our little teenager has purple hair

I am so not excited about cleaning this poor little excuse for an apartment out before we move. But I am excited to move in to our new place. I hope it’s as nice in real life as it is in my head. Of course I realize that it probably won’t be, but still I hope.

I’m also not very excited about the long drive down to Pocatello. I never really enjoy a long drive but this time I’ll actually have to drive myself…it’s going to be really hard on my nervous driver persona, I know it. The longest I’ve ever driven before I think is down to Moscow.

I had today off so as soon as Dylan got off work, which was even earlier than expected because his kid locked him out of the house, we headed out to Rathdrum to do laundry and let Daisy run around in the backyard. Not being able to go outside turns her into a fluffy ball of hell and now that she can jump high enough to get into the trash, onto the sink, up on the toilette, pretty much everywhere…well, we really try to let her be outside as much as we can. Now she’s dead asleep next to me on the couch, her three white and one purple paw all stretched out. She stepped in Austin’s paint.

nuts anyone?

The lease is signed and in the mail. The U-haul is rented and paid for. We leave on the 10th and I am getting very ready. Mentally I have already quit work and it’s not a totally unpleasant feeling to not care at all about your job. The boss has finally realized he has to hire somebody though because three of us are leaving and will be gone in less than two weeks. An add is on craigslist and people have been stopping by all day. Hopefully they hire somebody that can start training next week, just cause I think that’ll be fun to see. The place is a bag of nuts. Cracked nuts, full nuts, half nuts, sweet nuts and gross nuts.

Scary to think that I have no idea when I’ll be working again though, hopefully I’ll be able to find something in Pocatello half way quickly… but you never know.

hopes for a home

Yeay, we have found an apartment in Pocatello that we both like and now I really really hope we get it! Close to campus, backyard, not very big but not too small either, 400 bucks a month. Hopefully we get it.

Today I was off work and naturally the weather was crappy… it seems to always be the case. I was kind of hung over from going out last night though, so the weather did kind of match my overall state of being. But I did go to the DMV and now I finally have my Idaho licence, not that it makes a big difference, but it is sometimes very inconvenient not to have one, so there…I’m officially a Idaho resident and driver.

Tomorrow I work again, all day again. It really is a pretty long shift working 11-close when we sometimes don’t get out of there till 9:30 or even later. Lunch was crazy both Tuesday and Wednesday so we’ll see what tomorrow brings. When we get too busy it just really sucks, you end up not getting very good tips cause people have to wait forever for both their food and service and we just run around like lost chickens while people are rude to us. I can’t wait to leave that place, I’ll miss some of the people I work with, we have a lot of fun sometimes, but the management can go shove something up someplace.

I’ll also really miss the coffee. Monday morning after I passed the road test I had an hour to kill before work and went to Thomas Hammer (or whatever that place is called) for breakfast. It was not at all as good as our stuff (God, I’m getting so coffee spoiled. It’s ridiculous..) although I think part of it was picking Irish cream for my flavour shot, I forgot I don’t really like that stuff.
But I only drink one latte a day and no more than two shots. I started with one, now I always do two but that’s it. Some people I work with do quads, sometimes several times a day. Nuts.

I would like to thank the academy...

Another day at the office. Another day to put on top of the stack of days that will go unremembered from my life.

Nothing special about today except for maybe that my co-worker told me that her mom is in prison for driving drunk and killing somebody. The reason (she told me) was that we have a couple of regulars at the restaurant that very often (like 3-5 times a week) drink a butt load and then drive home and that really bothers her. It bothers me too, a Monday not very long ago D was picking me up from work and he actually ended up giving them a ride home because they were just trashed…anyways, tonight they were ordering their eighth Mug Club beer when she told me about her mom.

I already knew though, cause our gossip queen for a boss had already told everyone a long time ago. He’s such an unprofessional, immature douche for a manger…but again, that’s beside the point. My two second dilemma was whether to tell her I already knew or fake a surprise. I faked a surprise. I don’t expect an Oscar anytime soon but I think I pulled it off.

This is the girl who’s only healthy leg I wanted to kick just a few weeks ago. I feel bad for her now, though. Not because of her mom (well, that too but that’s old) but because ever since the girl who stole money from the restaurant (what did I call her? Amanda??) was fired, this new girl has become the new little chicken to pick on in the nest.

Yes, she is annoying when she acts like going to college makes you genius and yes, she is indeed lazy and does as little as she can any time she works… but she now has a group of four catty girls actively keeping her in the cold and that’s just not nice. So I’m trying to give her a break. Not another broken leg, but a break.

