Oh the Places we have lived.

(Please note: if you are reading this blog for the first time, you need to start with the post entitled " The reason" which can be found in the 2011 Archive)

Blog entry preceding this one is "Christmas Eve & Christmas Day" in 2011 Archive.



Lily: For those of you who do not know, J.J is keeping a blog of his own, to record memories and stories of his time in Canada before he and I met. Today's entry takes inspiration from J.J's thought process.

Our first rental home together (Bluefish Crescent, Tascott):

After our engagement, my father had said we should move out and find a place of our own. We had barely been together a few weeks officially and the thought that we had to move out so quickly (in my eyes) was surprising. J.J barely had a cent to his name using his savings to fly over and was only working to supplement his travelling whilst here in the country and I was just a university student who had been living at home with no income. Now, before my father rings me up upon reading this, in his defence, his reasons for wanting us out of the ancestral home was so that we would have our privacy (which is fair enough) as any young couple should and want to have yet I was thinking "practicality".
This place was $225.00 p/week.

My memories of it include...

•  A mouse dying in the wall between the laundry and the lounge room and using every chemical known to man to be rid of that "dead" smell, that only a rotting mouse corpse can have.
• Trying to impress the chef J.J by cooking a banquet of a Chinese meal for his first birthday as my husband. I remember sending him to our room, and ordered him to stay there until I called him. Mainly because I couldn't stand him over-looking my shoulder while I cooked less I be embarrassed by my poor culinary skills. I had used the back patio area as our dining room, lighting as many candles as I could find, only to have the evening turn into a disaster due to a fierce wind ripping through the screens and the food being cold because we did not have a five star kitchen with ten burners to match my over-ambitious goal I had set for myself. He claims to have loved the evening, I suspect that he is being husbandly by sparing my feelings.
• (Family /Friends avert your eyes) Making love in every room of the house, including one particular hot and sweaty romp in the hallway 
• Getting ready for our wedding.

J.J.:

so i had been pretty comfortable in my hovel back in Ottawa, it was a hole in the wall but no matter where I went in the world, it was home. Then, one day into my egocentric existence a gorgeous girl arrives and her enticing smile and the sparkle of her eyes entices me to come to Australia just like the siren's song. I was warmly welcomed into the household and it was there that our love blossomed and grew until her spell enticed me so that I asked her to marry me. She said yes. And we had to find a place to live.
Well, despite Lily's commentary on my sliding scale of time, I think it was the very next day that I saw the for rent sign go up on Bluefish. How, utterly convenient. It was a nice little place with an open plan kitchen living room and dining area. With the generous support of our families we were able to furnish it and set ourselves up on the years and adventuers we had before us.
I remember our first Christmas there decorating the tree we mentioned in a previous entry.
I remember the dead mouse. God it smelt awful, a sickeningly sweet and earthy aroma
I remember throwing ice water on each other while showering.
I remember the birdcage and the lonesome death of Fergus.
I remember waking Lily up as we came back from the bucks night.
I remember Lily sleeping with a baseball bat, certain that someone was breaking in, until one night I heard the noise as well and leaped up to investigate only to discover that the loud clicking was the power box clicking on and off.
There were some dinner parties, with beef wellington, triple chocolate mousse for dessert. And well,  I cant remember the rest of it but it was a joy to cook for a new family.

54 Bluefish, was filled with laughter, games and happiness.
But, the time came to move... and the search for a new home began.

Our 2nd dwelling:

 East Gosford:
The most awesome apartment ever to be lived in by us :)
Price $175.00 p/week and we signed a year contract.

We moved for one simple reason, Bluefish landlord wanted to raise our rent and I wasn't having a bar of that. We rented the top floor corner apartment on the left, with one of the most spectacular views of  "Brisbane Waters". It had yet to renovated and so we dealt with 1970's coloured carpet, cracks in the brick work and a dark wood late 70's early 80's kitchen. A poorly designed kitchen as they had the oven right in the middle of the floor at eye level which thereby blocked the view. It had air-conditioning in the lounge-room, three rooms, open plan living/lounge and a laundry room in the apartment. No elevator so moving in was hard work carrying boxes and furniture up three flights of stairs, though most of the heavy lifting was performed by my brother (thanks you're a legend), my dad (yet another living legend) and our next door neighbour at dad's house Rick (thanks again). Jeff had the pleasure of working at his new place of employment out at Terrigal Beach (lucky bastard).  We had the garage door on the left and after a few mishaps I worked out that the best way to get in and out of it, was to reverse into it. Sadly my reversing skills was only in its early stages at this point and so J.J's beloved bicycle that he had brought with him from Canada was sadly a victim that has still to recover.

