The Journey Continues…Segment 7: RA Fun and Surprise Pregnancy

Daylight Savings Time, anyone? I’m late with this post…sorry about that! 🙂 This is the Seventh segment of my ‘series posts’ catching everyone up on my Journey to my Miracle Baby. Sheesh I never expected to extend it this long! 🙂 If you want to start at the beginning, feel free to go read them here:

The Beginning

Segment 2 – Rebound Relationship: Abusive Hubby #2

Segment 3 – Kissing Some Frogs

Segment 4 – Meeting Mr. Right

Segment 5 – Mr. Right and the Rocky Road

Segment 6 – All About the Queen B.

I just want to say thank you to everyone who has been reading and following along – I know that most people prefer posts to be……not so long winded…heh, heh! So my heartfelt thanks to all of you who are reading along and commenting – you really touch my heart with all your kind words and support.

Things were progressing quite nicely for Mr. Right and I, we had finally reached an even keel in spite of the poison that Queen B had attempted to inject into our relationship. I had my own apartment across the parking lot from his – along with his ‘regular’ job as an Instructor at the Technical College he worked at, he was also the Resident Adviser for the students who were taking part of the Student Housing available through the school.

There were specific rules the students were to abide by, or face the threat of being ejected from Student Housing, along with the possibility of being expelled from school. The maximum age for student housing was 20 – the school didn’t want to worry about liabilities with having students 21 or older in Student Housing – ‘contributing to the delinquency of minors’ and all that jazz.

The apartment complex we lived in happened to be one of the participating complexes that had apartments available for the student housing. As is typical, the students would throw parties and congregate in various apartments. If the noise level reached complaint status, the manager would get a call from whichever resident was annoyed, who would then call Mr. Right to have him go break up the noise/party.

The two of us would then go to the offending apartment and break up the party. We often joked around about how if anyone told us years before (when we were participants in such parties) that we would be the ‘bad guys’ breaking up those same types of parties, we would have laughed hysterically.

Some parties were pretty tame, mostly just an irritant to the ‘regular’ residents who lived in the complex that were getting bothered by the noise level – either by the amount of students congregating in one location, or the loud booming music…or both. There were those parties, however, where the students somehow managed to acquire a keg or three – or had quite the collection of liquor bottles proudly displayed for consumption. Those parties were the really loud boisterous ones that the ‘regular’ residents really hated.

Both Mr. Right and I are always mistaken for being much younger than our actual ages, so we’d blend in and almost always get mistaken as fellow party-goers – many times we’d be walking up the sidewalk on the way to break up the party and would be greeted by party revelers who would invite us to join in and told to help ourselves to a drink. We’d decline the drinks, grin knowingly and proceed into the party apartment, locate the offending student host, then tell everyone the party was over, it was time to go home.

More often than not, when the apartment manager called Mr. Right, they would also call the police, so if we got there before the police did, we’d forewarn the students of what was about to transpire. There were rarely any arrests made, but the police did write down their names, addresses and Drivers License numbers to ‘flag’ them as being a potential problem – and to scare them a little. Then we’d help the officers dump all the alcohol down the drain – and the police would ultimately confiscate any kegs that were there. We used to joke that they were taking the full kegs back to the police station for their own party… 😉

The parties seemed to be limited to Friday and Saturday night – some weekends we’d have no phone calls and Mr. Right and I could enjoy each others company without fear of interruption. Some weekends there was nothing but interruptions. The school worked with several apartment complexes in the area, so at times we’d be going around and breaking up parties until about 3:00 a.m. Fun times.

Eventually the school got together with a builder and they decided to build their own townhouse complex specifically for Student Housing within walking distance of the school. Having every apartment, every building full of students (18-20 yrs old) in one congregated location? Not such a good idea.

At least the way it currently was, the complaints/parties/crisis were few and far between – because the student apartments were widely scattered amongst ‘regular’ apartments. The students were actually considerate of the ‘regular’ residents in the complex, so for the most part they kept their parties to a minimum, or at least to a level where they didn’t garner complaints from their neighbors. Or they would go around and alert their neighbors of the impending party – and invite them to join in.

In spite of the protest of homeowners in the area, the building plans moved forward. Since Mr. Right was the ‘official’ Resident Adviser and I was his trusty ‘assistant’, we were approached by the owners to see if we would be interested in being the Resident Advisers in the new complex.

