A Series of Houses

Traipse through the places that I have either grown up in or moved to.

I have moved several times in my 29, nearly 30 years. Most of those moves have occurred after I left my parents’ house about 14 years ago. Every place that I’ve lived has had a presence of its own. Let me tell you a bit more about them.

I grew up in a blue house on Soda Creek Reserve about half an hour north of Williams Lake. It was a small three bedroom house that was a floorplan copy of many others, not just on our reserve, but on several others that I’ve been to. That isn’t to say that every one of these houses looked the same, heavens no. Each family used a different door as the main door, or their house was pointed in a different direction, and definitely every family used their house differently.

Ours was dark blue with a green roof. The living room door was the main door and it had a little porch with a few stairs. It was a bastion of cleanliness, even with me doing my best as a precocious little brat to make a mess or find some way to shock my Mom. I didn’t dare track my shoes across the floor, but I would forever make forts out of the couch and generally put things out of their place. My room was a nightmare that Mom would often pretend didn’t exist.

There were always ants, spiders and flies that would make their summerly appearance and battled off the premises with sprays, traps and squishings. My Mom juggled my sister and me, full time jobs as well as running the household. She did an amazing job because I remember that despite my tornado like presence, the house was always in order. We had a cloth on the counter for a drying rack, a yellow kitchen table, wood stove, worn floors and of course the best old couches with flat square cushions.

We didn’t have TV until I was about 7 or so. Even after Dad got it set up in the living room I didn’t see much use for it. I would watch movies over and over, but most often I was outside or at school. I remember the Old House always being full of sunshine and various wonderful smells like cooking, baking, laundry, motor oil and WD40. The backyard had an awesome natural sandpit made of the softest beige sand that made for endless hours of fun. Dad had a car ramp set up back there and off to the side.

There were chokecherry, Saskatoon and raspberry bushes everywhere. We have a smattering of crabapple and winter crabapple trees around the rez. Granny and Granny Eddie had gardens and current bushes.

Home on the rez doesn’t just include your own house, it’s a number of houses where there’s no need to knock. I remember all the houses were full of sunshine, smiles, hugs, cooking and cleaning. Ultimately, the Old House felt like a comforting presence.

As comforting as the Old House was, in good shape it was not. In our last few years there the floor between the living room and back room began separating from the wall. It had severe cracks in the foundation and was generally falling apart.

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By the time my sister was about 1 and I was about 10, we moved up to the Big House. It’s a log house with 2.5 floors: basement, main floor and my parents’ room that makes up the top half-floor. The basement is a basement with a quarter of it that houses many of my Dad’s tools. The main floor has two bedrooms, bathroom, and a big open area for the kitchen, dining and living area.

My room was the one on the east side of the house so I could watch the sun come up. After several growing pain adjustments, it was eventually purple with a couple murals on the walls. As a burgeoning teen I fought myself to keep my room fastidiously clean and decorated. I made a little rose trellis on my window with carefully cut strawberry cartons and cloth roses. When I started making my own money I bought beads for the door and a purple inflatable chair and all sorts of other visually pleasing things to put around my room.

I had never quite gotten used to the Big House. For one, it was big; easily three times the size of our Old House. Since it was a brand new log house it spent its first several years settling " creaking in the wind, in the night, and just creaking in general. It was cold and drafty. I sorely missed the close heat of the woodstove where we often opened the doors in winter when the fire burned fiercely.

The Big House has a woodstove in the basement, a pellet stove on the main floor plus a furnace for heating. I used to go lay down beside the woodstove when a fire was lit or completely hog the pellet stove by propping my legs up above the vents. Even when I go to visit nowadays I steal my Dad’s slippers because my feet don’t like the floors, and I stand in front of the pellet stove.

A few years ago Dad finally got to build his shop across the driveway from the house. I think my old playset is still out there. My sister has her trampoline off to the side. Dad and Uncle flattened out the little hill beside the shop and flood it every winter for a rink. There are TVs in every room except my old one (which still has remnants of my rose trellis and some books). Rowen loves to go visit his Granny and Grampa and just like before, there is always someone stopping by for a visit. My parents’ house is tall, busy and full of stuff.

…

When it was clear that Snewt and I were serious about one another and we spent some time with each other’s families, ultimately I moved out to his house. His parents’ house is a double wide trailer with a basement on their plot of land out in Esk’ét. It is also full of stuff, piles of important things that were kept from various stages of their lives.

Snewt and I stayed in his room on a twin bed. His room is also on the east side of the house with the sunrise coming in. Time moves a little differently out there. It’s more fluid, with an ebb and flow that moves people along. There are always jobs to go to and things to get done around the house, but the energy out there makes sure everything happens at its own pace.

