The HOA “Mafia”

   For anyone who lives in a subdivision run and ruled by an HOA I am sure this post will touch a nerve.

  When we bought our house 7 years ago we were required to read and sign a contract with the HOA for our subdivision. That contract clearly outlined what the HOA’s responsibilities were as well as what ours as homeowners were. The clear intent was to protect the neighborhood and to protect the property values of the homes. We took the time to read the massive manual and then in complete agreement we signed on the dotted line, believing that our HOA would in fact protect the value of our home. WRONG!!! We found ourselves on the ‘hit list” for our HOA “Mafia” and the saga began.

   For the first 5 years in our house we played by all the rules. There were simple infractions like a car parked in the yard for a short time while we jocked the many vehicles around so everyone could get out, the wayward trash can that got forgotten over night and was left at the curb, the overgrown bush that had been missed in the yard work, or the occasional paper flyer found days later when it blew out of hiding and landed on the driveway, but for the most part we did what we were responsible for and without complaint. We also paid our annual dues on time and believed that the money was going for the betterment of us all. WRONG!! We found out that we were in the minority of homes that followed the rules and that the bulk of the funds were not for the betterment of the neighborhood but to pay the over priced management company that was responsible for making sure people followed the rules. Problem was they weren’t doing their job just collecting a hefty paycheck!

  We would attend the HOA meeting and raise our complaints about the management company and question as to why they were not following the rules we all had to sign and we were told that it would be looked into with no results ever to follow so by year 6 we were done. No more payments were made and that’s when the HOA “Mafia” showed up.

   It was a quiet day in the hood. People were coming and going as usual. There were a few out fighting the war in the yard or just taking a walk. Nothing out of the ordinary would suggest that the “Mafia” was lurking but apparently they were and they had camera’s in hand this time. We have a situation where we have an ongoing battle with our lawn. Living in the Florida heat and having a yard planted with ‘crab-grass’ is never a good combination. In most places people work like crazy to kill the crab-grass, here they plant the damn stuff and call it a yard. What doesn’t just up and die in the summer heat turns brown and crunchy. It in turn allows the “natural vegetation” that grew in this orange grove before the homes were built to sprout and thrive since the builder did nothing to inhibit that growth. Add to this the fact that the base soil of the yard is SAND and the home to Fire Ants and Gophers and I am sure you can clearly see the disaster.

   Now one can kind of combat this problem if you are willing to run your sprinklers for several hours every day but then you best be ready to pay a $600.00 water bill each month and possibly pay a fine for using the water (we have water restrictions) if your caught. You also have the option to buy a new yard once a year but that too is rather pricey an option and useless for the most part.

  The first couple of years we watered our lawn faithfully only to find that while it was green it did nothing to stop the “natural vegetation” from sprouting with a vengeance as well. Thousands of dollars in weed killers, fertilizers, bug killers, fire ant killers and gophers vibrators and we still had crunchy crab grass. I even sought help from the Agricultural Dept. and was told that it really was a loosing battle….so…we gave up and went GREEN.

   I stopped stressing over that magazine yard and let Mother Nature design my lawn. The way I looked at it she was here long before any of the houses were so I let her do her thing. It started out kind of rough-looking but soon she was pushing up pretty little flowers of all colors, wild strawberries for the birds, and sweet-smelling plants that filled the yard. Yes there were patches of bare sand but we found that the fire ants migrated to those areas and were much easier to control than when they were hidden among the crab grass. We also discovered we now had far less spiders and snakes to deal with. I grew to like the new look of our yard and had not heard any complaints from either neighbor about it. It wasn’t long until their yards started taking on this new look as well. The money that I would have spent on all that wasted water could now be used to buy things for the garden, like lights and a mirror ball etc.

