Free Happily Ever Madder: Misadventures of a Mad Fat Girl by Stephanie McAfee Page A

chair, bored out of my mind with their hateful banter, I imagine them as a herd busting down the church doors every Sunday and begging the good Lord to help them abide the lowly sinners who drink beer, use the F word, and have their grass trimmed all wrong. Idiots.
    Cindy starts a PowerPoint presentation featuring community rules and regulations and then brings up a picture of someone’s mailbox that has a package sticking out, thus preventing the mailbox door from closing, and Margo explains how this is a violation of code. Next on their agenda is garbage cans, and they spend thirty minutes talking about how all receptacles including recycling containers must be inside by dark.
    “Inside,”
Margo stresses. “Not rolled back from the driveway and leaning on the garage door, but
inside
the garage and therefore
out
of sight.”
    I wonder how long it took her to come up with that clever little wordplay and how many times she practiced it in the mirror before getting it to that perfect pitch of bitchiness.
    After that, they start talking about dogs barking.
    “Well, we have a new dog in the neighborhood, and I think that’s causing quite a stir.”
    “My dog,” I say, looking around. “Are you talking about me?”
    “Well, yes,” Margo says with a sneer and a shrug. “Who else would we be talking about?” Cindy rolls her eyes and snorts.
    “There’s been a complaint about
my
dog?” I say and remind myself to stay cool. Gramma Jones always used to say that I should never argue with an idiot because anyone just standing around looking might not be able to tell who the idiot is.
    “Well, no,” Margo says. “There hasn’t been an actual complaint, but the other dogs know he’s here, so obviously his presence in the neighborhood upsets the dogs that have lived here longer.”
    I want to scream, “Are you freakin’ kidding me?” But I don’t. I simply sit there with a fake smile plastered on my face and try not to laugh out loud at the sheer idiocy of this pitiful excuse for a community meeting.
    “What do we plan to do about that?” Margo says, looking at her panel of assholes.
    “We could require all dogs to wear shock collars,” Cindy says promptly. I’m about to tell Cindy that I’ll put a shock collar on her goofy ass, but I don’t have to say a word because she’s riled up another dog owner.
    “Hey, I’m not puttin’ a shock collar on my dog, I can tell you that,” a big man drinking from a red plastic cup bellows. I make a mental note to bring my own drink to the next meeting. “If you want to put a collar on something, you can put a collar on that damned cat of yours, because it keeps getting in my Corvette and pissing everywhere, and I’m sick of it!”
    “You don’t know that’s my cat, Roger,” Cindy says with a smirk.
    “As a matter of fact I do, because I installed a camera in my garage and I’ve got it on video.”
    Roger gets up and walks to the podium. He pops a thumb stick into the computer and cusses under his breath while he taps the keys so hard, I’m afraid he’s going to pop one off and put out one of Cindy’s heavily made-up eyes.
    “Roger,” Cindy starts, “you haven’t requested authorization to speak at this meeting, so you need to step away from the computer and return to your seat, then call and make an appointment to speak, and then if the board approves, you can show your video then.” I smile to myself because I can tell by the tone of her voice that she knows it’s her cat.
    “Is this your computer, Cindy?” Roger asks, boring a hole into her with his beady red eyes.
    “No, it’s the association’s!” Cindy snaps back.
    “That’s right, and I pay the
association
over five grand a year in dues, so I think I’ll go ahead and use it like the piece of community plastic that it is.” Roger’s really putting on a show, smirking back at her and whatnot. I decide I really like Roger.
    “It’s not my cat,” Cindy mumbles. She looks at the board