Cherry Easter Eggs Hunt

I'm still dealing with painting my room.  I have one guy who swears up and down he's going to do it, the deal though is when.  He has not even texted me to say when he can come to Richmond and paint.  So, my guess is that he has many offers of paint jobs and won't be able to come for a while.  In the meantime my house is just filled to the brim with things from the living room, spilling over on tables and chairs everywhere else.  So somehow I've got to get this party started!

Cherry champagne

The car was back yesterday, with it's brake lights on, so I knew someone was in it.  As usual, I believe they were watching me, because they reacted to me.  When I pulled in and went inside, they moved on. Perhaps they wanted to make sure that I got home safely.  Or, as I'd left Rose outside, perhaps she'd barked.  She has some separation anxiety, and I obviously can't take her with me everywhere.  Here, barking is the type of thing people complain about, and I try to keep all barking when everyone is at work.  Whomever the stalker is, I don't see him/them anymore.  My first guess was that it was just some guy I didn't speak to, or perhaps one of the Dave's had a bit of auld lange zyne, and wanted to look at me again.  Then I believed it was people hired by the woman next door, who's anger at my pets some how exploded into something even more seminal.  But the guy who followed me to Lowes' last year was from the Shenandoah Valley.  He  has a criminology diploma from Arizona, and he was relatively easy to find, unlike anyone else. So both Arizona, and SV also have vague connections to my past.  One of those connections was felonious behavior directed at me.  But he also walked out of my next door neighbors, so it was obvious, it was all those two next door.  Could it be they moved out to take a step back and fight me, for whatever reason, from a distance?

   I hadn't seen anyone in a while, and they pulled into a neighbors driveway, the one who's son is alleged to have broken into a home two doors down.  All the neighbors are saying it about that guy, but my take on gossip here is that it's just that, designed to hurt and wound.  The women who seemed to have a train of guys and others at their house, in disguise, my neighbor and her daughter, left. I say it's in disguise, because everyone that is in a car that has either followed me, or has come out of next door, has come out with huge sunglasses and a hat, usually a knit one, when it's weather that really doesn't call for it.  With all the problems of police here, and still having break ins, I wonder why on earth they stayed so long.  They seemed rich, and this neighborhood isn't.  It's only benefit is it's proximity to the highway and shopping and a hospital.

The little burglars mom is friends with the woman who just moved.   I've seen her out on the porch while I was on my cell phone, and think she's using technology to catch my cell phone conversations.  I reported the hacking to the FBI's web page, but honestly, so many people in the US are being hassled in this way.  They're way too busy to deal with my issues, and when I've spoken to them, they've said that they don't have any jurisdiction over anything that happens to me in my neighborhood.  But they do know about the problems I've had, and they do have a few names that I suspect, so do the local police, so if they DO anything to me, if ANYONE does anything to me, they're going to be paying a huge and likely very justified price.

So, while I'm trying to de-winter-fy my house and yard, I have the same old issues again.  Adams turned out to be run by a sociopath and her coterie of friends.  If you want more info on that check out Danny's webpage:  http://www.watchingadams.org, and then read the comments section.  True to form, I must have triggered Bev's enemies list by my bad Google review, which I used my school account to publish.  As soon as I withdrew they took control of the account, and I had no access to it.  And suddenly I can't find that Google review anywhere.  Danny won 100k from Adams state.

I wanted to finish out there, but realized it was unlikely I'd be able to travel with the plethora of health issues that have suddenly cropped up AGAIN.  Whomever is stalking me, I hope they get every bit of that back.  Soon.

Time Moves On: Unanswered Questions

I have a few problems here at the family house.   First, I'm still working on the walls in the living room.  I Khiels'd the first coat, to get any marks covered, the previous paint was a flat coat, and now I'm waiting to do a real paint.  I have two potential people out there to paint.  But I really don't know if I want to have anyone here in the house, especially those that I don't know.  The last painters broke the spigot outside my house, and I didn't get that fixed for two years.  They did a cheap patch up job, that lasted about 8 months, but that hose gets tugged on because of watering plants and cleaning things.

