting, but I recognized that she was pissed to the point of spitting, indeed so mean and mad enough that I wondered if the wisps of grey snaking through her hair would stand on end in Bride of Frankenstein fashion.

"IF I SEE YOUR DOGS IN MY YARD AGAIN, I'M GOING TO CALL THE POLICE!" She said it like Œpo-lice' (with extra emphasis on the Œpo') and this time she punctuated her sentence with the slamming of her front door. I heard the panes rattle in their frame.

"WHATEVER!"

That's all I could muster. A fifth grader's wimpy retort. I thought of hurling the poo-filled bag at her front door, but thought better of it. Instead, I felt the delayed pinpricks of adrenaline stinging under my skin and the hotness behind my eyes signaling oncoming tears.

I finished the walk back to my house, tears welling, feeling embarrassed and persecuted. But I do clean up after my dogs, I thought. I've never let them go into people's yards. I am a good neighbor. I am good to my neighbors. I've given part of my dinner to the homeless that frequently walk through our neighborhood. The hubster and I did yard work for our octogenarian neighbors when they battled a month-long spell of Bronchitis. We help them clean their gutters! We help them move heavy things! We pick up litter, for chrissakes! Even the dogs walked a straight line back to the house instead of saluting every other tree with their left legs like usual. By the time I put my key in the front door, my cheeks were soppy and my nose was drippy.

Just great. I would never be able to walk by that monster's house again. If she ever found dog crap in her yard in the future, she instantly would think of me. I needed to change my whole walk route. Other neighbors, ones I'd yet to meet, probably heard me yelling and assumed I was some sort of shit-strewing creature.

And so I realized it: I was going back over there. I needed to rectify my morning and my dogs' reputations. Most of all I needed to mend the animosity this neighbor felt towards me. I want to live in a place where everybody knows your name and they're always glad you came. This had to be settled.

Before my knuckles met her door, it swung open. It was already 85 degrees out, yet there she stood in a full-length, long-sleeved flannel night gown. With her cordless phone still to her ear, she peered at me with initial suspicion.

"I'd like to talk to you about what just happened, if you have a minute."

"Uh-huh." She feigned disinterest.

I sucked in my gut and did my best to slay her with sincerity.

"My name is Rhianna, and I live on Woodford, just around the corner. I have lived here for two years now, and I walk my dogs past your house every morning. I assure you that I have never let them go into your yard, let alone do their business there. I'm sorry that I yelled at you. I don't want to have a bad relationship with you. I wanted to come back over here and let you know that."

I reached out to shake her hand, and her face softened. You would have thought I was a member of the Publisher's Clearinghouse Prize Patrol by the way she was suddenly looking at me. She asked me forgive her for the way she had talked to me, but emphasized her disdain for dog doo. I agreed. As proof, I could have told her about the time when, in foggy five a.m. darkness, I stepped in a dewy pile of it when crossing my own yard on my way to the gym. I realized later that morning in the locker room-after my two miles on the treadmill-that the putrid whiff I kept catching was me. But rather than deprecating myself further, I asked her about her grandchildren that I often see playing in front of her house. When our brief conversation winded down, I wished her a good morning. She wished me the same, and this time she punctuated her final sentence by calling me "sweetie."

They say that you can catch more flies with honey than vinegar, but seems that dog poo works just as well.