House Hunters, Boise Edition, and Examining My Motives

I put a lot of time into finding apartments to check out for this newest batch of apartment hunting. My previous experiences helped a lot in avoiding the kinds of places that you needed to meet a certain poverty level to get or that had a three-year waiting list, and with so many places to look at, I was pretty confident I'd find somewhere in my budget.

House Hunting Stage One!

I knew I wanted to stay in Boise--I've kind of fallen in love with this town, with the Greenbelt and all the interesting places to go and the beautiful trees everywhere-- but I was willing to move to another part of town if I had to. My first day of in-person apartment hunting was July 12th since I wasn't working that day and could dedicate the entire day to apartment hunting.

I started out in the North End. I was delighted for an opportunity to drive around there-- a lot of beautiful old houses in wonderful condition are in that part of town. This was not one of them.

I chalked this one up in the "maybe" column of my list and continued on.

The next few places seemed nice enough but didn't actually have any openings until well after I needed to vacate my current premises. Then I found a place that stopped me cold-- a beautiful sky-blue house on a fancy street. How the heck did something like that make it onto my list?

Well, I quickly figured out that it was the basement that was for rent, which explained a lot.

After walking out of there, I immediately called the company to see if I could turn in an application. Turns out someone bought the lease the day before I got there. 

The rest of the day was filled with disappointment. Everywhere I went either had no available apartments or had apartments more expensive than I'd anticipated. Though I'd scheduled an entire day's worth of visits, by 2PM I was physically and emotionally exhausted and wasn't sure whether I was more likely to fall asleep at the wheel or start crying. I decided the wisest course of action was to go home and take a nap.

After I had recovered a bit, I wised up and started making phone calls to places instead, crossing off everywhere that I couldn't afford or that didn't have openings.  I did make it out to one more lock box showing that evening.

I wasn't encouraged.

Now, meanwhile, my roommate was doing some searching of her own. She was determined to move to Meridian, since it's closer to her work, and was doing her best to persuade both me and the third roommate (the one who's lease is still good until May) to move with her. She very quickly found and fell in love with a townhome out there and turned in an application, willing to take the risk of paying the full rent if she couldn't convince two people to move in with her. I didn't really want to move to this place-- not because of any bad feelings towards her, but because of the fact that I had no desire at all to live in Meridian-- but I thought it was nice to have that as a backup if my efforts in Boise failed.

Well, the owner of the townhome called back to say that this house had a limit on unmarried adults who could live in it and they were wanting to rent it to a family. So, too bad about the $40 application fee.

Back to my apartment hunting in Boise-- while my first day was a disappointment, I did not give up. I decided that I needed to raise my budget for potential rent by $100, which made me wince since that meant looking at places that cost more than half of my current income. But I am supposed to be getting more hours as the year goes on, I could survive a couple of lean months until then.

House Hunting Stage Two--with an increased budget

I didn't end up visiting most of those places. Phone calls eliminated them quickly. But I scrounged up a few more apartments that had just gone on the market and were for sure available still.

House Hunting Stage Three--and I'm getting a little concerned at how short this list is

Alas, I found that all of these places were very run-down and not really anything I felt appropriate to pay more than half my income to live in.

In retrospect, using a clear pin as a reference point for my current apartment isn't super helpful 

The above is a slight exaggeration; there were a few places I hadn't quite wiped off my list yet (like the apartment in the first video). But I was certainly feeling discouraged. Still, I came up with a few more places I could call, a few more listings I hadn't tried. Maybe a few of the more pricey (but not too much more) places were worth considering.

And then my one roommate fell in love with another place out in Meridian.

There's another girl in the ward who needs a place, so the two of them worked together to find The Franklin at Ten Mile--this fancy new place that's still under construction and features a website where all the "photos" are obvious computer renderings of the hoped for final project interspersed with random photos of people smiling. No, seriously, check out their website.

And while there are two bedroom apartments, getting three roommates would make a considerable difference in rent (putting the rent we'd each pay well below even my original budget). So my roommate proceeded to turn every conversation into an opportunity to try to convince me to move in with them. To her credit, it wasn't only the reduction in rent--we are friends, and she knew I was still looking. Still, I dug my heels in. After all, Meridian is not Boise, and has less trees and less biking areas and adds 20 minutes to many of my commute distances each way.

