The Talk of the Town

In our little house we have quite the "entourage" as I like to call it.  We have our 3 year old son, a 75 pound chocolate lab, a 65 pound German short haired pointer, and a 6 month old cat.  Like I said, our entourage.

I should have also probably mentioned that we live in a town home, not an actual house.  That's right, no backyard for our 4 legged kiddos to play in or "use" at their disposal.

So when its time to take the pups outside, between the toddler running amuck, and handling the 2 large dogs, (and just me) we usually don't spend too much time out there.  So things like picking up after the dogs doesn't get handled as they are doing it.  I usually end up doing it every other day.  When Cameron has gone to bed, and after the dogs have done their business.

Well apparently this is too much for our anal retentive elderly neighbors to handle.  Because this morning, as I was handling our normal morning ritual (you know, calming one dog down because there are other living creatures outside, calling after the other because sometimes her curiosity gets the best of her, and of course there's Cameron, trying to pick up God knows what off the ground).  I was approached by one of my (very friendly, just to note) neighbors. He wanted to let me know that there was an HOA meeting last night, and apparently me and my little entourage are the "talk of the town" (as he put it).  You could tell this man felt bad for even trying to disrupt my already chaotic situation, but just wanted to give me a heads up that the HOA and some of our "older" tenants, have it out for us.  They don't feel that I am keeping my property in proper condition.

Lovely.

As if I didn't despise living in our condo - that has no storage, a dryer sitting on our patio because it broke back in November of last year and was never removed, not one thing fixed that was promised by our landlords to be fixed when we moved in (including a hole in my living room ceiling because there was a leak in the upstairs bathroom that caused a weakness in the ceiling and the previous tenant decided to stick his hand through it), a crazy next door neighbor that calls the cops because we were watching Toy Story too loud at 8pm on a Wednesday night, and a severe red ant problem (yep, the kind that bite).  Just to name a few.

Now I need to be outside (my property only - just another note) with a bag under each dog as they are taking care of business, while watching my child, and then make it to the dumpster with each dog and making sure my child doesn't try to play chicken in the parking lot.  All because I live in a small community of old retired people that have nothing better to do than sit around and find things to bitch about.

And I get it.  I chose to live in a condo, I chose to have the dogs and the child.  However, let's be real here.. a little dog shit on the ground never hurt any body.