FOUND IT!!

I have found a fabulous suite in New Westminster. It's not the one pictured in yesterday's post - that place was really tiny. Those photos were nothing short of miracle photography, making the rooms look at least twice the size they actually are.

No, the place I found was the second place I mentioned. The woman who owns it called me the evening before I was to head over to New West and I scheduled a time to view it right before I went to the other one.

The house is AMAZING. It is a genuine New Westminster heritage home, one of the larger beauties. When I was ushered into the main floor, where the owner lives, the grandeur of the dark wood-paneled entrance hall with high coffered ceilings took my breath away.

The house is divided into four additional suites, one in the basement, two on the third floor, and one in the attics. The suite available that I was shown was on the second floor. The door into the suite opened to reveal a roomy, sunny living room with a large bay window on one end. An antique brass chandelier hung from the center of a 12 foot ceiling and underfoot (throughout the whole suite) was the original wood flooring. This, at one time, was one of the bedrooms in the home. The suite ran the depth of the house and through a doorway was a small kitchen on the left and a place for table and chairs on the right. Continuing through, past a small open storage closet, was the bedroom - about half the size of the living room. Each room had a door that lead into the common hall where, down at the end, was the bathroom. That's right, there's no bathroom in my suite but the one down the hall is mine (as the other suite on that floor contains a private bathroom). There is also a bedroom on the floor that the owner reserves for her daughter when she visits from New York, and for when missionaries that her church supports come back for a visit. At those times, the bathroom is shared with whoever occupies the spare room. I was concerned about this at first and it was almost a deal breaker for me. But when I asked further, she divulged that she only has female visitors stay in the room and not all that frequently. The commode is in a separate room from the bath and shower. I decided that I could deal with it. The price is right and the rooms perfectly suit my taste in decor and furnishings - Shabby Chic.

I told the owner that I would take it but she wanted to hold it for me for 10 days until I am sure. She is a bit nervous that I only saw two places. But I don't need to see more. I love this suite! I sent her my references today.

The James Gilley House. The suite is the bay window on the left (second floor); the two windows on the side are in the kitchen and bedroom, in that order.

Here is some history on the original owner of the house:

JAMES ROGERS GILLEY 

For many years connected with the firm of Gilley Brothers of New Westminster, James Rogers Gilley occupied an important position in the commercial life of his community, being highly regarded by all who knew him for his straightforward business methods and his honorable dealings. His death, in August 1906, removed from the city's activities one of its foremost citizens and a man who even in a short span of life had done much to promote the
general welfare.

James R. Gilley was born in St. Andrews, New Brunswick, June 12, 1863, a son of Walter and Sarah (Rogers) Gilley. There he was reared and educated but in 1886, when twenty-three years of age, came to British Columbia to join his brothers, Walter R. and H. Gilley, who had located here a few years previously. After his arrival here he engaged in the teaming and livery business in company with his brother Walter at Port Haney for a year. In 1887 they removed to New Westminster, establishing themselves in the same line, and here the three brothers were associated in business for about five years, at the end of which period the livery stable was disposed of, all their attention being given to their teaming. Gradually the present extensive business of Gilley Brothers developed and new lines were taken up, including handling of building materials, coal, crushed rock and sewer pipe, they also becoming in time owners of extensive quarries. The firm gradually built up a business which was second to few, if any, in their line in the province.

In 1890 James R. Gilley returned to New Brunswick for his bride and on the 2nd of October of that year was united in marriage to Miss Sarah Adelma Dean, a daughter of Rufus P. and Mary (Smith) Dean, of St. David, New Brunswick. Mr. and Mrs. Gilley became the parents of eight children: Reita Sarah; Edgar Roland and James Royden - twins; Rufus Walter; Marjorie Evelyn; Beatrice Adelma; Verna Muriel; and Jean Rogers Dean.

