Bored at work...

Today is Thursday, which means that the doc I work for is in Brigham City seeing patients and I'm here in Logan covering phones. And as the phones hardly seem to ring on Thurs mornings, it means I'm generally left with a shortage of things to do. Therefore, I decided to utilize this time to update my friends on my life! Isn't that just the best idea ever?! :-)

First, work. I'm actually really enjoying working at Alpine, despite my slow Thursday mornings. I've been trained to work with two different physicians and next week I start training on the billing side. I'm a Jack of all trades! Hey, it's job security. Most of the people I work with are great. Really friendly and welcoming. There are a couple people who are a little standoffish, but maybe they're just shy. Or stressed. Or whatever. I don't let it bother me, you get those in every office. I'm LOVING having Fridays off! It's like I get two Saturdays! I never want to go back to a 5 day work week.

The apartment is growing on me. It's still seriously small, but I'm finding ways to work with it, and I'm sure I'll continue to find more. I still hate having to beg ask people to use their washing machine, but it's ok. I need to figure out something for Tori's room though. I think I might get a small bookshelf for her room. Right now all her books (you know, the ones she never reads) are in the bottom dresser drawer. But if I could clear that space I could put the toys that find themselves scattered around the periphery of her room in there. But that's what KSL is for! I'm still dealing with the "old house" smell and freaking nasty ancient carpet. I'm planning on carpet cleaning probably next week on the 4th. Then we can go camping and let it dry all weekend. I have been seeing spiders around too. Which shouldn't be a surprise, we had about a million ladybug eggs laid right outside our front door. Tori was super excited about it because she learned about ladybugs and their life cycles in school. She immediately became the "mommy" and now has little grubs and ladybugs everywhere. It's a full on feast for the spiders. I'm about to go kamikaze on those bitches. I need to go to Home Depot and see if they have anything for spiders that's safe to use indoors. In the meantime, I've got a gun fly swatter. I'll get em.

Tori's still managing ok. It's hard for her to be missing all her friends, but she's actually doing better than I'd expected. She's all about the running away right now which is driving me crazy, but we'll get through it. My parents are coming out today, which I think will really help. Once she makes some friends close by we'll be golden!

I'm going to finish with some pictures. I know I still haven't posted that vlog of our apartment I promised, but as soon as I get the carpets cleaned and stuff I'll do it. I swear! :-) Until next time, loves!

My first week

Well, I've officially been living in Utah for a week and it's been...interesting. Can I just start by saying how much I hate unpacking? Wait, I don't think you caught that. I HATE UNPACKING!!! My closet at home was wonderful. My dad had outfitted it Classy/California Closets style, and I had almost more shelving than I knew what to do with. So going from that to an old attic apartment with almost no storage to speak of...I've got a lot of crap that I don't know what to do with! It's fun. :-) Thank heavens I have an amazing sister in law who is a master at tackling projects head on that I would rather avoid. She and Adam came down last weekend to help me move in and with their help I got my kitchen completely set up and my front room done! Well, until I started unpacking my DVDs and realized I have WAY too many. Good news on that is I found some clear DVD storage cases that can be zipped up and stored under a bed. I got 4 (they hold 35-40 each) for $11. Can't wait to get those so I can get the rest of the mess out of my front room!

So the first night we spent at Haley's house. We showered there and headed over to the apartment to start unpacking. Gotta say, there are some great people in Utah. We were counting on Adam to help with the heavy lifting, but that morning he decided to be a dork great husband and let his wife sleep in because they'd been up late. So they didn't get down till around 2-3. But we weren't willing to wait around for that, so the guy who lives below me was fortunately willing to pitch in with mattresses and bed frames. My cousins stopped by and made short work of the boxes, and then some random guy on a walk with his girlfriend stopped and offered to help with the dressers. Milly made me laugh when she commented that he was just showing off for his girlfriend, but hey. I was the one benefiting so I was good with it! Anyway, at this point it looked like my dad's truck had vomited all over my tiny apartment. (The girls made fun of my awesome Buffy obsession calendar, but I forgave them.)

Pregnant chick was whining politely requesting some food by this point, so I ordered pizza. Haley took Tori and picked it up, and Adam and Nykele showed up soon after. They and Dad left for the storage unit to get the rest of my stuff, Haley went to the store to get me some basics, like toilet paper (only a little important), and I continued to avoid unpacking. Anyway, to make a long story short, Adam and Nykele helped me get my kitchen put together and I got my room to the point where Tori and I were able to sleep there that night.