There came a time though when it was discovered how bad the mould was in the house. Snewt’s Mom and Dad were moved into the little hotel on the rez while people tried to figure out to do about it. That left fj, Snewt and a pregnant me up at the Other House; we were considered low-risk to the mould in the house.

Rowen was born and his first few months were spent growing up in the Other House. Snewt was working and I was able to just be home with Rowen. Things became a little jumbled together and slightly confusing. There were some bandage solutions thrown at the Other House for the mould due to lack of funding. Mom and Dad first moved back into the Cabin, and then we switched places.

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As things settled down and we got set up in the cabin, Rowen was as happy as ever. His first words and steps took place in the Cabin.

The Cabin is a tiny one, possibly two bedroom cabin about fifty yards from the Other House. It has a slightly awkward floorplan, but it’s a good little house. It has a full length porch on each side. The kitchen and living room are off to the left when you walk in, the bathroom is in the middle. The back half of the Cabin is a room type area which is where people usually sleep and the room with a door on the left side is usually a computer room. Or at least they have been when we lived there and now that fj lives there.

The Cabin was great for our growing little family. It was easy to clean, being so small. The woodstove keeps it warm in the winter. I imagine that I really liked it because it reminds me of the Old House " the fire burns quite hot and requires opening the door to let some of the heat out even in -30° weather.

…

There came a time that I wanted to return to work and school when Rowen was about 1 or two. I made the drive every day into town and Rowen stayed with family when possible. After a while though it was deemed easier if we just moved into town. We were approved for a 4 bedroom townhouse which we dubbed 31.

31 was a 6 level townhouse close to downtown. Most everything is close to downtown since Williams Lake isn’t exactly huge, but it’s closer than most complexes. 6 levels may sound like a lot but it was mostly stairs and all the floors are basically half-floors. Still it was a great place for the price of $600 a month, pretty much unheard of nowadays.

From the bottom: basement; bedroom and mini living room; kitchen and half-bathroom; main living room; main bathroom and master bedroom; and on top, two smaller bedrooms. This place is one of my favourites for the rent and space. Rowen spent a good couple of his formative years here and his preschool was just down the street.

Since it was such low rent it unfortunately attracted a lot of partiers. While we didn’t have too many problems, the weekends did tend to get noisy and a few of our neighbours that came and went tried to stir up trouble. Our Landlord was good about interceding for us because he liked us.

It’s an older complex and so it was quite cold and drafty in the winter. We hung up blankets on the patio doors and between floors to help the heat stay put, as well as we tried that plastic sheeting on the windows. It seemed to be pretty decent. As you can see by now though, I like to stay very warm with a high tolerance for heat and low tolerance for cold houses.

It came to a point that the complex was going to be redone and rent was going to increase to $825 and probably above $900 in the coming months. Between us and our boarder that was still going to be too much. So we started looking for another place.

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In relatively short order we settled on an upper suite in a fourplex, two bedroom. The Landlord seemed nice; the place looked good if much smaller than our townhouse. We found out quickly though that this place was inhabited by heavy partiers and the Landlord made no effort to improve things.

I won’t spend too much time on this one because it was an awful place to live. We were already looking for another place not long after moving in, but ended up staying there through the holidays. We were robbed on Boxing Day when we were out visiting family, and I wouldn’t doubt if it was one of our neighbours. Our DVD collection was cleaned out, electronics, thankfully none of Rowen’s movies or TV, and all of my socks were taken. Maybe they thought I had money in there? Or they really needed socks?

I think we ended up stuck there for nearly six months before we found someplace else to go.

…

Our next place was a two bedroom apartment in a nice little complex below the hospital. The exterior of the building was cement, and the walls in between. But not the floors between us and the apartment above. The cement walls were nice though because they diminished the sound of the ambulances and kept the place cool in the summer. We called this one Gibbon since it was on Fourth and Gibbon.

We had a great little cement patio that was slightly larger since we were a corner unit. There was a group of kids that ran around the complex, which was horseshoe shaped around a courtyard. Rowen was 4 by this time and loved the ability to run out and join them. It was surprisingly peaceful at Gibbon and sitting out on our patio was incredibly enjoyable.

We were only there for 3 months though since we were approved for a house up in Pine Valley.

…

We were actually given the choice between two houses. One was the 5 bedroom house on Firdale Drive and the other a 3 bedroom trailer in 150 Mile. After looking at the house in Pine Valley we didn’t even have to go look at the trailer. The house was enormous with 3 bedrooms in the basement, a laundry room and storage room, and the other two bedrooms, a main washroom, kitchen, living room, and an extra family room with a woodstove on the main floor. I don’t believe the trailer had a woodstove, which was one of the main reasons we went with Firdale.

