In the beginning . . .

As I was cleaning the living room window, my peripheral vision captured a woman standing to the far right of my property, on the sidewalk, taking a photograph of my home.  I hadn't the slightest clue why a photo of my home would be of interest to anyone.  It was just a simple three-bedroom ranch starter home.  I felt blessed to finally have a home to live in instead of an apartment, but there were no outstanding features or anything.

A few days later my daughter and I turned into the driveway and noticed the front door was standing ajar.  Having lived in the city of Los Angeles for a few years prior to buying this home about 45 minutes outside that city, I'd formed the unbreakable habit of always locking the front and back doors and keeping them locked.  When we'd left for the market we'd exited through the kitchen and laundry room to the garage, not through the front door.  I went across the street and asked a neighbor to go into my home with me to make sure everything was all right and no one was there.  All was clear.  How puzzling.

We started getting a lot of hangups and then there would be callers asking for my husband or myself.  If he answered the phone he was told to keep his wife away from the caller's husband with a threat following that.  If I answered the phone I was told to keep my husband away from the caller's wife or he would be killed.  I said, "Go ahead, you'd be doing me a favor."  My husband and I compared notes.  We had no idea who would play such a vicious game nor who would have entered the home and left the front door wide open, nor who would have wanted to take a picture of the front of our home.

One day I walked to the mailbox to get the mail and in the front yard next to the mailbox I found a dead rat with a shaved head and three holes drilled into its head.  I felt nauseated, thinking that someone had killed a creature, albeit a rat, in order to cause me to be fearful or whatever the expected reaction was.

I had a sister who was a bit on the sociopathic side, but she didn't live that close.  My husband quite possibly had borderline personality disorder and he had been both mentally and physically abusive, but this wasn't his style. 

I had absolutely no clue who would mean me harm, try to scare me, or worse.

More later.