The HOA War begins

The foxes and The HOA are competing for being the neighborhood evil. Actually, the really bad thing is, given the chance, I would love to have a pet fox. Just a little irony there. Hubby loves it. Hubby’s having his own little problem with The HOA. He used to have a war with the mailman at the old house. I have no idea how it started, but it was ongoing for nearly fifteen years.

Hubby has an internet business, so he works at home. He’s almost always home during the day and our weather here is almost always sunny. Mail to the house shouldn’t be a problem, but we couldn’t have packages sent to the house because the mailman would actually hold packages for a rainy day and then leave them on our doorstep in the rain. He wouldn’t ring the bell, he’d just leave it in the rain. Hubby was home, there was no point to this. He was just being petty.

There’s no house there now, so the war is over. However, Hubby has an HOA to play with now. Yay? Our neighbors were over a few months ago. (I’ll call them Mr. & Mrs. Patience and you really have no idea how well it suits them. They have three girls and a boy between the ages of twelve and seventeen? Cringe.) Their oldest daughter had a party the week before and they wanted to know if we were bothered by it. Bothered? Actually, we didn’t notice. 

There’s a rule about no parking on the street overnight, it’s in the HOA binder. Sure, well, define ‘overnight.’ Apparently it’s past midnight. Mr. Patience received a notice from The HOA citing the regulation and a picture of the cars in front of his house with a time/date stamp on it.

So . . . someone from The HOA drives around at midnight looking for infractions and taking pictures? Really? Can I have that job and how much does it pay? Benefits?

Two things happened at that moment. I got a sudden urge to reread 1984, and Hubby developed a twitching need to bait them. Kill me. Then a couple months ago Hubby got very excited about a package he received, going on and on in Y-chromosome-ese about some online trade. With a grin, he opened it proudly and showed me a 1970s coin-fed parking meter that he wants to sink in concrete in our grass parking strip. 

I’m sorry, did you not read that correctly? My husband of twenty years wants to install a coin fed parking meter in front of our house to tick off The HOA. Naturally, I questioned him. Something along the lines of “Wha-?” Usually I’m more coherent, but words failed me. He explained he examined the HOA regulations, both binders, and can’t find anything specifically against it. The city says we just have to be sure to have a notice on it that it’s non-functional, for decorative use only, or some other indicator that it’s not official in any way. That’s all? Great!

What about taste?

Hubby’s still trying to argue the parking meter is art. The Boy suggested painting it purple, and I almost went for that for the sheer lunacy of it. For now, it sits in the front hall (not a win) and waits until its fate is determined. I’ve budged a little, I’ll allow it in the backyard. I think that’s reasonable.