Time for another set of interesting tidbits. I think that this set will span from after graduation to Owen. Yeah... that seems like a good timeline.
51. Right after graduation Lacy recommended me for a job at
Togo's Eatery. I got the job and started working two days later.
52. After graduation Lacy and I lived in one bedroom that she rented in a house. I was not really supposed to live there... but Lacy didn't like staying there alone and her boyfriend still had another year of high school left. We eventually got evicted because we kept eating the food of the other room renters. We didn't think they would notice a cookie here... a packet of top ramen there. They noticed.
53. For two weeks after our eviction date I continued to break into the house through the window of the bedroom we had been renting and slept on the floor. I had nowhere else to go.
54. After two weeks my boss asked me where I was living. I sheepishly admitted that I was breaking into the house and sleeping on the floor. She was horrified that I might get caught. That night she asked me to get in her car cause she had a place for me to stay for a few nights. It was with her brother in law and his wife. They had 2 little girls. I loved staying with them. They asked me to leave when the two of them went on a vacation and they were going to be leaving their girls with a family friend who was going to be staying at the house with them... Halfway through their vacation the manager of the Togo's and I went to go check on the girls. We found them unsupervised in the house while the babysitter was having a drunken party with all her friends. When the couple got home they told me that they wished that I had stayed and watched the girls instead... yet they never asked me to come stay with them again.
55. I started at Fullerton Community College in the fall of 2000. I signed up for English, History, Dance, Math, and Drawing. I never finished any of my classes.
56. Halfway through my first semester of CC I started working at Book Star.... which was Barnes and Nobles under a different name. I was still working 1 hour less than full time at Togo's.... I rode the bus everywhere.... I worked for 3-5 hours in the morning at Togos, then went to school for 3-5, then worked 4-6 hours in the evening at Book Star. It took me an hour on the bus in each direction.... plus an hour to walk from where I was staying to work and an hour back.... so I spent 13- 20 hours a day just working and going to school... which left very little time to actually study. I dropped out of my classes so I wouldn't fail.
57. In October of that year I started living at a place that I called the drug house. A friend from Togos had a 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom house to herself. Her dad had gone back to jail for violating his parole, and she couldn't afford to pay for the house herself. So Lacy and I moved in to help pay the rent.... plus we both needed a place to stay... Lacy left when she got tired of the lifestyle in the house and picked a fight with our friend about it. From then on I had my own room until her dad got back out of Jail.
58. I called the house the drug house because each room was divided into a different drug of choice. One room was for people smoking pot, one room was for people dropping acid, the living room was for people getting drunk, the kitchen was for people who had been smoking pot but were now drinking, and the garage was for people doing speed. I spent most of my time sitting on the stairs, drinking, waiting for the cops. I was the best person to deal with the cops cause I knew most of them. So I sat there just in case. We never got busted by the cops.
59. Sometime during that year my mom convinced me to go to
Chrysalis. It is a retreat weekend designed to strengthen the faith of young Christians. Even though the rules said no drinking... I was drunk when my mom picked me up. By the end of the weekend I felt different. I gave a faith statement that had the most burly of the men in the crowd crying. I went home and stopped drinking. When my friends dad came home she kicked me out cause I wasn't fun anymore.
60. When she kicked me out Lacy and I were on a waiting list for an apartment in her boyfriend's (and still my friend) Mike's apartment complex. We stayed in my parents living room for the 3 weeks we had to wait.
61. We got a three bedroom apartment and the six of us renting the apartment moved in. In one room was Jill and Nancy. In another room was Sarah and Jordan (we called them Will and Grace alot...) and in the Master Bedroom (cause we had her mom cosign) was Me and Lacy.
62. Things started going badly almost immediately. Lacy went out and started acquiring pets.... So then everyone else went out and started getting pets. Within a month we had 4 kittens, 2 guinea pigs, a 35 gallon fish tank, 4 1 gallon Betta tanks, 3 Russian dwarf hamsters, and 2 lovebirds. All but one of the kittens and the two guinea pigs were Lacy's.
63. Everyone except for Lacy was in college.... so we would bring over a couple of our college buddies and have a mellow hang-out with a few beers and a carton of cigarettes.... (I think everybody but Jill and Jordan smoked) Lacy would get pissed when she came home and we were all having a good time when she was tired and just wanted to take a bath and relax.
64. Shortly after we moved into the house my Papa died. Two months later Gramps died. I started failing all my classes again. Lacy got mad. The original deal with us sharing a room was that I was supposed to go live at Cal Poly Pomona in the fall... over the summer Mike would be turning 18 and he was graduating high school in June. The idea was that I would move out and Mike would move in. As my grades slipped... it looked like I wasn't going to be able to move. Everyone else figured that Mike could just wait to move in. (even Mike was willing to wait.) Lacy didn't agree. After Lacy realised that I wasn't moving, she stopped talking to anybody. She would leave post-its all over the house with little commands on them for things that she wanted us to change. We all got really pissed off and one day we left post its for her all over things reminding her of every single house rule she was breaking. She got pissed and evicted me. I was the only person she could evict and easily replace. I moved in with my boyfriend, Eric. I left my stuff behind and promised to come get it before my "eviction" date.