We didn't really get to know our neighbours with some small exceptions. On the bottom floor, left hand apartment was an elderly gentleman who was the building's "know it all" & " Busy-body". His breath smelt of liquor and he was constantly updating us on what could and couldn't be done around the building according to the body-corporate by-laws. Next to his apartment was what we referred to as the "white trash" family. A woman and her teenage son, and the woman's boyfriend. Many a fight was started in the early hours of the evening between the step-father and the son with lots of colourful language, slamming doors and screaming. When a door was slammed in this building whether it was from angry words or the wind, you could hear it and feel it as the building shook a little.

I really wish I could find photos of the view for you to see, however at this point digital cameras were only for the professional photographers and while photos were taken with the SLR camera, the actual photos have disappeared.

Memories of this place:


Smoking something not all together of the legal variety on the balcony at sunset which pretty much did our heads in with constant giggling and I felt really sleepy.

• Being too hot in the bedroom so J.J and I switched our lounge room into the bedroom and brought our bed out in the lounge room  to be closer to the air-conditioning.
• Having friends and family over for dinner parties.
• Starting to try for a child.
• Finding out by phone that my grandmother had passed away.
• Finally selling the Nissan Skyline we had bought from friends to a deaf couple. The car still didn't have a working handbrake or window and had to be treated like a lady to get the thing to start. We made back $1300 from that sale.
• Buying "Boris the Red", our first proper car where everything worked.
• (Family /friends look away, look away) - a day of love-making seeing how many times in total we could make love in just one day.
• Having my friend Louise try and show me how to change the oil in my car as she was disgusted at the thought when I said I would just pay someone else to do it. 
• The constant Fish deaths in custody.
• The water-heater dying a death and flooding our apartment, it was over 20 years old.
• Being disgusted that our landlords wanted to raise our rent to $185.00 per week. I really took it personally every time a landlord wanted to raise the rent. (lol)
• Upon making a decision to move to another state of the country, we packed up our things. It was at this point that to our horror an indoor plant we had been keeping (on carpet) decided to make a perfect circular shape in our carpet by dissolving the carpet underneath the plant. We thought we had been doing the right thing as a tenant by buying a drip-tray for the plant but to our stupidity, we didn't realise that terracotta provided a perfect breeding ground for moisture. Fearing that we would loose our bond, we did the responsible thing of trying to hire a carpet cleaner to see if he could fix it... to no avail. We then stuck our tails between our legs and approached our Real Estate Agents of our Landlords (L.J Hooker), being very apologetic and pleaded our stupidity. To our luck, the landlords didn't care as they were going to renovate the entire apartment and rip the carpet up anyway.
• All the birds that would settle on our balcony railings to give J.J their morning song. :)

We spent about four to six months living with Lily's dad while we saved as much as we could do for the move and then found ourselves in Queensland.

J.J: I loved this place.
Oh God, how I loved this place.
It was one of the greatest apartments ever.
Three bedrooms, a bath that wasn't disgusting, an internal laundry, wrap around balcony, big dining and lounge area.
Did I mention the spectacular water views?
The creepy know it all neighbour that would bring your laundry in for you if you were out and it was going to rain. I used to tease Lily that he was doing it just to fondle her undies. To which she retorted it was probably mine that he preferred.
The fights from the downstairs neighbours were always entertaining, and we would stop watching t.v. and run to the interior balcony just to be able to listen more clearly.
There were plenty of convenient shops nearby with great take away food.
What more could we have asked for?
Well, apparently, Lily was dirty at paying $185/week. I having spent more for less, just had to shake my head and try and explain just how awesome our yuppie scum bag apartment was.
Would I trade our current house for that apartment? That would be a pretty tough call, but I think the house would win out.
Just...
I loved the lorikeets that made a home on our balcony morning and evenings. Sure they were noisy, but they were pretty and shut up after 30 minutes.
I loved getting to BBQ on the balcony, taunting the neighbours with the smells of garlic, rosemary and lamb drifting throughout the building and neighbourhood.
I don't miss the three flights of stairs when bringing up groceries.
And for the record, I was working the day we moved out as well. Thanks everyone for helping out.
I also remember that we turned the bedroom into a games room and the ensuing competition that Lily and I had playing GTA and Liberty City. We got to take all our frustrations from life and I imagine each other out in the game.
I don't think often about any of the other places we have lived together, but I do think about Webb St. For the time we were there it certainly felt like home.

