Please, Stop the Stupid (Lawn Chapter)

When I moved into this apartment complex, the managing company told me that no one is allowed to drive on the lawn. Ever. For any reason. That meant we would have to park the moving van in the parking lot and carry everything (including the heavy furniture) the ninety-four-long-strides from the parking lot to my door. Seemed a bit cruel but those were the rules and I agreed to follow them. 

Example of daily maintenance cart rut

Soon, the Monday after the weekend move, I learned that those

Rodent hole fix

rules didn't really apply to everyone. The maintenance crew drive golf carts all over the lawn. Daily. Way more than necessary, actually, since, even though they have work orders, they never come prepared for the job. They drive up to the door, come in to assess the situation as though resident reports are not reliable, and then have to return to the cart--and usually the garage--for tools and parts. They actually drive every inch of the ground, almost daily, to pick up trash and fill in holes the rodents leave. 

It almost made sense to me for them to drive those carts on the grass. It might still seem to make sense, except for the insistence that no one would ever be allowed to drive on the grass for any reason because they don't want ruts in the grassy areas. In my mind, ruts are ruts are ruts. And these are some rather obvious, substantial but acceptable ruts, since they were not caused by residents.

The painter (who had hit the ceilings in every one of my rooms with the wall-color roller) came to touch up. (Totally going off track to say that when he touched up, he hit the wall color with the ceiling brush, and used white paint which made it obvious that I was correct when I insisted that no one had painted the ceilings and management swore I was wrong. After he finished attempting to fix the mess, I had three paint colors instead of two.) He pulled his van right up to the door because – I suppose – it is much harder for a young, healthy, guy to carry a ladder, a brush, and a bucket of paint ninety-four-long-strides than it is for an old lady to carry every single freaking thing she owns the same distance. Or, maybe his van wouldn't leave the same ruts as my moving van would since he wasn't carrying much.

The floor guy-- who did not come to refinish my floors as promised before I moved in--came to finish the hardwood in the apartment above me. He carried even less than the painter--one electric sander--and drove right up to the door. I guess his toddlers—who, like every child who sees wide open space, ran, jumped, and screamed, louder and louder when they discovered the echo--were his free pass. Since he had no control over his children, he surely couldn't be expected to corral them and carry his sander ninety-four-long-strides in an area where no one is allowed to drive – ever. 

For years, I've watched carpet cleaners, exterminators, utility workers, even a house-call dry-cleaning service drive on the lawn. Far as I know, the only people who absolutely followed the no driving on the grass rule were me, and the ambulance drivers who came to get me when I had the brain hemorrhage. Fortunately, I was conscious and mobile when they took me out because this building isn't designed for stretchers. Once I made it out the front door, they wheeled me on a stretcher the ninety-four-long-strides to the parking lot, carefully staying on the sidewalk and leaving no ruts behind. 

I won't try to pretend that I'm a big enough person to not be annoyed the first day I looked out my front window and saw this. I'm not that person at all, obviously. I grabbed my camera and snapped this photo through blinds and dirty windows because I wasn't ready to let the world know how petty I was. 

At that point, I snickered, texted the picture to a daughter or two with a snide remark about the beloved grass – and maybe management having heart attacks or something. I'm past petty now - shameless and ready to scream this story from rooftops. 

My ability to snicker left town when the workers started dropping equipment in the parking lot where we are already a few spaces short of what we need. Seriously? Their heavy equipment and trucks can be on the grass, and they've dug trenches, but the pipes that are going into those trenches need to sit in parking spaces instead of on grass? Republicans have to be in charge of this decision. There's simply no other plausible explanation for this level of stupidity. 

I planned to make the best of the situation. I always do most of my running during daytime hours, so I would just be more conscious about making it home before the 9-5ers, so I'd have a parking space. 

The second notable slip in my patience came the day I saw the orthopedic doctor. Last time, I had been in excruciating pain for six months, I used ice, heat, TENS, and weeks of physical therapy to no avail. I finally found this doctor and after one cortisone injection I was pain free. I was excited about returning to have the other side done and looked forward to coming home and breezing through chores I had put off because of the pain. 

