The Note Lady

When we rolled into Santa Fe last week, we met our friend Alice at this ridiculous $2.5 million adobe mansion she was house sitting. This place was out of control in more ways than one. No expense was spared from the finished concrete floors, custom fitted windows and authentic adobe construction. It sat on a huge tract of land high up in the mountains that overlook the city. But for all its splendor, this home distinguished itself by the insane notes that the lady of the house left for Alice and her husband Geoff. The notes, which were taped all over the place, ranged from strange "Check for cats before starting dishwasher" to insulting "Don't turn on this television ---- too complicated". I walked through the house and counted a grand total of 34 notes. Most of them had something to do with the nine housecats --- which was quite apparent that the note lady had no business owning. The cats peed wherever they wanted so half of this new beautiful house reeked. And the note lady insisted through her notes that the cats were to go out during various times of the day. Nevermind the fact that her property was swarming with coyotes, who had dropped the note lady's cat total down from 11 to 9 felines. But yes, you guessed it, there was a note about the coyotes too. It instructed the housesitters to watch for them every five minutes when the cats were outside. There was a rifle next to the note, you know, in case a coyote was spotted with a cat in its mouth.

So Karen and Alice and Geoff and I laughed all week about the note lady. That is until I got a call from my mom late in the week. She said a friend had been driving down Gaston Avenue and saw that our electric gate had been left wide open. On Gaston, the wide open electric gate is shorthand for "please walk around the back of my house, break in and steal everything I own." We had a housesitter of our own who was supposed to be dealing with these issues. So we called her. She said, "Yeah, I don't know why the gate wouldn't close. It was open when I came back from work." Nevermind that Karen told her how to use the automatic gate opener and to watch and make sure the gate was closed before pulling away. Oh, and our housesitter said she had set the house alarm off --- twice. Nevermind that Karen showed her the very simple buttons to turn the alarm on and off. Oh, and our housesitter said she was out late one night, when she was supposed to be at our house, feeding the dogs, and her purse got stolen --- our house keys were in her purse. So she couldn't get back into the house.

We concluded all our housesitter problems could have been avoided had we left a whole lot more notes.