Our 3rd dwelling:

Coorparoo.
Price: $220.00 p/week (Lily hated paying this much but it was one of the cheapest and livable places we could find in Brisbane).

We got this place after looking everywhere in Brisbane for somewhere. We tried the big real estates and we tried private landlords, we got rejected (our first rejection), finally finding both a place and a landlord that seemed to meet our needs. The landlords Sam and Selina were a young couple who owned two apartments in the same building, renovating our one just prior to us moving in, they really seem like a lovely young couple and were very glad to be living in one of their apartments. Our apartment had new carpet, new kitchen, new bathroom.
It was small.
It was really small. Combined lounge/dining/kitchen, two bedrooms, bathroom, with laundry facilities located in our garage. And the garage was a bitch! It was the first garage of eight (I think) which meant that you had a sharp curve to navigate - first time I entered it, the magna got scraped down the side and I was pissed off!

Memories of this place:

• We made the drive from NSW to QLD in two days as at that point J.J hadn't got his licence yet and I couldn't do the 12 hour drive on my own in one day. We arrive in the afternoon and begin the unpacking. By around 7pm that night, we were both exhausted but were wary when there came a knock at the sliding glass door. There before us was a lady in her late forties who we had never seen before explaining to us that she was the new landlord having just bought the place. We were completely taken by surprised and felt betrayed by Sam and Selina who had not mentioned to us at all that they had intentions of selling the place. The way in which this woman introduced herself made us both feel obligated to her, for if she was our new landlord then it was best to play nice if we wanted to stay in the place and having just moved states, the thought of having to do it again so soon was unthinkable. So we let in a random stranger into our new rented apartment simply because she said she was our landlord. As it turned out, she had only been interested in the place and just wanted to show her son around but I think if we had of been in a right frame of mind and not so exhausted from moving we would have turned around and said a polite "fuck off" and dealt with the consequences of that later.

• We chose this place because J.J was starting a new job, we needed a place asap and it was clean and affordable. Had we had enough time, we would not have chosen it at all for the very simple reason that while it wasn't a main road, it was a road that connected two main roads. What this meant was in the wee hours of the morning you had all manner of cars hooning down the road. And because we had no air-conditioning, we had to leave the windows open to get any air.... which meant no sleep because of the noise.
• One night, while laying in bed reading I just happened to look up at the ceiling to see that it was moving. Perplexed by this image I refocused and saw that the ceiling was indeed moving - because a spider egg sack which had been cleverly camouflaged near the light had burst open releasing a great deal of small spiders (hence the moving ceiling). I immediately jumped from the bed, freaking out on a number of levels and either myself or J.J crystallised the ceiling and I probably burned the sheets that were directly underneath but if my spider-fear wasn't huge at that point, it certainly became so from then on.

J.J:
I never liked this place.
We took it out of necessity.
There were some horrible places that we looked at during our search. One of which, on the waterfront in Sandgate on Flinders Parade was in such a horrible state I brought the keys back and went off on the real estate for having charged me to view the property. It also horrified me that they would let the property be in that condition and try and rent it. - The "pool" was little more than a koi pond. The carpet had been pulled up and left in a pile in the centre of the room. Oh yeah, a wall was leaning on a 45 degree angle!
The house that we were rejected for hurt. It was a gorgeous colonial highset in Sandgate. I would have actually considered buying it at one point I saw so much potential with it. But, for whatever reason we were knocked back. As a result we became Southsiders. Which, in the long run turned out to be more convienent for work.
My memories aren't much different than Lily's. I was deeply put out by our new "landlord" and the fact she showed up again the next day with more family. Seriously! Go away!
I remember the heat. God it was hot in that place. And the way it was designed meant there was no airflow unless you left the front door open as well.
I've always been one to laugh at Lily's fear of bugs/spiders. However, the moving ceiling was, shall we say... unsettling. I don't think we slept in the room that night, opting instead for the spare room.
The blow off valves on the cars would go just as the little bastards reached our place, and it was from that moment on that we decided never to live on a main or divided road again. In fact, any address with road is just going to be bad.
Eventually, Sam and Selina did sell the apartment. Turns out they were hoping to buy the entire place unit by unit, except one owner dug her heels in and for whatever reason annouced that she would never sell to the two of them. As a result they unloaded their two units and we had a new landlord, very nice gentleman, it was just coincidental that we had decided to move as he was taking over.