The good news is that I got home in time to have a parking space. The bad news is that soon after I got inside, an attack of dizziness, sweating, and nausea made me fear I might be having a reaction. And, I was still in pain, actually worse pain than before the injection. I got an ice pack, sat in the recliner with my feet up and head back, and hoped this would pass quickly. As soon as I had settled in and almost found a little relief, a maintenance man knocked at the door to ask if I could please move my car so trench-diggers and heavy-equipment operators could drive onto the grass. I wanted desperately to hand him my keys and ask him to do it himself but grumbled something not too terribly hateful, put my shoes and coat on, grabbed my keys, and walked ninety-four-long-painful-strides to my car. 

As I was unlocking my car door, nowhere near the space that the work crew had marked off with cones to claim as their personal drive-way, even during the twenty hours a day and weekends that they are not on site, the maintenance man waved me down to apologize. He thought I owned the car at the end of the row. Never mind. He didn't need me to move my car after all.

I couldn't waste a bad emotion. Seriously, I'm not that big a person. I stopped him before he could escape to find the correct owner of the car that needed to move and asked where management thought we were supposed to park, and why they didn't ask the workers to put their supplies in the grassy area where we don't need to park or walk – just a few feet beyond where it was sitting. He said they have no control over where those people put their equipment and supplies and, I guess, didn't think it was appropriate to even ask them to move the cones that they leave behind. Since they have no control over the work crew but they do have the ability to waive rules for residents, I demonstrated my resistance to stupidity by asking if it would be okay for residents to park on the grass when the lot filled up. 

Absolutely not. No parking on the grass. Ever. 

Silly me.

IF I were that bigger person that I've already admitted I'm not, I might have decided to never leave home again. That way, I could avoid being in the terrible position of having to choose between searching the neighborhood for a parking space and breaking the rule. But I'm really not that person. Not anymore. My patience and bigger-person-ness decrease in direct proportion to the expansion of the stupidity epidemic, meaning they are as close to none existence as they can possibly get. When invited to have dinner and paint Christmas ornaments with my daughters and their families, I said screw the grass and accepted, and I stayed out until after 9 p.m. 

When I got home, the closest available parking space was three blocks away. My shoulder still hurt because that injection did not work. My hip was slightly dislocated, screaming with pain, and weak, because that's what it does when I drive ten miles. My knees hurt, it was cold, I had things to carry, and I was tired – and annoyed. I drove around the complex once more, to make sure I didn't miss a closer space. When I found nothing, I pulled my car onto a grassy area between a sidewalk and the road. A space that was already rutted by maintenance carts. A space that people walk on constantly, that dogs poop on, that squirrels and groundhogs and rabbits and hawks romp on. I used the same ramp that maintenance uses to pull their carts onto the lawn, and parked, not blocking the road or the sidewalk. I went inside, texted the kids to have bail money ready because I wasn't sure what might happen if they towed my car before morning.

I set an alarm to get up and walk one-hundred-four-long-painful-stiff-morning-strides and move my car off the grassy area as soon as others left for work and vacated space for me in the lot. When I got out there, the maintenance man caught me and told me I knew I wasn't allowed to park on the grass. I explained that I had come in late, the closest available space was three blocks away, I didn't feel well . . . Didn't matter. He was trying to protect me because if I left ruts on the lawn, the property owners (whose names I am not allowed to know) would charge me to repair them. 

That's when I lost what little was left of my patience. I reminded him that he leaves ruts in the grass

every day, that there were TRENCHES in the brown, winter grass, that huge, HUGE trucks were driving all over the property. He had a hard time hearing me because those huge trucks were loud. I promise that is the only reason I had to scream. And the tears – only because it was so freaking cold and windy. 

I got a designated handicapped parking space within the hour, something I hadn't requested before because it seemed pointless when I had to walk ninety-four-long-strides from my car to my door. Sadly – maybe, jury's still out on the exact emotion – the other change in me is that, for the first time ever, I didn't say what came naturally. That fixes my problem but what about my neighbors?