Being An Upright Citizen And Joining A Brigade

Last night, in a burst of civic-mindedness, Mr. Clairol and I attended the monthly community meeting. It was very enlightening. The main thing we learned is that a lot of old people live in our neighborhood and they bitch a lot.

Here was the agenda:

Principal of Local School (who got bumped up the agenda since the police rep wasn't there yet and she wanted to get home for American Idol. I am totally serious) Principal spoke about the new landscaping that would be taking place over the summer. Apparently, our neighborhood school is getting a sorely needed new parking lot. And some new grass. And some new trees. And Oh! planter boxes. Yay! Those teachers getting laid off? Well they can drive by and look at the pretty new parking lot. That will be nice for them.

Then a nice lady from the city told us we were getting some new sidewalks. There was much rejoicing in the land. Hooray! Huzzah! But they'll only be on one side of the street. Oh. Well, Yay, anyway. Aaaand they'll only extend two blocks. Um, Yipee? Aaaaand it's going to cost $600,000. WHAT?!?!? But it's from a grant, so no new taxes! HOORAY! HUZZAH! Old ladies were ripping of their shirts and table dancing. It was scary.

Local Utility Guy (Known hereafter as Loogie, because I am mature) Loogie spoke for a solid ten minutes about I do not know the hell what. There was a lot of "This is actually not an rate increase, this is a rate process," and some stuff about insurance, caps (which confused me, since he was not wearing a hat), hydro, credit rating, etc. He was so circuitous and took so many tangents that I seriously began to suspect it was a purposeful attempt to confuse us. Because if we have absolutely no clue what he talking about we are far less likely to ask questions. I was interested to hear him say that this process began in March and they are just now attending community meetings, two days before the final vote is taken. Loogie is a sneaky SOB.

Then the leader of the meeting, who is a local realtor, tried do drum up interest in our community area group entering something in the upcoming parade. It was all very vague and she wasn't clear on the specifics, so mostly, we just looked at her as if to say, "Pass the dutchie, lady." No, not really. It was a more of "Pass the crack pipe if you think we're building a damned float." The oldsters love their meth.

The rep from the police department never came and no one liked my idea of reporting a crime just to get someone to show, so there was thirty straight minutes of complaints from the elders. Some beauts:

In response to complaints about speeding, City Chick said, "You know, a lot of times, we come out to monitor speeding and it winds up that the complaint filers are actually the biggest offenders."

I died, people. I thought Mr. Clairol was going to pee his pants.

"My garage door keeps coming up. I think someone has a remote and is just driving around testing them."

"The school kids are picking my roses." I dearly want to see an officer assigned to this. We could call him Officer Rosy. OOOH! Assign Officer Sorta-Billy- Zane and make him do it bare chested! HOORAY! HUZZAH!

And then we left, right in the middle of some old woman's rant about garage doors and flood lights and delinquents that hung around the garbage cans at night. (What are you guys doing? Hanging out at the Gas & Sip Dumpsters.) We hit Dairy Queen and laughed all the way home about the meeting. We are so going back next month.