I've had my homeowners' association on my mind again this week, mostly because after next week I will want to put up Christmas decorations outside. The HOA has never said anything about Christmas decorations in the past, but I'm starting to think they might this year just because they seem to hate me for reasons that I have yet to understand. Now I'm not going to go all Griswold on them. My house won't be some bright, glowing spot on Google satellite maps. I just want to put up my usual holiday fanfare--multicolored, icicle lights on the bottom story gutter, a lighted wreath on my door, and if I really feel like going all out, lighted garland and red bows above the first-floor windows. I will probably also put out a Christmas mat, but really, who can tell the difference between a mat with dancing, Santa-hatted penguins and a mat with fleur-de-lis from the street?So here I am, all stressed out about whether a little holiday cheer will incur the wrath of the HOA, when I see this neighborhood oddity, a nickle grey mailbox, coming back from the grocery store the other day. There it was, all bright and shiny, four houses into the subdivision and sticking out like a sour thumb in a sea of dull, black mailboxes. Seeing as I have read the covenants cover to cover, I know for a fact that all Mailboxes in this neighborhood must be exactly the same. That means if your mailbox rusts to the point of no longer being able to open, you have to buy another flat black mailbox. You can't buy shiny black. You can't buy plastic black, and you dang sure can't buy nonblack or watered down black. It's flat black and nothing else.
Since the mailbox is the fourth house in the subdivision, there is no way that the HOA and the management company for the HOA did not see it. Well, there is one way. They could have been driving past with their eyes closed, but given that there is a sharp curve right after that house, they would have driven straight into a creek a few seconds later. I haven't seen or heard of anyone doing that so, in my opinion, that means they have seen it and they just don't care.
Why? Someone please explain to me why it's okay for someone to violate the explicit mail boxes clause of the covenants, but if I sneeze too hard, the management company sends me a letter on behalf of the HOA telling me I need to clean up my snot in seven days or incur a $200 fine. I just don't get it. Either apply the covenants to all of us in an even-handed manner, or don't apply them at all.
Given how long that mailbox has been up--two weeks so far--I have half a mind to buy a Santa mailbox topper for mine, just to see what they would say. I'm sure it will be something that Scrooge himself would be proud of.
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