In my last post I talked a little about managing an apartment while Greg went to school. Let me back it up a bit and give a bit of history to how all that came about and what it did for our family.

Greg and I moved in together when I was 18. I had graduated from high school and started working at the Bay in West Edmonton Mall when I was 17. I was staying with my Auntie Helen and Uncle Garry, and was incredibly grateful for them letting me stay, but I also knew that if Greg and I were going to make things work, we needed to make it happen together. We moved into an apartment beside West Edmonton Mall by the Miseracordia in Jan of 1987. Greg found a job pumping gas, I think he made $5.00/hour so he also refereed hockey to help us make ends meet. Our rent was $435 for a one bedroom apartment and we both had car payments we were making. I was getting part time hours, making $4.50/hour.. It was tight some months, and we sure didn’t eat as healthy as we do now, we were happy if we had some macaroni and hamburger with tomato soup! And if we had 20$ left at the end of a paycheck we thought we were doing well! Eventually we moved from there and moved in with friends of ours, Blair and Marcie, and lived with them, cost sharing for 6 months or so. We moved again after that, and Greg found a job with Cloverdale Paint. Things happened and I moved in with my girlfriend Colleen and Greg moved in with his buddy Brian. She would end up being my bridesmaid at our wedding, but she’ll never know how she helped me at that point in my life. Greg and I worked things out, and low and behold I ended up pregnant a few months later. ( I have no idea how that happened, o1bviously, because it happened twice!). Anyway, Greg and I moved back in together and and started saving our money and when I was about 6 months pregnant, we bought a mobile home. We lived there, in Westview Village in Winterburn until Alicia finished Kindergarten. While there we had Melanie, got married, met Jan and Neil and their kids Ashlynn and Kyle, and Bernie and Angela and their kids Allysha, Chelsea, and Morgan. To this day, they are all some of our dearest friends. We spent hours and hours together. Allysha and Alicia were in kindergarten together. It was Alicia Ho… and Allysha Ho.., so they were always lined up beside each other and partnered together, so now my Alicia says they were the 2 A-Hos! I just laugh at that. We were so blessed to meet both of those families, and be able to still have a friendship with all of them. Bernie, Angela, Greg and I played cards almost every weekend. I’m pretty sure that was what saved our sanity when money got tight. We had great friends, and could get together and laugh like loons over cards, our kids got along, and we didn’t have to spend a fortune to have a great time. Jan told me once that she saw us outside with our little daughter and she told Neil that they needed to go for a walk so they could meet us. I don’t know what I would have done if we hadn’t met them. Our kids spent a lot of time together, dying their hair with felt pens, making musical instruments out of pie tins and rice or Kleenex boxes, elastics and wrapping paper tubes. I have such great memories of that time with all the kids. If it hadn’t been for Jan and Neil when I was pregnant with Melanie, I have no idea what we would have done. I suffered from severe hyperemesis gravidarum, which means that I threw up for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week the entire pregnancy. I was hospitalized twice because along with the severe vomiting and dehydration came extreme migraines, to the point the doctors thought I was having an aneurysm in my brain. Jan and Greg brought me to the hospital, while Neil looked after Alicia. They ended up keeping her for a few days while I was in the hospital and Greg was working and coming back and forth. I’m so thankful for them. Jan and Neil ended up moving to Lacombe, Bernie and Angela moved to Moose Jaw for a while, and we went and visited them and our family there a few times, and then they came back here, and we had moved out to Stony Plain.

And that’s where this story started. We had moved to Stony because we wanted Alicia and Melanie to go to the French Immersion program at Meridian Heights. It was where my sister Renee and brother Rick were going to school. ( For those of you who don’t know, my sister Renee is 5 years older and brother Rick is 4 years older than Alicia. My brother and sister went to the same school, at the same time, that my kids did! )The school at the time was ranked as one of the top French Immersion schools in the province. We had started looking for houses, but decided to move into the apartments that were right beside the school while we made a decision on a place. I was still working part-time evenings at the Bay, Greg was full-time at Cloverdale. He worked til 4:30, and I would leave and go to work for the 5:15 to 10:15 shift 3-4 days a week, and I worked pretty much every weekend. One Monday morning Greg came home from work about 9:30 in the morning. I remember looking at him and asking him what he was doing home. I also remember him telling me he had been laid off. On the Friday before he had come home and told me that his boss had given him the chore of deciding who would be laid off on Monday because the economy was tight and the company needed to “downsize”. He fretted and worried over that all weekend. It really upset him that he had to make that decision. That Monday he came home and told me it was him, and I remember just saying to him” Why am I relieved and not scared?” You see, Greg had been suffering from terrible nosebleeds and headaches from the paint fumes he was exposed to every day. They had lost his one boss to cancer not that long before this, so I looked at this as the Universe or God’s way of telling Greg that he needed to be out of that job so he could stay alive. I was terrified because we had no real income ( my part time job did not bring in a ton of money), but I also knew that we would do whatever it took to keep our family together. I was super happy we hadn’t bought a house though! I jokingly told Greg that I would clean ‘ shitters’ for a living if I had to… little did I know that would be a premonition of what was to come! And two days later we made the decision for Greg to go back to NAIT to get his Business Management and Finance Diploma. We would figure out money somehow. The people who had been managing the apartment were really nice. They were young and had a brand new baby and he was taking sign language classes to teach it at the school for the deaf. (No none of them were deaf). They introduced us to their boss Arlene, and we ended up managing the building in Edmonton, as I said in my last post. Yes, the “ant building” as we came to call it. Thankfully that didn’t last long as Terry and his wife decided they didn’t want to manage the apartment building in Stony and quit, opening up the opportunity for us to take over. It was such a convenient place to manage because it was right across the street from the school the girls would go to right up to grade 9.

