Well our last few days in Provo seemed like they lasted forever. The packers came Tuesday and were there for about 8 hours, I always thought we had a lot of stuff but now I KNOW we do! The next day was the day of one of the huge storms so the people that were packing the moving truck and driving our stuff to Cali were a few hours later than we expected and they took almost the entire day too. We were very glad when they knocked on the door and asked where they would be safe parking. Silly me trying to be the helpful person that I am grabbed the jeep keys and said, “oh, we took up two spots in case you needed to pull in, let me move our car.” Boy was I surprised to walk out onto 7th east in Provo to see a full sized semi parked right in front of our apartment and right in the middle of the road. I don’t think moving the jeep would have made a difference.
Jeremy stuck around to help with everything so he didn’t go to campus to work on his thesis very much. This meant that we didn’t leave Thursday like I wanted to, instead he stayed on campus all day and I was left at home, with almost nothing. This was quite a day for me. With our car in a shop, a flat tire on our jeep, our stroller in a moving van and cold winds a blowin’ - I resorted to Neanderthal behavior. I had some cleaning to finish in the morning, but the rest of the day was horrid. I rummaged the storage closet for what was left of the paint we had used to spruce up the apartment over four years ago. I was desperate for entertainment. With the lids rusted on and me with minimal tools, I found myself squatting on the ground while I pounded and pried the cans with no luck as the metal edges curled up. As the lids finally curved up and off from my relentless efforts, rust chips filled what was left of the paint. No matter, what else had I to do? Paint away. Jeremy ran out of paper to print on and was forced to come home just in time to spare my sanity, which was quickly diminishing with the help of the paint fumes. We went out to a much needed dinner that night. Friday morning we finished up our responsibilities in Provo including the finalization of Jeremy’s thesis WAHOO!! and packed what was left in our apartment to take our one way drive out of Utah.
Since we were being reimbursed for the trip we decided to stay at a hotel on the strip in Vegas. Jeremy let me choose and the child in me came bounding out. The Luxor of course – it’s SHAPED like a pyramid! The weather was quite nice in Vegas, so much so that I immediately changed my shoes, and shortly thereafter changed them back with blisters now squeezed uncomfortably into my winter shoes. As we were relaxing in the room I had our new house on my mind and the improvements we’d like to make so I happened to be paying more attention to the architectural design and décor of the hotel. While I’m not planning on adding any angular window treatments or Egyptian themed bedroom furniture to our new living space, I did enjoy the nicely tiled glass shower. As I was admiring it I thought to myself, “yes Stefanie it is beautiful but I wouldn’t want it because the glass doors would be a pain to clean. Oh wait, I DO have shower doors like that in the new house.”
At least that part of the house I remembered accurately. When we walked in Jeremy and I were both pleasantly surprised with how our minds had warped a few things about the house. For me all the rooms seemed bigger – hooray our new furniture will fit! The movers weren’t scheduled to arrive until the next day but we had our camping matts so we set up in the living room and enjoyed the first night in our new house with no appliances and no beds! (No really, we enjoyed it!)
When the movers did come I again was wanting to be helpful, as they were rolling out the walkway tape they asked for something to cut it with. I picked up a leatherman sitting close by that was opened to the pliers and said, “you might be able to get it with the inner edge of the pliers.” The mover took the tool from me and politely pulled out the pocket knife portion to cut – ah yes, that would work better.
Over the next week Jeremy and I spent time unpacking boxes, moving furniture and working on our yard outside in the perfect weather – it honestly feels amazing, like my favorite time of year back in Utah, ahhhhh.
There are a few things I have noticed that are different here;
First, there is not five feet of snow on either side of the sidewalks (think Midway Utah) in fact there is no snow. On our drive here, as we came over the last past climate shock hit me. I felt that winter had been thrust from me and I had no chance to say goodbye to winter. That by far has been the biggest, and possibly the only shock of the move.
Second, fire hydrants are white
Third, we’ve seen more landscaping trucks drive by than we’ve seen people. I think everyone has their yards landscaped, even the houses that look crappy with yellow lawns seem to have perfectly spaced bushes and well manicured trees. I wonder what our neighbors think as they drive by our neglected lawn and see our rear ends as we strive to rid our front lawn of unsightly weeds.
Fourth, does anyone work or go to school around here? The first few week days we were here both our neighbors and there kids were just hanging out at their houses. Despite my attempts to assume the best, off track of year round school?, I resorted to wondering if some of the kids had dropped out or were suspended – did I work at Independence too long? J.K.
Fifth, not far from Bakersfield is a little tourist mountainous town called Kernville. Despite it’s charm our first view was during the annual Whiskey Flat days. Don’t let the name fool you, there were plenty of bikers and beer stands to go around. I was surprised how many people were actually there and it was a blast but by the time we left I had seen enough leather, tie die, and T-shirt fringe to last until the 80’s come back full swing again.
Well, that pretty much does it. I have really enjoyed myself here so far, in fact a few days my cheeks even felt sore from smiling so much. This morning in fact as Lia and I took a walk around the golf course I heard a bird chirping and the smiling started up all over again, I miss birds. I think we are really going to enjoy our neighbors too. We met the ones on either side of us within the first five minutes after arriving at our house. We hadn’t even walked in the door before we were all on a first-name basis. They are extremely nice and said if we ever needed anything just to let them know – while the support is much appreciated, the first thing we really needed was a plunger, and we didn’t bother asking to borrow that! Jeremy and I both hope that we can be good neighbors and also hope that they appreciate how we are trying to improve the look of our yard, although I don’t know that I’ll ever take the time to scrub the concrete on my driveway like I noticed another neighbor doing. Now that is home ownership pride!
