We live in a very small townhouse which is part of a very large complex and comes complete with a very annoying Home Owners Association. I say "very annoying," but really it's usually just this thing that we pay monthly so that our grass stays cut and the snow stays out of the driveways. It's only actually really annoying about once a year when our jerkface neighbor decides to make it annoying.

While there is a whole long list of rules and regulations to go along with our HOA, very few rules are actually enforced. If you walk through the joint, you'll find houses that are painted a non-Association approved color, tacky five-foot tall rope light palm trees, dogs running loose while the owner stands inside his or her front door, cars parked where the very clearly don't belong, flowers that are taller than the five-foot maximum technically permitted, and a whole host of other so-called violations. That's not to say the neighborhood looks bad; it's more that nobody cares about anything as long as it's not affecting them.

One of the rules is that no children's equipment can be left out in a yard. So, despite the fact that we OWN probably half an acre, that technically means we can't leave any pools, slides, swings, basketball goals, or the like in the yard. But we always have. It's not like an aisle of Toys 'R Us going on or anything, but if I set up the inflatable pool on Saturday, I'm very likely to leave it in the yard until Sunday. When we recently re-stained our deck, we stuck a bunch of plastic kingdom items in our driveway, under the deck, for the three weeks it took to finish the project. They weren't permanent residents of the blacktop, but we had to stick them somewhere until we were done.

Apparently, that annoyed someone. Today we got a letter from the HOA stating that there had been a complaint about the toys left in the yard. Now, most of it was already gone. It took me approximately 13.531 seconds to clean up the two items that were left. Whatever. What has me FLIPPING MY LID is that the notice said we had to take down the swing that has been hanging from the underside of our deck for well over a year.

WELL OVER A YEAR.

Puhleeze. Nobody can tell me that swing was bothering anybody. We own an end unit at the end of the complex, so nobody even drives past our driveway. They have no business being in our backyard as it is private property. If they would keep their eyes to themselves, they wouldn't even know it was there.

I'm PISSED.

Never mind that the Toddler is pretty much too big for it anyway. Never mind that she hardly has used it this year. All I care is that somebody complained about something that makes meh behbeh happy.

We know who "somebody" is. We can't prove it, but I'm pretty sure it's the same "somebody" who once filed a complaint because we wouldn't let him park in our driveway (if that doesn't make sense then you are reading it correctly--doofus thought that since they had lived in the complex longer he should have "seniority" and be able to park wherever, including on property that we own and pay taxes on). It's the same "somebody" who complained that we don't clean up after our dogs. At any given moment in time, there's a trash can full of individually wrapped stink bombs in our garage that say otherwise. It's the same "somebody" who whined when I planted a tree at the end of the driveway to keep people from driving across our grass to get to another driveway. Every freakin' year, the guy apparently scours the rules and regulations until he finds something to complain about.

We need to move. Before I kill him.

In the meantime, he works in Customer Service at our local Wal-Mart. I think I'm about to become a royal pain in his arse. If my baby can't swing in her own dang yard, I'm going to do some swinging. Oh, yes I am.

(Aaaaaaaaand end rant.)