65. I went a week before my eviction date to pick up my stuff. She wouldn't let me in. Instead she handed me a box with my high school diploma, 3 of my 4 high school year books, my houseplants (uprooted and with no dirt shoved in a Ziploc bag) and a pair of shoes. She said that she had gotten tired of looking at my stuff and had put it out to go in the trash the day before. Problem was that that morning was trash pickup. My stuff was gone. Several thousand dollars in books, a very expensive pearl necklace that my papa had given me right before he died, several thousand dollars worth of clothes and shoes (my Nana had given me an open-ended personal shopper account at nordstroms at one point... I took advantage of it!) My sesame street dolls ( I even had a honker with a working nose!) and my entire collection of original Rainbow Brite dolls. All the sprites, everything. My dresser and nightstand, the fountain that my mom gave me for Christmas.... all of it. gone. Shortly after that all the rest of the housemates moved out and lacy struggled to keep the apartment. Around that time she and Mike broke up and he kicked her out and moved in some of his friends.... that was around the time that I lost track of the goings on in that house.
67. Around that time of chaos, I had started going to
Shinai. Shinai is sword fighter practice. We were "training" for
SCA events. Shinai is where I met Eric. We started dating and when all heck broke loose he let me move in with him. I continued to live with him for a while after we broke up. I really had no where else to go... and in all the chaos Lacy had managed to get me fired from both of my jobs by making a scene, so I had no job. During our relationship I met Eric's friends, Cassie and Jeffery. When Eric got evicted from the house he was renting a room in, I moved in with them.
68. While living with Cassie and Jeffery I met their friend, Paul. He picked me up from my new job at Walmart one day cause Cassie was at the hospital with Jeffery. Jeffery had fallen off a ladder at work and broken his leg. Since I didn't have a key to the 600 square foot studio apartment we all lived in, I went home with Paul. I never really went back to Cassie and Jeffery's house to stay for more than a day or two at a time when Paul would have to go somewhere for a few days. And even then that was only at the beginning of our relationship.
69. Paul was the biggest Mistake (notice the capitalization of the M?) I ever made. He turned crazy very early on in our relationship.... I didn't really notice until it was to late. It started with him not wanting me to go to shinai ( I could understand that. Eric still went to shinai and there was a rumor going around that he wanted me back....). So I stopped going to shinai. Then what new clothes I had gotten while I was dating Eric and living with Cassie and Jeffery started to disappear. They were replaced with clothes that Paul wanted me to wear. They were sexier and nicer... so I thought nothing of it. Who could blame a guy for wanting to show off his lady? Then he quit working when I got injured and had to take medical leave. He was always home with me. If I made a phone call he was right there listening to me. That was when I started to worry. I told Paul that I didn't want to be his girlfriend anymore. He reminded me that I had nowhere else to go. He offered me the guest bedroom in the condo. I stopped letting him touch me. I tried to go back to work so that I could save up some money.....
70. A few days before Christmas of that year Eric showed up at my job (still walmart) to bring me my Christmas present. He picked me up for my lunch break and took me to his place (he was living with his mom for a few months) to give me his present. I had a gift for him too. I gave him a spiderman poster (he is a really big fan) and he gave me a special edition copy of Shel Silverstein's The Giving Tree. The Giving Tree is my favorite book. He also gave me a giant Tare Panda, which is a Japanese Kawaii character that I really love. I leaned over to give him a hug and tell him thank you. The next thing I knew we were up in his room and I was very late to return from my lunch break. I didn't feel guilty about Paul at all. As far as I was concerned I had told him more than a week before that I didn't want to date him anymore and that I was only staying with him till I could save up enough to get my own place.
71. Around Easter of that year, Paul realised that Eric and I were in a relationship again. He dropped me off at my parents house and left most of my belongings in plastic bags on my parents lawn. My friend Greg let me come stay with him and his family. Around that time Eric had surgery. I was supposed to stay with him and take care of him.... but I was staying with Greg and felt that all I had to offer his family in return for me being there was to watch Greg's stepson. Eventually Greg's wife kicked me out of their house. I moved in with Eric. He never had gotten over that I had chosen to help Greg out instead of taking care of him. I reminded him that at the time Greg was the only one offering me a place to stay. It ended up being the big thing that ended mine and Eric's relationship. He said he couldn't trust me to be faithful to him. I was heart broken and swore I would never love again.
72. When Eric broke up with me I ended up homeless. I was sleeping in a park for several months. Most of my clothes were either still at Eric's house or in my parents garage. I packed just a little bit of my stuff in a backpack and slept on a bench in a park. My parents thought I was staying with friends. They even went on a month long vacation cause they had no idea. I was to embarrassed to tell anyone that I was homeless. Eventually a friend figured it out and found me a homeless shelter. I still slept on the floor there... but at least I didn't have to worry about getting raped or murdered.
73. Eventually a friend from work decided that she wanted me to live with her. Around that time Owen and I started dating Exclusively. (There is more to the beginning of our relationship.... but I will save that for later) We went to the beach one day and fell asleep. We slept for 5 hours. The only reason we realised that we were burnt when we did was because I woke up to go to the bathroom and it hurt to bad to walk. We were like lobsters.
74. Eventually she and I had a falling out (she wanted me to pay all the rent and buy all the food cause she wanted to save her welfare money to buy a new car. I disagreed with that.)and I came home one day to the locks on the doors being changed and all my stuff in plastic bags in front of her apartment. I stayed at her neighbors house for a night and tried to get ahold of Owen.
75. When Owen showed up he asked me if anything was missing. I told him that my favorite shirt and my Betta fish "Celeste" was missing. He banged on her door until she opened up and told her that we wanted my shirt and my fish. She swore my shirt was in one of the bags and gave him my fish. Then she slammed the door in his face.
So there you go. From that point on my life has been Our life.... which I will tell you about in the installment that will finish up my juicy little tidbits. More later.