Mr. Gilley always took an active interest in fraternal affairs and was a well known member of Union Lodge, No. 9, A. F. & A. M. Beside his connection with the firm of Gilley Brothers he was interested in other commercial enterprises, having made judicious investments as prosperity came to him. He stood ever ready to give his support to any worthy movement that he considered would benefit his adopted city and gave an example of public-spirited citizenship well worthy of emulation. Strictly temperate in his habits, he was upright and honorable in all his dealings and although entitled to prominence and recognition, was modest and unassuming in his demeanor. Frank, open-hearted and genial, he was easily approachable and personally popular, his generous nature making him a favorite among all who knew him. He was always willing to give his share of time and money to any measure that had for its object the good of the community, never taking into consideration if such measures would benefit him financially or not. Naturally his death therefore was a heavy loss to the city of New Westminster, where he died August 1906, the news of his demise bringing sorrow to many a home. Mrs. Gilley, who survives, makes her home in the beautiful residence which he erected on Eighth street shortly prior to his death. She is a woman of many charming qualities and is rarely accomplished and is socially popular among the best people of New Westminster.

IT'S OVER (THIS TIME IT'S A GOOD 'OVER')

I manage to get through all of the sorting and packing and take the last load of boxes up to my friends to store in her crawlspace. My landlord loads them into my van and then goes with me to unload them at the other end. There is no way I can pick up anything more than a couple of pounds in weight. My back is really dodgy.

Moving day arrives and I get up early and put my sheets in the wash. Then I set about packing up the rest of my bedding into big Rubbermaid containers. I pack the last of the bathroom stuff into a small suitcase. I carry a couple of lighter things out to my van and when I come around the corner back to my door, the young fellow who is going to help me move today is there. We introduce ourselves. He is alone. I ask him if he has help and he says yes, that his father-in-law is supposed to be here with the truck but he can't get an answer when he calls home. I don't know where he has come from but apparently not home. He tries calling again and leaves another message. We decide to load up all the stuff I am taking with me to my new place into my van while we wait. He gets stuck in. He's a really nice guy and we get along great, chatting away about all sorts of stuff.

An hour or so later he calls again and finally gets his wife. Soon his father-in-law arrives and they load my mattress and a couple of small pieces of furniture that is coming with me into the truck. We head over to Fort Langley to where I will be living and we unload everything. My friend thought we were coming in the afternoon and it's just after ten so she is scrambling to get painting stuff out of my bedroom. She spent the last two days painting it a pretty blue to cover up the dark green walls with the graffiti that her daughter had 'decorated' the room with.

We head back to the house, and the young guy tells me they have to go back to his place, for some reason. They take one load of the stuff I plan to garage sale to the barn and then leave saying they will be back in half an hour. I potter about, cleaning the place and putting my box-spring into a large mattress bag for storing. An hour or more goes by and they aren't back. I pop out to throw away some garbage and run into my landlady with another woman. This is the wife of the young guy who is helping me move. She has come to do some cleaning before they move their things in. I decide to go get some lunch as I am really hungry, having had nothing to eat so far today.

When I get back she is still cleaning and we get to chatting. She says her husband really likes me and that I remind him of a friend of theirs. We talk about what it's like living here; she wants to know if the road is noisy (yep) and where I put stuff in the kitchen. I tell her and she likes my way of organizing things so plans to copy it.

Time is going by, the guys are not returning and I am anxious to get to my new place and unpack, get my bed made, and settle in. I decide to leave. All that's left to move is the stuff in the little storage shed, a bookshelf, and my bed and dresser. Just as I am leaving, they arrive. I ask if he minds if I go, as there isn't much for me to do and he says he's fine with it. He tells me that, if my bookcase is for sale, he would like to buy it. I tell him it is. That means both big items are gone now as I wrote to the woman who came to see the red bookcase and told her she could have it for $130. Her husband came and got it last night.

I head back to my new place. It doesn't take too long to get my clothes unpacked and my bed made up. My friend pops her head in after an hour or so and is shocked to see how settled in I am already.

I put my mattress on top of the boxspring and mattress already in the room as I don't want to store it in the barn again. It got very damp when it was stored there over the spring and summer and I am afraid of it getting ruined. When I climb into bed, exhausted at the end of the day, I sink deep into the mattress. I guess the support the boxspring normally gives it is not there and that's why it's so soft. But it feels great and I sleep like a log.

It's now Friday and I just got back from a 'Mom's' group meeting. It was a nice way to spend the morning and as I sit here, I am where I couldn't wait to be a few days ago. It's over. The move is done. My stuff is sorted. I can relax for a few months without worrying about where to live. I can stay here at least until the beginning of August if I want to. Maybe longer. Maybe shorter if I decide to sail the Caribbean. I am seriously thinking about it.

