The Situation

My current situations FAQ 's

The Living Situation:
I live with five other young single adult LDS girls, in a house in East Palo Alto (EPA). When talking to locals, I usually have to preface this statement with, “but the NICER part of EPA” because EPA has a reputation for being ghetto. Which it is. No more morning neighborhood runs for me.

There are four bedrooms, Tiffany and I share the master’s bedroom.  For those who don’t already know…Tiffany and I met when we became random roommates August 2012, my sophomore year of college. She is basically the reason I ended up in California. She currently works as a tax accountant at Ernst and Young (EY) in San Jose, and she moved in one week before I did. Anyway, we started sharing a room in April 2014, so this is no new territory for our friendship.

Here is a little look into that situation:

This is Tiffany’s bed. Tiffany sleeps like a queen. Literally. It’s a queen sized bed. The pillows match the bedding and everything. The comforter is amazing and it swallows her up at night...

while I huddle over in my lowly corner like a pauper. Mattress in plain sight –what an eye sore, but not one worth paying to cover.  I have been using the same bedding since my freshman year of college #newyearsamebedding. Maybe it’s time for an upgrade? But on the other hand, if it’s not broke, don’t fix it.

Then there is the situation of the dressers.

These are Tiffany’s nice hand built (meaning IKEA, built by us) chest of wooden drawers with metal knobs. 

 Tiffany bought this two months ago, they weren’t on sale, they weren’t even the cheapest option, and they are huge.  Though Tiffany now has a real job, she just came from college and a part time job paycheck.  So to help her mind comprehend such a purchase she said, “I can use these drawers for the rest of my life. I will pass this dresser onto my children and my children’s children.”

I can imagine it now, the fights that will ensue over which grandchild gets to claim the authentic 2017 model IKEA dresser. Tears will be shed, everyone will want a piece. Don’t you remember how Grandma would store her itchy blankets in there? What about the memories which resurface every time Aunt Jo sees the hot pink nail polish stain from her preteen years?  Remember when Grandpa jammed the bottom left drawer and we never figured out how to open it again? The memories.

Either that, or Tiffany will ditch them when she moves from California and they don’t make the cut in the U-Haul.

Then there is my dresser.

 $20 dollars from Target. All plastic.

One half of the room appears to be housing a girl at college, while the other half houses an adult with her life together.

The master room does come with a master bathroom. So that has been quite a nice change.  We went from elbowing each while brushing our teeth in our 3’x3’ broom closet of a bathroom, to each having our own sink/vanity, and sharing a huge walk in closet.

The Job Situation:

I am an Activities Director at a post-acute care center. Or in other words, I run the activities department at a skilled nursing facility. I did the same thing in Utah, but here it comes with an upgrade because I have assistants who actually run the activities. I do the administrator side of things, like planning, scheduling, preparing, buying, attending a million meetings, conducting interviews, doing assessments, etc.

The other day I was bored and avoiding paper work, so I went to see what was going on in the activities room. Half an hour later I walked out with this:

They were making four leafed clovers with construction paper, but I forged my own path and created a rainbow instead. Sometimes I like to over achieve.  It was a productive hour.

The Social Situation:

The Bay area is known for its young single adults ward. The ward has been great, and there are a lot of fun people. 

One day Austin, Tiffany, and I spent the evening being tourists in San Fransisco. Austin is one of our closest friends, but he is a winter intern (wintern) so he is leaving at the end of April. We probably should have put our social efforts into people who are actually living and working here, but hey, interns are people too.

To nobody’s surprise, but to our bodies chagrin, weekends are still spent baking. When we get our mind set on baking, you can’t change it.

 This fateful Friday night, we wanted to make monster cookies. These cookies require M&M’s, and we didn’t have them, so our plans for the night called for a trip to the grocery store.  In Provo this wouldn’t have been a big deal, we could have been at one of three different grocery stores in about five minutes. But here our house is about a 15+ minute drive to anywhere that isn’t IKEA, Home Depot, or Mi Pueblo (a latin grocery store). I took for granted the days I could go to 100 different restaurants and stores within a 1-10 minute drive of my apartment...

