ship-jumper's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Another move, a better landing Ok so here I am again. I jumped ship by crossing the border but I did NOT drown as some have told me they concluded by my lack of entries! Shippie is still here and doing well! Where oh where does one start with an entry that is MONTHS overdue? This could turn into a long ass entry if I’m not careful. Perhaps I’ll just start with the old faithful bullet point entry style. Get the crux of things out and then focus on entries of the weird and obnoxious later. Wait. Weird and obnoxious is the job of poolagirl so I best not invade her boundaries there. Well I’ll just stick my finger in my nose and call it even for today! So what is new with Shippie? Let’s see….. • Kel and I just moved again. This in itself is a huge story as our living situation has not been the greatest for the past 7 months or so. Our life has been all about moving since we got married in November of 2006! We moved Kelly from Ontario to where I was living in Portland, Oregon. The plan was to stay a year and a half and then move back to Canada-hopefully BC. However, given a few different variables, we decided it was best to move to Canada earlier, so the end of Feb 2007 we packed up Casa de Ipo, shipped everything with movers and shipped the car, and landed in Ontario. We stayed with the in-laws for a month or so until we found this wonderful house downtown that was 3 blocks from Kelly’s job. The new place was a one bedroom apartment in a 100 year old Victorian house that had been converted to 4 apartments. The owner of the property lived on the main floor and at first seemed to be a gem of a lady but just drank a wee too much. The second level of the house was a great We started to see this owner in a different light as time went on. PSYCHOTIC. She is a textbook case of an un-medicated bi-polar afflicted alcoholic. The woman was always drinking. You’d see her at 7 AM walking around with a beer or glass of wine. The hours of the day would pass and you’d still see her with booze in hand. Being an insomniac, I would at times go out at 3 in the AM to have a smoke and there she’d be wide awake, drunk, and nutty. You sit and talk with her and she is always talking about how so-and-so is an ass, and you-know-who is out to get her, and damn it all be to hell she is going to ‘get’ so-and-so. Ugh. We quickly learned to keep our distance and never use the front entrance in hopes of avoiding her. I won’t even get into the screaming matches she would get into with her boyfriend at all hours, or the screaming matches she’d get into with seemingly no one there. She bought another house that she decided she was going to move into and live in. Thank god!! Perhaps things will quiet down now? HA! She went from adoring Kel and myself to screaming vulgarities about us and to the young girl who moved into the unit on the lower level. Cock suckers, dykes, faggots, bitches….these were all words used to describe us now. She would then have these rage fits where she would start taking furniture and clay pots, etc. and throw them off the front porch onto the laneway AND the city street in front of us, all the while screaming obscenities and nonsensical things at the top of her lungs. The sound of shattering clay pots-BIG clay pots- at 2 in the morning is shall we say…unnerving and stressful. Things progressively got worse. We hesitated every time we left our place or returned home, fearing we were going to run into her. She finally moved out the end of November, but her presence did not stay away. She’d show up at all hours, banging, knocking, screaming, you name it. She never did rent her unit out on the first floor but would instead come and bang on the walls to just be a pain in the ass. Her supposed Italian Mafia boyfriend ‘manager of the property wanna-be” was just as much of an idiot and tried to throw his weight around with us. Our heat went out in December due to a problem with the water heater and we were treated as if we had sabotaged the damn thing. The heat wasn’t restored for about 13 days!! The owner would scream “Well they have the gas fireplace so it’s not like they are freezing.” Yeah, and that thing heated the living room and kitchen pretty well but did nothing for the bathroom or bedrooms. A few nights Kel went and slept at her parent’s house with Ipo because it was so cold. I stayed and froze because as pathetic as it was, we were leery about leaving the place unattended as the owner was known to just walk on in. Don’t even get into the ‘you should have contacted the tenant board” and “that’s illegal she can’t do that.” Please. I know. I’ve been in the property management business for over ten years. I know the rules and the laws. We had given notice to the owner that we would be leaving at the end of our lease and it came down to a “Pick your battles” situation. This woman was a time bomb. We were just trying to take the path of least resistance and wait things out. Trust me when I say however that now that we are out of there, there will be a huge complaint written up with the tenant board! The owner even turned on the woman who lived in the unit above us whom she had always spoke so highly of as well. This woman did not have the proper phone lines installed to her apartment so it was impossible for her to order landline service without having to pay to have a phone line installed to her unit. This is the responsibility of the owner, not a tenant. So she phoned the owner and was told that no way in hell was she going to pay for that and if Jen wanted phone service she would have to pay for the wiring herself. WTF?! Two days later the owner got a hold of Jen and told her she does too much for everyone and gets nothing in return, and so she wants Jen to move out too. “I have lots of money and lots of attorneys, and you better move out or you’ll see lots of trouble!” Needless to say Jen had already planned on moving out since we had given our notice, as she did not want to be alone in that place and have to deal with the owner, but now she found herself on the venom receiving side of this owner as we had. So. We moved AGAIN. Lol. Technically this was 4th time in 15 months we have moved. UGH! The movers showed up on the March 31st, packed up the whole lot of our stuff and moved it all in to our new place. We are now in a high rise which has it’s perks. I don’t have to shovel anymore! We’re nestled in an extremely wooded lot that provides many many walking trails/paths, a pool, tennis courts and a community garden. We’re up on the 12th floor, and the great thing is we have no stairs. No stairs means we were able to finally bring Kelly’s dog Cleo home with us!! She’s a Dutch Shepherd who has some hip issues and would not have done well at our old place so she’s been staying with Kel’s parents. Now we have both dogs and everyone is happy happy happy! LOTS of places to go and walk the doggies and LOTS of smells for them to sniff along the way. The building is amazingly quiet and our balcony overlooks the centre courtyard where there are lots of trees as well as the pool. The utilities are included in the rent so we no longer have $200/month heating bill surprises due to awful drafts and windows that leak. Things are good at Chez Ipo and Cleo. And get this: Jen from upstairs at the old place? Well, she took a look at the property after we told her where we were moving and she ending up renting a place here as well. There are four buildings, but she just so happened to end up in the same building as us but three floors down. So we have a friend already in the building and an emergency dog sitter if ever needed! The stress we were under was lifted the day we moved and it’s amazing. I have not been able to sleep for months, but had no idea how significant this was until I was laying in bed the first night. I actually fell asleep within 15 minutes of my head hitting the pillow. I could feel it in my body the difference as I lay there closing my eyes. I knew I was stressed, but I guess I didn’t fully realize the extent of it until we were gone. I need to go do some more unpacking. While I have managed to install all of the window treatments, I have yet to unpack all of my clothes. I best get on that now! 11:44 a.m. - 2008-04-10 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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