neighbour nonsense- am i going insane??

[palazzopantaloons]

Hello All, I'm writing this b/c this has been building and building inside me for all the time we have been living in our house (over 5 years) and I really really need to vent. Basically, my next door neighbours are turning me into a sociopath. They are an older couple in their late 60s who have lived in their house for over 40 years and are very opinionated and judgmental about absolutely everything, it seems. They think they're the king and queen of the street. If I happen to see either of them out front and get caught up in a conversation, it always turns into them gossiping and slagging off other people who live near us, "This person's a fool, that person needs to do this, that or the other..." I try my best to be friendly and smiling when I see them, I really do. Many times they've said things to me directly which have been insulting-- for example when I've come home w/ shopping bags in my hands, "Oh... shopping again, are we?" (I'm barely a clotheshorse) or when carrying DH's work shirts in from the drycleaners, "Oh...you don't do them yourself?" Can't they mind their own business? They open their curtains to see who's rung OUR doorbell, even!!
I'm convinced they're turning other neighbours against us-- i'm not sure if this is related, but we've never been invited over to anyone's house for parties or even a cuppa, when we've invited people over to ours for our DC's birthday party shortly after moving in way back when... They're always home, and I find I loathe even going into my front or back garden to do anything b/c I KNOW they're watching and judging from their windows or over the fence. (We do manage to keep our gardens in a decent state btw, but they'd be so much nicer if I didn't feel this way) I'm getting really freaked out and paranoid about the whole situation. We're nice people. I swear!! Oh, just yesterday, I had just returned from voting up the street and ran into them on the pavement and she goes, "I'd vote to keep Americans out of our country!!!" (I'm American, with British citizenship)
What's wrong with them?? Is it me?? Am I crazy?? I can't seem to let it slide and ignore them, but I need to in order to live a normal life. FFS!

Next time you see them peering at you in the garden, flash you knockers at them!!!!

I lived in the US it amazed me to see people taking shirts to the drive through dry cleaners...I honestly couldn't believe it or work out why people would do it!

Because they don't like to iron. Are there no people in the UK who pay other people to do their ironing?

Shirts aren't usually being dry cleaned though Acornantics they are being wet laundered and ironed.

DH takes all his to the laundry service (dry cleaning/laundry at the end of our road in N London). I have no desire to emulate my Mum ironng 7 shirts and 7 hankies every Sunday evening. They're brilliant and charge less than £1 a shirt.

When we lived in a flat they had this great service where you put your dirty shirts in a locker in the basement, kept the key and emailed the laundry service to collect. They'd be laundered and replaced clean in the locker within 24 hours.

Only downside is that such services don't work so well for women's work clothes unless you go in for the cotton shirt style. I tend to wear non-iron wrap dresses instead.