Kathleen McCall:
Occasional�� Muse�

2004-09-25 - 1:44 p.m.

Days, Going By

There's something about "updated five days ago" that bugs me. It speaks of my life. That I haven't had any time for jotting down odd bits, or that there hasn't been anything amusing enough to make me push the child out of my chair and write.

Or all of the above.

Actually, it has been an interesting week, not in any way I could easily write down, but in a familiar way. Most everything is in a state of unrest for me right now, even my own home, my haven. Sometimes I forget that my haven is a condominium, and that although I think I own it, I actually live with fifty-one other ghost owners. I own my inside walls, but THEY (yes, me too, the fifty-second ghost) own the windows. I own my sheetrock, but they/we own the airspace within the walls. If you know anything about condominiums, you understand this. And you understand that mostly we successfully ignore our fifty-one roommates. But that sometimes, the group erupts into horrible rending fights, slinging all sorts of mud at each other, drawing chalk lines and daring each other to step over, spitting and tearing each others' hair out in clumps, eye-poking and instep-stomping and crotch-kneeing. It's all in the CCNR's.

So this has been going on, over the rather amazing "special assessment" (again, if you own a condo or have EVER owned a condo, this phrase will strike fear into your heart) of -- get this --- ten grand. Yes, ten thousand bucks. Zat figure get your attention? Did mine.

And there's all this weird personality shit, currents pushing this way and that; there's all that pompous I-volunteer-on-the-board-and-you-don't stuff. It's impossible to question a decision these days without directly questioning the parentage of the board members who made it. Nobody seems to be able to put principles over personalities right now. I'm as guilty as the next person.

I don't WANT to choose sides. I know I'm a pathological conflict-avoider, but I need some sanctuary, and I need my home to be a safe space. I don't want to cross the head of the board - she's a terrifyingly remorseless and self-righteous woman, and I don't want to have anything at all to do with her. I don't think she'd key my car, but I do think I'm quite likely to get a letter saying I have twenty minutes to remove all the climbing vines from my siding and that I will be charged fifty bucks a minute after that period until such vineage is removed from the siding defined in CCNR section (IC) clause 280.37 as common property, to wit, "the north wall of the dwelling."

But I don't want to be on her side, either. I don't want there to BE sides. The neighbors to the north of me are my friends, and they are militant about this whole thing - and I do mean militant; you have no idea. Thems that aren't with 'em are agin 'em. If I'm not willing to sign the petitions and stand up in the meetings to support the anti-Board contingent, then I'm THEIR enemy.

And all of these fifty-two people are living here, in my house, squabbling over the bathroom and who belongs to the underwear on the floor in the hallway and why doesn't anyone else ever take out the trash?

So: my week. Toss in a adolescent who is having a REALLY rought time in life, and five evenings booked solidly with meetings and commitments after work, and an accidental needle stick at work which sent me off to have a "baseline HIV and Hep C" test, to be repeated in six months; the usual financial woes compounded by this new ten grand debt, and serious concerns about my mother's living situation, shake vigorously, and you have the reason why I haven't updated. No time to THINK. I can write, but it comes out like this did - in a long frantic babble of this-andthenthis-andthenTHIS.

It isn't that anyone's expecting to get a blow-by-blow of my life from this diary - I don't do that anyway. I usually put up something I'm thinking about. Right now, I just don't know what I'm thinking about.

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