The noises that surround me...

I am cooking this afternoon (how do my posts keep coming back to food?). The windows are open and I hear rain, and thunder and the house feels cool and crisp. I hear hear Willow meowing outside the door and Dr. Laura coming through my headphones as I putter I around chopping and mixing and then washing the dishes. I hear the guys next door working on their cars as they always are in the afternoons(can there really be anything left to fix?!) and these noises that surround once again make me feel happy and calm. Pretty soon I'll hear Joel pull up on his bicycle and hear his laughter and stories of the day and his awesome ride home in the rain, and in a couple of hours I'll hear the voices of friends as they arrive for dinner. What noises surrounded you today? I hope they were good ones:) Jenny

I miss you I believe....

Though it does feel so good to be back in our little home with my Joelie starting to tutor and get back in the swing of things...I do feel a bit alone. Constant rich companionship makes it feel funny to be by myself so much. So many good things have happened, though, in these two days at home. Things that never happen. For example, here was the picture last night in our kitchen...

I was home, alone indeed, but cooking. Yes,me, I was making something! I made lentil and spinach soup and cornbread. Not only that, but there was a cat laying in my hallway watching me. Now, those who know me well know that my heart's desire is to have "cats and babies round my feet where all are fat and none are thin(love that carol King:)" and so it was really a joy to see this kitty curled in the hall. She has been a stray here for a while but yesterday worked up the courage to come inside and have a bite to eat and a good, long nap.I have wanted a cat for so long but Joel is allergic to some cats and hates their fur and i was never big on the thought of a litter box--yuck! I think he bonded with this one while I was away, though, because he encouraged me to let her in! Anyway, Brandi Carlyle's voice was wafting up from the basement and one of her songs said, "I'm happy, can't you see, I'm alright but I miss you I believe." Just how I feel, I thought to myself. To make a good, healthy dinner felt so good, and having this little companion was great, and seeing Joelie's face late at night when he came home from studying was so sweet and having fun conversations with my students is always wonderful....but I do miss all of that loveliness in Texas...here is a picture of my lentil yumminess from last night and one of mom and I. Oh, and don't tell joel, but one of kitty who is at this moment curled up at my feet in bed:)More pictures from TX coming soon...

The Hunt Hotel...

Mom and dad are in route to Salt Lake City! We are so excited and scurrying around like mice to get everything ready. Well, at least one of us is...

I left to go tutor one of my students, but gave Joel specific instructions on what I needed him to do in the guest room while I was gone. I don't think "take a nap in the guests' bed" was on the list:)
If you haven't heard Joel's big news, click on the "Joelie's blog" link to the right and you can read about it. Then you'll understand why he especially needs rest right now with all of his new responsibilities:)
Guess that's all for now. I've got a bathtub to scrub,a guest room to prepare, flowers to buy....I'll try to keep this updated with our adventures with the folks during their stay at the Hunt Hotel!

If I ever get on a communal living kick again...

You are all free to remind me of the following things:

1.The Washer and Dryer: We share them with one family and one single girl that live in the duplex in front of us.Besides the fact that they are in a pretty scary basement beneath the duplex that I refuse to go in at night, they are really gross and dirty. Yuck. Before I finally wiped them down, they both had so much gunk (I don't even know where it comes from) that I felt like our clothes were cleaner before they went in!! Also, they leave their clothes in for hours and hours and our clothes have to wait in line.

2. The trash cans and recycle bin: We take them out and bring them in almost every week--even though we are all supposed to share the responsibility.

3. Our sprinkler: apparently we share that with our neighbor too because it always ends up in her yard and we have to retrieve it if we want to use it in our lawn!

So, I am rethinking the whole "oh, communal living would be soo great and save so many resources and create community and on and on...". I mean, I haven't totally given up on the idea but so far I am being pretty wimpy with these few shared resources! Ideally we would actually know our communal living neighbors and have a common goal for the living arrangement and so we could have some practical "how are we going to share" discussions, but still. Americans are so individualistic and its hard to change that in my own attitude. This little talk has made me want to try harder though. For goodness sakes, we are only sharing three things!! I'll let you know how it goes.

Well, not too much going on. Just getting ready for mom and dad to get here on Saturday--yippie!! We did go to a pro-soccer game on Sat. night--that was fun. Here is a picture of Joelie with two buddies from school taken after the game:

Benjamin on the left and Sully on the right.Both are great, interesting, yogaing, skiing, earthy type guys. Of course, the guy in the middle is pretty great too:)Guess that's all for now. Hope you all are doing well, Jen

It's For Real!

Well, here we are. I’m sitting in our new living room in our new little house after a walk through the park across our new street. So far, we love it! The Hunts drove us up and helped us BIG TIME getting moved in—we even painted the kitchen a wonderful, soothing green. We had a wonderful time with them and are soooo thankful for all of their help.

Yesterday Joel and I had a really fun day exploring our area of town on foot. We walked to Taco Time, then test drove a Toyota RAV 4 (not for us but it was fun just being in a new car:), and then we walked to the library. OH MY GOSH, I think SLC must have the most amazing library in the world. Its five stories with gas fireplaces on each floor, tons of windows and reading rooms, free wireless internet, and you can walk out onto the roof where there are flower gardens and tables and mountains everywhere in the distance! I think Joel and I are going to be spending a lot of time there!

We are getting the house together a little bit at a time. Shari organized and finished the kitchen, we finished the living room today, and tomorrow we are focusing on the bedroom—lots of pictures to come.

Guess that’s all for now. Hope you all are doing well—we miss everyone already! Make sure to click on the Flickr picture link to see pics of us moving in!

Our New Abode

We searched on the internet,
we scoured the local papers,
we visited a rental agency,
we looked by car and even by foot and at long last we found our new home.

Thanks to mom for being such an objective voice through what turned out to be such an emotional house-hunting week. Thanks to Joel for being patient as mom and I had our discussions about the “issues” that came with each house that we looked at.

A typical post-house tour conversation featuring the issue of safety:

Joel:” Looks good to me. Jenny, why are you so quiet?”

Jenny: “Well, I love the wood floors and cute little oven, but something about the neighborhood just doesn’t feel safe.”

Joel: “Are you serious? Look at the kids riding their bikes home from school, look at the cute bungalow houses everywhere. It looks pretty safe to me.”

Joyce: “No, I feel it too Jenny. Let’s drive around the block and get a feel for the area.”

Joel sighs and gets into the driver seat. We make a block and while Joel continues to see the cute kids walking happily down the sidewalk, mom and I see a corner store with huge beer advertisements and two shady looking characters pulling away on their bicycles. We look at each other in agreement, Joel catches the hint and says “ Well, I want you to feel safe so lets try the next one on the list,” and off we go.

Other “issues” frequently discussed were location to the University, cleanliness of the building, storage space, overall character and charm, distance to grocery stores and other shopping, and of course, price.

We ended up with great location close to the University, a huge park and shopping, good character, not an apartment, not so great in the storage department though it does have 2 bedrooms, and an okay price. Overall we are pretty excited, especially about living on our own and not sharing our space with anyone.

So there's a housing update for ya:)