Thursday, January 18, 2007

What to do?

Sometime this year we are planning on building on to our home a Mom apartment (living room, bedroom and bath). With her chronic back pain, she needs our help and we WANT her with us.
Here's the dilemma.......
The neighbor to our right has just put their house up for sale. We don't want to go thru the bad neighbor thing again. We had ghastly neighbors to our left side for 5 years before they were forced to vacate due to foreclosure. What a friggin' nightmare they were! Boom boxes and car alarms constantly. Fortunately, we have great people living there now.
So.....of course we are worried about what is going to buy the house on the left now. Do we grit our teeth and go ahead with our plans? Or, do both Mom and us sell our houses and find something some else with a little bit of land out in the country? Can we afford it? Are we getting too old to handle extra land? Should we move out of state where taxes are cheaper? Like Delaware?
One thing that I do know is that I've been seeing (and had some interaction of late) a lot of thuggish looking teens lurking around lately. You know, the ones with the crotches hanging down to their knees and butt crack showing. They are not from our neighborhood, they walk thru our streets to go who knows where. This scares me too. Are we going to be safe in our old age if we stay here?
To explain the interaction.......
Last week Mom, son and I were walking the dogs in the evening. We stopped to rest the dogs behind the elementary school near our home. As we were seated on a bench approximately 6 youths came into the school yard. From afar, one started asking us who we were, what we were doing there.......so on, so forth. Being a smartass I told him, "I don't know you, and you don't know us." We then figured we should leave. We proceeded thru the parking lot and then 2 of the teens started running towards us. Their action startled us AND THE DOGS! My big girls turned around, barked and snarled..........the two boys stopped in their tracks. heh.
If it wasn't for my doggies, who knows what would have happened? Now, I am forbidden to walk the dogs alone at night (hubby's rule). It's a damn shame what this country is coming to. To tell you the truth, I am not afraid to walk the girls at night after what I saw them do to protect us. I just hope someone trys to mess with me and them, it would be a lesson learned for the unfortunate soul.
So? Should we stay or move elsewhere?

2 Comments:

Blogger Kathy said...

Thats a hard decision Chris. But I firmly believe you need to feel safe where you live. Have you looked into real estate prices in other areas compared to what your area is like? Selling 2 homes to buy one should be pretty feasible if you find the right area and who knows, you may have money left over.

Seriously though, safety is important. Leaving in fear isn't really living. KWIM.

Hugs!

10:43 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I think it's time to move on... you have GOT to feel and be safe in your own home!

Kate

10:48 PM  

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