Sometimes in our lives we make mistakes and things happen that we wish didn’t and I have a hard time not thinking about them and just wishing I could turn back time.  The past week I have been so sick to my stomach and have been wanting to find the rewind button and can not stop thinking… why!!!!  It all started when we had a neighbor of ours came to the door and I had just laid Max down for a nap.  He had been asleep for about ten minutes and this is the only time of the day that I can get anything done I feel like sometimes.  Anyway, our neighbor came to the door and rang our doorbell and then pounded on the door with his fist so loud it made my heart jump.  (it also woke up my sleeping baby.)  So I ran to the door and as soon as I opened it he started to yell at me…. I tried to say that I had a baby asleep and to please be quiet but he didn’t even act like he could hear me.  I walked outside and shut the door.. then he yelled at me for a few minutes about how our chickens had been over at his house and they were in his barn eating his horse’s grain and pooping all over the place and he had had it…. By the way he kept yelling at me I thought this was the tenth time he had talked to us and kept saying I was sorry.  I couldn’t believe how mad he was and couldn’t believe he was yelling at me… at one point I asked him if he knew that they were even our chickens and it just made him even more mad I think.   Anyway after that I was just upset that I had been yelled at so bad and so I tried to call Ryan and let him know that we needed to lock up the chickens and that there was a problem.  He was our flying a airplane and didn’t call me back so I didn’t get to talk to him until he had gotten home around 5.  I was still upset about the whole thing and the first thing I asked him was if he had ever said anything to us about our chickens before.  When he said no I was taken back and just said I couldn’t believe what a jerk he was about it.  The way he handled the whole thing was like we had problems with each other all the time.  Then I told him a little of what he had said to me and before I could even stop him Ryan had jumped into his truck and was gone.  He was only gone for 5 minutes and then walked in the door and I was in shock.  He had a fat/bloody lip and was washing his bloody hand that had been cut.  And then before he could even tell me what had happened we had cops at our house.  It was such a bad night and I am so sick about the whole thing.  

So Ryan went to his house and knocked on the guys door the same way that he had knocked on ours.  (that was a big mistake)  He came out yelling and said, “why are you banging on my door” and then pushed Ryan off the doorstep and put him in a choke hold.  Ryan said he got out of it fast and put the other guy to the ground where he said, “here is my business card, if you have any problems call me, don’t go and yell at my wife.  And here is $20 for the food that my chickens ate.”  So Ryan let him get up and he punched Ryan in the face…. So Ryan hit him back.   Then the guy ran to his front porch and grabbed a metal broom and started to hit Ryan with it.  Ryan grabbed it and it broke in half.  (that is what cut his hand up)  then he still kept hitting Ryan with it and called him every name in the book.  As Ryan was leaving he kept saying things like, “you think your such a good Mormon”  and things like that, and then a “when I get rid of my cancer I am going to come over and kick your @@@”  He is around 59 and just not a nice guy….   

They called the cops on Ryan and told them a totally different story.  They said that he came to my house and was so nice and I was so nice to him.  And that Ryan came over and just knocked on the door and and as soon as he opened the door Ryan started to hit him.  I am not sure what else he has said but the whole thing is a mess.  Were the stories are not the same the police ended up giving them both the same charge, which was assault.  We have to go to court and plead not guilty and then  go and talk to the prosecuting attorney.  The cop said that it is a fine of 150- couple thousand, and some jail time to 4 months but he didn’t see Ryan being charged with anything like that.  The cops were very nice and gave us some advice and talked to us and made us feel a lot better about the whole thing.  There was a friend of ours that saw some of the fight and when he was holding the broom and that was a good thing.  The guy lied to the cops and told them he didn’t have a broom and then hid it so they couldn’t find it.   

Ryan is not like this and he has been upset about the whole thing.  We both wish this never would have happened and I would love to be on good terms with our neighbor.  I hate feeling afraid of someone and wondering if he is going to come over and do anything….. I have been a little scared of him anyway because I have heard bad things about him and know he isn’t very nice.  

I keep thinking of how to fix this problem and I am at a loss.  The cops said to stay away from him and I think that is for the best right now.  But I want to forgive and forget and move on somehow.  I am praying everything works out.  I have been thinking about how things like this happen and sometimes we are not in control.  It is crazy that sometimes people who didn’t want something like this to happen get dragged into it.  There is a story on the Mormon Messages that is called “leave the party”   It is about three boys that get a scholarship to a great school in Japan.  They go to a party one night and there are drugs at the party.  The one boy didn’t want to be there and asked his friends to leave.  One said he would leave and the other said, “we can just watch, it is no big deal”  and ended up staying.  As the two friends were going down the elevator, in a different elevator the cops were going up.   They charged everyone that was at the party and the one boy that wasn’t doing anything was kicked out of school.   Even if we are not doing it, if we are at the wrong place at the wrong time it doesn’t matter.  

We need to remember that we need to surround ourselves with good people, and be in a place that we can have the spirit with us.  I had a experience in high school that ended up being very similar to this one, and it was a big lesson for me to learn.  

We were at a high school basketball game and as we were walking through the parking lot there was a car with a sticker that said “skaters suck”  The group of boys I was with were all skaters and wanted to write him a note.  I had lipstick in my pocket and so I gave it to them.  They crossed out the sticker and then wrote, “you suck.”  We all thought it was funny and then went into the game.  While I was inside the game one of the boys went back out to the car and had noticed it had really nice speakers inside.  He stole the speakers and then went home.  

The next day the cops came and talked to each of us that were in that group that night.  None of us knew what had happened and were in shock.  The boy pressed charges and it was against all of us.  Because I was with that group at very beginning I was also in trouble.  We ALL had to pay a fine, and we all had to do community service.  Even though I was with a good group of boys I should have never given them the lipstick or joined in on that.  That made me apart of a crime and was not fun at all.   I hate it when people put the police down and blame them for things like this and I know that they are just following rules and doing their jobs.  There a lot of good people that serve as police and I want my kids to respect them and honor them for what they are doing for us.  I don’t think everyone knows how lucky we are.