Ah, Mi Pueblo

 

We’re basically an onion here. Our condo building with twelve units is one of eleven in the complex, a microcosm of a society within a microcosm of society.

          You may remember the flap at another building over one of its residents deciding to build and park thirteen big planters smack in front of his building, without consulting anyone else who lived there. Not only were they ugly, but they were against the rules of outside objects – never mind the danger they’d present come hurricane season. And yes, they’re now gone, per order of our board.

          After several of us in our building discussed the situation and all agreed that yes, this sort of thing should have had the input of everyone, someone in our building ordered sixty-two bags of mulch and had them delivered yesterday. On her own.

Some good sports - or maybe people guilted into it - laid all of the mulch around our building and yes, it does look nice. The thing is, the majority of us here will be gone in three weeks, the summer rains will wash some of the mulch away, and the rest will settle in and be indistinguishable from the dirt by the time we all return in the fall or winter.

          And the person who did this is on our management board.  Sigh.

          Also in the past two days, with my lofty title of building rep (which really just means I send information on to everyone), one person complained to me about the couple above her who defiantly played loud music or television at 12:30 at night, even after she’s pointed this out before.  

Another owner knocked on my door the next day, teary-eyed because the person above her slammed the door in her face when she asked the woman to please not sent buckets of water cascading down when washing her porch. The water was running down the building, over the screens below, and dripping into the lower porch.

The conspiracy theorists next door and the couple it took my three years to wring their email address out of are looking pretty good right about now.