I do not like being told I am doing something wrong. I do not like being told that I am breaking a rule (or a law). I really do not like being told this if I do not know the rule that I am breaking. This is why I was upset when the wife and I discovered a large orange sign pounded in our front yard…
I guess you can tell we are having a good laugh about this now but not so when we first saw the sign. We are in violation of two rules according to the orange sign. We are watering our lawn on a day other than our trash pick up day and the watering is causing a run off onto the street. This is the first I have heard of these rules.
I know that we (or is it still they) here in Texas are in somewhat of a drought. I know that in a drought there are restrictions. However, according to the sign, there is some sort of rule that prohibits watering on any day other than your trash pick up day. Since the bill for water usage and trash / recycle bin pick up is one and the same I suppose that this makes sense but for the life of me I am not sure how I am supposed to know this. I guess you are supposed to wait until you get the city’s equivalent of The Scarlet Letter pounded into your front yard for all to see.
According to the sign, this rule has been in place since November 1, 2011. The warning was signed and dated at 2:10 AM. This means that someone has the unfortunate job of driving up and down residential streets in the wee hours of the morning to catch evil violators like us in the act. I can tell you that I have not touched the sprinkler system control that is in the garage since we moved in last September so that means that we were just lucky to have gotten by so long without getting caught. I do not even have a manual for it so I guess I will have to just figure it out myself. I can tell you that we had the ONLY sign and there were many other folks within eyesight that had wet driveways (suggesting that they, too, had their sprinklers set on a non trash pick up day).
Anyway, the wife and I stewed about it a bit and then calmed down and started laughing at it. That is until we got our second warning of the day in (of all places) our mailbox.
My mother and grandmother are here for a short visit. My grandmother is 85 and this is probably her last big trip anywhere. They divided their time here between us and my cousin (who has the slight advantage of having a new [newer] baby). Since my grandmother has a little trouble walking around (and since our van was hogging the space in our driveway) my mother parked right in front of our driveway so my grandma did not have to walk as far. Unfortunately parking there is in violation of some sort of US Postal Service rule of parking too close to our mailbox. This warning did not call as much attention to us as the other warning sign but since nerves were a little high in the “warning sign” department we still got a little riled up about it. Unlike the water sign, this carried no monetary penalty (we could not tell if the water sign was a warning or a penalty, I guess time will tell).
Anyway, I will tackle the sprinkler system today and be mindful of the mailbox when folks come to my house and park. Hopefully we can get through the day today without any more warnings.
Jon Dieterman
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