The Saga of my move to independence....

By popular demand I will tell the tale of my move out of the nest.. Its a complicated, sometimes sad tale, but I will share anyways..
I will start this tale back in Prince Albert, in 1984. (this will be the long version so grab a coffee and settle in.)
I had been living with my mom and evil stepdad (ES) for the last 3 years. I was at the tender age of 13 and was not loving the whole 'new daddy' thing. ES was throwing his weight around with moms permission and we were constantly at each others throat. So at the end of grade 8 I decided I was packing my bags to go to live with my dad in PA. Not sure if Dad was really excited about this originally but he is too nice of a guy to say no to his favorite daughter so Mom loaded me up on a greyhound and I headed 8hrs east.
The first year in PA was kinda shitty, going to a new school in grade 9 is not fun, but Dad helped me through it plus I made a few good friends to enter highschool with. Plus it probably didn't hurt that my dad was ok with 'pulling' alcohol for my friends so I had a bit of cool.
Going into grade 10 was pretty cool, this is where I met my little buddy JT. It was in Remedial Algebra. Don't ask me why I signed up for this, i really wasn't that bad in math.. who knows. But it was destiny, b/c if I hadn't I wouldn't have spent the whole year in this class and probably wouldn't have become such good friends with JT. Well actually it was my friend Rolanda who I had met in Grade 9 that sort of brought JT into our little inner circle of friends and for that I thank her. Her and Lorna & Lorna all had crushes at one time or another on good ole JT. For some reason I never did (though in '96 this all made sense lol).
So naturally JT & I became the constant in the circle of friends. Others came and went from the circle but we always seemed to stick somehow. Surprising b/c we really had nothing in common, I totally loved Casey Kasims top 40 and JT was always ordering import records from the record store in the mall.. I never quite got his Joni obsession or his stevie nicks thing.. Alas it must have been our twisted sense of humors that tied us together.. we can (and still do) find the strangest things funny.. Anyhoo.
I won't go into the highschool tales of drinking and debauchery as they would be given most justice as individual posts. Just let me say there was a lot of drinking, sometimes driving, broken hearts, obsessive crushes that never materialized (except for a couple drunken liasons that deserve their own post). Its really amazing that I made it through the late 80's alive.. crazy.
So after grad I stayed around for a couple more years before I decided to move to Calgary to go to university.. My mom and ES had moved there from Leduc in '88 so it seemed logical to apply to the University of Calgary for school.
So in 90' I packed my car and headed west. I registered for General studies at the U of C my goal was to go into physiotherapy. Don't ask me why physio, it seemed like an ok career when I picked it out of a hat back in PA..
My 1 and only year at the UofC was pretty boring. Nothing like you see in the movies.. Its really not easy to meet people at university if you didn't go to high school with them. Never even went to a single college party..
But after a year, my money ran out and I decided to go to work, well I really had the decision made for me. Mom and ES had always had a turbulent relationship. Breaking up atleast once every year or two. Well in 91 it was a bad one and he eventually moved out leaving mom with a new house and huge mortgage. So to help her keep the house I paid $400/mo rent until she could sell it. This breakup actually ended in a divorce, and after selling the big new house, Mom and my sister and me moved a few blocks away to a townhouse which she bought.
I was living in the basement room of the townhouse and working as a file clerk at Willsons stationers. Things were ok to start with, but slowly were getting a little rocky.. Mom was going through the 'change of life' and was not handling it well.. Talk about walking on glass.. I probably didn't help that this was a no smoking house and I would sneak a smoke in the morning in my room using one of those smokefree ashtrays which obviously don't work worth shit, b/c one fateful morning before work, Mom went downstairs to get some bread out of the freezer and was gone a little too long.. Well I know the Jig was up.. She came upstairs and blew a gasket. There was yelling and then crying and more yelling about respecting her house.. Well I finally had enough.. (didn't help that my manager at work was also going through the 'change' so work was just as bad. Anyways I just walked out the house and she followed me yelling.. It was crazy,, she was crazy,, ..
So anyways, it wasn't long after that, that I moved out to my first place. Thankfully it wasn't long after that that both my mom and my boss both got the menopause patch as well.. Whew!
My sisters best friend Dalaliah's boyfriend was looking for a roommate, Steve was nice guy and he knew a chick from the Peg who was also looking for a place. So we ended up renting this 2 bedroom townhouse in the south of Calgary. Nice enough place , paying 600 /mos. Steve being a guy, who also partook in daily doses of da ganga took the unfinished basement. I took the master bedroom and the crazy lady from the Peg took the other room. Well this arrangement work ok for a bit. Steve was fine but this sloth that had moved it was getting on my nerves in a very short time. You see she was a useless rich kid who had never worked a day in her life. And moving to calgary wasn't going to change that. I came home from work to find her in the same position that she was in when I left. In her house coat on the couch watching TV. The house was a mess, etc.. Luckily she only stayed around to get her first welfare check.(yes the rich girl got welfare) then she packed up her housecoat and headed back to the red river.. Good riddence. The next winner in the roommate department was another aquaintance of Ganga boy.. He seemed nice enough until he started stealing from us.. He stole my amplifier, my beloved tragically hip hat that I got from the roadside attraction tour.. Still pissed about that and money from Steve.. The bastard unfortunately left nothing of value in the house to steal back except one day he left his motorcycle jacket which I promptly took over to my moms house for safe keeping.. Eventually after bouncing a rent check, Steve went up to the thiefs room and nicely (with his foot on his neck) asked him to give him cash for the bounced check and get the Fuck out.. lol Well the little turd wasn't around the house after that day thank god..
The last roommate at the townhouse was older guy that steve met through his work. He worked at 7-11(there was never a shortage of ready to expire hoagies in our house). I should have guessed that a 30 something ex-navy guy was probably going to have some idiosicracies.. And of course he did. He really was a nice guy, honest, paid his rent,,, but the one little thing that made him unique was that he consistantly got drunk on rye, passed out on the couch and would proceed to piss the couch.. I know .. Lovely eh??
Well 10 mos into our year lease, Ganga Boy breaks the news that he and some fellow 7-11'er's were moving into a house closer to the store they worked. This include pee-boy. So I was without roommates and definitely couldn't afford the 600/mo rent on my $7.10/hour I was making at willson's.. One good thing is that b/c they broke the lease, they said I could keep whatever part of the damage deposit was left.. Lucky for me, the landlord only deducted 20bucks off for the furnace filter so I kinda made up for being left high and dry and homeless..
My next search for a place to rest my head was not easy. Finding a place to rent that I could afford without roommates (you can see why I was hesitant to have anymore roommates) was hellish...
Well I did finally luck out, sort of anyways and found a basement suite for 395/mos. It was a 3 bedroom basement suite.. Huge in fact.. this was Monty's place..
Monty was a creepy landlord that lived on teh 3rd floor of this house.. He owned a moving company called Monty's moving... By creepy I mean this is the kinda guy who you would expect to find body parts in his freezer..

Well I have to go to a meeting.. Sorry to leave you all hanging but I will continue later to tell the story of Monty and the serial killer that lived next door to my basement suite..

TBC.....