Anyway the point is that we could have made normal chocolate chip cookies, but these cookies are so good, it was worth the trip.

Okay this post is getting way too long, so to be quick about this….

Once I went on a hike (glorified walk) with these people

You can’t tell by this picture but we were kind of on a cliff where if we lost our balance, we could fall down on either side.

Two months in and we are already turning into tree huggers.

It has been raining a ton over here, so everything is super green and luscious. It’s beautiful.

So there you have it. My situation in a nutshell. 

A Utah Girl in a California World

Moving 600 miles away from home doesn’t come without some adjustments, and after living in the same town for 15.5 years, these are some of the main differences I have noticed.

1.The roads are so awful. Really, they are bad. There are pot holes and cracks everywhere.  Sometimes there are just big metal sheets that are essentially part of the road.  After watching 9th East get torn up and redone every summer for the better part of my life, the awful roads were very apparent my first weeks here. The other day I drove on a new road and it was a beautiful moment. When I realized what was happening, I gasped, turned to Tiffany and said “look at this road!”  If you are exclaiming about the quality of pavement, there is obviously a problem.

2.This is the land of the Prius. I bought a Prius before I moved here and I joked, “now I will fit right in in California”. I had no idea how not a joke that was.  I swear, every three cars is a Prius. Don’t believe me?

Mine is the middle right. This is not the only time I have seen this happening in a parking lot.

3. It is also the home of Tesla, which means they are everywhere. I remember a few years ago my brother saw one and said, “ooh, look! A Tesla”. And I was like “What the heck is a Tesla?”  Well, after listening to a biography about Elon Musk, driving past a Tesla dealership on a regular basis, and sitting in the driver’s seat of one, I now know all about this all electric, luxury car. 

4. As stated in a previous post, if you want a bag at the store, you have to pay for it (retail stores included). This extra cost takes the whole “I can bring in all my grocery bags in one trip” to a whole new level.  Now it’s a game of, “I bet I can stuff all this food in my arms and successfully get into my house without buying a 10 cent bag”. 

"This is what living in California looks like"-Tiffany

(her diet of cereal and ice cream is #goals)

Despite going to the grocery store on a regular basis, I have forgotten to bring my canvas shopping bags multiple times. You think buying a 10 cent bag wouldn’t be something you think twice about, but I’m just saving the environment 10 cents at a time. See how California I already am? Before I would have said “saving my wallet” but now I care about the earth. My Prius is rubbing off on me.

5.Starbucks are everywhere.  Picture this, you walk past Starbucks and go into the grocery store, and are immediately greeted with a mini Starbucks. Occasionally at work, marketers bring in Starbucks for people.  As someone who doesn’t drink tea or coffee, things can get tricky. When offered a green tea I had the following internal debate in my head: “Is green tea okay to drink? Is it like herbal tea? Its not hot, it looks like a green milkshake and there is whipped cream on top…can I drink this???” I declined and said I was someone who likes to “eat their calories”. Thank goodness Starbucks has baked goods. Now I just request coffee cake or banana bread, and have “Tasty Starbucks Drinks without Coffee or Caffeine” permanently pulled up on my browser on my phone.

6.There is traffic, and parking is a pain. Traffic is a phenomenon I will never understand. There is no rhyme, reason, or pattern.  Sometimes it’s bad, sometimes it’s not. Some days it takes me 2 minutes to get on the freeway, other days it takes 20.  Inconvenient parking however is something I am very familiar with. Coming from off campus Provo BYU housing, I am use to bad parking. So nothing new there.

There of course are other differences, but I will spare you because apparently the only differences I have noticed have to do with cars/driving, and food (I have so much more to say about driving).  Write what you know, ya know?  I didn’t even comment on the high “cost of living”, but that’s just a given. It’s expensive here. End of story.

