Hey guys, I'm back from LA. About five pounds came along for the ride. It's all good though, I am confident that I can get rid of them. I expect about 3lbs are water weight and will evaporate quickly and 2lbs are real fat that I will need to work on.
Vacation was good. As usual though, a week with my family begins by being relaxing but is stressful by the end. To be fair though we didn't have any major fights this time around which was nice. I'm worrying about my parents since I think that their driving is getting worse. My dad is in his late 60's and my mom turns 65 next year, so it's not like they're ancient, but they were never great drivers to begin with. On the way home from the airport our first night with my dad driving we had 4 close calls with other cars. Most of them were the other cars' faults, but still.
Leaving aside the negatives, here are the good things from my trip:
- seeing my elderly aunt who is still chugging along despite a laundry list of physical ailments for which the doctors have no cure or treatment (she looked better than I expected)
- an enjoyable conversation with my cousin and her husband
- my sister-in-law making for the first time her family's traditional oustakaka, which is a Swedish dessert that involves making your own cheese using raw milk and rennet -- it turned out great
- playing with my sister's two dogs, although one of them has a lot of anxiety. They are cute playing together. One dog has an extra toe!
- spending some quality time with two dear friends from college who I don't get to see nearly enough (that whole living in another state thing really gets in the way
)
- not fighting with my parents
I am back at work today after getting home at 1:30am last night. Carter was super sleepy. I was worried at first he didn't seem too excited to see us, but then again when he is sleepy he doesn't get very worked up about anything.
We'll see how he is when we get home from work today.
Unfortunately when opening our mail we got a letter from our homeowner's association saying that effective immediately they are instituting a new vegetable garden policy, which is restrictive enough as to basically outlaw the gardens and make us dig up our veggie patch which we have had for four years with no problem. The rules at first seem innocent: no more than 100 square feet, must be behind the back corners of the house, not visible from the street, no more than 36 inches tall, no fencing of any kind. And they must be approved in writing by the board.
Okay, but then think about this: there is no part of our backyard that is not visible from some point in the street due to the layout of our neighborhood. Our neighborhood is rife with bunnies who will devour anything that does not have fencing around it. Tomato plants, which are the most popular backyard vegetable, easily grow to be more than 36 inches tall. The board are a bunch of dictators (3 person board, last time someone left they appointed their buddy to the open space instead of having and election) who hate gardens and don't know anything about them. There was no referendum or vote or anything on these new rules.
In any case, it is too frustrating for me to want to bother fighting them. We tried before but there isn't much we can do. It's possible if we could get signatures on a petition of more than 50% of the homeowners we could change it, but that's a lot of work. So our options are: 1) move, 2) give up growing vegetables, 3) ignore them and wait and see if they complain, 4) attempt to grow vegetables within their rules, 5) just stick veggies in with all our other plants rather than having a veggie "patch", and grow all our tomatoes in pots. I guess we could plant flowers in our current veggie plot instead?