   So imagine my surprise when I opened the mail one afternoon to find a picture of my yard and a demand from the “Mafia” to either replant my yard with new sod or else. Honestly I laughed out loud. The cul-d-sac in front of my house looks the same as my yard and the HOA isn’t planting sod there so why should I have to? They clearly like the “natural” look as much as I do. So I sat myself down and wrote them a letter explaining that I would not be buying a new lawn again this year. I explained that I was living “green” and that I liked the “naturally growing indigenous plants” in my yard. I told them that if they were offended that they were invited to buy a new lawn, pay the water bill to keep it green and mow it as often as they felt necessary but that I was no longer willing to “play the game” they wanted me to play, but thank you for inviting me.

   I have not heard back from them as of yet. When they do show up again (and I am sure they will) I will be ready for them. I too have a camera and I have taken many pictures of the yards, trash cans, open garages, trash, wood piles, toys, busted cars, unmowed common areas and such to share with them as well as 7 years of accounts so they can explain why the thousands of dollars they have collected from the homeowners has not yet put an entrance into the subdivision? Yes, we are still coming and going on a dirt road, imagine that!

   I am ready for the Mafia, I don’t care what they say anymore and if they think my “green” yard is a problem, wait till I paint the house black and white stripes! Heck they should feel right at home with a prison theme, don’t ya think?

Vertically Challenged…Horizontally Gifted!

Vertically Challenged and Horizontally Gifted….

    As a kid I was pretty typical. I loved playing outside and would spend endless hours riding my bike, roller skating or climbing trees.  Had I any concept then of what life was going to have planned for me I might have put down the cupcake and picked up celery stick instead.

   By the 6^th grade I had blossomed into that girl all the boys stared at. The Booby Fairy blessed or cursed me depending on your point of view with a chest that required something more substantial than the typical training bra! While all my friends were still able to pull of the tee-shirt without the tell-tale lines I was bound up like a mummy ready for burial. More time than I care to mention I found myself pinching them on the monkey bars or bumping them into a door, wall or person. I hated them and wished I could run without bouncing like an out of control beach ball in a hurricane.

   Mother Nature and the Booby Fairy must have been sisters because it didn’t take long for other part of me to start filling out as well. I lost that “boyish” figure fast. In its place were hips, thighs and weight gain I couldn’t explain.

   By the time I made middle school I was set apart as the “fat” girl. After all this was the 70’s and that meant that if you weren’t the perfect size 6, or no more than 100 lbs you were the one everyone pointed at in the lunchroom.  Looking back I realize now I wasn’t “fat” at 127 lbs but I did have curves none of the other girls had. I didn’t fit in with the popular crowd because all the girls were worrying that their boyfriends were looking a bit too long at those curves. I started wearing baggy clothing just to hide them but that in turn just made me look even bigger. Mother Nature wasn’t done yet…she also decided that at a height of 5’5” I was tall enough. If she had been kind and given me just 3 more inches my 127 lbs would have been stretched out and I might have stood a chance.

    I spent my middle school years and my high school years being tormented and believing that I was the “fat” girl. By 18 I had reached a weight of 148 lb! I remember to this day stepping on that scale and almost going into shock.  Just 2 pounds from 150 and social suicide!  To make things worse this was the dawning of the “DISCO” age and I was old enough to party! My best friend was a waif of a thing who could turn sideways and disappear so standing next to her was like putting an elephant next to a gazelle and asking which the fat one was.  I didn’t let that stop me however because I discovered that I loved to dance. I put on my best disco dress and my 4 inch heels and I hit the clubs every chance I got. I never had a problem getting a dance partner once we left the dance floor they were always more interested in the gazelle than the elephant no matter how the elephant could twirl!  My curves got me attention but not the lasting kind and I began to wonder if they ever would.