That itty bitty half a centimeter on this side of the map is about ten miles in real life

It got to the point where I was avoiding my roommate a bit. But despite my stubborn refusal, I wasn't sure I'd get a choice. Could I really afford to live where I wanted to live?

Now, I usually try to keep things pretty light here. But sometimes bigger issues have to be addressed, like it or not, and depression is one of them.

Depression has been a part of my life for a long time, though it's only in the last couple of years I've been able to admit to myself that I needed help and start getting treatment. And I'm actually doing quite well, perhaps the best I have in a long time, at managing my symptoms. I take medicine that helps, and I've been learning more and more about figuring out which of my thoughts are rational or irrational and how to manage them.

Still, I get "moods", times where nothing is OK and about me least of all, and all of the stress and pressure I was under threw me into one. I spent some time crying in my room, unable to sleep until very late at night.

But I felt much better when I woke up the next morning. I sat in bed for a while, taking my time about getting up. I took a look at my notebook where I've been writing down all the addresses and phone numbers and rent and details.

And I realized I needed to move to Meridian.

It wasn't, understand, simply a matter of running out of options in Boise. I still had places to try. But that night of feeling broken put some things into perspective for me.

When I'd been so upset and angry the night before, the idea of accepting the offer to move to Meridian had felt like admitting defeat. Thinking about it more, I could see that I was getting attached to the idea of romanticized independence-- that's what adults do, right? They get their own place and they pay for it themselves and they find it themselves and they keep it running themselves and they don't need help ever because no needing help means that you are strong and successful. Right? 

Yeah, no, that was being irrational.

And my roommate's persuasions had triggered some of my knee jerk reaction too. Now's not the time to get into that story (maybe later, this person will certainly show up in other stories), but there was a person who put me through a lot of emotional manipulation and abuse. I didn't recognize how much she had hurt me until after she was out of my life, but I did learn that I am susceptible to that kind of thing. So when a repeated argument focuses less on the logical reasons I should do something and more on how the desired action relates to my relationship with another person-- I get a bad taste in my mouth. It reminds me too much of what happens when those tactics go too far.

When I stepped away from my more irrational thoughts and feelings and considered my choice from that saner standpoint, I saw the one vital reason that I couldn't stay in Boise.

If I stayed in Boise, I'd be alone.

I mean, I'd make friends, of course. I've made some friends in my ward in the short time I've been here. But at night, after a long day, when I'm most susceptible to the demons that live in my brain, I'd be alone in my room every time.

I'm an introvert with social anxiety, so it's very easy for me to be a "hermit". Don't get me wrong, some time alone is good for you. But too much is like a very weird drug; you hate it but you can't figure out how to stop. Being alone at home seems so much easier because there's no one to judge or reject you.

But dealing with mental illness sometimes means recognizing that the person who rejects you the most and judges you the most harshly is, well, you.

In college, I had a lot of lousy roommates. And a handful of absolutely wonderful ones. But during my first year of school, I was alone. The structure of the apartment meant I never saw my "roommates" unless we passed each other on the way to the bathroom. And that was the year when I went through the worst depressive period of my life. I just... I couldn't handle being that alone. I needed other people around to pull me out of my brain. Even lousy roommates were better than that lonely year had been. And when I had good roommates, that support system made a huge difference.

So, through that lens, my choice was pretty clear. I could spend a year living all alone in Boise, in a lousy apartment for a price I could barely afford. Or I could spend a year living with two girls I actually liked in Meridian, in a nice apartment for a price I could definitely afford.

So I swallowed my pride and asked if they'd still let me move in with them to Meridian.

I still haven't seen the place in person. We had an interesting time with the application process-- computer errors, it turned out, so it took them longer than expected to tell us and we still haven't signed the lease. But the application was accepted, and somehow (if we can manage to get everything up the stairs) we're going to move into this new place on Saturday. 

Maybe in the future, I'll move back to Boise. With more time to anticipate the move, I could find roommates there and struggle less with the fact that a two-week window does not leave a lot of available apartments. But that's a good way into the future. For now, I have a place to live, and people to share it with. Maybe it isn't perfect, but it's enough.

The Village (not the Shyamalan one)

Despite some stressors, and the fact that I visited a place called "The Village", today was not a horror movie. Mostly.

First of all, today I had my board exams. AKA the test that I have to pass to get my music therapy licence so that, you know, I can legally keep my job and be a music therapist and all that. It was a doozy of a test, despite the fact that it was all very familiar material. Lots and lots of questions with multiple potentially correct answers.

