I realize that this might be a shock to some of you seeing two posts so close to one another, but I was feeling creatively generous. Okay… so not exactly generous, maybe more like charitable.
Nonetheless, no matter how you look at it, I felt like posting… So I was thinking (yes, I do know how to do that on my own… and yes they let me) it’s been long overdue since there’s been any picture updates. I’ve decided to start posting some pictures of the kids… one kid at a time starting from the top running to the bottom, so Emmah’s first then Nick and so on right down to the last one. This will help those of you who don’t fancy my writing, or just don’t feel like reading. All you’ll have to do is read this post and then come back to see the pictures. Kinda like the way one “reads” National Geographic… read a couple captions and look at the pictures.
Think of this as National Geographic for your computer without the dangers of a paper cut. Of course, you can’t take the computer into the “library” (as my dad called it from time to time) as easily as the magazine itself, but this way, you don’t have to look at starving children… just our grungy ones.
Well, now that I have your attention (this is the time to flee) an update from the land where summons are served hot off the press, or should I say hot out of a large woman’s pocket on her way home.
Deciding that we’d had enough, and really, enough is enough, anyway, we’d had enough of the getting the runaround with regards to the city and the historical committee. Seems the left hand doesn’t know what the right is doing… surprise!
So, as stated in my previous post, one of the “violations” was the porch steps and a non-weather tight storm door and another was the siding… or lack thereof or perhaps it was the various stages of destruction/demolition. All the same, they were some of the violations listed that were remaining that needed our attention. Now because we live in a hysterical district they (obviously) want to keep the area preserved in its turn-of-the-century charm and so there are guidelines put forth that the committee would like to see followed. Okay, fine… we can play that game and we have to this point submitting everything to the committee for their stamp of approval.
Now we come to the issue of the porch…
As fate would have it, we have a committee member (Bonnie) living across the street three doors down. She sent us a letter saying that “they” see that we’ve “started working again” on the house, uh… we never stopped. She left her number and so Julie contacted her and as they spoke on the phone the conversation turned to the porch. Bonnie offered to take our sketched drawing of the proposed porch design to the next meeting, a meeting that neither Julie nor I could attend. Then two days or so later, there was another letter hand written (the first was on official city letterhead signed by her) stating that the committee wasn’t allowed to look at anything until our legal matters with the city are settled… per the city.
What?
Okay, so lemme get this right… you won’t look at my drawing to approve (or not) my design… a design that I need to have so I know where, and how, it will tie into the house… so that I know where the siding and trim will be running to… siding that’s on the violations list. So I can’t side the house until the porch is done. I can’t finish the porch until its design gets approved. I can’t get approval until my legal matters are settled. I can’t settle my legal matters until I get the siding up. I can’t get the siding up until the porch is done. I can’t finish the porch……..
Do I have that right? Hmmm… talk about getting you going in circles.
This is where enough is enough… Julie in her wisdom decided it was time to take this issue to a higher authority… it’s time to bring in a councilman and get him involved and so we did. We had a nice conversation with him for about an hour on the front lawn and he agreed that there seems to be something wrong with the way all this is getting handled. He said he will make some phone calls to the city attorney among others and get back to us on Wednesday. So it gives us a bit of hope that things might ease off, then again they may not… either way, it made us feel good to tell someone who seemed genuinely interested and sympathetic to our impasse among other things.
Okay… since I said that was going to start posting pictures, I guess I need to wander on over to Emmah’s page and throw something up there eh?
(yawn) Didja hear that… well I did… it’s my pillow calling out to me… this will only take a moment… be right back.
Shhhh…
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