Hmmm… What can I tell you? 🙂 Doesn’t the title make it obvious? 😉 I couldn’t think what to call this entry, let alone what to write about tonight! 🙂 Today has been very peaceful and quiet… My favourite eldest daughter came over for the day, and, as usual, after luncheon we retired to the parlour lounge room, and watched an episode of Agents of Shield, and several episodes of Person of Interest (which is really getting interesting at the moment!). Her equal but more technical half arrived to whisk her off to some sort of meeting, and himself and I had dinner. Well, he had dinner, I had my soup (tomato tonight!) Later on we were talking about how he’s trying to take a step back from all the work he’s been doing for the Body Corporate… Living in an apartment has heaps of advantages, especially when it’s right across the road from a major shopping mall, has a reasonably secure underground parking area, a lift, and fabulous views! (especially on the 5th floor, where we are) 🙂 It also has its share of disadvantages, like the plumbing being just adequate, dependence on one lift, which shows its displeasure of the summer heat by breaking down when it gets really hot, the need to be generally quieter than you would in a normal house, etc., etc… Most of the owners and tenants are elderly, and there is a dearth of people young and interested enough to join the Body Corporate committee. How many of you live in apartments? How many of you have to deal with a Body Corporate? Probably not many, so perhaps I had better explain…

When this building was erm.. ‘built’, the developer formed the Body Corporate. This Body Corporate owns the fabric or structure of the building ( the outer walls  and its common areas). For instance, although my mother and others bought these apartments, all they really bought was the title to live here. Rules were set up by the Body Corporate which dictate what colours we can paint the outside of our walls (we can’t), what colour the side of the curtains facing the outside and or street have to be (white or cream), and what we can and can’t put on the balconies (drying of washing prohibited!) The Body Corporate also organises rubbish collection, window washing (outside of the windows only), general repairs and maintenance to the structural and common areas, and so forth. It’s a business worth about $150,000 a year, so it has to be run properly.

It’s a pretty thankless task, and Julian and our next door neighbour have been doing the brunt of the work for years. As the other owners and tenants get older and more curmudgeonly, so the complaints and grizzles get louder, more frequent, and quite often silly and childish, and 99 and 3/4 of these fall to Julian to fix, sort out, and or smooth over – that’s on top of the financial side of looking after things. Now, I don’t know about him, but I’m getting sick and tired of him always in the office, pouring over Body Corporate business! We say we want to go away for a bit, overseas… but even if I was fit and well, even if we didn’t have Flipper to look after, we couldn’t go away because there’s too much work to do, and no-one to look after it for him, even for a couple of weeks.

So anyway, he’s looking at stepping down from his position as secretary (of the committee)  This would be very nice indeed, but… what will happen to things if he steps away from the helm? When he took on this job in about 2008, the Body Corporate finances were in a shocking state – it took two years to get things back in the black, and apart from having to get the lift mechanism replaced early next year, the finances are looking fairly healthy…

Sounds to me like it might be a very good idea to look for somewhere new, when he relinquishes his position, rather than stay around and wait for the – probably inevitable – slide into chaos and neglect, which will be a real shame, as I really like this place (though there’s lots I’d love to do to refurbish it! 😉 )

Weight-wise this morning was like a dream come true!  Down to 120.1kg! You can bet your bottom dollar that I’ll be back up again tomorrow – I remembered to have my afternoon tea this afternoon Tomorrow, however, after the cleaner has been, we have vowed and sworn to get the wheelchair (to act as an anchor for the elastic) into the lounge room, and I’m going to get all enthusiastic and energetic and get stuck into my exercises! 🙂

I think. Will I or won’t I? Will my weight go back up again tomorrow? Will I remember my afternoon tea again? Stay tuned for all the answers! 😉