House Sitting

A couple of years ago we looked quite seriously at living
our lives from someone else’s house. There is a website for people who do that
and it’s called Housecarers.com. People arrange for house sitting gigs all over
the world and get to stay in some pretty fantastic places, some out-of-the-way
places and some real dives! The arrangement usually comes with pet care responsibilities
or heavy landscaping task lists or a very long time commitment or any other number
of potential inconveniences. After all our research a decision was made to buy
a place of our own and forget the whole idea. That is until this week.

It helps to know someone living in the area who knows the
vacating party and we do. Since Amanda and Marc live on rural Pender Island and
word got around that they were looking for accommodation, this house sitting
opportunity presented itself to them first and they, just settling in, passed
it on to us.

Long story short, we jumped at the chance to spend 3 ½ weeks
over Christmas and New Years near to them and, of course, our little Gabrielle.
Gord is working over Christmas this year so we will be back for 4 short days at
the height of the holidays but will spend the better part of the darkest days
of the year in the Gulf Islands on a farm caring for a small clutch of domestic
animals and cozying in for a sweet holiday.

We are keeping our home in case you were wondering. We need
something to come back to that puts us near Gord’s hobby, which conveniently
pays the bills and is a real source of fulfillment for him. In a sense, it is a
safe little adventure and will make Christmas extra special this year! Who
knows, maybe I will be inspired to write a novel that will one day become
famous. I could title it, “Little House on Pender” or something of the sort.

Are you doing anything out of the ordinary for Christmas
this year?