Life of The Unemployed

My first three weeks in Palo Alto I had no job. And while that would have been a dream come true in any other part of my life, I was too stressed about finding a job to truly enjoy my time off.  I also find little joy in doing things alone, so I didn’t do anything very exciting. I would have loved to walk around Stanford campus, and explore San Francisco but it didn’t sound fun if I was going to be alone. So what did I do to pass the time??

1. Rewatched the entire series of Parks and Rec.  Seven seasons in three weeks. I regret nothing.

2. Once, I went to Ikea just for something to do.  I literally went to Ikea to walk around. I was somewhat lost once I hit the ground section, but it didn’t worry me a bit. I was glad that my excursion was going to take me longer than expected. Then I took the “long way” back to my house.  People. Ikea is exactly .6 miles away from my house, so the long way pretty much consists of purposefully driving past my street down the road for a while, and the looping back around to go back home. Clearly, this was a cry for help. A sign of desperation.  At this point I really started to question my creativity skills. Was this seriously the best way I could entertain myself?? Apparently. 

3.  I welcomed traffic like an old friend. There is traffic? Great, something to take up my time before I go home and watch more Parks and Rec.  Once I found myself in school pick up traffic in East Palo Alto (aka EPA, aka the ghetto, aka where I live) and it was great. Traffic is usually mind numbingly boring, but this was like watching an episode of TV. People were yelling at each other from their cars, some rules of the road became optional, and people of all ages were walking everywhere. I got to make up in my head what was going on because no one was speaking English. It was great.

4. I would grocery shop 2-3 items at a time. Buy bread and cereal on Monday, new phone charger on Tuesday, apples and oranges on Wednesday (but only about 3 or so, so I had an excuse to go to the store for more fruit on Saturday), walk around Target (buy nothing) on Thursday, and so on.  I had the system down. 

5. Read young adult fiction found on weird websites online. It works, and it’s free. 

*repeat.

I won’t lie to you, it was boring. Hence the lack of photos in this blog post, I wasn't doing anything worth documenting. Thankfully there were more things to do on the weekends, like roller skating in the city, going to trampoline gyms, and learning to play poker. Of course I eventually got a job and the life of absolute freedom was behind me. I miss it now that I have to wake up to an alarm. 

RIP unemployment life. RIP. 

The Craziest Thing I Ever Did

*written January 12th, 5 days after arrival. 

“Craziest” is putting it nicely. Other words to describe it could be, stupidest, scariest, or most insane. What I have done has either been very brave, or very stupid. And let me tell you, as soon as we drove into California I was thinking it was the latter. 

Let me back up and explain.

I moved to Palo Alto, California, with no job.

Let me back up and explain again. Palo Alto is in the Bay Area, Silicon Valley. It’s a stones throw away from big companies like Google and Facebook.  It’s 33.7 miles from The City (if you call San Francisco by its actual name you are SO not from the Bay) and 17.4 miles from San Jose (the ‘capitol’ of silicon valley).  The main point here is that the cost of living is extremely high.

“Woah, Carlie, you are moving to Palo Alto?? Do you have any idea how expensive it is to live there??”

“Why yes, concerned friend, I in fact DO know this. I happen to have already paid my firsts months’ rent, so believe me, I am very aware.”

If you type into Google, “Most expensive places to live in America” The top two answers are 1. San Francisco and 2. San Jose.

“Carlie, it is so expensive there, that they make you pay for grocery bags.”

“Great”

So back to the main point here, I moved to one of the most expensive places in America and I had no job lined up.  So if any of you are ever wondering what to do with that extra money or food of yours, just think of me, and that should spark some ideas. 

“Well as long as you aren’t moving to EAST palo alto”

“yeah, that is EXACTLY where I am moving”

Then there is also the little fact that my entire experience associated with Palo Alto had consisted of driving through it one night after my family had spent the day in San Francisco.  We might have spent a grand total of ten minutes there before getting back on the freeway.

“Soo then why, Carlie, have you moved to this place?”

What I have been telling Mormons: “Well, Marriage aint happening for me in Provo, so it’s time to move this mess to a place full of YSA men.”

