Lindsey smiled smugly as our cars were towed, clearly thinking she\u2019d won some petty HOA war. Jack and I had just moved into the rental
\nfor a short work assignment\u2014barely unpacked\u2014when she showed up with cookies and a forced smile. Her \u201cwelcome\u201d quickly turned into a lecture<\/p>\n
about the HOA\u2019s one-car driveway rule. We explained both cars were in our own driveway and we were temporary renters, but she wouldn\u2019t let it go.later, we woke to the sound of tow trucks\u2014and saw Lindsey watching in her robe, pleased with herself. But her grin vanished
\nwhen I told her she\u2019d just made a $25,000 mistake. Confused, she didn\u2019t notice the nearly invisible government sticker on our windshields.<\/p>\n
That night, I made one call. By morning, a black SUV pulled up. A federal agent calmly explained she had interfered
\nwith an undercover operation and caused $25,000 in damages. Her face drained of color, her coffee mug shattered on the steps.<\/p>\n
Jack said, \u201cNext time, don\u2019t act like the sheriff of suburbia.\u201d
\nAs the agent left, I added, \u201cMaybe just bake the cookies and stop there.\u201d
\nShe never came outside again. And those perfect roses of hers? They never quite recovered.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lindsey smiled smugly as our cars were towed, clearly thinking she\u2019d won some petty HOA war. Jack and I had just moved into the rental for a short work assignment\u2014barely unpacked\u2014when she showed up with cookies and a forced smile. Her \u201cwelcome\u201d quickly turned into a lecture about the HOA\u2019s one-car driveway rule. We explained […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3986,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3985","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timeshow.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3985","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timeshow.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timeshow.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timeshow.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timeshow.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3985"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/timeshow.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3985\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3987,"href":"https:\/\/timeshow.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3985\/revisions\/3987"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timeshow.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3986"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timeshow.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timeshow.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timeshow.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}