I've put tape on the bottom of the walls and the sides and the windows and door frames, but not the ceilings.  Yes, I do need that!  I'm a beginner painter, and I want it to look better.  I've waited a whole month, pretty much because I wanted to pay someone else to do the actual paint.  But the last painters did a good job on one room and a crappy one on another.  So painting the living room has been a project that I've been contemplating for years.  I've called contractors in to get estimates and some of them have been high, not reflected what I knew to be the truth about what is under the paint currently, nor a real life scenario to get the walls "pretty."  They're old.  They're plaster, and they need work.  The last contractor, who actually addressed all those issues wanted 500 dollars a day to send a painter to work on the walls.  I didn't do that.  Not only do I think that's outrageous, but I am hyper aware that repairs on this house don't always work well.   It's easier to get a job done if you know people who do repairs.  I don't.

So my thinking was that I'd get the walls and trim painted, and then re-varnish the floors.  The kits to re-varnish are either oil based, or some other thing,  and I don't know how to use any of them.  So all of this repair is just an experiment, where I hope I do no harm.  And then I'd subtly change the furniture.  The room is kind of small, like the house, and when I moved in there were three huge sets of shelving, that thankfully were not too heavy to move.  The largest is still here, and one of the smaller ones is going back in it's spot, but I feel so oppressed with things built up high.  When I put other shelving in, I want it to only be waist high, and actually, this whole pack rat phenomenon that all my family seems to have, simply must stop!  I purchased a new refrigerator and a new washer, but have yet to work on the kitchen, where I need a new sink and counter set up.  I don't think I have the strength to install that myself. 

I have to get yet another lawn mower to do the lawn this summer.  I break one about every 6 weeks.  I think it's because I get the cheap ones and I have a lot of lawn to do, so I'm getting a better one this summer.  As I write this, I have several spots of poison ivy like irritation on my arms because the bushes, some kind of weed that grows under my fence from my neighbors yard, touched my arms when I started clipping the branches.  I've gotten rid of over half of it, but there is still more to do.  The large 48 inch pot that sits on the edge of the faux rock patio in back has some type of green plant, is grayed and broken up and needs to be replaced soon if I want to save the plants.  I don't know the names of them, but the plants left here, about thirty, are down to about less than ten over three years.  I don't have a green thumb, and the dog gets out and plays with the pots, and digs in the ground, no matter what I do to her.  My plan is to get about 8 bags of topsoil to even out the lawn, cover it with grass seed and then straw to get a good growth spurt.  I've waited a bit long for planting seed, but I am doing things all at one time.  Lifting heavy things is awfully difficult, and the lawn is actually the last thing I wanted to do on the house, except to cut and maintain it this summer.

I've managed to survive here for 2 and a half years, despite all the problems I've uncovered.  I've had to survive through the threats I've gotten here, and the denial of everyone around me that they existed.  My dad said he dealt with them too, and I didn't believe him then, but I do now.  People go into my security fenced yard at night late, and they play around.  I have pulled several tops off the clothes line that have holes clipped in them on the bust.  I've had that happen a few times.  That kind of slasher psycho behavior is frightening, not funny when you realize that someone murdered my dad's dog and then burned down his fence and tried to break into the garage about six years ago.  If you went through my neighbors yard, it would be easy to just hop over the 6 foot privacy fence.  The rest of the fence has thick bamboo, and the fence surrounding it and poison ivy type plants.  Mostly, people would likely avoid that area.  And bamboo when it grows thickly often leaves only a few inches between plants.  I wonder if someone here is jealous that I have a large bust?  Why else would someone put holes in my tops over the boob? 

