Depressing, Things I Find

• People who buy things simply because they are on sale.  They’re going broke saving money.  It’s sad.
• Watching young stars flush their lives down the toilet, thus proving everyone right.
  
  
• Walmart
• When my Costco membership is due & then added onto my already large-ish total at checkout.
• Seeing old friends on Facebook and seeing how much our lives have gone in completely different directions.
• Anyone over the age of 19 standing on street corners, twirling signs and advertising for a pizza place or a “HUGE CLOSEOUT SALE!” at the nearby electronics store.  If I do see an older person doing this I pretend like they are the owner/manager of the business. See, they just wanted a break from the doldrums of their office so they told the 18-year-old-or-under kid whose job that really is to take an extra break that day and he’d take over for a while. You know, just to get some fresh air.  I have to pretend this or the tears start to well up. 
• Seeing I have less than 1/3 of my Chipotle burrito left and I hadn’t been absolutely savoring every bite.
• Phone calls from the vice principal.
• Purchasing toilet paper, deodorant, tampons and other non-fun necessities.  Such a waste of good, hard-earned cash.
• Driving by the new Ikea that is being built 5 minutes from my house,  reading the huge sign that says "COMING FALL 2011," doing the math and realizing that is still an entire year away.  I go even further and imagine the insane crowds that will be storming that place day & night for the first year (at least) it's open as well.  That makes a good two years before I'll be able to handle going and purchasing all the cheap but stylish things my little heart desires.  

Exercising, My Internal Dialogue While

5 minutes in: This isn’t that hard today.

10 minutes in: Geez. This sucks. How much longer? 

15 minutes in: Ugh. Slow down. I’ve only done 15 minutes. Shoot. Pace yourself. No one knows how much resistance you have on your bike. Simmer down. 

20 minutes in: ::start thinking about other things and don’t realize 8 minutes have gone by almost painlessly:: Sweet! 

30 minutes in: K, half done. But I’m gonna pretend I’ve only done 15 minutes because then when this ends ‘15 minutes early’ it’ll be awesome.

35 minutes in: Nevermind. I’ve got 25 minutes left and now we’re in countdown mode. I’ve done more than I’ve got left.  I've earned every minute of this.

36 minutes in: ::imagining myself walking out of the gym after it’s all over:: That’s gonna happen here in just a bit. Keep going. 

37 minutes in: I don’t have to be here, you know. I can leave whenever I want. It’s not like this spin class is for college credit or anything. 

38 minutes in: I could just look at my phone, act like I got some super important/shocking/gotta-get-outta-here news and then take off in a hurry. 

40 minutes in: There’s only 20 minutes left. Maybe I won’t die. ::abort Operation Cell Phone Frenzy::”

45 minutes in: Only 15 minutes left! 

46 minutes in: Only 14 minutes left! 

47 minutes in: Only 13 minutes left! 

{continue this pattern} 

55 minutes in: Only one, maybe two songs left. Ooooh, and I like this one. 

60 minutes in: I did it. That was so easy.

Zip Codes

I've lived in my fair share of zip codes over the course of my 35 years.  

83706- Boise, ID  Birth-1991

While I lived in a few different zip codes in Boise, this is the main one I remember.  It's the one in the Lakewood area of east Boise otherwise known as "the place I grew up" in my mind.   We moved to Lakewood from "the bench"  when I was in third grade.  Jefferson Elementary to Garfield Elementary if you're in the know.  I was devastated at the time but quickly made friends, got my first crush (John King) and fell in love with my new neighborhood.  It was one of these planned neighborhoods with trails, small ponds, parks and "secret passages" galore.  Absolute heaven for a kid on a bike.  Not to mention the sheer numbers of kids roaming the neighborhood at all times.  We lived there until we moved to New Jersey the summer before my junior year of high school.

07869- Randolph, NJ 1991-1993 (my parents continued to live there until 1999)

If I thought I was devastated when we moved across town in third grade, it was nothing compared to the despair I felt at the move to New Jersey.  First of all, I had never been on an airplane before this OR been east past Wyoming at this point in my life.  Not to mention the life long friends I would be leaving behind, including my best friend Jill but also including some of the cute boys we ran around with.  I also had an athletic "career" I had been working on since the 5th grade.  The coaches knew me.  I knew all my teammates.  Junior year would have been a huge year for me in both basketball and volleyball.  I distinctly remember, shortly after learning we were moving, attending a girls varsity basketball game with some friends.  As we were leaving my Sophomore coach sees me as I'm going down the stairs and he's going up.  He turns to me and points and says "That'll be you next year, Jeppson!"  I turned and ran down the rest of the stairs bawling and continued to bawl for about an hour after that.  