But I passed! And, with one less thing to worry about in my currently very crazy life (Stress? Stress? I'm not stressed, what made you think I was stressed? I have nothing to be stressed out about. Ha. Ha. Ha... Excuse me while I go throw up) I decided that it was worth celebrating. Since I had to take my test all the way out in Meridian anyway, I thought I'd go check out the taco place my roommate had mentioned to me in The Village ...at Meridian.

I'd noticed the outside before while driving between appointments, mainly because it's got an anachronistically old-world European charm (at least to my admittedly untrained eye), but this was my first time actually visiting.

Basically, it's a big fancy mall. Now, understand, malls have never been my wheelhouse, but I do have a bit of a fascination with outdoor malls. And this one really is quite lovely; the flower gardens alone are worth a visit if you're in the area:

And there are some very pretty buildings:

In the center is an area with lots of nice seating, a performing stage, and some mini Bellagio-type fountains.

They sync up with the music that's played throughout the area.

Also, statues of butterflies turning into books and vice versa:

Anyway, I got my taco:

And then I took some time to go exploring. I was actually pretty excited to have one of the kinds of adventures that I happen to instead of that happen to me this week.

I fell in love a little bit with this fancy stationary store:

The reflection kind of spoils this, but the store is called "Paperie + Pen" and behind that is a wedding dress made of paper.

I might need this notebook...

I had also heard that there was a pretty cool candy store here, so I took a look.

The outside:

Did not adequately prepare me for the inside:

AGGH! My EYES! My cellphone camera can not do justice to the neons.

My middle school self would have loved it but I found it a little overstimulating. They do have an excellent selection if you're into gummy candy, but I didn't end up buying anything.

All in all, I had a very pleasant time wandering around at the village.

Perhaps a little too pleasant. 

You see, as I stepped out of one shop with a frozen yogurt in hand, I glanced down at my cell phone to realize that I only had forty-five minutes until my next work appointment. Barely enough time to run to my erstwhile apartment for my guitar and then get there on time.

Note, also, that this session is with a client that I still haven't officially added to my caseload yet. I'm supposed to meet him once or twice with his previous music therapist first. But last time, I got lost and ended up not arriving until the last fifteen minutes of the appointment. So you can understand how I felt stressed when it looked like I was just a hair's breadth from being late. Again.

And there was much skedaddling.

Well, that was the intent, anyway. But I got stuck in some nasty rush hour traffic. And then there was a problem with the elevator, which made me regret my guess that the elevator might be a few seconds faster than the stairs. (But also left me dreaming with some fondness for the day not long from now when I will live somewhere that isn't on the fourth floor). Then, on my way back into the car, I somehow managed to set off the alarm. 

Cue five minutes of me trying to figure out how to make the sound stop and get the lights to stop flashing in my brand new car that I am still figuring out what all the buttons do. And I don't have an owner's manual because it's a used car.

I texted the other music therapist to let her know I was going to be late (because at this point I was) and alluded to some car problems. Then I took off, rushing as fast as was legally permissible-- right into the very worst of Boise's rush hour traffic. Inching down Chinden Boulevard, I watched the estimated arrival time on my GPS unit go from "a little bit late" to "a lot bit late" to "Wow, this family is going to hate me and not want me to work with their child", to "Wow, I kind of hate me and probably shouldn't work with their child", to "Yeah, no, at this rate I'll miss the entire session." So I gave up and turned around to go back to my apartment. And promptly got lost. In a familiar neighborhood.

Lessons learned:

1) Pay attention to the time while going on adventures.

2) I'm kind of an idiot

3) I opened this up with the wrong kind of village references.

Anyway, tomorrow I dive into the legwork part of apartment hunting, so that's where the real horror story begins.

Don't believe me? Check out this map I poked lots of holes into just so I could show you how many places I'm going tomorrow.

Exhibit A

This is a little sooner than I expected to prove myself right.

I just innocently attempted to microwave some soup. In what I thought was a conscientious gesture, I covered my bowl with the plastic microwave cover in order to keep the soup from everywhere. 

This is what I found when I opened the microwave.

Eventually, I was able to pry the bowl off with a spoon. I tried to pop the cover back into shape, but I think I might owe my roommate a new microwave cover. Also, from now on I'm using paper towels instead.

Space Jam!

So, here's a tale of weirdness with only myself to blame.

