Just about enough

Lauralea and I have been back and forthing it for some time about moving to a different house.

 

The fact is that we like where we live. Hunt's Fine Foods is near by, Micah's school is across the street, and it's close to the church. We like the back yard, with only one close neighbour, the rest is park like and nature-ly peaceful. But growing four big kids in a 800 and some square foot home with four bedrooms is well a bit tense at times. So far our attitude has been, let's just hold on till they get through with us and are on their way in the world. This has been enough to keep us content, till now.

 

I'm getting less and less content at the direction Prince Albert and especially the East Flat section of town is going.

 

In the past years here we've had four bikes stolen, one huge Canadian flag, along with it's flagpole taken from our yard!!! Our ladder is gone and some other things went away too. Fine, I've put that behind me, I think.

 

Our girls get verbally accosted doing their School's fire Hall run where they have to run along the beautiful riverbank and back to the school. They're told to ignore the "abusers."

 

A couple of weeks ago, after I was in bed, I was disturbed by a noise and got up, only to find a couple of guys sneaking up to our front door with a bag of liquid of some kind. (I hope it was water, think it was paint, and I don't even want to think about if it was gasoline.) I saw them sneaking up to the front door, I flipped on the light and swung the door open and boy howdy they headed for the hills.

 

Last week I awoke to find our Patio table pulled up to Hillary's window, the one she sleeps under. But the legs fell off the table in the move so I guess that plan was thwarted

 

And, last night, I was sleeping lightly, (as I'm doing allot of these days, for these very reasons) listening to the outside noises. At two am there are kids out on the street in front of our house, exchanging small packets and placing them in their pockets.

 

Now today, I received word that a friend of mine was downtown and got the crap beaten out of his face. The ambulance had to be called.

 

Then Micah told me, as I was driving him to play at a friends place, that in the morning when he was on his way home from "Math Camp" a guy stopped him and asked him where 7th street was. Micah didn't know and then the guy asked him if he had any money!?!?

 

I'm very frustrated right now. I don't want to be chased out of a previously good neighbourhood. We are considered a part of this community. We fit here and belong here. We are known here by name and what we do and have done. Do we become closed and fenced? Do we abandon the place to the power of the few?

 

I've got allot of questions right now, and not allot of clear answers.

 

Update: Ok, after finally falling asleep sometime after 2:30 am, by 3 am a car goes screaming down the street, screeching around our corner, to be followed closely by a cop car with lights and siren, going like stink. So now we've got exciting high speed chases too!