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.