cherries in the snow

One of the girls who lived upstairs from me used to start fights every time I walked outside.  I had the bottom floor of a top bottom duplex in a chic downtown neighborhood.  The neighborhood was full of old houses, and mine was especially interesting because of all the people who moved in and out of the upstairs.  I had a woman with three children who divorced her millionaire husband for no specific reason that she stated, but she and her three children were all on Ritalin.  I knew because I found it one day in the backyard.  A younger woman, who had moved back to the city with her boyfriend from the VI.  Her man was the dad to her two children and the first job he got was with a woman who owned a bakery.  He  had long dreads and no job skills at all, according to his girlfriend.  He dumped the girlfriend and left her to raise their children while he strutted around town with the bakery owner.  Then the girl moved an artist in upstairs, who was mean enough to deliberately mow down the Azalea bushes I had the rental office put in.  Then there was the woman who left a home she called the mousetrap to move upstairs with her three children and her boyfriend.  I used to hear her suddenly start fights.  The main bedroom was right above mine, and from darkness and silence I would hear a sudden crash upstairs, then she began yelling that the guy had slept with her sister and she could never forgive him.  Usually, this episode ended up with flashing blue lights outside because the fight went outdoors and the other neighbors called police, I don't think they had a phone.

Then that crazy girl who fought all the time moved in upstairs with her younger boyfriend and son.  She'd been in jail for solicitation, and told me about it all, and about her arrest for hitting someone's child.  She thought I would believe her and not the others, the police, when she claimed she was innocent, but I didn't.  After a while I realized she had a personality disorder and whenever I had to walk outside, and she called out my name, I quickly turned and either went back upstairs or to my car.  She was that insane.  She may not be the craziest neighbor I've ever had, but she comes close.  The fourth of July that year wound up with me calling the fire department.  I smelled something burning in my bedroom and she had taken one of the tiki torches she constantly burned, (she had an obsession with fire) and put it in the basement and closed the door.  You would think it would be any trouble for her with the fire department, but nope.   She used to strip and she played men like a violin!  She'd just bat her eyelashes and play ignorant when anyone tried to get her to take responsibility for her aggressive behavior.  While in my hometown, I was across the street from a Legal Aid for people with mental disabilities, and I could have sworn she was walking into the old Ben Franklins in handcuffs with an attorney in tow.  I used to wonder what happened to her, but I had her one year after I moved on, scream at me from a car on a major road that she was going to murder me.  I took her seriously, but in my opinion, I was just an unlucky sap she decided to move in next to, way back in the day.

I worked in sales for most of the time I lived there, and just barely kept a home going.  People I worked with  used to ask me why I did that to myself, paying so much for rent on a place that had expensive utilities as well.  My response was that I had to live on my own, and I don't really like apartment living.  Even though the duplex was an apartment, I did have some time alone where I lived with no one upstairs.  They had no real locks on the doors and when the last person moved in upstairs there were marks on the walls where someone had been sitting and using drugs.  What I had believed to be squirrels were actually people, using the empty apartment.  My dogs were with me, and no one bothered me especially inside my home.  At that time I still answered my door, and the few people who knocked were either those looking for a room and seeing the empty space upstairs, or someone looking for someone.

Ever since I moved here I've spent all my time wondering why I ever left my hometown.  I felt oppressed by it's smallness, while at the same time missing the place, where the promise of every dream you ever imagined could come true.  It's something of a Hollywood, just on another coast.  Then a dozen or so years ago, my mom retired, sold her house and moved to another area of the state, not giving me any conceivable reason to move back,ever.  And I knew that I could not move back.  Never.  As time flowed in it's inevitable pond, I lost touch with people, and eventually I forgot about them.  The few people remaining that I know are through web applications where I see their happy announcements about the birth of a grandchild, a son or daughters college graduation, all the little things that make up a life.  Or, see their requests for prayers when a parent of family member is ill.  When my dad died, when he was so ill for the last six months of his life he felt trapped, I didn't ask for prayers.  He'd been sick off and on for 18 years, and it was just his time to go, at 82.  While I still feel raw about his death, I know time has simply moved on.