With the Student Housing shifting entirely to the new buildings, they wanted someone reliable to enforce the rules they were putting into place – rules that were similar to the rules of the original student housing, that both Mr. Right and myself were familiar with, and currently enforcing. Mr. Right and I had some trepidations about putting all the students in one complex together, but were confident that we would be able to keep the students in line – thus making the local homeowners happy, keeping the new complex intact and the students on track.

This would also give us the chance to revisit our co-habitation status that the Queen B had effectively derailed. We had grown a lot during the course of living apart, and felt we were ready for that next step. Besides, we still had plans of getting married, he had already sort of proposed to me 6 months prior with the ring setting… 😉

To sweeten the pot, the owners offered us one of the townhouses rent-free so we would be able to keep an eagle eye on everything – they were, after all, concerned that congregating that many students in one location would cause some property damage if they weren’t kept under close supervision. It was also one of the provisions for the construction going through to completion – it would ease the local homeowner’s minds that responsible adults would be keeping an eye out to make sure the students didn’t do things that would ultimately bring their property values down. Or something like that. Being ‘rent free’ also ensured that Mr. Right would be able to save up to put a diamond in that ring setting, too, so of course I was all for it… (grin!!)

Moving day came and we recruited some students to help us move our respective apartments over to the townhouse. We got all settled in, confirmed with the owners that they wanted us to be ‘hawks’ not ‘doves’ in our method of managing/monitoring the students. We were all on the same page.

Let the games begin.

Students started moving in enforce – the buildings were rapidly filling, and the chaos was beginning. We had to switch several students from their ‘assigned’ townhouses, because they didn’t get along with their roommates. Each townhouse held four students – there were 3 bedrooms, 1-1/2 baths per unit, students in the ‘single’ rooms paid more than the 2 students that shared the one ‘double’ room in each unit. But they all shared the 1-1/2 bathrooms, the kitchen, dining room and living room. Tempers flared. Personality conflicts emerged. Drama ensued.

It quickly became evident which students were the studiers and which were the partiers. They congregated together – the partiers annoying the studiers. The parties weren’t limited to weekends only – since the school had a 4-day schedule for the students…5 hours a day, 4 days a week, the parties were coordinated around the class schedules. So those that had the evening classes partied when they got home until the wee hours of the morning. Those with the early morning classes partied in the afternoon into the evening, and either showed up late for class the next day, or didn’t show up at all. Those that had afternoon classes partied all the time.

Our phone was ringing off the hook – we’d have to break up a party almost every. single. night. That was truly annoying since we both had ‘real jobs’ and worked full time during the day – we really wanted to have a few nights of uninterrupted sleep! We sometimes had to call the police for assistance – but we mostly reserved that for the partiers that had shown any kind of threatening nature towards us – or anyone else. We got calls from parents when their kids complained about the parties the roommates were having, we got calls from students complaining about the same thing.

We even got calls in the middle of the night from drunken students complaining about a light bulb being out or running out of toilet paper. We had to explain to them that those types of things were their responsibility, just like living in their own apartment. We got cursed out for pouring top-shelf liquor down the drain, harassed by the partiers as we walked through the complex, complimented by the students who were serious about their studies. We even broke up a party that was instigated by the mother of one of the students – she supplied all the alcohol and was drunk herself.

Things were crazy – students were hiding people in their townhouses – people that had gotten kicked out of student housing, or kicked out of school. One student even had a fugitive from the police hiding in their unit. It was interesting when we’d have to do our ‘monthly inspections’ mandated by the owners, to make sure the units were being kept up and not being destroyed.

We’d walk into a unit and be amazed at the hundreds of empty beer cans/bottles or liquor bottles proudly displayed on every shelf or surface in the room. We continued to break up parties almost nightly. One student was particularly belligerent when we broke up his party…three nights in a row. He threatened to run his car through our front window since we weren’t answering our door to his drunken knocking because he wanted a temporary parking pass for his girlfriend…at midnight.

We called the police and when they went to his apartment to investigate, another party was in full swing – complete with scads of drunken teenagers, and in the middle of the room, a bong. Not just your ordinary bong, but one they had made from an orange cone – you know, the construction ones…a huge orange cone. They had modified it by covering the bottom opening with Plexiglas, glued a giant nut with a screen into the top, then drilled 4 holes spaced evenly apart about halfway down the sides – with tubes coming out…for community ‘toking’.

