Halloween isn't really a thing here, though we've gotten a handful of trick-or-treaters for the past couple of years, usually when someone organizes and they come in large groups with parents leading them. But I'm wondering how many we'll get with it being a Monday. And our neighborhood has become a bit unsafe in the last couple of years. There's a group of teens and young adults that has been responsible for everything from throwing eggs at people, to vandalism, to sexual harassment, to threatening people, to setting fires to bushes, and now in the last week, possibly to cars. We don't know if they are responsible for the car fires, but there have been 5 car fires in the last week in this neighborhood, and considering all the other things this group has done, I wouldn't be surprised if they did the cars, too. E was looking things up online and said that according to the City officials, a letter has been sent to the parents of the kids involved. I know a couple of the kids personally....one is my next-door-neighbor's nephew. I don't think he's malicious so much as incredibly dim. He's just not a bright kid, and I'm sure he's easily swayed by others. Another was one of A's bullies before we moved him to the other school, and as soon as we did that, the kid started in on E, but she ignored him for the most part. Then when she was biking home one day, he stepped out in front of her bike to block her path. She couldn't stop in time and she ran into him and he got mad at her and started yelling at her and calling her all kinds of names. We contacted the school and they made him apologize to her since it was his own fault that she ran into him, and after that, he pretty much left her alone. And another was a friend of one of E's friends from before. E went to a Christian elementary school for the first couple of years, and met her friend Indra there. When the school closed, Indra went to a different school than my kids did, and she met Noemi there, so E met Noemi at Indra's birthday party, but never hung out with her. Well, I ran into Indra last year and she said she had stopped hanging out with Noemi because Noemi had been hanging out with these boys that were getting into trouble with police and she didn't want to be associated with it. Smart of her. But anyway, this group of kids has been terrorizing the neighborhood, so I don't know that anyone will dare to bring their kids out this year, and it being a school night, I'm not expecting anyone. I've got candy, just in case, but E will have to answer the door because M and I will be out on a date night.
), there were 4 turkey vultures picking over a freshly dead squirrel in the gutter right in front of it…makes for a nice, although inadvertent, theming upgrade…!!!!! 
