Condo Rules, Widowers, Breasts and Pocket Change---Oh, My!

I went to an open house on Sunday of a free standing condo in my target area and price range. Loved the place except for the carpeting and paint which are easy enough to replace. They have a beautiful dog walking path, perfect for Levi and me. Flat as a pancake and it starts within 50 feet from the condo. I asked about the dog policy in the community of 50 condos and found out you can’t even put in an offer on the place until you get approval on your dog from the condo board. You fill out a form, provide a photo and DNA of your dog and wait for them to call you in for a doggie interview. DNA? Okay, I do get why they want a poop sample for residences who might make a habit of not picking up after their dogs but why would you have to pay to provide and process one before you’ve even made an offer on a house? 

I called the condo management company the next day to see if I could get more information on their dog rules like weight and breed restrictions, etc. I know many places have a 25 pound limit and Levi is 27 pounds and he’s got nothing to lose. The woman started rattling off restrictions pertaining to keeping birds inside your condo. Birds! Inside! Only one per condo. In my wildest dreams I never dreamed condo boards would get that deep into your pet business. Then she started in on cat rules but I was still processing that they have a bird rule and I didn’t hear what she was saying about felines. Finally, she got to the paragraph on dogs and it was vague on size and weight saying only words to the effect that everything was at the discretion of the board. You can’t have underground fencing---duh, you don’t own the land---or tie a dog by your back door. You have to walk it every single time. And anytime they want, the board can vote your dog off the island. “Put your condo up for sale or take a trip to the kill-shelter,” they could order. “Last night your dog peed ten feet short of the dog walking trail and we have yellow DNA in snow to prove it.” But the condo board are all lovely people, the manager told me when I balked a little about the each and every time rule. Yes, lovely people who get bent out of shape about someone having a cage full of parakeets.

 

On the way home I stopped at the Guy-Land Cafeteria and an old guy struck up a conversation with me while the cashier was off chasing down change for 100 dollar bill from a customer ahead of us in line. “I see you eat breakfast anytime of the day,” he said. “I do. Especially when I come here.” “Me, too,” he replied. Then he went on to tell me about the wife he lost who always made big breakfasts on Sundays and how he can’t seem to make everything come together at the same time when he tries to make breakfast at home. “Don’t feel bad,” I told him, “I’ve been trying to do that my entire adult life and I still can’t do it.” I visualized him taking out a pencil and crossing me off the list of possible lady friends. Seriously, though, I don’t know how long ago he lost his spouse but it was still painful for him to talk about his loss.

The Guy-Land Cafeteria does get a few women customers and this time there was a table with four generations in attendance. When the youngest one got hungry her mom took her to the bathroom where I found the young mother still sitting on a toilet stool fifteen minutes later. It made me sad/mad to see her there nursing with toilets flushing around her. One of my great niece-in-laws is militant about (discreet) breast feeding in public places and I admire her dedication to the cause. I've followed some of the Facebook discussions on the topic and I can’t believe how much attitudes have changed since I was a kid when I often saw breast feeding mothers. When did it become disgusting to so many people to the point that we have to have a movement to bring back the notion that breasts are not pornographic when used for the purpose they were intended?

After lunch I stopped at the dollar store to pick up some things for a Red Hat Society tea later in the week. We’re packing Christmas gift bags for nursing home residents again. As I paid the cashier she asked me if I wanted my (seven cents) change. “As opposed to what?” I asked thinking there must be a charity box for change near-by and she was suggesting I donate it. “Well, a lot of people don’t want their small change,” she said. This was the fourth time this year that's happened to me and at three different places. One time my change was seventy-something cents! All I could think of to answer back was “Yes,” but I wanted to ask the cashier where all that extra change goes at the end of the day. What ever happened to having retail registers balance at the end of the day and cashiers couldn’t leave until they did? I’m age-challenged to understand why/how this ask-people-if-they-want-their-change thing came about. Wanting my seven cents made me feel both church mouse poor (as if I really needed it) and Mr. Scrooge rich (as if I didn't want someone else to have it) at the same time. I couldn’t decide which but it wasn’t good either way. ©

The 'To Do' LIst

I had only two things on my ‘To Do’ list yesterday and I thought, Oh boy! I can spend the rest of the day reading ‘Catching Fire’. (Yes, I got bit by the Hunger Games series.) Anyway, all I had to do was change the filter on the furnace and go to the post office. Tops, I could complete my list in a half hour and play lazy bones the rest of the day.

