The Soviet HOA

It has been raining a lot.  Each morning, we push off the water that collects on our canopy outside, and watch it spash down like an elaborate water fountain.  The plus side of this is the fact that we don't have to water things.  The garden in our back yard is already prospering mightily, although the peas have been assaulted by what we suspect are rabbits.  This morning, we spotted one in the front yard, sitting quite still.  It was trying to figure out a plan, having been completely caught off guard by our approach.  Madison and Mommy sat on the front porch, whispering to each other about the rabbit.  He or she just sat there trying to figure out when was the appropriate time to run for your life!

As mentioned earlier, we also have chipmunks.  We did not see these today, although we're spotting more holes.  This could be problematic, although not at the moment.  There is that 'aw shucks, that's cute' sort of feeling which is mixed with 'these rodents are tearing our front yard apart!'  I don't think the latter is going to happen, although I could be very much wrong.  Currently, we're enjoying the occasional glimpse of a chipmunk on our front yard.  And when Madison saw there was a second chipmunk, there came the realization that we had quite possibly a new family moving into our neighborhood.

Of course, they'll have to follow the by-laws of the covenant as well.  Heaven forbid the Home Owner Association finds out they aren't paying for their pool pass or something.  The Home Owner Association we have has apparently recently changed management, by the way.  Our other new friends who just moved in last week to the neighborhood (humans, not chipmunks), got three "welcome letters" right away.  There is sarcasm in that previous sentence, as none of these were welcoming at all.  In fact, they were letters telling them to fix certian miniscule problems right away, or be fined.  Way to make a great first impression, Home Owner's Assocation.  You did the same thing with us when we moved in, and made us feel real welcome, like we're all part of some big happy family or something.  Okay, that was sarcasm again.  This is an exaggeration, of course, but our HOA makes us feel more like a branch of the Soviet Union.  In fact, just last week, another family was taken off to Siberia for not mowing their grass enough.  

Seriously, there is nothing pleasant about our HOA.  They fail miserably with communication, and their standards are a little weird.  For example, we have a neighbor on the other side of the community with a ten foot raptor in their yard.  They have a life-sized dinosaur in their yard, and yet this same organization is complaining about a 8" X 7" missing part of a fence to a family that just moved in that day?  I am not making this up.

The irony is that the insides of some of these houses are not taken care of that much.  That makes all the difference in the world, of course, in how long you see a "for sale" sign in the front yard.  We have a few of those in the neighborhood.  Not many though.  The thing is, it's a great place to live.  We enjoy it quite a bit.  It's just that our HOA is a little off-and-on.  We're still waiting for that friendly welcome letter ourselves, but I suppose we don't really deserve it.  

So anyway, Madison did get to hang our with our new neighborhood friends later on today - not the chipmunks.  They saw our neighborhood and fell in love with it.  Their house is really nice, and Daddy went over there to help move a refrigerator.  So Madison tagged along, and this was the first time she went over to their house to play.  It won't be the last.  The daughter there is older, and will be going to Summer Xtreme next week, so I'm sure we'll be seeing a lot from there.  It'll be a fun summer!

As long as we're not shipped off to Siberia...