For the rest of the story, I won’t use full names…I don’t want people to come back and say… Oh I know them! I’ve put my foot in my mouth too many times to do that, and have learned my lesson! The apartment we took over had 48 suites– one, two and three bedrooms. It was 4 floors and was known to the police as “Party Central”. We did not know this when we moved in, however we very shortly learned this taking over managing it! I remember shortly after we took it over, Greg was studying for mid-terms already, and it was about 2:30 in the morning and the buzzer to the front door went off. We jumped out of bed and answered it to a girl telling us that the garbage bins were on fire because someone had thrown a burning mattress into it. We quickly called 911 and Greg went barreling out the back to see if he could do anything about it. ( He had been a firefighter in Entwistle for more than 13 years, so was pretty versed in putting out fires). It was a rather large fire and the firetrucks showed up very quickly, followed in short order by the police. We had talked to the girl and she had told us that she saw the person throw the mattress and from which apartment balcony he threw it. So the police came to our door and we tell them who we think it was and which apartment to go to. They pull their guns!! This guy was well-known to them! The police go to the door and bang on it very loudly, and they can hear him inside…snoring! So Greg took them up there with the key so they didn’t have to break the door down, but what had happened was the guy, I’ll call him Mr. J , had fallen asleep in bed, drunk, while smoking a cigarette, with a fan blowing over him because he was a BIG guy and it was quite warm. The mattress caught fire, the fan blew the blaze up, he woke up, realized the bed was on fire, tossed the mattress over the balcony, went down from the 3rd floor , out the back door, flipped the burning mattress into the garbage bins, and went back to bed and passed out again! We were so lucky that it wasn’t worse. He could have burned the entire building down, killed us all and been killed himself! Yep, that was our first real taste of life as an apartment manager!! And of course it had to be the middle of the night on a night that Greg had to be up at 5 to go to the school to study for exams he was taking that day!

For me, it kind of goes down hill from there. Greg really didn’t mind managing the building, but I thought it was the worst job ever. We did meet some really fantastic people while managing. Doug and Barb( this is their real names, and I think they would love being a part of this so, I’ll use their names) were a couple who lived in the suite across from us. He had been a diplomat with the Canadian government and traveled all over the world until he had a heart attack and had to retire. They came home to Stony and had lived in the building for a quite few years before we took it over. One day fairly early in our term as managers, the girls and I were out in the halls washing the walls. Doug came out of their suite and asked me what I was doing. I kind of looked at him funny ( um, I thought it was pretty obvious what I was doing!) I told him the walls were gross, so I was washing them. He looked at me with amazement,and said that in all the years they had been there no one had ever cleaned the walls. I just told him, “well this is my home too and I want it clean for people, especially because it’s my name on that sign that says I’m the manager! I wasn’t going to live in a pig pen. I think that was the start of them really liking us and our having a good friendship with them.

While we were managers Greg and I had to evict people more than 25 different times. We cleaned house, literally!! I cleaned a couple of apartments that people did the “midnight moves” from, and they were left absolutely disgusting!! In the one suite the couple had the sweetest, cutest little girl. I wanted to take her home. He would sit on the 4th floor with his pellet gun watching his girlfriend take his wolfhound dog and daughter for a walk. She was only “allowed” to walk where he could see her. Yes, I called the police and Social Services on them a couple of times. They left in the middle of the night – after being evicted for not paying their rent of course – leaving garbage, dirty diapers, bloody women’s pads, dog crap, and mounds and mounds of dog hair, as well as much of their broken down furniture. It took me almost a month to clean that suite and air it out properly. I’d take Alicia to school in the morning, and take Mel and go up to the suite and work on it all day, every day. It was just horrible. Greg would come home from school and help me move out some of the furniture and get rid of what we could– And then I cleaned and scrubbed and washed. We rented it to a woman and her daughter. The woman ended up marrying that Mr. J from the first part of the story. And let me tell you, the situation did not improve much! All that work, only to end up doing it again. That was one situation where I didn’t listen to my gut instinct about not renting to her, but we were under the gun to get it rented out, so we did, against my better judgement. Lesson learned… trust my gut—always!!!

