...the bombs bursting in air...

Okay - our neighborhood is OUT. OF. CONTROL. I'm so sick of it. Not only do we have (loud) LOUD fireworks from about Memorial Day til Labor Day, all hours of the day (until 4am and starting again around 7:30am) there is a rental house 3 down from us that always attracts the WORST renters! For a while it was quite obviously a drug house, then things got better but now this summer it's a bunch of punks who LOOOOOOOOVE to party it up and then fight. Last week when Chevra (hi Chevra!) was babysitting there was a STABBING in the alley or in front of our house or SOMEWHERE which was freaky (sorry Chevra), before that I could watch the action from upstairs as it progressed from alley to backyard to street-side, again tonight - same thing. Steve & I just wanted to sit in our backyard and enjoy a few beers but the ruckus from down the block was unbelievable. F-this and F-that - it'll probably be Dahlia's first word. Then the fighting started (as I had predicted). People in the alley, through the yard, the fighting (with each other?) in the intersection - the girls pleading for the guys to stop it, the guys telling each other to "step back" and "f-off" and all sorts of nonsense. THEN as they were walking/running/fighting by they JUMPED OUR FENCE INTO OUR YARD! I was watching from the relative safety of the darkened enclosed front porch, but Steve was still out there. At first I thought they saw him and jumped him! But he was back inside on the phone to the cops. Of course by time the cops arrived - the neighborhood is silent. Not even the fireworks that had previously glittered the evening and ruptured poor Dahlia's sleeping occurred. Grrrr.

This is the straw breaking the camel's back. My money is on us moving by summer's end.

I've had it.