Our new townhouse is awesome.  I love it for a thousand reasons.  There is nothing that bothers me that I can’t adjust to.  We have space to move, space to get away from each other, and everything we need.  I do mountains of laundry, cook and bake happily in a well-appointed kitchen, have family meals in our dining room with all my pretty things in the china cabinet next to me, and there’s a fireplace.  Our back yard opens onto common space with trees and a pond and automatic sprinklers and I never have to cut the grass.  I love it here.

As with most developments like this (and this one was built in the mid-1980’s), there are rules.  When I signed the lease, my landlord gave me a link to the HOA rules and regulations.  There was really nothing unusual in them, I thought.  Keep your part of the grass watered.  Weed your gardens and gravel spaces.  Stay out of the pond.  Keep your back porch/balcony lights off at night so as not to disturb your neighbors.  No permanent clotheslines can be installed, and temporary ones cannot be left out once the clothes are off of them, and for the love of God, you canNOT have a chicken coop or chickens.

Apparently I missed some parts, because the “May newsletter” just came out and I’m sure I’m in violation of some of the “reminders.”

1. Stop talking on your patio.  Okay, the actual newsletters said “voices carry” and we should not have discussions on our patios that might disturb the neighbors.  Since my patio is the size of a postage stamp and mostly covered with my barbecue pit, this is not an issue for me.  If I sit outside at all, it is on my balcony, and then I’m reading a book or watching the rain.

2. Close your garage door, no one wants to see that mess inside. Actually, it said “open garage doors seem to be an invitation for thieves to help themselves to your bicycles, tools, and other items.”  My garage door is open any time I’m out working in the yard.  And unlike my neighbors’ garages, mine is pretty much neat and clean, so I can park a car in it, something my neighbors don’t seem to know how to do, since they take up most of the street parking because they can’t park in their garages.

3.  Your grass is dead.  Maybe you should water it.  Actually, it said that we are supposed to water our lawns in a “timely manner.”  I have no idea what that means.  I have been watering, and have the water bill to prove it, but my grass looks sad.  I’m not going to go crazy with the water, that’s obviously not helping at this point.  And if they want me to water more often, then they are going to have to pay my water bill.  Twice a week is plenty.

4.  No children should be playing outside.  Actually, it said that children cannot play outside in the common area without an adult out with them.  Considering there’s about a half-dozen kids that play together (including our Tater) on our side of the pond, this seems unnecessary.  I can see them playing from my living room, just as all the other parents can, and if the kids are misbehaving (like playing in the pond, or throwing rocks at the ducks) we see it and correct it.  If these were tiny children, there would be a reason for an adult to be out there.  But these are 4th-6th graders, and they are fine playing outside by themselves in protected space, without us hovering over them like mother hens.

I know the rules are there for the good of all, and I follow them when they make sense.  But there are just some things that are too dumb to even consider.

I did get to meet the vice president of the HOA board.  She was all sweet and pleasant, but obviously one of those that has way too much time on their hands and not enough to do.  She had her little doggie with her (“Miss Peaches”) and I was standing in my open garage with a piece of paper and a pencil writing down things I needed to pick up to fix the grass and to repot some plants.  She walked right on up the driveway (after reading the bumper stickers on my car) and asked if I was the new tenant.  I talked to her, showed her my gardens, fussed over my sad-looking grass, showed her how loaded the trees were with apples, and did my best to play her game.  And that was even before I found out the landlord can’t stand her. We’ll see if there are any problems in the future.  I will do my best to be a good citizen of “The Meadows Townhouse Community.”

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