Another suite that I cleaned out was rented to a guy I’ll call Mr. G. He and his girlfriend again did the “midnight move” but this time they left EVERYTHING! There was furniture and mattresses and an antique sewing machine and a gorgeous old cedar chest and 2 sets of encyclopedias, one from 1905 and one from 1943. And of course gross rotting food and garbage etc. Again, I had to clean out what I could, then we had to wait the legal time frame before we could say that they actually left and weren’t coming back, and try to sell what we could to recoup the costs. The saddest thing for me was that inside that old cedar chest was baby pictures, wedding pictures, an old beautiful wedding gown, an old handmade quilt and so many more memories. I just didn’t understand how people could leave all of that behind. It had obviously meant something to them at one time, but what caused them to just leave everything? The answer to that, sadly, was cocaine. They had both become addicted, and got into trouble with the law and went on the run. It was a true eye-opening experience for me as it made me understand what the costs of addiction were – and are. It was a lesson about humanity that I’ve never forgotten. They had been normal people prior to that, and it made me realize it could happen to anyone.

There are so many memories, and many of them I can now laugh at, but they were truly terrible, ( or I thought they were) at the time. For example, there was a young woman who lived on the second floor. She had come down to the door one morning and I was actually laying on the floor in our apartment because I had put my back out and couldn’t even move. I called for her to come in, and she told me her toilet wasn’t working properly. I asked her if it was urgent, and that if it was I would have Greg go up that night, or I could call a plumber to come in that day. She told me it wasn’t, and that any time that week would be okay. I said that Greg would be up the next day or the day after that then. Well, that night shes comes back down to talk to Greg. He was very cautious around her because this girl had a HUGE crush on him.( I used to tease him that she would jump him in a shot if she could! She looked at him with such lust in her eyes!) He took Alicia with him up to her suite for protection! Not joking! He really did feel like he needed someone with him and I couldn’t go anywhere so it was poor Alicia. Well, he gets into her bathroom and she tells him that she hasn’t been able to flush the toilet in over a week! WHAT!!!! Why didn’t you come and tell us before, and why did you tell Jackie it wasn’t urgent?!?! Anyway, she had been wiping her butt and throwing the dirty toilet paper in a bucket beside the toilet. How disgusting! And you know what the problem was? The chain had slipped off and she just had to reconnect it. She could have taken the back of the toilet off and lifted the chain up to flush it! I mean REALLY!!! Poor Greg and Alicia! They were gagging so bad, and to top it all off she had 3 cats in the apartment and their littler boxes were in the bathroom too. It still makes them gag to think about it!

Greg and I came up with names for some of the people in the building. By having a really warped sense of humour, it helped Greg and I keep our sanity. I know it wasn’t nice to come up with some of these names, and was pretty terrible of us, but it really truly kept our sanity. We called Doug and Barb, Dangerous Doug and Bodacious Barb, and they loved it! ( they were the only ones we told that we did this!) Doug had a great sense of humour and helped Greg come up with some of the other names… one was ” Oh Ye of Large Proportions!” Another was “Hugemoungous Appetitetis ” …I know, I know, that’s terrible and I’m ashamed of it now, and I absolutely would never do that now, but back then, I kind of didn’t care.