But meanwhile, I got a call today from the agency. I am off the mountain and have been assigned to the Staging Area at BCIT, a local college in Burnaby.  There is no staging area in Surrey.  The woman who told me that didn't know what she was talking about.  And I go for my training, finally, on Sunday.

PRESSURE, PRESSURE, PRESSURE

I was moving out on Sunday, the 31st. Now I have to move out tomorrow.

There's a knock on my door. I answer and it's my 'land lady'. It seems strange to call her that as I have been friends with her husband for ten years. She is his second wife; they got married 3 years or so ago. I hadn't seen much of him since then until I moved into this suite. I don't know her all that well as I have spent almost no time with them socially. She's really nice though and I like her.

She's in a panic. She came over a couple of days ago to see if I could move out early as the people moving in wanted to have their little daughter's birthday party here on Saturday. I wasn't keen but said I would see. If my daughter was able to come over and help me pack on the weekend, then perhaps I could manage it. Turns out Ashleigh wasn't able to so I called to let her know I wouldn't be able to do it. I didn't like the feeling of pressure and panic it gave me, all for a birthday party, so it was just as well.

Now she tells me that she had it wrong. It wasn't for a birthday party. It was because if they can't move in by Friday, then they won't be able to move in until the 15th and that means they will lose half a month's rent and they can't afford that loss. I am not happy to hear this because immediately I feel pressured. She tells me that the family really want to move in and are willing to do whatever it takes to make it happen. They will come over with their truck on Thursday to move my stuff wherever it needs to go. The woman will even come over and help me to pack up the rest of the stuff. I don't have to clean the place. Whatever it takes.

I really feel like this is not my problem. It's within my right to stay until when I paid for - the end of the month. No reduction or refund is being offered to me. So that means I paid rent (and utilities!) for 5 days on the front that I didn't get and now for another 3 on the end. But there is a long standing friendship here so I say I will do it. When she leaves I feel totally overwhelmed.

I get stuck in to serious packing, by myself. I don't really want someone I don't know packing for me. It's mostly just the kitchen and my bedroom (clothing) left to do. All the kitchen stuff will go to my friend’s crawl space for storage. The stuff in the bedroom comes with me. All day I pack boxes and stack them in the spare room. By the end of the day, my back is feeling like it might go out. The next morning, it is feeling worse. The first box I pick up, I feel the familiar sickening twinge that signals a trip to the emergency room is imminent. I have to stop. If I pick up one more thing, or twist a wrong way, I will be totally incapacitated. It is the worst timing. But to be expected. I shouldn't be lifting heavy boxes at all anymore. This was all supposed to happen on the weekend when I had help coming.

I spend the rest of the day in my living room chair, totally frustrated. There's still so much to do. Around dinner time I feel my back is stable enough to go through the bathroom cupboards and toss out a lot of stuff I don't use anymore.

As much stuff as I have gotten rid of in the past year, I feel as though I still have way too much. Not furniture. I barely have any of that anymore and, should I have to set up house again, I am going to be living like a college student. More like clothing, makeup, toiletries, jewelry, shoes.... just way too much stuff. Yet now, when I look in the closet for something to wear out somewhere other than work, I feel like I have very little to choose from. It's a weird dichotomy.

SO MANY BOOKS, SO LITTLE SPACE

Photo by Ashleigh MontgomeryDeciding what to keep and what to get rid of is easier than I thought it would be. Until I got to the books.

I rarely use my library card. I love books. I love them so much that I would prefer that they became treasured possessions than an item borrowed and returned as if they had no value to me.

This may be explained by the fact that I have been reading since I was three. My mother taught me. I have foggy memories of a green chalkboard on an easel in our living room and yellow chalked letters with my mother's voice sounding them out; ah, buh, ku, du, eh... I remember begging my mom to be able to go to school at four years old. She talked to the school officials and I found myself happily in the British equivalent of Kindergarten a year early (until it came time to do math; there was no happiness in that for me. Ever.) I had every story book lining the shelves of that classroom read in two months. I have read pretty much everything I can get my hands on since.

When I was married, we turned the family room into a library. Bookshelves lined every wall and were full. He was a reader as well but read different authors than I did. When I left, I took the ones that were mine. The Bronte sisters, Jane Austen, a set of leather bound classics such as The Scarlet Letter, Moby Dick, Don Quixote, The Secret Garden. I had every book by Sharon Kay Penman, Bill Bryson, Rosamunde Pilcher, John Grisham, James Patterson, Anne Rule, Maeve Binchy to name just a few. And they all came with me.

