OK SO- I own a house that’s in the jurisdiction of an HOA, which is supposed to be an organization that does the stuff a super does for an apartment complex, but for a neighborhood, except that ours sucks and doesn’t do dick fuck but annoy me.
As of right now, I don’t have running water between 8AM and 5PM because the HOA never allowed the city to do sewer maintainence because then they’d have to spend money fixing the parking lot, and now something catastrophic has happened to the pipes, and there is a colossal hole in the ground where the parking lot used to be. Also a hideous amount of noise and terrible smells.
In addition to generally sucking, we have Erin. She was probably born in the Triassic, smokes like a factory victorian children would lose fingers in, and She’s my most recent Mortal Nemesis.
I found out about her when I came down for breakfast about a week after we moved in and found her, on a stepstool, both hands on the glass, peering into my kitchen window at 5 AM. I slapped the window and swore at her, assuming she was the neighborhood loon*, and a week later got a letter threatening me with a $300 fine if I didn’t remove the nonapproved storage bins off the porch. She then took 9 months to approve me putting the gate the HOA had owed the property since 2012 up, and threatened me with another fine when I put up the damn thing anyway. Other neighbors have been harassed for things like having repairs she’d already approved done, having loud children, and having “too revealing” swimwear.**
She doesn’t get paid to do this, by the way.
She volunteered.
So I’ve taken two lines of precaution.
Firstly, my reading-disordered ass went down to the library where the actual copy of the rules are kept, INSTEAD OF ONLINE, LIKE EVERY OTHER ORGANIZATION IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY, and read the whole thing until I found a neat loophole to an issue- The porch is very nice in the summer, but it’s also exposed and people look in the windows and my idiot dog will bound right over that wall after any rabbit he sees, so I want a tall visual barrier put up. But the rules say no artifical fences or blinds. They do specify that having plants that just so happen to grow up over the edge of the wall are A-OK. So I’ve planted corn and sunflowers all around the outside. Should give me a nice 9-foot and perfectly legal fence when they’re done.
Secondly, I’ve made friends with her Priest, a Father McAffery, who runs a legit food bank. So as far as he knows I’m running the Saint Fiacre’s Food Bank Supplemental Garden and Spiritual Refuge***. He thinks I’m delightful and Catholic. I am probably one of those things and good at faking the other, but the illusion is enough that I can probably sic him on Erin if she sees fit to complain about the garden.
**Colorado recently legalized allowing people with breasts to have them out in public regardless of gender. Karen in number 6 is also a Mortal Nemesis**** but I’m looking forward to the partially topless fight she and Erin are going to have any day now.
***By which I mean I like growing crops but only want to eat some of them and like feeding other people, and when my mind is troubled and my soul restless, I shall retreat betwixt the corn with an iced coffe and a trashy fanfic until I feel better.
****I have many nemesises. It runs in the family. Karen in Number 6 is her own post though.
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