Ok, now for my awesome bathroom experience. So Saturday night I stopped at hell Wal-Mart on the way back from Haley's house because I didn't have the ability to shower. Seriously, you should have seen the shower head on this shower. There was more lime than plastic showing. I had a shower head I'd ordered online, but when I went to install it, the pipe was 3/8" and the shower head was 1/2". ARGH! So I knew I'd need to go to Home Depot and get an adapter, but hey, I need to shower. So I figured I'd deal with the nasty one until Monday. I got a cute shower curtain and some hooks and figured I'd be set...until I got home. I went in to get the curtain up so we could shower the next day and just stood there staring in dismay. The "curtain rod" was a stick of wood freaking 2" in diameter. My shower hooks just laughed at me when I tried to get them on it. I almost started crying. Keep in mind, at this point it was about midnight. So Tori and I had to go back to Haley's to shower before church the next day. Sigh. Side note: that night we went to Grandpa and Nana's for a Memorial Day BBQ. I walked in and remembered Ben (my downstairs neighbor) saying he'd better be nice to me since I'm the landlord's granddaughter. Made me chuckle.

So onto Monday. Haley was an angel and took Tori with her up to the mountains. Allen's family all went up and played all day so she had tons of kiddos to play with. On the way home after I picked her up, she kept going on about her "cousins" and "other grandpa". She's totally adopted Haley's in-laws. It was pretty cute. So anyway, I had a whole day to keep going on organizing. Obviously I didn't shower. I actually turned on the shower to see if I might be able to shower without a curtain if I was careful...and the water immediately started spraying straight out to the sides. So much for that. Adam and Nykele helped my dad organize the storage unit that morning, then came back with him. He grabbed my empty boxes and took them back with him, and Adam and Nykele helped me organize my front room, including getting my tv stuff set up. They're awesome! I went with them to Bed, Bath and Beyond where I kicked off my errands by picking up a new shower rod (I decided to simply ignore the monstrosity) and a wall mirror. From there I went to Wal-Mart where I found fans for our bedrooms and shower hooks, then stopped at Home Depot where I found my adaptor! I was able to hang my shower curtain and use my new shower head just in time for my new job! Yay!

So now onto my new job. My first day was Tuesday. It was the first day back after a holiday weekend when the doc was on call. His nurse ended up adding 9 extra patients to an already packed day. By the afternoon, people were laughing at me when they found out it was my first day. Toward the end of the day Kathy (the nurse I work with) admitted that this was the worst day she's ever seen there. So with that back story...it actually hasn't been too bad! That first day (morning) I followed Christina (office manager) around, watching and observing. By that afternoon, the entire office was so nuts that I was taking patients back by myself. Good thing I'm so awesome! By the time the last patient was *finally* being seen, I was sitting like a zombie. Christina told me to go ahead and leave (around 5:35), I went and picked up Tori (Ann took pity on me and fed us) and we were in bed and asleep by 8:30! It hasn't been quite as crazy since, but it's definitely never boring.

One factor of this that will be interesting is seeing how and where to draw the lines. Ann's watching Tori for me right now while I'm working, which is actually really nice because it's only about 5 min from my house, then 5 min to work from hers. But we've never lived near Ann, we've only ever visited. And when we visit, we're over there all the time. So now I get to try and manage a balance between being able to be there to visit and spend time, while also not overstaying my welcome. And trying to help Tori appreciate the difference between visiting and living here and how that affects her ability to go over to Ann's whenever she wants. Wish me luck! 

So anyway, that's my story so far! Once I get my apartment to a non-embarrassing stage, I'll do that vlog I promised. Love to you all! <3 p="">

From University until almost Fort Collins...this is what my speedometer looked like on I-25! What a great way to begin my trip! :-P

Yep, Wyoming is pretty awesome. This was at Little America.

Tori has the BEST bedhead! This was the morning after we got there.

Freaking love this picture.

First thing Tori finds a place for in the new apartment? Her bow.

Haley = 3.5 months baby, Adam = 3.5 slices of pizza.

Adam got to be a human jack while we placed the bricks under my mattress.

Adam and Nykele got this dress for Tori from Ghana. GORGEOUS dress, but Tori wouldn't stay still for a dang picture! :)

Some of the girls at work gave me a fortune cookie on Thursday. I opened it up at this is what it said. Pretty appropriate, I thought! :)

Tori and I went with Ann and the fam to Second Dam for dinner on Thursday night. It was SO beautiful, and literally just up 4th North from my apartment. I'm thinking it's a place we'll have to go often. :)