Well we have been running like crazy lately.
Mid to late summer around here is usually like that.
We went to pick up Saren near the end of July. That went well and I am so glad he is home.
The weekend before that we had Aguilar Fest-Saturday was our garage sale, which went OK, and then Sunday was the Mud Race, which was a lot of fun, even if I got sunburned.
I spent two days the last week of July filling in for the administrative assistant for the fire department, while she went on vacation. When I sat down with the kids to discuss how things would go that day, it was kind of funny to realize that this was the first time I’d left the house to work since before most of them were born. There wasn’t a lot to do, as to do the incident reports I’d need training, so I put together a directory of different phone numbers I may need as a dispatcher. I already need to update it LOL. But it has already proven itself useful.
Then, we had an inspection. Now, I have discussed before that we currently live in government housing. Living in “the projects” doesn’t have quite the, umm, stigma attached to it that it does in a big city. For one, we have a small complex of 18 units, and mostly elderly and families live here. We don’t have drug problems, or people driving brand new cars while living off of welfare. In fact, I don’t think any of the families are living off of welfare. We do have one family here on disability, but it’s really a disability. We ended up here after some choices that, looking back on, we’d probably not have made. Not necessarily bad choices, more like no other choice choices.
See, we were living in this cute little house on about 1.5 acres, across from the school. We were renting it. We couldn’t get financing to buy it because, like many homes here in Aguilar, it was over 100 years old, and the foundation was cracked. There are lots of arroyos here, and when many of the older homes were built, those arroyos were filled with cheap fill dirt, which has settled over the 100 years, so the foundations have cracked. We have a lot of vacant homes in town, simply because they can’t be sold due to the foundation damage. We certainly couldn’t afford to buy the house outright. But the owners were perfectly willing to have us continue to live there for as long as we wanted.
The school district, however, had other plans. Our school was old, and funding was finally secured to demolish and rebuild. Once that was done, the school decided they needed a parking lot. They made an offer to buy the house we were living in, intending to demolish and build a parking lot. The owners weren’t interested. The owner’s grandfather built that house, he wanted it kept standing. After about a year of back and forth wrangling, the school threatened to use imminent domain. That means they can have the house condemned (again, that foundation damage) and buy it for fair market value. Again, a lot of back and forth-and if the imminent domain was granted, we’d have about 30 days’ notice to find a new place and move out. So, facing the prospect of homelessness, we quickly rented a house in Trinidad, about 30 minutes away from here, and moved out of our happy home.
Living in Trinidad was a nightmare, in more ways than one. Long story short, we ended up coming back to Aguilar, where we really wanted and needed to be, and living in a cabin on a friend’s property. We were about 30 foot from said friend’s house, so we had access to running water and electric, even though the cabin itself had neither. But then I got pregnant with Roan, and we decided cabin living wasn’t such a hot idea with a baby. So we started seriously looking for a house. Not a lot of rentals here, so we moved into the apartments. Rent is determined on a sliding scale. We’ve usually paid full rent, except for when Larry was in school.
Now, when you live in government housing, there are certain things you have to live with. First of all, there’s not a lot of soundproofing between apartments. I’ve lived in apartments before and understand that there are some things you have to accept, but in our little town, not a lot of people have, so there are a lot of issues among neighbors about travelling sound. Then there’s the privacy issue-again, not a lot of it, which is hard to get used to after living away from people so much as we have. Then, there’s the inspections.
Once yearly, the director comes in and inspects your house for cleanliness. They look at stuff that, while on the chore list, often gets ignored for more visible stuff. Stuff like the floor and wall underneath and behind your stove and refrigerator. The floor of your closet. The hinges of your cabinets. Now, they do this for a few reasons. The first is maintenance issues. Like, say the track for your closet gets broken. It’s something you can live with, so you don’t call maintenance about it. Well they want to fix that type of stuff. The next is because, being a government entity, they don’t have a lot of money to replace stuff like stoves and refrigerators, so if you are trashing their stove and refrigerator, they want it dealt with. And, of course, there’s the stigma of living here-if you’re living here you must be trash of some variety, so you have a messy house and need the excuse of doing a deep cleaning once a year or being threatened with eviction.
Now, I must clarify, that the last statement does not reflect the attitudes of our current executive director, or the attitude of many executive directors. However, the policy was put in place by HUD many years ago, so someone had/has that attitude. I am on the Board of Commissioners here (that will be a separate post) and have heard people in leadership positions of other housing authorities say “The maintenance staff is told to keep an eye on the people when they go to fix stuff, and see if they are keeping house.” I myself have had issues with maintenance staff (another separate post). Now, I can understand monitoring cleanliness to a certain degree-after all, apartments are problematic in ways that houses aren’t. If one person/family attracts pests such as mice or roaches, they will quickly spread to other units, no matter how clean they are. But making people feel like they are scum because they don’t mop every day or because they couldn’t physically move their stove to clean under it is pretty uncalled for, in my opinion.
Anyway, in addition to the yearly inspection (ours is in November, when it’s nice and cool for cleaning), you have another inspection every two years, by HUD, for safety issues. That inspection is more of a look at the entire property-are your sidewalks wide enough to be in compliance with ADA, can people quickly escape their apartments in an emergency, but they also randomly look at several units just to check. Our next one is coming up in January.
And then this year, we had another inspection by HUD. They came down to look at some other stuff in the office, and also wanted to randomly inspect a few units. So another large deep cleaning, at the hottest time of the year. THAT was a pain in the butt. But, the good thing is that it’s done, so it will make everyone’s chores easier. It’s much easier to pick up and put away a few things than completely clean a room. Of course, ours has never been hit by a random inspection, but we have to do the cleaning just the same LOL.
And then we’ve had fire issues. We are in a drought, so even a few days of soaking rain doesn’t do much to mitigate fire danger. At this point, a few days of soaking rain just makes the fuel grow more, and then it dries out again and becomes more efficient fuel. In the last week, we’ve had nine events. Most of them weren’t fire, but still, busier than usual. But a neighboring district had a really large fire, 300 acres at last count.
So, all in all, a very busy few weeks. However, things are back to our normal level of chaos now, so we should be able to post more regularly!
I’m still working on August menus. How sad is that? LOL. I’ll get it posted as soon as I’m done. Tonight is chili cheese hot dogs and some sort of potato. I’ll use up the tater tots in the freezer if it’s cool enough to use the oven. The good thing about soaking rains is that it usually means I can use the oven after 6-8 weeks of not being able to. That adds some variety to our meals and treats.
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