Changing the filter on the furnace requires a trip down to the basement which requires a pocket in my clothing because I like to take my phone with me when I go in case I fall down the stairs and I’m still holding on to life long enough to call 911. The sweatpants I was wearing didn’t have any pockets and just holding the phone in my hand wouldn’t do because I’d probably drop it in the fall and it would slide across the cement floor, landing in the sump pump. I hate that sump pump so retrieving my phone from within just wouldn’t happen. I’m always afraid I’ll find a snake inside. You guessed it, I had to change my clothes to go down to the basement to avoid all that happening.

Changing my clothes had already cut into the half hour I had allotted for my ‘To Do’ list but while I was in the basement I checked on my “trap line” of d-con and I breathed a sigh of relief when it looked like nothing had eaten any of the poison pellets. Next I decided I might as well bring some stuff upstairs to decorate for Christmas but color me disappointed when I found all the Christmas things are in boxes up high. With my shoulder still under restrictions from my surgeon there was no way I could get them down without breaking his rule about raising my arm above shoulder height. Briefly, I thought about getting a ladder to take my shoulder up higher off the floor but I nixed that idea because I’d probably fall off the ladder, smashing the phone in my pocket, and lay there until my body was mummified.

Finally, I got on the road to go to the post office but on the way home I saw some Christmas trees tied to the tops of cars and that remained me of all the years Don and I would take Starbucks coffees up to Christmas Tree Corners on the Saturday after Thanksgiving and we’d count trees coming from the tree farms in all four directions. That memory made me sad that I’d have to forgo any holiday decorations this year… until I remembered the Dollar General near-by where I could pick up SOMETHING. Something was better than nothing, I told myself. Nearly an hour later I walked out of the place with a small, pre-lighted Christmas tree and some small stuff to decorate the cheap little thing. It took so long because I had trouble deciding on the size tree I wanted. I kept resisting that little one because it looked too much like what people bring their grandmas in nursing homes but on the other hand, I didn’t want to waste money on something larger when I had nicer stuff down in the basement. I had several size trees in and out of my cart and various ornaments to fit each one’s scale, and I’d made a mess of Dollar General's stock before I settled on the nursing home special. That left me with no other choice but to spend more time straightening up their shelves.

The tree was a 14” wide by 24” high fake pine that came in a box that measured 5” square by 18” high so as you can imagine it needed serious plumping up and being an x-florist I was up for the task. In days gone by I would have dipped the branches in a tub of very warm water but these branches weren’t plastic and whatever they were made of didn’t look like they could survive a bath, and since they were pre-wired with lights I didn’t think a fire marshal would approve of the bath idea either. I could electrocute myself lighting a wet tree. So I fused over the branches, plumping each one up before I plugged it in to see the lights. They didn’t work. In the box was a paper instructing the purchaser not to return the tree to the Dollar General. If the lights didn’t work, it said, I should email for replacement parts. I ignored the paper, stuffed the tree back in the box and took it back to the store where I was prepared with a story about not having a computer. I didn’t need it. The clerk probably remembered me from the security cameras as the customer who tidied up after herself, so she did me a favor. Or maybe she just didn't know about the note inside the box.

I got the new tree home and started the plumping process all over again. The lights, of course, worked on that one---we tested them in the store---but whoever strung them didn’t do a very good job and of the twenty lights five of them were bunched in one large clump at the bottom. So I restrung the pre-wired tree while I thought about popping some corn to string on the branches. Then I remembered the potential for mice coming into my basement and I knew I couldn’t store that tree down there after Christmas if it was decorated with eatables. And no way was I going  un-decorate it and go through the stuff-it-in-the-box trauma again. I could almost hear that first, damn little tree crying!

By the time I got my ‘To Do’ list done that half hour I predicted it would take had turned into this afternoon-long saga and I was tired and running out of daylight. And that’s when I discovered how short the cord is coming out from my little nursing home special. There was only two places in the entire house where I could set that tree and still plug it in: on the kitchen counter where I’d been working or on the exercise bike. Neither place would do which meant I would have to take another trip down to the basement to find an extension cord, but by then I’d changed back to my sweatpants without pockets, oh crap! "What do you think?" I asked the dog. "It's not so bad sitting there on the bike, is it?" And I'm quite sure I heard him reply, "Go change your clothes." ©