The police had a field day with that – they took pictures of it, then were planning on displaying it in the local police station for ‘educational purposes’. It was pretty hilarious. Had to give the students points for creativity. Of course the belligerent student got arrested that night – not because of the bong or the party or the underage drinking, but because he threatened one of the police officers. He was subsequently kicked out of the student housing by the owners. He didn’t leave quietly, though, he made sure he put a few holes in the wall and did some other destructive stuff – including vandalizing Mr. Right’s truck with mustard and shaving cream, and scratching obscenities into the paint.

We were still monitoring/managing in the manner the owners asked us to – like ‘hawks’ and not like ‘doves’…but then the owners started getting worried that they wouldn’t be able to fill the townhouses to capacity if we were being too strict – they were afraid that we would ‘scare’ students from living in the student housing…they were worried about their bottom line and profitably. They wanted us to throw the rules out the window and not break up parties; just let the students do what they wanted.

This went against our better judgment, we expressed our concerns for allowing the students to run amok, but the owners insisted we not enforce the rules. Quite frankly that meant we might actually get a full night’s sleep without getting phone calls complaining about loud parties. Except that it didn’t stop the phone calls…instead, we got phone calls from irate parents wanting to know why we weren’t doing what we were supposed to be doing and ‘protecting’ their kids, based on the rules of the lease they signed. They allowed their kids to be there because of the strict rules within the lease. They were the ones paying the bill. But our hands were tied. Things quickly started getting out of control.

One night there was the biggest party ever – word quickly spread that we weren’t breaking up parties anymore, so they really went wild. Unfortunately, some of the students also invited people that weren’t students – and some of those people were not so nice. Inevitably a fight broke out – some students banged on our door begging for help, and we went against our ‘orders’ and went to break up the party – but not before we called the police, since we heard that one of the ‘guests’ was carrying a gun.

We met the police at the party zone, and when the students saw the police cars they scattered like crazy – a couple of the students ended up in the hospital with severe injuries from the fight, and several more were arrested. We contacted the owner to alert them to the issue at hand, and wanted to have a sit-down meeting with them to discuss a happy medium on the ‘rules’, especially since doing ‘nothing’ was making things worse, and parents were not happy.

Our meeting was scheduled several weeks out on April 1st…yep, April Fool’s Day. We were adamantly told not to do anything, we were specifically told not to enforce any rules until after the meeting. The VP of the company showed up with his head maintenance guy – and handed us a letter of termination. We were getting fired from being the Resident Advisers of the complex, because we were enforcing the rules they put into place. Amazing. We got fired on April Fool’s Day. Nice. They had already hired a replacement; we had until the end of the month to move out of our unit. Total time as RA’s there?  Exactly six months.

We hurriedly found a new place to live, a nice townhouse not so far from where we both worked. We scrambled to get packed – and recruited students to help us move. Our first ‘real’ vacation was scheduled for the second week in May, which ended up being only one week after moving into our new place. With both of us working really long hours, we didn’t have a chance to unpack much after we moved in before we headed off on our much-needed vacation. You can see a post about our trip to Punta Cana here. 🙂

I found out later that during the time we were moving into our new place, I was about 8 weeks pregnant. In past pregnancies I miscarried around that time, once at about 12 weeks. So in hindsight, it’s truly a miracle that I didn’t suffer a miscarriage at the time, especially since I was moving loads of heavy boxes and furniture into the new place, coupled with the extreme stress of the whole situation of being fired for doing our job – a ‘job’ that we didn’t get paid for, mind you, and was in addition to our ‘regular’ full time jobs. I think the timing of our much needed vacation was crucial, because we spent the whole week doing nothing but relaxing…and having a good time…. *wink!*

I’m going to leave you hanging for another week… 😉 Join me next week as the Journey to my Miracle Baby continues…discovering the pregnancy, reactions and worries. Thank you for joining me on my journey! 🙂

P.S.: We heard through the students that things went from bad to worse over at the Student Housing – because the new manager was partying with the students, and parents were getting really upset at the goings on.

The owners went through several managers over the next couple of years before the school finally decided they no longer wanted their students to live there…they went back to the way things were before, having students ‘scattered’ in several apartment complexes instead of all bulked together…especially since one of the buildings burned down during one of the many parties held there a few years later. Mr. Right and I were so very glad we were no longer part of that stress… 🙂