This last January, there was an opening social at the Logan LDS Institute, and I was thinking of attending--mainly because there would be refreshments, and I didn't feel like cooking.

Well, someone came around passing out flyers which claimed that the event was "Space Jam" themed, and that we should wear "Space Jam" costumes.

I have a weakness. I can't resist an opportunity to dress up in a weird costume.

So I decided to dress up. The first problem---what the heck is a space jam?

I wasn't sure, but it sounded like some 80s futuristic kid's show--something like Captain Planet, maybe, or Galaxy Rangers--so I decided to go with my best impression of a 1980's idea of the future. So I dressed up in bright, ridiculous neon colors, with a few 80s twists (side pony tails, baggy shirt, etc), including some really intense makeup. To complete the ensemble, I carried a little Sonic Screwdriver my brother sent me as a Christmas present.

Then I went off to the Institute.

I showed up a bit early (ie, on time rather than fashionably late), and something seemed off. No one else was dressed up, as far as I could tell, and no one was commenting on my awesome costume. Though there was a "painting planets" activity, and a photobooth. I went straight to the photobooth of course, watching the group ahead of me get a photo of themselves jumping in front of a green screen--apparently a background would be put ahead of them, and what with the jumping I assumed it would be some sort of outer space background where they would appear to be floating in low gravity. Excited, I stepped up and posed for the camera.
It was only after I stepped out to make room for the next group that I heard the photographer explain that Michael Jordan would be edited into the photos.
Michael Jordan?
I walked around some more, with a sickening feeling.  No one was dressed up, no one at all. Then I found a room with a sign reading "Showings of Space Jam".

So, Space Jam--it isn't a 1980's kids show.
It's a 90's movie in which Michael Jordan plays basketball with the Looney Toons.

So that "awesome costume"? Was actually just me looking like a weirdo.

Feeling mortified, I decided to flee before I was seen by anybody I knew.
I was not entirely successful--as I dashed through the hall, I heard someone say, "Hi Jenna!" But I didn't stop to see who. Instead, I ducked under the "don't go back here" ropes that cordoned off most of the building and made my escape through a back door.

And I thought it would end there.

Until, on Sunday, my Sister is flipping through facebook when she says,
"Hey, Jen, you should see this."
The Institute Facebook page had put up photos from the event, and the top photo to show up on the page was this one:

So... yeah. That happened.

So then I got a haircut so no one would recognize me two days later.

Preparedness Adventures!

So a couple of weekend ago, my friend Tara (who had been one of my mission companions) asked me if I was interested in "Preparedness". I said it depended, which is true, because I'm all for learning first aid, and food storage lectures can be fun if they include free samples and recipes, but I don't have much attention span for water purification, and really it all depends on how entertaining the presenter is.

Tara clarified that she was inviting me to a "preparedness expo" that she and her sister were going to, and sent me a link to the event Web page. Looking it over, what most caught my attention was the variety of topics-home defense, essential oils (one of these times I will have to tell you about essential oils), first aid, government conspiracies, the "fountain of youth", and the Book of Revelations. It looked like about the kookiest event I'd heard of this year.

So of course I had to go.

Getting there was a but of an adventure itself; my phone seems to really struggle with figuring out where addresses are in Cache Valley and had led me wrong a few times, and weird side effect of using a car on my mission is that when you are used to having a 650 mile restriction per month you feel guilty for wasting miles on wrong turns. But I finally arrived. My friend was already in a class when I showed up at the little expo center, so I wandered around a bit and was very aggressively advertised to by a guy selling animated Bible videos-but I managed to walk away without signing up to pay $30 a month for a stack of movies for my not-yet-existant-children so I guess it was a victorious encounter. (Maybe that's why people are so reluctant to talk to missionaries, they probably expect us to talk like that...)
But, anyway, I meet up with Tara and her sister, and we meet her sister's friend that was saving us seats for the big star lecture of the afternoon-a promising one, all about what is going to happen to the U.S. during the apocalypse. Tara's sister's friend, whom I ended up sitting next to, was a cheerful grey-haired woman who told me she was so delighted I was there.
"What do you notice about the age of most of the people here?" she asked me. I looked around at the room, which was mostly filled with senior citizens.
“A little bit older than me." I conceded.
"More like a lot bit older than you." She corrected me. "Why isn't more of your generation awake? We're all half dead so we aren't that awake ourselves." Then she gave me some chewable vitamin C supplements.
On my other side, Tara and her sister insisted that I try some fancy hot chocolate that they had bought during the expo the night before. Apparently they toast and crush the actual cocoa beans, "like coffee. But it's not coffee." At their insistence, I tried a sip of the substance in the thermos they produced, and find my mouth full of a bitter, gritty, grainy substance. "Sorry about that," the sister said when she saw my face, "you're supposed to filter out the grounds, but I was in a hurry this morning."

