Nate and I have lived in Arizona for almost exactly a year now. We bought a brand new house in a brand new neighborhood, and we have settled in nicely. There are some funny (funny?) things about living in this nice new neighborhood governed by an HOA. Commies. A few weeks after we moved in we received a citation from an organization that we voluntarily joined requiring us to pay a fine for leaving our garbage receptacle "in sight" for too long. Since that time, we have received numerous warnings and citations for violations ranging from not pulling our weeds on time to parking the car on the curb. Recently we began landscaping our back yard. We had a situation (another story altogether) and needed to remove part of our Communist-esque cinderblock wall in order to allow the Bobcat to carry our three 2000 lb trees into the yard. The by-laws say that we can do this, and say how to do it, and tell the rules for rebuilding the fence. But...we were still required to petition the board of the HOA for permission to take down the wall. In the mean time, now that our fence is revealing the fact that our back yard is still a piece of dirt, we find out that we were supposed to landscape our yard within 120 days of taking possession. I suppose we'll be getting fined for that now. Don't ask Nate about any of this. He turns red in the face. We own our property, he says. I'm beginning to think the Otts don't fit in so well in the 'burbs, where people get all twitterpated by anything less than prim. I like leaving my waterhose across the driveway if I want. I wonder if our neighbors get a fine for their incessantly barking dogs??