Our 4th dwelling:

Coorparoo.

Price $275.00 p/week (eventually went up to $295.00)

We had had enough of Pembroke Rd, plain and simple. Apartment was too hot with the windows having to stay closed and it was too noisy. So I started looking for another place that had air-conditioning and was not on a main road. About three streets over we found a house and since we were both now working we could afford to up the rent.

This house was nestled between two apartment buildings which meant for many eyes staring at you on either side but this was also our first rental property that allowed us the adoption of a cat. And its colour scheme probably influenced what we were to do inside our own home.

Memories of it include:

• Nemesis the cat falling out the bedroom window and clinging for dear life, very reminiscent of the scene from Lord of the Rings where Gandalf the Grey Wizard clings to the rock bridge before falling into the unknown.
• Finding out we were pregnant for the first time after years of trying.
• While pregnant getting my first and only late night craving. It was around 1am, and I was desperate for food, any food and since we rarely had time to shop for groceries being at work in the hospitality industry, we had nothing in the house. Now at that point, McDonald's which was down the road from our house was not opened past 10:30pm and the only other thing opened was the Service Station. I raided there food section like a kid in a candy store coming home with those Breakfast drinks "Up and go"'s by Sanitarium and I think I downed at least three of those, a packet of biscuits and something else ridiculous. Now while it satisfied the hunger....it also made me ill. I think it took about twenty minutes later that it all came back up.
• I think the next memory has pretty much wiped out all other memories from this place it was so horrific. We had been here for about a year and a bit, we were pregnant and we thought it was now or never to take advantage of the "First home buyers" government grant to aid in buying a house. With the house chosen, the loan granted all we had to do was move and clean the rental to get our $1000.00 bond back. The move was flawless, the cleaning was done and I at this point was five to six months pregnant. Like we had with any other rental we had contacted the real estate to come and check the place for approval to get our bond back. Well...things didn't go to plan. 

The real estate agent took three days to visit the house after I had completed cleaning and phoned them. When I rung to find out what had been taking so long with the exit report, I was told by the 20-something real estate person that the place was not up to the real estate's cleaning level. I asked what was wrong with it and he replied that there was a layer of dust on the counters, the windows were not cleaned and then a list grew....nothing major just little bits and pieces. I explained that three days ago when I had finished cleaning that there was no dust. He replied that that was not his problem I should have timed the clean better. A second viewing time was arrange and I returned to re-clean the place. 

Now, I know for a fact that J.J and I are very good tenants. We took care of every single place we have ever rented and left it in the same condition that we received it in. We never put holes in the wall, we never trashed the place, left burnt out furniture in the middle of the lounge room or garbage. The police never came around to our house and no complaints were ever made and if any accidental damage was done, we paid to have it fixed immediately.

Again, I cleaned the house. I got down on my pregnant belly and cleaned that mother-fucking place until I could eat off the floor. It was cleaned. IT WAS CLEANED!!!

The real estate boy begged to differ. He declared it wasn't cleaned (again) and would not sign off on our bond release. We again asked what the problem was and he said there was dust on the venetian blinds and there was grease behind the oven knobs.

KNOBS PEOPLE! He said there was grease behind the oven knobs. Now answer me this honestly, if the knobs are fixed how many of you actually clean behind the knobs. He was being a dick. Plain and simple. 

J.J got angry. J.J got really angry! J.J has never been this angry in the entire time that I have known him and he was ready to punch this young boy for being such a cock-sucker. Now after spending six hours scrubbing this place clean with nothing else for the real estate guy to bitch about with the exception of grease behind the knobs and dust on the blinds I was tired. I was pregnant. I was hormonal. I was emotional. 

I explained that the dust was there on the blinds when we moved in to which he replied that " Well, you should have written that on the entry report." I replied with " Who does that? Write dust on an entry report??"

