Nightscreeching

Imagine yourself sitting in a chair at night, enjoying an episode of one of your favorite shows, reading a good book, or talking to a friend on your computer. All is well, calm, and peaceful. You are sipping your favorite coffee while listening to your favorite tunes, snuggly in your jacket on a chilly Winter's night.

Now imagine that perfect moment of happiness being ripped from you like a band-aid from your skin.

Instead of listening to your favorite show or music, you are now hearing the sounds of some crazy teenagers revving their car's engines so loudly that your windows shake. They scream random profanities at your house. And to top it off, they are holding their car's horn down the entire length of your street.

This has been happening lately. Usually every weekend, at night, someone will rev their engines loudly while holding their horn down and screaming in the direction of my house (it could be a neighbor, but I have my reasons to believe it's me). It is startling, for such loud and obnoxious noises to appear from nowhere, and to be honest kind of frightening.

Additionally, I found crap by my mailbox yesterday. I don't mean crap like, "Oh look at that crap just sitting there," or "Move that crap out of the way please," oh no. I mean like someone took a dump next to my mailbox. Will insists that it was a dog. But I don't think this is the case. For one, it had corn in it. Two, it was not in the shape of dog crap. This was a human turd, and it was both appalling and disgusting that someone could do something like that to someone else.

We got rid of it (yuck yuck yuckkkk), but I'm still kind of worried. You see, the thing is that I'm living in Australia right now. And while I know that most Australians are genuinely good people, I also know that there are jackasses out there. I also know that this is a fairly small community, and William and I have have no problem noticing where certain cars live, when we recognize them from the store. My problem with this, is that I'm American. I sound American, I act American (I guess), and I'm sure that other people can pick up on the fact that yes, I am American.

I am kind of worried. I mean, all it takes is someone recognizing the "DC" shoes logo on the back of Will's car and finding where the car parks at night after hearing me talking at the store. I don't know what sort of people are out there. Maybe it's not because I'm American. Maybe it's because I'm overweight. Or maybe because I have brown hair. Or because I'm Pagan and somehow they knew that. Who knows, it could be anything.

Next time it could be a rock through the window. Or someone breaking in and taking our things, or beating me up, or something. I honestly felt safer walking down empty streets in Seattle at night than I do living here at times, in this small little neighborhood.

I don't know, maybe I'm being a little bit paranoid. Maybe someone just had to take a dump and didn't care where they did it. Maybe the cars are honking at the truckie across the street. Maybe Will was right, and it WAS a dog, that had gotten leftovers, ate corn, and took a weird lookin crap by our mailbox. Maybe it's just the people who applied for the house we're renting, and are pissed that they didn't get it.

Either way, I'm about 30% closer to wanting to move house again. Sigh.. :/

- Manda -