One day this girl buzzed our door at midnight, higher than a kite, and accused Greg of towing her car from the spot that it had been broken down in for months. Then she tried to reach through the door and punch him! She threatened to go to the police and charge us with theft. Greg finally got her to leave, but she showed up again the next day with a bunch of buddies in her car..with baseball bats to come after Greg. I called the police and my boss! I was so upset! I was crying and scared and told my boss that we quit! I wasn’t putting my kids and husband at risk over a damn apartment management job! Calmer heads prevailed, and the police talked to Greg and he explained to them what had actually happened. He also talked to our boss who had come out. We really couldn’t give up the job, but I was so mad! Thank goodness Greg is a calmer guy than me! Anyway, the girl had gone to the police and laid a complaint against us, but we explained that it really had started at midnight the night before, and Greg showed the police the car she thought we towed. It was sitting in the exact spot where it had been for months, with leaves all over and two flat tires to boot! The police just looked at Greg and kind of smirked. He told Greg that maybe Greg shouldn’t have called her a “fat effing cow” ( yes Greg used the full word!), but also said that he understood, considering it was the middle of the night and she was attacking him! The kicker to all this was her parents also lived in the building and her mother came storming into our suite swearing and yelling at us!– At me! Telling me that I had to take what her daughter was dishing out because that was my JOB!!! ( wanna talk about pissing me off! Yeah, that did!) We were going to evict this girl for not paying her rent, but she decided she would just move so we didn’t have to. Her mom was mad at us because after all the crazy events of the night before we banned this girl from the building. Her mom was upset that she wouldn’t be able to come and visit. My thought was ” who the hell cares, that’s not my problem!” But again, cooler heads prevailed, ( again, thank God for my husband’s calmness!) Greg apologized to her for calling her names, and he made her come and apologize to me and my kids for terrifying us for coming after him with a baseball bat and a bunch of guys! Her mom also apologized to us, because of course, she had told her a very different version of events than what actually happened. The only reason we let her come back into the building was because her dad was a really nice guy and was so incredibly embarrassed by both his wife and daughter.

Oh the memories! Oh the absolutely terrible, horrible, funny, lovely memories from that time! Greg would play marbles with the girls for hours and hours in our living room, on the warped, lop-sided floor. They’d shoot the marbles, aiming for a cup, and the marbles would roll so far the other way because the floors were so bad! While I was at work during the summers, ( I had picked up more hours when Greg was off school for the summers), he would take all the kids in the building and set up the water sprinklers for them. Doug and Greg would sit on the lawn and have a beer or two and all the kids in the building would run through the sprinklers. Greg would tell the kids,”go ask your Mom if it’s ok that you come down, and they would run up and ask their moms (there were a lot of single moms in the building), and the kids would come running down yelling ” My Mom said I could, My Mom said I could”. So Greg would set up the sprinklers and all the kids would have an absolute hay day. Our girls loved having their dad home, and he was most definitely the fun one of us!

That time in our lives taught us so much about who we were, what we were capable of doing, ( to this day, I still know how to change a thermocouple in a water heater, I can put a new door up, including frame, I can manage people and their work processes, and so so much more!) It taught us the strength to do what we need to do in order to survive. We learned how to work together in the most challenging of situations. I learned how to step out of my comfort zone, and what I really don’t ever what to do again! But we also met some amazing people who really were just trying to live a life. Doug died shortly before we stopped managing and moved into our new place.Before he died, we had renovated a suite on the top floor and moved them up there. They were both so ecstatic to be living on the top floor in a nice “new” suite. It made the last few months of his life happy. We felt pretty darn good about doing that for them. Another gentlemen we met was Grandpa Huey. He was an older gentleman who was really all alone. His family lived across the country and so our girls became his surrogate grandchildren. Greg and Grandpa Huey would take our girls to McDonald’s for ice cream all the time. It was as good for us and our girls as it was for him. We cried when he died too.

I learned so many lessons from managing an apartment building. I learned to be grateful for a loving, wonderful, incredibly hardworking husband, to be grateful that our family does not suffer from addictions. I learned to speak up for myself against abusive people, and to stay calm in times of turmoil and chaos. I learned to manage people and the work that needs to be done, which helped me get the careers I have had, and will have. Greg, the girls and I are pretty willing to do whatever it takes to help our family flourish. For me, managing an apartment felt like a very degrading thing to do, but I realized that many people are really thankful to have people who care, and who tried to make their home a better place. I might have started out thinking that it was a degrading job and that I would end up looking like Mrs Roper from Three’s Company with her muumuu and curlers in her hair, but that the skills I developed and the people I met, made it worthwhile. I came to learn that we were not “normal” apartment managers, and that we left the places we managed far better than what we got them.

I have come to understand that everything we do in life leads us to where we are and where we are supposed to end up. It might feel like hell going through it, but that the other side looks pretty darn good. By our doing what we did, Greg was able to have a really good, strong career, and so have I. His going to school was the catalyst for the life we live today. It forced us to look at people and life from different perspectives, and helped us to become better people. It changed our entire lives. We would never have been able to afford for Greg to go to school had we not managed that apartment, so as much as I say I hated it, I am grateful for the experience it gave me. It made me step outside of what I knew, and grow. It helped make me the strong, capable, determined person I am today. You do what you’ve got to do in order to survive, and I can look at that time as crappy and terrible and awful, or I can look at it as the opportunity it was… as the step it was to where we wanted to be. I think I’ll look at it as the opportunity…with a side of crap!