Well, in terms of entertainment, this lecture did not disappoint. It was one of the most detailed conspiracy theories I've ever had the pleasure of listening to. You must understand, I do believe that the world is going out eventually, and that there will be a Second Coming. But I also know that it's not going to happen when or how we think it will happen, and serving as a missionary in Brownsville, Texas towards the end of the Mayan calendar made me a little sick of speculating. Too many people freaking out, asking us about when the zombies would show up or about the cloud in the shape of the angel of death that appeared over the shooting in Matamoros or the killer tidal wave or "what about the mermaid on discovery channel? WHAT DOES IT MEAN?!?" And these individuals were not impressed by our answers of, "Well, the world probably isn't ending and we're really here more to talk about how you can follow Jesus than how the world is going to end". Not to mention that everyone's favorite books in the Bible down there are Psalms and Revelations. (I still don't get it, but I guess people will read those same two books over and over and ignore the rest of the Bible)

Anyway, the point is that I approach anyone telling me how the world is going to end with a certain amount of amused skepticism. This guy does win over the usual stories I heard in Brownsville since he was well dressed and wasn't high, but it was still a little convoluted. Using the Bible, the Book of Mormon, news blogs, dreams that random people have had, and a good old fashioned dash of the Red Scare, he's come up with a timetable of how "They" (ie, the communists, or in other words an alliance between China, Russia, and Iraq) are going to destroy the American dollar and the stock market, get us all on welfare and install Obama as our dictator so that we can get used to communist rule, collapse our civilization so that we all starve to death, and then invade with a gigantic army. He even had an approximate time table for how long each part of their plan is going to take. So what do we do about it? Get a years' supply of food and ammunition. Just before the year long famine and super winter, any person with a years food supply (LDS or not) will receive an invitation from the prophet to go camping for an "indefinite period of time" and it is there, in tent cities up in the mountains, that we will safely wait out the apocalypse.

Yeah. Serious.

One of my favorite parts was am anecdote about a group of elderly gentlemen in Cache valley that he meet with who had all been having scary dreams about the world ending. They asked him, "What do we do with our food storage? In all our dreams, the valley gets flooded."
"Well, what are you doing now?"
"Burying it."
"Well, that's a good idea because Cache Valley will only be flooded for a week." (How does he know this? No idea.)
So then they tell him about a guy who'd been having dreams about the valley flooding, and instead of burying his food and ammunition in his field like his neighbor (who said, I'd like to see "them" find that. For now I'm assuming we're still talking about the communists, who have nothing better to do than dig up a dairy farm looking for food storage.), used his dreams to select a point in the mountains that looked well above the floodline. He picked a spot and started digging, only to find some else had hidden their food storage in the same spot. He took it as a good sign, buried his food 20 feet to the left, and wondered who his new neighbor is going to be.

Anyway, that was the highlight of the event for me. We also had a Green Berret talk to us about self defense (more or less he told us that self defense is American so we should all buy guns. Also the creepy guy sitting behind us kept throwing out weird and violent suggestions like "stab his eye out with a knitting needle". We changed seats.) And an energetic young woman who spent the entire presentation bouncing on a mini trampoline told us that if we want to stay young we need to exercise and if we study a lot we can survive lobotomies. There was also an oven powered by tea lights, and Tara and her sister made me try a free sample of their new favorite hot chocolate (sans grounds). It was slightly more edible but I wouldn't buy it, however many antioxidants it's supposed to have. But, when I looked at the schedule and found myself having to choose between "Gold For the Middle Class" and a thinly disguised ad for essential oils, I decided I'd had enough for the day and left.

So, am I now more prepared as a result of this preparedness expo?
Lets just say that if you find a can of tuna and a slingshot buried in Cache Valley with a note reading "In Case of Apocalypse", it's mine.

Helpful Sign I Saw Today

If you can't read it, the sign says "College of Science Room 245. Elevator and stairs"

If that's where the closest set of stairs are, we might have a bit of a problem...