No bike but extra cheese

Damn who ever stole my bike (that wasn’t even really mine) from the Riverstone bus stop. May he or she wreck real hard and get bad scratches and bruises on all knees, elbows and hands. It was locked up and all, they stole the lock and everything. Freakin’ bus people, they’re crazy.

As far as work goes, there’s a lot of it lately. I feel like I work more than I really want to and I pretty much close everyday. But who knows when I will be able to work once we move so I really shouldn’t complain. I’m not complaining, just whining a little.

You get so sick of people working at a restaurant; well I bet you get sick of people working a lot of places…. And a restaurant just isn’t an exception. Last night we had two adults come in with 9 (nine!!) kids 15 minutes before we were closing, then they stayed for over an hour, made a huge mess and didn’t even tip 15%. Today I had a couple get taste samples of every single beer on tap and then decide to drink coffee. I had to read the entire menu to two older ladies who acted like the world would go under if they made the wrong decision about what dressing to get for their side salads. And it was during lunch rush too, the entire time my boss was yelling from the kitchen “Asiagoooo, your order is uuuup!!!” He calls me Asiago. Or Asiago Tuna Fish for long, and sometimes Ozzy Osbourne. It’s great. Seriously though, I don’t really care, it’s only a little annoying when customers think that’s actually my name and ask “so were you named after the cheese?”

a day off -where's my sun?

My one day off this week (except for Sunday which is always off since we’re closed) is almost over. Did I spend it well? Well, considering I’m in Cd’A and the weather was kind of crappy…yeah, I think I spent it ok.

We’re looking to get bikes and downhill skis for Pocatello since we’ll need them for getting around town and are planning on getting ski passes. It’s so funny to me that Dylan has gone skiing once (a few months ago in Sun Valley while we went down to southern Idaho to look at Pocatello and ISU) and now pretty much considers himself to be intermediate. I’m not a very good skier when it comes to downhill skiing either, but that’s the thing… I have been doing it on and off since I was four years old and just because I can make it down the hill half way quickly without breaking any limbs that doesn’t mean I’m good. At least not to me. But we’re just different like that, I guess.

We’re also in the process of filling out an application to rent a place down there. Part of me is really excited about it, the other part still hasn’t landed in Coeur d’Alene yet and has no idea what is going on.

My new little niece is chubby and has dark hair, unlike any of her siblings. She has the upper lip that is the trade mark of my mom’s side of the family though, so we know she wasn’t switched out at the hospital. Hopefully I get to see her before she turns one… that would be nice. My sister has four kids and in six years I have attended one baptism and one Christmas. Not a single birthday. I’m a very absent type of aunt.

Directions and me

There is something missing in my head and it’s the part of the brain that handles directions and information about locations and positions of places I need to go. Seriously, people don’t understand how I can be so bad at taking, giving and basically dealing with directions, but I’m not making this shit up, this how bad I am.

Example, I am supposed to drive somewhere (and right there I’m partly screwed because I know that I’m driving to an unknown place and worrying about that takes up more than half of all my mental capacity) and someone tells me:
- Ok, so you’ll go straight on Boekel and then across 95 and then make a right… unless you want to take Lancaster, which would work too….

And then they keep on talking and I listen and I listen but I don’t hear anything but “right, left, intersection, bottom of hill, second right, house on left, stop lights etc” like it’s a nursery rhyme and they might as well be talking about chain saws; I try to understand but there’s a mental block and I just don’t.

I realize that people get frustrated with me and I don’t blame them at all. If I told someone “this is a hand, and this is a foot, here are the knees and right here on top is a head” and they were like
“what? Oh, I’m sorry, you lost me at foot…” I’d probably think they were retarded too and get annoyed.

But if God ever appeared in front of me and said
“Åsa, if you want to survive, you have to make a right by the big tree and then salvation will be on you left in about 3 miles” I’d be dead for sure. I can’t do directions, I just can’t.

one end and one beginning

I really kind of wanted the Netherlands to win today…does Spain really deserve to be both European and World champions? According to Willy, probably. It’s a shame he couldn’t come up and join us for watching the game, that would have been fun. Especially since there were some actual Dutch people at Capone’s today.

But, now the world cup is over and we have to wait for 4 years for the next party…there’s always that empty feeling at the end of any big event like that, the Olympics, the World Cup, the European tournaments. I hate when it all ends and you know you have to wait so long before the next one.

On a happier note my niece finally decided to join the rest of the people on the outside today. She was born 11:32 am (Swedish time) and so begins the countdown for a name. 3 months you can leave your child nameless before the authorities interfere and my sister and Peter have been pretty darn close to deadline with the previous kids so I’m not going to even ask if they have any ideas or suggestions for at least a week or two.

