The Waiting Game

I’m used to waiting. After all, I’m a mother. I wait for Alex to stop his third tantrum of the day over a light switch. I wait in line at Costco while the family in front of me prepares for Armegeddon with their cartload of bottled water. I wait for the day that I will be able to sleep in past 7:30 am.

But let’s be blunt. Waiting sucks.

Especially when you’ve been waiting for three weeks for someone to give you a simple yes or no answer.

We put a deposit down on one of those big, honkin’, half-a-backyard-swallowing playsets for Alex about a month back. He really needs the physical activity (don’t most kids?) and we wanted him to have something in the backyard for him to crawl, swing, slide and play with during the summer months. We’d even extended an invitation for the neighbors’ kids to come over and play when it’s put in (which was great to get their parents to agree to let us do this too). The more kids Alex plays with, the better, and he definitely loves to be around other kids.

However, we live in a “covenant controlled” development. Which means we have a set of rules to follow. Which means whenever we do something to the outside of our house “to alter the appearance,” we have to put in a form and get permission. Yes, you may own the house, but you still have to ask someone if you can put different light fixtures in when the whims of change strike.

I do understand the need for covenants. Some people can get a little too out of control with the care and upkeep (or in some cases, the lack of) and it helps the neighborhood look better. But when I have to even ask for permission to plant a vegetable garden in my own backyard, you have to wonder what your monthly dues are going towards.

So we went through all the procedures. We did the paperwork, provided drawings, mentioned that we had discussed it with our neighbors and gotten their okay with it, then sent it off to the architectural control committee and we waited.

And waited. And we’re still waiting. Three weeks later.

They don’t have a set meeting date every month. Apparently, they “get together” when there are enough applications and sort through them all at the same time. Which could be a month or two from now, with our luck. In the meantime, the company we ordered from has the equipment and is ready to set it up any time, the weather’s getting nicer and nicer and I’m anxious to get Alex playing in the back.

Why on earth, in this age of everything electronic, they can’t just email a PDF of the applications to the members, get a yea or nay from email and respond to the applicant in the matter of a few days is beyond me.

Even if they say no (which I can’t imagine), I can get the deposit back. That’s not the issue. The waiting and waiting without a determined deadline is the problem.

Come this Wednesday, I’ll be making more phone calls. I’ll be bugging more people to see just what the hell is going on and why it has to take this long. And come election time for the board, I might just consider running. I can’t be the only person in the development that’s been frustrated by the lack of speed from the architectural committee.

We had some lovely weather this weekend, sunny and in the 70s. I can’t even count how many times I said over the weekend, “Wouldn’t it have been nice to have the playset up already?”