Home sweet home owners' association

This weekend while my co-blogger, Ellie, was dancing and drinking (simultaneously!) at the Reducers show in OB, Connecticut,

and my other co-blogger, Jacquie, was cracking the whip at the Devo concert and microbrew festival at the Del Mar Race Track, in Del Mar, California,


I was, well, not.

Don’t get me wrong, I did drink some beers. I even managed to sneak out to sushi with Jacquie and our long-time good, good friend, Aline, who was in from Texas.

(They obviously wanted their photo to be included.)

But most of the time I was in moving hell.

I did survive, and managed to only forget two bags of clothes and all my daughters’ hair accessories at the old place, but it was brutal.

However, now that I’m in my new home (albeit surrounded by a cardboard city) my new challenge is accepting the rules and regulations that come along with belonging to a Home Owners Association.

That’s right, I now live (for the first time in my life) in a planned community, and the Association likes to keep this community looking a certain way. To ensure this, they’ve instituted plenty of bylaws, rules, etc.

I’ve vowed to myself that I will be nice and sweet and charming to everyone associated with the Association, so that I will get what I want get along well in my new environment.

Because I have a boyfriend that I suspect will be spending the night on a fairly regular basis, I needed to find out the rules governing overnight visitor parking.

So I called up the Association and very sweetly inquired about overnight parking. I listened with growing irritation patiently, as the woman told me that I need to call the office every time a visitor is going to park in a visitor parking spot overnight.

“Every time?” I asked incredulously sweetly.

“Yes. Every time.”

Here is my dumb ass, so-NOT-sticking-to-my-self-pledged-vow reply: “But you’re not my mother!”

And this is only week one.