An Angry Hum

Inclination
[in-kluh–ney-shuh n]

a disposition or bent, especially of the mind or will; a liking or preference:

As I’ve exhaustively established, I’ve never been very handy. I never had an interest in being so. I was not so inclined.

But over the last few weeks there’s been a paradigm shift. I realized I’m not handy but I make things. I’ve made TV shows, commercials, and video game cut scenes. I’ve designed hundreds of logos and drawn thousands of pictures. I’ve made bacon, and paper, and pastrami. I graffiti-ed my sons’ bedrooms and I’ve designed graphics for skateboards. I’ve pickled eggs, and painted pictures, and brewed beer. I can’t help myself, I make stuff.

But I never learned the language of the handy, and was intimidated by the workings of my houses, my cars, my things. But then I got a stupid letter from the stupid city. Upon cursory, and ultimately inadequate scanning of the letter, She and I discovered that our camper was in violation of a stupid city ordinance for having been in our driveway for more than 14 consecutive days.

FALSE! We raged at the iniquity. It had not been in our driveway for 14 days as we’d taken it out camping twice with 10 days in between! And under normal conditions it is stored at my sister and brother-in-law’s farm. Stupid city and their stupid $120 fine.

So, spoiling for a fight, I went to Stupid City Hall. I asked to speak to the appropriate party. I was told that she was unavailable but that they would send Todd out to speak to me. Todd.

So Todd The Proxy comes out, and I explain my situation. Then, satisfied that I had clearly and reasonably stated my concern I looked to Todd for satisfaction, for resolution. He looked at the letter, then at me, then at the letter. An Age of Man passed. Todd looked at me, then at the letter, then back to me. “Oh no,” I thought. “Todd is broken.”

Todd said, “At this house?”, pointing at the address on the letter.
“Yeah.”
“It says your camper was in your driveway.” said Todd.
“Yeah.”
“And this is your house?”

Shit.

So I ended up insisting that Todd forward my concern to his superior, left my phone number and departed, wondering what swirling, civic gravity-well my issue had been thrown into.

To my surprise, Todd’s boss called me three days later. I was instantly impressed, as she was calm, kind, smart, and able to make decisions.

“Hi Troy,” she said. “I’m glad you went to my office in person, I’m sorry I wasn’t in.”
“No sweat,” I replied. “I just wanted to clear up this camper thing.”
“Yeah, we can’t really enforce that one, since we can’t really park outside your house making sure it doesn’t sit there for more than 14 days.”

Wait, what? I was disarmed.

“It’s the other things we wanted you to look into.”

Wait, what?

Remember when I said “inadequately”? Well, neither She nor I read the letter to it’s end. If we had, we’d have learned that we were in violation of THREE Stupid City Ordinances. We were also supposed to have readable and unblocked numbers on our house (one of the “1”s had fallen off an unimportant length of time ago, and I had not gotten around to fixing it) and our garbage cans were not to be visible from the street (they’re super visible from the street, and have been so since we moved in 18 years ago).

“Yeah,” I admitted. “That’s on me. Totally my fault.”
“It’s fine,” she replied.
“So,” I said. “About that fine…”
“I’ll be back in your neighborhood in a couple of weeks,” she answered. “If those things are addressed, there won’t be a fine.”

I thanked her, and realized I had some work to do.

So now, a couple weeks later, I’ve replaced the columns on my front porch (built ‘em out of cedar). I’ve put up new house numbers, and find them very stylish. Next I’ll build a fenced-in enclosure for my garbage cans (I’ve already set the posts, in concrete, and they’re almost exactly straight). After that I’m going to renovate a guest room (maybe two). Then I’ll redo our dining room and put in a light fixture.

But first I’ll start by watching YouTube videos on how to do a bunch of that stuff.