He basically shot us down stating that he could not release the money. J.J fuming went to move towards the guy. I stepped in between the two, tears streaming down my face and sent J.J away. I turned to the real estate guy and explained that our level of clean was never going to be good enough for him and to take $120 out of the bond money to pay for a cleaner of his approval. He did this, we got the remaining bond money and forever the real estate company of "Ray White" will never receive any of our business ever again because this guy was such a butt-wad!

After this, we moved into our first home, complete with mortgage with thanks to J.J's parents for helping us. We have appreciated that on so many levels - Thank you.

The first thing we did in our home was nail as many nails into the wall as possible without having to check with any real estate before doing so - IT FELT GOOD!

And every time a "Ray White" real estate agent rings up, asking if we would like a free valuation on our home and we explain to them politely that we would rather place barb wire up our own bottoms than to use Ray White as a company because of the incident we had, more often than not, they apologise on the company's behalf and scamper off with their tails between their legs. Run rabbit, run.

J.J:
The second Cooporoo address.
I loved this place, it felt homey. I liked the design and layout. There were french doors that opened from the main, air-conditioned, bedroom into the front sitting room. The dining room, had windows all down the side of it and it did catch the evening breezes. The lounge area was small and really could only be set out one way, but it worked for us.
The kitchen was massive. Most importantly it had a gas cooker! OH, how I loved a gas cooker. The food was just that much better, even when it was worse, from that gas cooker.
The back yard was massive, long and narrow, and always offered up tiny surprises. Loganberries, mulberries, cherry tomatoes are just a few of the little pleasures that I can remember.

One evening, while tidying up for an Easter weekend dinner party, I had my first up close and personal experience with Australian reptiles. Something, was coiled up under the plastic water feature, and didn't like that I had woken it from its evening nap. It made me run inside and quickly try and identify it on the web, to no success. That prompted a call to the local snake removalist and he wanted WAY too much to come out. By the time I went back outside and tentatively moved the water feature again, said little critter was gone.
Whew....
Damn it. Where is it now?
The rest of the time there was met with caution anywhere in the garden.
This was also a place where we got to entertain guests again.
I love entertaining.
Dinner, games, drinks with friends all are always welcome.

Our departure from this place....
Lily has given fair warning to family and friends about what is about to come, I do now for my language in the next portion...
The little fucker from Ray White.
Its now five and a half years later and I will still strangle this little cunt if I ever see him again.
Let it go I hear some of you say.
I can't, for whatever reason he got under my skin.
Lily was right, I got angry. She did step in front of me and send me to the car. Would I have assaulted him? Probably not, but I really, really, really wanted to.
There has never been anyone I wanted to see arrive in my gaol more than this little shit. The greeting would have been along the lines of "Remember me?"
I don't care what he came in for, his ass would have been mine.
Not proffessional I know, and I never would have jeopardized my career for him, but the thought of it makes me calm and gives me warm and fuzzies.
The parts of it Lily left out.
He was almost two hours late for the inspection appointment. We had to actually go around to the agency and find out what was happening. When he said it wasn't clean and needed to be redone. I told him give us an itemized list, now, and we'll redo it while he waited. He explained that he couldn't do that as he had other appointments to go to. It was about this time that I was thinking of how to dispose of his corpse...
"Fuck you!"
Silence.
"Fuck you, there is. You kept us waiting for two fucking hours, you wasted two hours of our day, you can sit the fuck down for two hours while we clean."
"That's not going to happen."
"Then get someone else from the agency down here now."
"There isn't anyone else."
"Then get the principal of the franchise."
As I suddenly stepped forward, my anger off the scale - in all honesty, I cannot remember anyone that has ever made me quite as angry and that includes being hit by cars, dumped, shot at and broken into. It was then that Lily saved his life, kept our house and prevented me from going to prison. He went reaching for his phone, who are you going to call? The people at work that aren't available to come and review our dilema?
I went and reluctantly sat in the car while he EXTORTED the $120 cleaning fee.
I wrote letters of complaint to the agency, the Queensland head office, the national office, I even wrote to Ray White head office in the U.S.
I never heard back from them. Which, is probably more the reason I never want to deal with them. A simple letter of we apologise for hiring such a fuck-wit, we'[ve had him buried up to his chin in the middle of the Australian Bight. Would have mellowed me right out.
Alas, it wasn't to happen.
I wonder what my blood pressure is right now....

We have our own home!

Thanks to my parents and my then employer George Kalatzis. May your names be sung from the heavens and your images be carved as large as Mt. Rushmore.