We had over 3 wonderful years with Firdale. Along with the enormity of the house, there was a garage underneath the extra family room, a little patio, a front porch leading out into a nice sized front yard, and a ginormous backyard that had berry bushes.

Our second year there we got our little dog, Mario. He had plenty of room to run around in and things in general were pretty damn good at Firdale.

We did have some adjusting pains. It’s an older house, about 30 or 40 years old and has heating issues. The woodstove and extra family room must have been added on later because it really doesn’t heat the house evenly. It will heat most of the top floor nicely, but does basically nothing for the basement. One winter it dipped down to about -40° for a while and the pipes burst in one of the lower bedrooms.

We also battled earwigs incessantly. Apparently it was a recent neighbourhood infestation. While going around the house with bug spray our first couple of months there we discovered that there were thousands of earwigs underneath the pretty flat rock styled landscaping around the front. We quickly got rid of that and used plenty of bug spray throughout the summers.

I look back on Firdale with mixed feelings. I loved the space, location and the fact that it was an actual house and not an apartment. But since it was so much larger than we needed it was a lot of work to upkeep. Plus the earwigs " brrr. Overall, it was a great place to live until we decided to move to Kamloops so I could finish my degree.

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Our first place here in Kamloops was a cute little two bedroom house we called Moncton. It was a great little house and seemed just the right size for us. It’s L-shaped with bedrooms and bathroom on one piece of the L, and kitchen, living room and an extra little family room on the other piece. With yards in the front and back there was plenty of room for Mario to run around in.

The heating was a decent furnace that we helped boost with space heaters. It doesn’t get as cold here in Kamloops and there is much less snow. Moncton seemed a little cramped for space, but that may have also been because we had downsized quite drastically from Firdale. I’m pretty sure Moncton could easily have fit within the top floor of Firdale.

There was a peach tree in the backyard. When we moved this way in August, it was still green and we weren’t quite sure what kind of fruit tree it was and whether it would bear fruit. When that tree bloomed in September and October, did it ever bear a lot of peaches!

We gave away bags of it, bins to our parents for canning and tried to can the rest ourselves. Some of it still went bad despite our best efforts. It seemed like we had peaches coming out of our ears for a while; even Mario started eating peaches. My sister came to visit for a couple weeks and nearly camped under that peach tree.

It was a very peaceful place to live and would have been ideal to stay if it weren’t so expensive. At $1,200 a month it was within the normal renting range for Kamloops, but definitely above what we could continuously afford especially with me back in school. I miss Moncton and sometimes drive by it just to see how it looks with its new tenants " they take better care of the lawn.

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Our next place was a ground suite in a fourplex on the beach. Desmond started out as a great little place; good location, a treehouse in the backyard and the beach not twenty yards away. The floorplan was a little awkward, but a shared laundry room was included and our Landlords were friendly enough.

I’m not sure if I can mention the beach enough. Beach!

When we first moved in the unit above us was getting renovated. It was a little noisy, but bearable. The new neighbours that moved in turned out to be intolerable. They were a young couple with no kids, but with many, many personal issues. We became very familiar with their troubles as they fought loudly and sound carried painfully well in that little fourplex.

We had some difficulties with our Landlord as well and I had to cite the Tenancy Act to him a couple times. We weren’t there terribly long and luckily found a new place by the end of the summer. I run into my old Landlord once in a while and it is always awkward.

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We now live in a second-floor apartment in Sahali. It’s a nice little two bedroom that gets stuffy pretty easily. One of my coworkers also lives in the complex and calls it a little slummy, but otherwise good. That seems an apt enough description. But the rent is decent and it’s in a good neighbourhood.

We finally got two armchairs which is nearly heavenly; we had been making do with lawn and computer chairs in the living room. Our big couch had to be dismantled and discarded because it had no chance of leaving Desmond, let alone fitting in our new, cramped quarters. Considering what we had to do to get it out of Desmond, I can’t help but wonder how on Earth we got it in there in the first place.

Even though we’ve been here a year, I find I don’t have too much to say about Da House. The stairs are a nuisance most days, especially when we shop at Costco. We are looking for another place though. It’s hard to find an affordable pet-friendly place but we keep an ear out because we miss our little dog. He’s staying with Snewt’s parents for the foreseeable future " and has been with them or my parents since we had to move out of Moncton.

This concludes my traversing through the places I have lived. Hopefully I can update it soon with an affordable pet-friendly place and being reunited with Mario! Stay tuned.