What I have been telling everyone since I got here:

 “Well I have lived in Utah since I was 8 and it just felt like it was time to get out and experience something new. And the Bay area has so much to offer! There are so many companies, and so many job opportunities, I also have some friends down here so I thought I might as well move to a place where I have some connections.”

What my mind was saying once I got here:

 “OH GOSH, I DON’T KNOW. WHAT MISTAKE HAVE I JUST MADE? WHY DID I LEAVE CHEAP RENT, A JOB, AND MY FAMILY AND FRIENDS?? PLEASE HELP ME ESCAPE FROM THIS PRISON THAT IS MY LIFE.”

However, this was not on a whim. I have had the idea of moving to this place for almost two years now.  I had been on-board and full steam ahead. I figured if I didn’t get a job before I left, I would just have to move and figure it out then. Things aligned to where it felt like a good time to move was in January. Well like I said, as soon as my dad and I drove into California, that good feeling was gone.

I was anxious, nervous, scared, sad, and doubtful. I had been holding in tears since the night before.  Things really started hitting me when we pulled over to eat some dinner. I was quiet and had no appetite.  Then when we arrived at my new home the only thing I could think was, “What have I done?”

These feelings consisted throughout the next day, and onto Monday morning. Emotionally, I was on thin ice. Little things like reading a compliment that my brother emailed me, or seeing my grandpa’s handwriting (ridiculous, I know) were enough to cause tears to well in my eyes. When I said my final goodbye to my Dad, it was all I could do to make it back to my car before melting down.  Tears started coming, and they were coming, big, hot, and fast.

I don’t remember the last time I cried. I really don’t. Occasionally I gets tears in my eyes during movies, but I control and stop that nonsense before the tears can actually run down my face.

So needless to say, this whole crying thing was a new experience.  I cried as I drove away. I cried as I found a grocery store. And I cried in my parked car. Every time I tried to pull myself together something would trigger, and I would start all over again. I finally threw on a pair of sunglasses, and hoped that people wouldn’t look me in the face. I talked to my mom on the phone as I searched the grocery store for food, and that helped for the time being.

However, in my emotionally compromised state, the price of food and the lack of the foods I was used to were enough to almost set me off again. I managed to make it out without crying, but with very little actual food. I hung up with my mom, and then I cried. I stopped crying, got home, and then cried again.

At this point you might be thinking, “my gosh, Carlie, you are a grown woman, you decided to move, why are you reacting this way?” Well, there wasn’t really one reason. Yes it was sad that I had left my home and family, but it was more than that. I had no job, knew one person, and had no experience in this place. I was all alone; the one person I knew was in Chicago for the week.  It was also raining a lot and I didn’t see the sun or the sky till about Wednesday so that didn’t help.  I had been holding in so many feelings for so long that they just came bursting out. I wanted to go back in time and stop myself from leaving. I wanted to be back at my old job. I wanted to be back in Utah. I wanted to be somewhere where I didn’t have to pay for grocery bags.

I started scheming how I could escape.  Finally, I decided that I could nanny till July, sell my contract to a girl moving here to start work, and then be on my merry way home. Yes, that would mean that I would have lasted even less time in the Bay Area than my brother Nathan, but it was a loss I was willing to take. Then my nanny contact said she didn’t need someone anymore till May. So there went that idea.  I was stuck here to figure it out.

That night my eyes hurt, I had a headache, and I was very very tired. Apparently these are normal side effects of crying- I asked.  

In short,  after 5.5 years of having a job, I wasn’t handling my unemployment well.  

“So……uh, Carlie. How’s it going? Are you okay?”

Yes, I am doing great! After a few days of self-pity, I snapped out of it.  I got a job,  which is a story for a different time,  and I am happy to be here.  As indicated at the beginning, I wrote this almost two months ago when I first got here and things have only gotten better. I just thought it might be fun and interesting for you all to see where my mind was upon arrival.

So stay tuned for much less dramatic, and non-tear filled adventures of my new life.