Well, we finally bought a cottage....
I fell in love with Mayne Island many years ago as a young child. My aunt and uncle have a great big waterfront home where I spent some of the happiest days of my life. And once the smell and feel of island life gets into your blood, there is no escaping it. It pulls at you, relentlessly, until it occupies a permanent corner of your psyche. The slightest whiff of salt water can set your heart racing, and the desire - or perhaps the genuine need - for a place of one's own away from the city, becomes an obsession. Scouring internet properties becomes a hobby. Drooling over seaside cottages and waterfront estates takes on a life of its own. And then you reach a point in life where you just know that it's time to make a move. Sure, we'd be accumilating more debt, but so what? Life is too short...and maybe one of the kids will invent something.....******
When I became engaged way back in 1993, the first place I wanted to show my fiance was Mayne Island. Luckily for me, he was as equally charmed. It was winter time, and the sheer darkness of the place after we disembarked from the ferry was a revelation to him. Sixteen years of marriage and 3 kids later, we were finally in a position to buy. Unfortunately, what we wanted to buy was completely out of our price range....Forget waterfront. Abandon all hopes for a water view. How about a little house in the woods? Okay, a shack in the middle of nowhere! Good enough.
And then we saw her: a little yellow barn perched high up on a corner in lovely Bennett Bay. The price was right, (meaning: it's all we could afford) so we made an offer, fought with the bank, argued with the insurance company who had no idea where Mayne Island was, haggled for a new septic system, drove our wonderful realtor Kathie Warning crazy with endless set-backs, and suddenly...it happened. We were officially cottage owners. No more envying the smug neighbours, merrily waving as they head off to the cabin. No more wondering bitterly how anyone can afford anything on the Gulf Islands. No more staring miserably at the real estate ads, cursing the baby boomers. No more guiltily asking my incredibly generous aunt & uncle if we can borrow their cottage yet again. Farewell to feeling trapped in smog-ville. Our ship came in! True, the ship was bobbing on rickety moorings for a while, but we have embarked on an exciting renovation! This seems to be our fate in life: turning ugly ducklings into gleaming swans.
So here goes...this is our journey and I hope you enjoy it as much as we are....sort of....
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