Almost Daily

Because we're on a summer schedule around here right now, we slept in a little yesterday. When I stepped out of my front door at 8:20 AM to retrieve my newspaper, I noticed a man wearing a white ball cap standing on the side of the street near the eastern side of my property. As I walked up my driveway, the man took off his ball cap so I would be sure to recognize him and began walking slowly towards me. I had my dog (who's very protective) with me on a leash, and as soon as he saw the guy starting towards us, my dog began barking and pulling, at which point the man stopped and began laughing. He stood there while I struggled with the dog and retrieved the paper, and then he sauntered off. Of course I recognized him as he wanted me to; he's a lawyer who doesn't live in my neighborhood (he lives near the LBJ ranch in Stonewall).

This morning I got up at 5:30 to take my child to catch a bus for band camp. As we left, I noticed a light on inside the house directly above our driveway that is usually dark (except for the extremely bright lights coming from two lower-level windows 24/7 that were recently covered over with some sort of opaque black covering).

When I returned around 5:50 AM, I discovered two women in jogging shorts (who weren't jogging and looked like they'd just gotten out of bed) standing on the side of the street directly in front of my house. As I drove into my driveway, they walked off.

About 5 minutes later, I leashed my dog and went out front to get the newspaper. As soon as I stepped outside, I immediately noticed a very large dump truck that was parked just east of the eastern end of my property. As I started walking up my driveway to go to the paperbox at the street, this truck started up and began moving very slowly toward me in a jerky fashion that was the result of the druver (whom I couldn't see in the dark)repeatedly hitting his brakes to cause the maximum possible amount of noise. He did this the entire time I was outside, and as I went back into my house, I saw him drive off.

These are the descriptions of events from two mornings in a row. Now please multiply these by 10 years and you will get some idea of what has been and continues to be done to my children and me. It's not just in the morning, either (for ex., people run out of our house or driveway as we pull in at night, people harass us as we walk our dog in the evenings, etc.). It doesn't make any difference if we change our schedule, either; these people always know when we are coming or going, which they could ONLY do if we were under illegal surveillance inside our house. (Is that were some of the missing DHS equipment comes in?)

Later the same day (after I'd written the previous part of this blog): Around 4:15 PM, our dog began barking frantically. We looked outside and saw a male high school coach directing his class of student athletes to run repeatedly up and down the hill on our front lawn! (which is clearly a private yard). Worse, because of the current severe drought conditions here, much of the grass and ground cover on this hill (which we fight erosion problems on even in the best conditions) is dead, so the students were doing serious damage to the slope and what was left of its cover--and they all seemed to think this was funny. I was in the bathroom, but my adult daughter ran out, told them they were trespassing on private property and causing damage, and insisted that they leave immediately. Instead, the coach had the students sit down in our front yard for a few minutes, but by the time I got downstairs, they were all leaving. I immediately faxed the school to complain and also let them know there might be damages they would be responsible for, but I had to also wonder if harassment is now an official high school subject here.