A friend of mine came over to give me some fresh tomatoes from her garden yesterday. It was a very sweet thing to do, right? It should NOT have triggered heart palpitations and panic. Sadly, any time we have unexpected visitors, my heart skips a beat. We don't get many visitors here, which is a mixed blessing. While I'm glad on the one hand, I think it would be nice to have friends over.

When my daughter saw a figure through the curtains she said in a very annoyed voice...''Who is that coming to our door, and why?" Sounds pretty anti-social, I'm sure. We have our reasons. For one, when we lived in our old house, a shadow across our window or a knock at the door was usually bad news.

For a while, the police would visit our house practically every week! My daughter, who now lives in Austria (as far away as she can!) was afraid of having friends over because every time she did, there would be an 'incident' involving law enforcement. If it wasn't the police, it might be some other 'undesirable character'. You never knew whether to be nice to them, or to scream "get the *&%! out!" A lot of them were drug dealers, or people looking to get 'hooked up'.

One lady came to the door looking like your classic old hag... an obvious meth addict. Her skin was covered in bumps and sores. Her hair was all bleached and ratty. Her teeth were rotten around the edges. I asked her what her business was with my daughter. When I didn't like the answer I told her not to come 'round here anymore. I practically slammed the door in her face as she screeched in the most ghastly voice... "YOU CALL YOURSELF A CHRISTIAN!!!!"

Traffic was always the worst when my kids were trying to 'clean up'. If any of these people were as persistent with honest living as they were in trying to get my kids re-infected, they'd be an automatic success! I was astounded at how undeterred they were. I'd always say my kids weren't home, even if they were. Sadly, unless my kids were willing to stay home and never go anywhere, they'd eventually find them, bringing them back into the biz.

It wasn't uncommon for me to find people, or evidence of people in other parts of our property. I'm pretty sure our garage and storage shed had been used by homeless people on a regular basis. I know our couch was as my daughter would often let people stay the night without asking us. It was always a little bit jarring to wake up to strangers in my living room. A person doesn't want to be cold hearted, but we ultimately felt we had to put an end to that, particularly for our other daughter's sake.

One day I thought I saw someone in my backyard so I went to investigate. It was a young guy picking mushrooms! Now, we lived in the Pacific Northwest, where mushrooms grow fairly readily. Our backyard was full of them. He said he needed them for science class, that my son gave him permission.

Suspicious of that encounter, I decided to look them up. Turns out the free alder chips I'd put down as mulch were ideal for these certain types of mushrooms, and they were not the type you put in spaghetti sauce. They were worth a lot of money on the drug market.

I later learned that my son, after using these 'shrooms', had hallucinations for months afterwards. He was afraid he was going crazy. Almost scared him straight! But not quite. Needless to say, I raked all the old mulch up, dumped it at an undisclosed location, and spread store bought mulch.

Even after kicking our kids out, moving twice, having other people live there for a year, and spending large amounts of money to fix it up, people are still coming 'round. My husband is there now, trying to help my daughter in Oregon. He said someone came to the door very recently looking for his son. The guy said he was told it was a "drug house!" We would like to sell it but are afraid to leave it vacant.

It's so wonderful to be so far away from all that garbage! Unfortunately, as I've blogged about so many times before, we have other kinds of garbage. Right now I have several stacks of boxes and bric-a-brac right by the front door. It's not a good place, I know. It's the first, and possibly only thing people are likely to see when they come over. It's probably another reason we hate having visitors. We're embarrassed by the mess.

I have to question why I would keep my entryway so unsightly when I've made so much progress with the rest of the house. This ought to be an area for good impressions. Right now it's the complete opposite! Do I think that by keeping it ugly it will drive people away? Is that what I subconsciously want to do? Don't know. What I do know is that even if I'm bound to have heart palpitations whenever someone comes to my door, I don't want it to be because of how unsightly it is.

I'm feeling much better today so I think I'll make that my first priority. Ya'll have a great day!