Home

I love my cozy, little home.  When I have the opportunity to speak to my neighbours, in the same condo complex, I appreciate it even more.  I think that Ken and I lucked into the best unit on the entire property.

The complex consists of condo town homes that run in a circle around a driveway, on both sides of the drive.  The property is bordered on 3 sides by fences with metal gates that lock.  The fourth side is covered by two high-rise apartment buildings, and, between them, a guard house and the entrance to the underground parking garage.

The townhouse buildings are four stories tall.  The first floor consists of two-bedroom flats.  The top three floors are three-bedroom homes.  Ken and I are in one of the flats.   Our perfect little hide-away.

When summer storms come through, we don't have to worry about a basement flooding.  (Underneath us is the parking garage.)  We don't have to worry about the roof.  (That's our upstairs' neighbours' problem.)

Our front door opens onto a tiny patio.  Our back door opens onto a corridor that leads to the trash chute and the elevator to the parking garage.  It's a house at the front, an apartment at the back!  The best of both worlds!

We're not near the trash chute, so we don't have to listen to bags of garbage rattle and clunk inside our walls.  We're not near the elevator, so we don't have to listen to it heave and ping.  We're not near any of the metal gates, so we don't have to listen to them clang shut every time someone goes through.

We don't face onto the pretty green park at the centre of the circle of buildings.  That's actually a good thing, because the security cameras show that people have been dealing crack in the gazebo.  Charming!  Also, there are some young couples who take shelter to there... To paraphrase our condo board chairman "If I wanted to show you those security tapes on TV, I would have to first display a warning of graphic images."

There are kids who use the central park as their personal play area.  By "play" I mean running around screaming all evening until bedtime.  I can hear them from my home when my windows are open in the summer.  I would hate to be even closer to their shenanigans.  The parents have been notified that this creates a disturbance, but apparently they couldn't care less.

We have a few families on site that enjoy having raucous barbecue parties, involving drinking, music, and sometimes the viewing of sports games with the accompanying roar of cheers.  None of those families live on my block.

We have heard stories of people abusing the property in various ways, such as tossing their cigarette butts off balconies to land on the patios of neighbours below.  How rude!  My upstairs neighbours have never done that.  There was also someone in another block who emptied a kitty litter box down the trash chute directly, without pouring the litter into a garbage bag first.  Nice!

Our block is generally quiet and polite.  There are some wailing babies, and whiny dogs, but that's par for the course.  Last weekend, the neighbours across the way woke me up at 5:30 am.  They had their car out on the driveway, and were slamming the doors and speaking in raised voices to each other.  I couldn't tell if they were home very late from a night out or setting off early for a camping expedition, because they were speaking in Korean.  Fortunately, this was a one-off situation.

Therefore, I declare my home to be perfect, and I plan to possibly never, ever move.  How about you?  How satisfied are you with your home?