I'm still here

Wow, this might be the longest I ever went without writing something here. Well, I'm still alive and kicking (figuratively and literally). It's been an emotionally draining, very busy, couple of weeks that included a family trip, what I thought was the death of a family member (the family member, it turns out, only appeared to be dead, and after a while in the hospital, pulled through -- there's alot more to this story that I'll probably just keep to myself), contact with a couple ministers that I hope leads to bigger things (but if not, at least I have some more Christian friends), and a bunch more other stuff I can't seem to summon to mind right now.

So, last evening, I'm upstairs putting on a tee-shirt with the intent of going into the basement and lifting some weights, so as to improve upon my manly big bulkiness, when I hear a ruckus from outside. I bend my hear, and figure out that there is a kid (don't ask me how old... old enough to know better, that's for sure) yelling down my walkway, into my yard, demanding that a neighborhood girl that my kids were playing with come out to him. My kids responded by protecting her -- "Go away, she doesn't want to talk to you. You're not allowed in our yard." etc. This punk, purporting to be in our city's "Most Dangerous" gang, continued while I'm putting on my shirt. Then I heard "Do you think I'm afraid of you ****ing little kids?!" "Oh, no he didn't just say that," I thought to myself as I grabbed my sneakers and ran down the steps, blasted my front screen door open, threw my shoes down on the porch and sat down in a chair, so that I am know staring face to face, eye to eye, with this creep, and I start putting my socks and shoes on. He says, "I'm asking for A_____ to come out and talk to me." I yelled... and I mean I YELLED... "I HEARD WHAT YOU SAID!!!," giving him my best nasty, about to get medieval, look. Then, still staring at him with daggers for eyes, I told him, "You better split before I get these shoes on!" in a kind of "I came out here to do two things: Put on my shoes, and kick your rump black and blue.... and I'm almost done putting my shoes on." He looked at me and asked, "What?" I repeated, "YOU BETTER SPLIT BEFORE I GET MY SHOES ON!" He and his buddy, who I guess I didn't notice was standing there until this point, ran away. This is not the first time I've had to chase people off my property
Man, that fired me up. I almost lost it. We're all but fed up with living in the city. I want to go live in the woods.