Pay the city to remind you about things you don't want to care about.

Last week the now routine love letter from the city of mishawaka came in the form of an orange card stock slip of paper creatively designed to hang from a door knob crammed between two panes of glass in my storm door.  

It was from my buddy Randy.  I call him my city appointed pen pal. Due to unknown forces of the universe (highly suspected as a complaint call from judgmental creepy a-hole neighbors) these correspondences occur once twice a year.  I've accepted them now as a my tax money powered alarm system for yard work. The notice comes that I have a deadline to jump through whatever hoop he's been made to make me jump through. Then I call him and as nice as can be we discuss what needs to be done, how long I have to do it and then what I am able to do and how long it's realistically going to take me to do it.

This process is so routine and in my eyes completely outside of the realm of what my tax powered government should be spending on my time on that I've come to a very blunt conclusion. There is no need to waste my time keeping a routine schedule of exterior maintenance to my property when it's obviously consuming the minds of.my neighbors. No real consequences come from waiting for the letter to come and then handling the issue, I can safely assume that if there isn't a letter there must also not be an issue.

One of the biggest complaints is that a strip of grass between my property and the train tracks that has tire paths left over from the 1940's but no one can tell me if its actually an alley since its not on any maps and dead ends behind a carpet store, is blocked by vegetation. I feel like if this is an alley I shouldn't be being asked to mow it. If its owned by the city they should mow it, if its owned by the train tracks they should mow it and my personal favorite if no one owns it or uses it let it grow what ever god allows and keep people that much farther away from my yard. 

I understand the I am a horrible lazy person, or that my actions might appear to support that I am, but I don't care. Outside the boundaries of my property might as well be a wild amazon, a war zone, an uninhabitable desert or a brick wall.  I don't like or even really know the people around me. I certainly don't trust them and they've made clear that they don't like me. I imagine that they are engaged in an epic battle with me as we each wait endlessly for the other one to either move or die. I wish they would die. 

In all fairness my driveway looked like hell. I had debris left over from the recent remodel, boxes from the new baby furniture, last years solar pool cover that was so green it biodegraded and ripped this year and the fence that was destroyed by an over zealous demolition team that took out the house next door. Mostly I just stuffed what I couldn't throw away or burn into my garage. To throw away or burn later.