Yesterday's Fencing
**This post was written yesterday, but I had to run off to class and submit my embarrassingly terrible paper before I could post it.
Shit is getting wierd on the homefront - not the my immediate homefront, but the one that involves my lovely and dear progenitors. When things go awry here, it also tends to mean that they go awry at work. Every day I am becoming profoundly more uncomfortable with the fact that R is employed as their personal contractor, a contractor who is paid rates far too low for his level of love and commitment to the work. (no, I'm not biased!) Aside from that, the whole issue of my Dad's fence is starting to annoy me more and more for its' total excess. This weekend, the fence guy installed the automatic gate opener. This is admittedly great, because now you will not have to get out of the car to open and shut the gate when you come in. We have learned first hand that this is a pain in the ass, especially in winter. My dad then proceeds to tell us about the intercom system and video cameras that they are going to install. We laugh. Gee. wouldn't that be funny. Here's the thing: he was serious. There are numerous problems with this idea, elitism being only one on the list. There are, in fact, more practical issues, the first being how Marisol will get in in the morning if no one hears her buzzing. She could conceivably be waiting at the end of the driveway for a very , very long time before anyone notices she's out there. In addition, my dad is planning to have only 2 openers made - one for him and one for my mom. This would be fine, except it leaves me to wonder how I am supposed to get into the house to watch after my grandmother when they are away. Which as of late, is every 4 days.
It's such a silly thing, this damned fence. With each piece that goes up the less I understand it. It doesn't help that I held it up as example of violations of public space in my rotty paper. My poorly written, but well reasoned argument about the fence only fanned the flames of my civic-minimalist backlash.
Shit is getting wierd on the homefront - not the my immediate homefront, but the one that involves my lovely and dear progenitors. When things go awry here, it also tends to mean that they go awry at work. Every day I am becoming profoundly more uncomfortable with the fact that R is employed as their personal contractor, a contractor who is paid rates far too low for his level of love and commitment to the work. (no, I'm not biased!) Aside from that, the whole issue of my Dad's fence is starting to annoy me more and more for its' total excess. This weekend, the fence guy installed the automatic gate opener. This is admittedly great, because now you will not have to get out of the car to open and shut the gate when you come in. We have learned first hand that this is a pain in the ass, especially in winter. My dad then proceeds to tell us about the intercom system and video cameras that they are going to install. We laugh. Gee. wouldn't that be funny. Here's the thing: he was serious. There are numerous problems with this idea, elitism being only one on the list. There are, in fact, more practical issues, the first being how Marisol will get in in the morning if no one hears her buzzing. She could conceivably be waiting at the end of the driveway for a very , very long time before anyone notices she's out there. In addition, my dad is planning to have only 2 openers made - one for him and one for my mom. This would be fine, except it leaves me to wonder how I am supposed to get into the house to watch after my grandmother when they are away. Which as of late, is every 4 days.
It's such a silly thing, this damned fence. With each piece that goes up the less I understand it. It doesn't help that I held it up as example of violations of public space in my rotty paper. My poorly written, but well reasoned argument about the fence only fanned the flames of my civic-minimalist backlash.
posted by beef at 8:43 AM
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