A child persists in climbing on the dining table, and she listens to me not. I definitely should have gotten a dog. But then again, I couldn’t teach a dog to shout “Banzai!” when it jumps off the table. Life is a series of agonizing trade-offs. Fast, good, and cheap? Choose two. I am so cheap that I only chose one.

For example, I attended a condo board meeting last night in order to find out about the status of our association being charged 293k for the mistakes of a real estate developer and an insurance company. And while I gained somewhat valuable information (we’re screwed), I had to listen to a woman repeatedly ask “What can the board do to prevent floods?” Everyone’s eye drifted to the window, where the river is clearly visible. Yes, what indeed can we do to prevent floods? “Well, did they KNOW this place would flood when they built it?” You mean 100+ years ago, prior to global weather patterns shifting? “Well, what can we DO?” Finally, I yelled “Move!”

Captain Obvious that I am, we are still dragging our feet on putting our place on the market. Various online estimators show an approximately one zillion dollar drop in value. We don’t even have an idiotic sub-prime loan! And we can pay our bills, so there’s certainly no remedy available. It’s just collateral damage. Not looking forward to paying a ton of money for getting out of my apartment. It’s actually a perfectly good apartment, especially since we hammered out how to prevent the river from flooding. The trick was to get in good with the beavers, and they will tell the river to stay the course. We just have to dump beaver chow over the scenic walkway railing at various requested locations. Beavers want “Just Tomatoes” dried mango from Whole Foods, though, and that crap is like $5 for a little tub.

That poor woman went on for another fifteen minutes. Another woman brought her dog to the meeting, and the dog finally ate the first woman. This was a relief to all. I think I am going to look into getting a service tiger for just these situations. Maybe the tiger will learn to yell “Banzai!” too.