Yes, I have figured it out.  You are onto something, Karen.  I had the same thought when I noticed the neighbor's mailbox across the street had the same type of texture.  Across the street is a house with a family that has four tombstones.  I entered the lot and I saw the tombstone on the sidewalk across the street, but it looked more normal instead of like in the picture.  I zoomed in and moved my mouse over it, and it said "Here lies Coral Oldie."  Then I remembered.  I had forgotten about this, but her tombstone disappeared a while back.  I didn't know why, but I used the Lot Debugger to respawn her tombstone and put it back where it was.  I thought no more about it and played several other lots in the meantime.  I still don't know why her tombstone moved, but it must have reappeared at some point at the edge of the lot, and I never noticed it.
I was trying to see whether it was normal for lots to overlap like this.  When I was trying to get rid of the object earlier, it said it was out of bounds, and I had to turn on moveobjects to place the stuck object remover.  I noticed when I was at the lot across the street, there were fine lines demarcating their lot that included the sidewalk opposite their house.  I could send the sims to walk out here, but could not place objects.  When I went back to the other house, the lines appeared around the opposite sidewalk as well, so it appears as if they are overlapping.  I guess this is normal, but it just never caused any problems before.   

  Then again, we could never see neighbors before until NL.
Thanks for all the ideas, everyone. 
