HOA

So two days passed since one of my all time best April Fool's Day pranks, and the prank continues:  people on my friend Norman's FaceBook (tm) page continued to congratulate him on becoming UM Law's new Dean.  The thing is, he posted that it was my prank, but clearly people don't read well.

As we've seen with the Trump administration, baldfaced lies somehow become accepted as truth. Maybe next week Norman will call me from campus to tell me he has indeed become Dean. The way the school has been falling in the rankings, it could only help.

Last night Wifey and I walked over to neighbors Ann and Mark's house, where they graciously hosted the annual HOA meeting -- for the second year in a row. No one else volunteered to have the people over. We hosted the HOA party in '01, and it was a great time, but Wifey said we could do it again in 81 years -- after each other homeowner (we have 82 houses in our enclave) had taken their turn.

We gathered, and it was the first time since our vice president Ben had died suddenly in February that we saw his widow Gloria. She was doing well -- very strong woman.

I caught up with Brian, our neighbor and a fine ENT doc, who has examined me and given me the great news that I don't have throat cancer. He's a LI transplant like I am, and we always compare notes on the LI-Miami connections -- though he's a Catholic school grad and I went to public school.

I guess a little under than half the houses were represented, and we gathered in Ann and Mark's living room for the actual meeting.

We are SO lucky. There has been essentially zero crime, except for the occasional case of people leaving their car door unlocked and losing some change or sunglasses left inside. The only points of contention are a few local speeders, and, the peafowl.

We quickly discussed the peafowl -- nothing to do. You can't kill them, and our neighbor Joe, who is also Pinecrest mayor, explained that while a farm up in Palm Beach County will take the birds, no one is really qualified to trap them.

I reminded everyone of the kerfuffle that we had about 7 years ago. We voted to remove the birds, and then a company came in which darted them before picking them up. Our neighbor Dawn, very high strung, said that her 4 year old was traumatized seeing the "pretty blue bird" go down. So we had ANOTHER vote, and this time the outcome was to leave the critters be.

I wondered about the now high school aged girl -- hopefully doing well with a minimum of psychotherapy...wherever she is.

The local speeders were another story. Neighbor Roberta wanted speed bumps installed -- and Mayor Joe explained that was no mean feat -- it required traffic studies -- and he doubted our enclave was busy enough to qualify.

We then turned to our FHP trooper -- could he ticked the scofflaws? He could, he explained, but really oughtn't -- he worried about liability, since while in our 'hood FHP acts as private security.

Could they just shoot the speeders? Not a good idea either, our trooper answered.

So after discussion, it was agreed the trooper WOULD follow the scofflaws home and politely ask them to slow down and quit ignoring a stop sign.

Our neighbors Roberta and Joan talked about nearly dying several times while walking at night. It turned out one of the worst incidents was when WIFEY nearly hit them. I told Roberta she had no idea about Wifey and cars...

Gloria talked about her late husband, as well as Bobbe Dooley, who died last year at nearly 95. Bobbe was the unofficial mayor of our 'hood -- she and her late husband Joe platted our enclave in the 50s, and lived here since. We talked about maybe naming a street after her -- we all thought it was a good idea, but it didn't seem anyone wanted to take the initiative to actually get it done.

We ended the meeting and hung around for dessert. I talked with Gloria -- she is going to stay in the 'hood.  We counted close to 10 widows who live here -- she won't be alone.  I told her Wifey is jonesing to move -- closer to D1 and Joey -- but we're putting the move off for awhile.

I really, really love living here, and fear the next place will be inferior. I guess time will tell.

But for now, we're taking subtle action against the speeders, and the peafowl will be left alone. We should all be lucky enough to  count these as our problems...