But, as with most things in life, it all worked out for the best.  Moving to New Jersey was an amazing experience.  I went from a place where being a Mormon what everyone was or what the other people hated to a place where no one even knew what a Mormon was.  I don't think I had ever met a Jewish person before moving there and ended up having several close Jewish friends.  And I quickly learned that just because someone's last name was Cohen didn't mean they were related to all the other Cohens at my high school. Duh.   One thing I didn't expect when moving to Randolph was how welcoming everyone would be.  Most of these kids had grown up together and had been in the same classes since Kindergarten.  A new face was something of a novelty and everyone was beyond kind to me from the second we got our boxes unpacked.  And, of course, with my "street smarts" outweighing my "book smarts," there would have been absolutely NO WAY I would have gotten into BYU had I applied from Boise, ID.  New Jersey definitely gave me an edge there.  

84602- Provo, UT 1993-1994

Freshman year of college at BYU.  Deseret Towers.  S Hall.  2nd Floor.  Room 211.  Right side of the room.  And who occupied the left side?  None other than my amazing best frousin, Memzy.  What a year of learning and growth that was.  I loved every second of it.  I weep for any freshman at BYU who opts to not live in the dorms.  It is such a unique opportunity that you can never re-create after your freshman year is over.  It's also where I met my life-long best friend, Flem.  Unmeasurable happiness bubbles up inside when I think of room S-211.

84604- Provo, UT 1994-1998

Sophomore year included a move to "the Riv" and into Apartment #8 (also known as the coolest apartment ever, to us).  Imagine Memzy, Flem, Colleen and I all living under the same roof....and now we have a kitchen and a family room!  It was magical.  The fun of my Freshman year paled in comparison to the fun I had my Sophomore year.  Roommate Sunday dinners, surprise birthday parties, boys allowed in the apartment!, our bead curtain leading back to the bedrooms, Hart's next door,  getting people to loan us their cars, watching Conference on wall-to-wall mattresses in the front room, dance parties/cleaning checks (Holiday drum solo anyone?), and on and on and on.   Also, as an added bonus, this was where I met the love of my life.

We also did some time at "The Hood" but I won't go into that.  Ugh.

Gty and I were then married in April of 1996 leading us to live in a variety of places around the Provo area.  A condo owned by some family friends in New Jersey for the first few months of marriage.  A little one bedroom apartment waaaaay south of campus which required an elaborate car pooling system with our friends who lived there to get us all to campus every day.  A short stint in some other friends' condo up in Orem while they were trying to sell it (they sold it a month later).  Then finally, we had a good year in the cutest brown house ever on 500 West.  During all of these moves we were working at Covey Leadership Center (Gty was), attending school (that would be me), applying to business school (Gty again) and loving hanging out with other newly married couples (both of us).  Again, it was a time in our life never to be duplicated again. 

47906- West Lafayette, IN 1998-2000

Gty is attending The Krannert School of Management at Purdue University at this time.  We were so excited to move out of Provo and see what the "real world" had in store for us.  I became the family bread-winner working at Great Lakes Chemical as the admin for the LINX team there (that college degree sure paid off, huh?).  During these two years we acquired a dog (Maggie) and a baby (that'd be JBird).  I needed to go back to work a bit after JBird was born in order to keep our benefits so Gty was able to work his classes to take care of JBird while I went to work.  It's funny to think about that now but we somehow made it work.  

12211- Loudonville (Albany), NY 2000-2002

Gty accepted his first job out of graduate school with Owens Corning and we head out to Albany for him to work in the management of one of their plants there.  This is where we bought our first house for $150,000 (seriously??) but never furnished the living room or dining room.  It had the squishiest, softest blue carpet in there and made for a perfect ball field for JBird to run around on.  We also added TBone to the family there in January 2002.   9/11 happened while we were there which made it feel a little too close to home.  

43551- Perrysburg (Toledo), OH 2002-2004

After paying his dues in the plant and on a sales rotation, Gty got transferred to the home offices of Owens Corning located in Toledo, OH.  Now, obviously, Toledo isn't exactly at the top of the list for places people want to move to, but, as with all places we have lived, we learned to absolutely love it.  We purchased our 2nd house here and it was my DREAM house (as my dreams were at that time).  Brand new, gorgeous bright kitchen with an island, amazing master bathroom (the Albany house had no master bath, if you can believe it), huge backyard, and on a cul-de-sac where JBird would eventually learn to ride a bike. In stark contrast to Albany where no one would even make eye contact with anyone else, we could not get out of our new neighborhood without at least ten waves.  Perrysburg is a classic mid-west town. Happy & humble people.  Nathan & Annalisa moved to Michigan (about 3 hours away), and hated their apartment, so we saw them all the time on the weekends.  We loved our ward there which always makes a huge impact.  I will always remember our years there fondly. 