The fans, the fans! we forgot the fans...

Oh my god, it is so hot in our apartment I want to crawl out of my own skin and go beyond naked. Too bad that’s not an option.

Summer is really here now and since we both had today off me and D went swimming downtown. He always covers himself completely with sunscreen; I bought the spray on kind this year so I won’t have to rub it on his back all the time and then get blamed when there’s a tiny streak I missed. I usually put some on my shoulders, nose and forehead and call it good. Later today we went out to Rathdrum and had a delayed birthday dinner for John, the grandma’s partner, and the whole family commented on my sunburn… acting like I got third degree burns or something when it’s just a little red and doesn’t hurt at all. They’re such a bunch of fair skinned pansies. Except for Darryl, he’s a dark skinned chameleon, could pass for anything from Mexican to Chinese (he has in the past).

But yeah, I work Friday, Saturday so I figured I had to soak up the sun while I got a chance. Now I wish I could soak in a tub of ice.

looking for future living quarters while healing the liver

Back from an amazingly fun weekend camping up at St Joe’s. The weather wasn’t so amazing, but the Bloody Mary’s were, the game of wiffle ball was, the food, the people, the parade, the fire works, well pretty much the works. Good times. But my liver definitely felt it and tonight I’m not joining D and his cousins at the bar. I’m working tomorrow and I just don’t want to see alcohol for at least a few more days.

We’re looking at apartments in Pocatello, trying to get an idea of what there is, what part of the city we want to live in, how much we’d be willing/able to pay etc. A lot of places don’t allow pets, which sucks. I mean, I knew that was maybe going to be the case when we got Daisy and I told Dylan that if it came down to it, we could give her to his cousin in southern Idaho who has a farm with like four cats already. We haven’t talked about that alternative since we got her though, and I know we won’t be parting ways from our little kitty-girl. I don’t want to and I can tell Dylan definitely doesn’t want to either.

What I do want though is:
-to live on the ground floor (or basement) so it’s easy to let her in and out
-have an open kitchen with a kitchen island or high counter with bar stools, don’t ask me why I just really want that
-to live fairly close to downtown
- laundry on site

What Dylan wants is:
-An entertainment center
-A flat screen tv
-A big bed
-A sweet dinner table
-A new rocking chair
-Our own entrance and preferably no neighbours
-A dishwasher
-A place big enough to hold all this stuff

We might have to go down to Pocatello one more time before moving there to scout out some places. Hopefully we’ll find something that we both like well enough so we don’t have to move again real soon. Six more weeks in Cd’A and then we’ll be packing our bags, it’s getting ridiculous, I feel like all I do is move.

Although, I must admit that even though I swore all I wanted to do now was settle down and nest like a bird, watching the world cup has really made me want to visit Africa. So...my travelling days aren’t over, I never want them to be, but I am still excited to be getting a home base (a little term I picked up from wiffle ball)

Happy 4th!

4th of July weekend and I won’t be seeing the Cd’A fireworks this year either. My first 4th of July in the US was spent up state New York in a shady bar with pool tables and shuffle board and I was drinking Smirnoff Ice with grenadine. We went to a parade during the day but it was raining pretty much the whole time.
Then there was the one right after we came back from China. We celebrated at John and Diane’s and then drove to Spokane to see their firework show. Dylan was jet lagged and slept through the whole night.
Last year we went camping to Big Fish Lake (I believe it was called) a good time but the closest we came to fireworks was the can of gas on the fire.

Everyone keeps telling me I don’t really want to see the Cd’A show anyways, that it gets too crowded downtown and that it’s not as good as it used to be. I just like watching fireworks and so what if it used to be better, how would I know?

It’s like when I’m cold and D goes “it’s like a million degrees in here, you’re not cold” or when I say I don’t like salmon and he says“but it’s good, sure you like it”
Like argument can change the way you feel about something. Sometimes I really hate logic and arguments. Maybe I just don’t like salmon, I still eat it because people tend to make it a lot when they hear I don’t eat meat. Nobody feeds me as much salmon as my dad and it’s just too late to tell him I don’t like it at this point, and they few times I see him I just suck it up and eat the fish.
And, I really like watching fireworks. I’m way too much of a chicken to ever shoot them off myself, but I truly enjoy a good show.
But camping should be fun too, I really am excited about this weekend. It’s been planned for a long time and it will be good to see people I haven’t seen for a long time again.

And when we come back I might be an aunt again, for the 4th time around.