Pet peeve...just a little local problem(s)

There is one thing that everyone can definitely agree on that the world is in a mess.
So being overwhelmed with things that we have no control over has sent my head spinning, and I have decided to bring it home to a more manageable annoyance and not as earth shattering as the rest.

I feel like I have been writing all day long emails; this I will explain later on.

The weather was great today but a little warm and I did take my walk this morning, and even went for an afternoon dip in the pool.
Sounds like I shouldn't have a care in the world.
When I returned from my walk I had noticed while walking that as far as scenery goes it is quite depressing around my neighborhood. There are so many empty homes and neglected, many with tall grasses or just in need of paint or a little TLC.
Thinking about that and other things like feeling that something should be done about the fact that when I walked over to the next block and smelled the unmistakable scent of rotten eggs/sulfur; someone had on their sprinkler system and that the odor meant they were on a shallow well.
We are on water restrictions here all year long to hopefully balance the extremes, and so you are only allowed to water one day a week and before 8 A.M. Yes, even wells are restricted due to our aquifer being in jeopardy yearly when our yearly draught comes after this rainy/hurricane season we have our dry season; December 1st through May 31st.
They were in accordance with the law, but we had rain last night over a half an inch, and believe it or not our new 52 gallon rain barrel was filled to the brim. I called the water authority if it wouldn’t be a good idea to mention to people about a simple remedy called a rain gage which automatically shuts the system off when enough rain has fallen. Therefore no overuse of water and so all is copacetic.
When they politely agreed with my logic I took it one step further and wrote my long awaited return to commentary and sent a letter to the editor of the local newspaper, and mentioned the rain barrel concept, and now that we are all getting new larger uniformed trash barrels that will be picked up by automated machine on our new once a week pickup…I thought everyone could use their old trash cans for rain barrels, and suggested just adding a spicket or using a bucket or scoop! It’s all about saving money isn’t it? Since we and many others are on expensive city water.

My other writing was to the county commissioners, tax appraiser, and the editor of our paper.
This time it was just a nasty gripe that just annoys myself and my husband … you see in this state we have what is called Homestead Tax Rebate, which is a discounted amount on your home taxes when you prove residency in that home. And whenever I see something out of kilter on my walks I try and research the home to find out who it belongs to, and then either tell them or the powers that be.
While researching some of the empty homes, I found out that they were still receiving the Homestead rebate, and either had renters or no one living in the home, in another one the owner was even deceased, but they were listed as still living there. Now ordinarily this wouldn’t concern me one iota, because it doesn’t have to do with me personally, but oh it really does!
You see in this economy and in our depressed neighborhood/county/state where our homes have depreciated like the rest of the countries, our taxes have gone up!
I think it might be because of the shortfall of taxes not collected from the ones that aren’t being honest or totally fair about their living arrangements. It is just a drop in the bucket with all those other horrors of foreclosures and such, but some are making profits from rentals that they say they are living in and benefitting from the Homestead rebate!

The Market had its worse week ever and some are even admitting that it has crashed, but does that word actually make anyone feel better?
I guess it’s just the validation that we are not all crazy and we do have an extreme problem that has been recognized.


Finding money in anything we can from saving on water bills to not over paying on taxes seems like not such a bad thing. And why can’t we rationalize why these things might be happening?
This is something to think about and possibly something for us to do when things seem so out of control.
We can do a little bit to help ourselves and others.

Good night to all and to all do something!