29803- Aiken, SC 2004-2006

Wow.  Talk about a culture shock!  Not only is Aiken in the south (a place I never dreamed I would live) but it's a small town in the south.   The confederate flag is still waved proudly in front of homes and bumper stickers with sentiments such as "Happiness is a northbound Yankee" ran amok.  Our realtor's accent was so thick we often needed her to write things down so we could understand what she was talking about (example: "heeding an eyelighter" really meant "heating and air letter" See? Yeah.)  Despite having an "interesting" ward, we loved our time there.   I meant one of my dearest friends there (Heather) who, being from Ohio herself, ran up to my Ohio license plate sporting car in carline at the boys' preschool and explained her desperate need to have a fellow Yankee to hang out with.  I agreed we must stick together and a life-long friendship ensued.   With both the boys in preschool, Gty and I met often for lunch at our favorite restaurant of all time, Malia's.  That is, until Beebs was born and then the three of us met at Malia's a little less often.  We owned three palm trees and a hot tub there. And the wisteria just dripped from everything during spring and summer. 

COLORADO  2006-Forever, hopefully

Before Colorado, we averaged about two years in each location.  At the end of those two years I was always ready to move.  I can honestly say that these past four and a half years have FLOWN by here.  I have never felt more at home in a place as I have here.  It scratches us right where we itch, as Gty loves to say.  Weather?  Perfection in all four seasons.  Our ward?  Dreamy.  So many fun people to hang out with.  Big city nearby but we live in a smallish town.  Proximity to family?  We can finally drive to visit family rather than fly!  I can see us being here a long, long time.  I want my kids to go to college and be able to say they're from Colorado.  

Habits

Habits are like a superpower that can be used for good or evil.  

I have my fair share of villainous habits.  That 3:30pm dose of Dove chocolate, for example.  Also my need to have a beverage in the car at all times isn't helping stave off osteoporosis either (no, it's not milk I'm drinking).  My hand just gravitates toward the cup holder several times during any given drive.  When nothing is there I feel disconcerted, disgruntled and suddenly thirsty as heck.  It's just better for everyone is there's a giant drink there, trust me.

Other habits of note (good, bad, and neutral):

• Checking my back pocket several times an hour to make sure my phone is still there.  When I'm wearing yoga pants or other pocketless apparel and my phone is stuck in my bra (another habit I s'pose) it causes several fast & furious panic attacks as I check my non-existant back pocket again & again.
• When I take off an article of clothing I think I might wear again later that week (before laundry day), I drape it over the side of the dirty clothes hamper.  I want to keep it aired out.  If it gets bunched under some nasty, sweaty work out clothes then forget it.  It's dead.  The problem is, at the end of the week the tallish laundry basket is nearly falling over due to the fact that I've piled about 20 things on the edge in hopes of wearing them again.
• Bedtime routine: hair back in headband & pony tail.  Brush teeth.  Wash face.  Get in bed, plug phone into charger (it's usually nearly dead by then), and proceed to check Twitter, Facebook, Google Reader and go my turn on any waiting Words With Friends games.  Once I decide to go to bed (anywhere from 10:30pm to 2am) I rarely vary from this.
• I make my bed every morning.  I have to.  I'm not sure what drives me to do this, other than the fact that I love getting into a made bed at night.  If, for some freaky reason, I don't make it in the morning, I will make it at some point through out the day.  Even if it's 10 minutes before I go to sleep at night.  Crisp sheets = my own personal heaven.
• Lists.  I make lists about everything.  I can't shop without one.  I don't even get how people can do that.  If I have more than three errands to do I have to make a list or else I'll most likely forget one.  
• I always put my sunglasses on top of my head.  There have been many times that I'll go up to do my aforementioned bedtime routine only to realize my sunglasses have been on my head since early that morning.  
• After I laugh at something, I'll usually tag on this strange noise at the end.  It's like a mix between a heavy sigh and a light moan.  I have to believe it's some kind of a "wind down" I need after a big laugh.  I really can't explain it any better than that.  But it is annyoing, no question.  "Hahahahahahhahahaha....::sigh/moan wind down::"  See?
• When I drive I drive with my left hand.  My right hand is usually resting on my gear shift or tucked under one of my legs.  Apparently I'm not a "10 & 2" driver.