   Then it happened…I fell in love. I wasn’t concerned with my curves anymore because he loved them. I was feeling good and looking forward to my life again until the day I stepped into the dress shop to find my wedding gown. The woman there couldn’t hide the shock from showing on her face when I told her I needed to see what they had available in a size 16. You would have thought I was asking her to run naked in the parking lot! She hemmed and hawed and pushed gown after gown down the long rack while she mumbled under her breath about cupcakes and second helpings. Really?? It took her about 30 minutes but she managed to find 4 dresses in my size and hurried me off to the dressing room. I think she was afraid I would upset the skinny girls in there. Anyway….I tried on dress one which was a lovely confection of lace, ruffles, drapes, bows and dangly things that covered every square inch of me. The only thing showing was my fingertips and face and she assured me the veil would take care of the latter. As I trudged out to the viewing stand I felt like a trussed up sack of potatoes and I looked like a nightmare. The sales girls all oohed and awed and tried to convince me that I was a “vision” in white…yup I was a vision alright…the kind that wakes you up in a cold sweat! My mother sat there in silence as did my maid of honor. This wasn’t the one for sure! Dresses two and three didn’t lend much better results. It seemed that the designers all had this concept that girls with curves should look like the “Michelin man” from the tire commercials. MORE was better when trying to hide all those curves!

   By the time I had on dress number four I was tired of this whole event. I didn’t care what it looked like I just wanted out of there.  As they pulled it over my head after putting me in some huge under-skirt made of chicken wire I think, to help the dress stand out, I saw that this one at least showed some skin. It had something called a “sweetheart” neck line so at least I didn’t feel as if I was being swallowed alive. With long lace sleeves, a high waist and a train that stretched four feet behind me I was walked out to the viewing mirror and put on display. More oohs and awes followed and my Mother at least didn’t look like she would cry anymore made me think that maybe this one would work. I about fell over laughing when the question was raised about how I would dance in this monstrosity. The sales lady quickly spun me around and said….it “BUSTLES” in the back. What?? Bustles?? She then gathered up the 4 feet of extra dress and bunched it up, hooked it on two little hooks in the back and said…see!  OMG…my ass now looked like it was part of a Macy’s Day Float! Nine feet wide and 6 feet deep!  I could have hidden a whole family of midgets in there and never known!

    It was a done deal. Mom loved it, my maid of honor who was a size 3 gushed about how pretty it was and I just gave up.

   The wedding behind me and my future in front with a man who loved me gave me a new sense of purpose.  Curves became a little noticed thing. I was busy being a wife and soon to be mother so those curves were taking on a whole new dimension. The Booby fairy showed up again and I was a DD over night! The belly began to balance out the hips, thighs and butt and while some may think it absurd this new body actually started to look pretty good. Mother Nature however decided to play another trick and throughout the entire pregnancy instead of gaining weight I was losing it and shifting what was “baby” all to the front! By the time she was born I was looking wonderful! My after baby body looked better than it ever had and I wasn’t the “fat” girl anymore. Too bad that didn’t last long. Babies 3 and 4 made sure of that. While I lost with each one I gained twice as fast afterwards but was too busy to pay attention.

    Years later, I got up one morning and did the unthinkable. I stepped on a scale and to my utter shock that blasted thing said 195 lbs! NO I yelled but there it was in black and white.  All those years of tasting dinner, cleaning the kid’s plates and eating on the run and this is what I get. Why didn’t someone say something? Sigh…

   I tried all the diets out there and bounced up and down like a yo-yo for years. I ate cabbage soup till I wanted to barf or plant myself in the yard; I tried the popular diet pills, starvation, and eating 8 little meals a day. Nothing worked. It appeared that this was going to be my new “fluffy” shape from now on.

   It would have been easy to be depressed about it but I didn’t have the time. What did happen is that I soon found myself just accepting what I was and how I looked and giving it little thought from there on. That it turned out was the liberation I needed all along. Once I could look at me in the mirror and not be ready to toss my cookies, I began to see that it isn’t what is on the outside that matters but what is on the inside. The morning of my 40th birthday I stepped on the scale and when a number bigger than 200 popped up I just laughed.

   I turned around and said to myself and Mother Nature who was looking over my shoulder in the mirror…

    You win…I am Vertically Challenged and Horizontally Gifted! Thank you, I love it! It’s a perfect fit!