Huh, you've got our neighbors, who peer over the fence on a regular basis to look for things to report us to the city for. (The neighbor two doors down is hoping to harass us into leaving so he can back a very low-ball offer to our landlord to buy the house so he can add it to the two others on our side of the street in his collection.) Hubby pointed out that he had lots of time to spend on red tape and would be happy to have as many meetings with city officials as it would take to get this settled--and whomever was going to put their name on the complaint had better be there. Interestingly enough, no one showed for the third meeting, and Hubby had a copy of city regulations that he had marked. Bureaucrats don't like people who can look up cited regulations and have the intelligence to read legalese.

Fuck that, Ginger. Ridiculous.

Sorry y'all are feeling bummed, Nora. I think it's time to shift into summer mode - aka not doing fuckall unless absolutely necessary, and refusing to care much about anything because it's just. too. hot.

Oo Ginger, how frustrating!

Ginger, that is ridiculous and frustrating. I

Nora, sorry the house continues to be such a burden.

Ginger, FFS, what a jerk.

Connie, just, OMG really, evil!neighbor? really? I aspire to be an owner of many properties myself (so far, I own one. it's a start!) but to stoop to trying to harass people out of their house so you can glom it up? Wretched.

Nora, are you near your phone? Choosing between text and email right now...

I am near my phone. Am currently upstairs hoping this headache goes away soon. We'll see if some Kindle useage aggravates it...

To give evil neighbor "credit", he sees buying the house cheap as a lovely side benefit of getting rid of people who may not share the same family values as the rest of the neighborhood, ie, we're not LDS. But even these asshats know better than to say that in anything resembling a legal setting.

Ginger that is awful. If you were not going through the whole fighting cancer right now, I'd suggest appealing. As it is, I can only echo those who say "appeal if you have the energy". Do you have a friend or neighbor who do the heavy lifting in an appeal - basically, photos, filling out forms. Depending on regs, you still might actually have to show up for a hearing. I some jurisdictions you can file a preliminary appeal this sort of thing on paper, depends on rules of your state and municipality. Finding out procedure is also something a friend or neighbor could do for you. Actually since that part can be done by phone, email me your physical address, and look on the notice to tell me if it was city, county or special district, and I can at least look into the appeal procedures.

Gray cats and disappearing acts: when I lost my cat Ivan - I believe it was an I opened the door, he went by in a flash (or possibly teleported out) and I was so tired I didn't notice and then didn't realize 'til the next day.

I'm so sorry, sumi! Leo got out the last time I went away for a few days and I didn't realize it until my neighbor called me. They'd found him sitting on their porch, waiting for them to take him home. Which baffles me, because he doesn't KNOW them. How did he know to go there? It also scared the fuck out of me, of course, because he was outside for hours. He got bit in the leg by something, too, and was sick and limping and needed ABs for days. So I'm fencing in the porch so he can't slip by me and be gone again. No matter how careful we are, we can't be careful enough - cats are just too slippery.

And Gray Cat did it again. I let him out at 10pm last night and went to bed. I woke up at 5:30am and heard a meow, and I thought, that sounds like Gray Cat, but it can't be, and then he jumped up on the bed and lo, it was indeed Gray Cat. I remembered that I'd gotten up again at 1:30 and stepped outside on the porch because I'd thought I heard a cat yowling (the porch is underneath my bedroom window) but there was no cat. So, again, he must have run inside then when I opened the door, but I'm damned if I saw him. All day today I've been paying real close attention as I go in and out, but I'm nearly convinced the cat can teleport himself inside.