I have moved 6 times in 7 years and carting all of those heavy boxes from place to place became too much so I decided that most had to go. Not to mention I no longer had the luxury of devoting one whole room to their keep. I selected only the ones I knew I would read again. The Bronte sisters, Austen, the leather bound classics, Bill Bryson (hilarious travel writer), and Sharon Kay Penman stayed. As did a few select others. The rest I sold at a garage sale or gave to the local thrift store. I tried to sell some to the used book store but they didn't want most of what I had. I didn't know quite what to make of that.

Along the way, in the past seven years, I have added to the small library I cart around from place to place. As I pack my belongings into boxes, yet again, I pick up a book and run my hands over the cover, recalling the story held within. It's like remembering a recent vacation as the scenes that I love dance through my mind. The thoughts of parting with it is akin to parting with a photo album full of holiday memories. If I don't have the book, how will I remember the story? But I shake my head clear of that thought as the pragmatic side of me forces it's way into focus. The question that needs to be answered is - Will I read it again? If the answer is no, then it has to go into the garage sale box.

I have acquired some books that I cannot part with. Two are veritable tomes, inches thick and weigh a lot. But oh, what satisfying reads they are. The sort of book you just don't want to put down and, as the pages on the right get fewer and fewer, you wish you could slow down your reading enough to make them last longer than you know they will. Panic actually set in as I got down to the last ten pages. I am speaking of Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett and it's sequel, World Without End. Oh the feeling of elation that came over me not a week after I finished Pillars when I discovered there was a sequel just released. I, who can not bring myself to pay the price for a hardcover when it will be out in paperback at a third of the cost in mere months, handed over thirty odd dollars without a blink. If you haven't read them, don't waste a moment more. You MUST get these books into your hands as soon as you can. You won't regret it.

So those definitely go into the 'keep' box. Along with my Guide to the British Virgin Islands, all the Catherine Cookson books I bought over the summer, and a few books I haven't yet read.

As I tape up the box of books to garage sale, come spring, I am proud of myself. It's not easy for me to give up my books but I have done it a few times now. I can't say I haven't missed some of them because I have. I often recall with fondness the entire shelf of Ms Pilcher's books in their chintz print covers - so very British - and I wonder if I did the right thing to get rid of them. In the grocery line up I will see a book by Anne Rule and pick it up, read the back, and wonder if it was one I used to own and thus have read. And now, when I see a book I want to buy, I hesitate to spend the money if I know that I probably won't be keeping it. I guess it's time to dust off the library card.

GLAM SQUAD AND MY OWN BED

So I was talking to the makeup gal who is staying at the house here with me in Victoria. Her name is Tana and I have worked with her before but not recently. We were collapsed in the livingroom one night after work, sipping on some wine and talking shop. I told her that I would love to get into the makeup department as I did have my hair and cosmetology licenses years ago. She perked up and said I should for sure make the change over. That 'swings' are hard to find. A swing is an assistant that can do both hair and makeup. She tells me that she would hire me. So we talk about how that would work and the upshot is that, when we both get back to the mainland, I will go over to her place and she will help me get a kit set up and then, once she is on a show where she will need to hire help with background, she will hire me and start me off that way. I am absolutely over the moon excited about this new door opening and am so grateful to Tana for this offer. I feel like my life may be taking a new turn and so it will be interesting to see what the future holds.

I am still waiting to hear if my agent wants to take on my new script. I am hoping so. If both of those scripts sell, that's another door that will be wide open. I am thinking that, once work here dies down for the winter, I will go visit Ron Oliver and we can start collaborating on our wedding movie script.

Also, a good friend just bought a new home and is putting in a basement suite. She has already rented it to a young single woman but she wants a mature room mate. So I have agreed to be that room mate. So I will be moving the weekend this second show is finished. It's going to be a crazy few weeks coming up. But if I can get through them, it will mean a bank account in the black, and the first time I have slept in my own bed in two weeks shy of a year. I just realized that the other day. A year since I have had my own place.

I hope I never have another year like this one. For all the adventure, it's been stressful as well. I am looking forward to some stability again. Bring it on.