My Wanderings - On My Own

I did not go off to college after high school. I regret that now, but at the time it was not a priority. I did go off to Utah though. I needed to get away and try living on my own for a while. Why did I pick Utah? A few of my friends were headed that way, including my best friend at the time, Era, and it seemed as good a place as any. So the Raintree Apartments in Provo, UT became my next home.

I moved right after high school ended, within a week or so of graduation. I got there a day or two before Era and I was nervous. I remember being so scared when my parents left (they drove me down) and I was all alone with two new, and strange, roommates. They were out in the living room watching Beavis and Butthead and I was holed up in my room unpacking. Era finally got there though and we got to know, and actually like, our roommates. Oh the fun we had. I am not going to get into all of the adventures we had while living there, that would take way too long, but adventures we did have.

You had to be a student to live in Raintree, but you were considered a student if you just took institute classes. That is what we did. We did not have a car, but we took the bus down to UVSC twice a week for our institute classes. We walked everywhere else. We did a lot of walking up to the dorms at BYU to see friends (including Tom during the time periods when we were speaking to each other). Oh, I will tell you about one adventure that sure was embarrassing. Tom asked me to the BYU Homecoming (this was obviously one of those times when we were speaking to each other). Of course, it was not just a normal, "Will you go to Homecoming with me?" thing. With the help of Era, he led me around Provo on a scavenger hunt. It was pretty amusing. The most embarassing part was when I was told, in a clue, that I needed to go into this certain gas station and sing the ABC's to the attendant there to get my next clue. So in I go, feeling like an idiot, and start singing. After I finish I wait for the guy to give me my next clue, but he is just standing there smiling and looking very amused... and confused. It turns out that we were running a little ahead of schedule and Tom had not gotten to the gas station yet to let them know that some crazy girl was going to come in and sing the ABC's to them. Oh yeah, that was fun. Moving on now...

This was our living room. We were carving pumpkins for a family home evening.


Here is my part of the bedroom. I love to write. I do not mean write lyrics and poems and such, although I do enjoy doing that also, I mean writing with a pen on a piece of paper. I have a notebook, a very thick one, from years ago where I wrote down the lyrics to my favorite songs. I could have printed them off, but I really enjoy the process of writing things down. My comforter used to have ink stains on it because I would fall asleep, laying on my bed, with a pen in my hand. Back to the picture... if you look at the walls you will see pieces of paper taped there. I would write quotes, poems, songs... anything really, and tape them to my wall like wallpaper. I loved it.

Eventually Era got a car, and we decided to move out to Orem since we had a little bit more freedom with a car and did not have to walk everywhere anymore. We rented a house with some friends of ours. There were five of us living there. (Me, Era, Kristi, Kristie and Amanda) It was nice living in a house with friends instead of an apartment where roommates change and you do not know who is going to be moving in next, as it was in the student housing.


My mind keeps coming up empty when I try and think of some stories to tell about this house. We had a lot of good times there. I am smiling right now thinking about all the fun we had. Nothing that screams to be written down though, just a lot of goofing off. Living life with very little responsibility. This house did teach me a lot of lessons though. (One being, never buy gerbils. Especially not two gerbils that they say are both female. Let's just say that our friend with a snake was very happy about the outcome.) Some that I wish I never had to learn, but valuable lessons anyway. The one that involved the police and our psychopath landlord was especially hard to take. That was around the time that I felt like I should move back home.

Back home. That was hard. Living with your parents again after you had lived on your own. It was not an easy thing to do. I do not remember a whole lot about this time period. Probably because not a whole lot was going on. Working and hanging out with friends was pretty much it. I did move in with Kim and Joe for a little while, but then I was back at my parents. I often thought about moving out and finding a place a little closer to work (I was working in Seatac at the time and had a 45-90 minute commute depending on traffic.), but rent was cheaper at my parent's house.

Okay. I will give you one funny story about this time period. I bought a junky, cheap little Ford to drive around. It did fine when I was just commuting to Gig Harbor and back (about 15 minutes for those of you not familiar with the area), but once I started commuting to Seatac everyday it started getting mad at me. Eventually it got really mad. So mad that if I did not stop at least once on the way to and from work to let it rest, it would stop working. I had an exit that I would pull over at everyday, turn off my car, wait 5 minutes, turn it back on again and head off to work. It was great in the snow though. I could go anywhere in that thing. I would pass trucks with 4-wheel drive stuck on a hill and just smile and wave at them. I killed it eventually. I was supposed to put water in it everyday before I headed home from work. One night I was too tired and did not give it it's water. I knew it was dying as I drove it home and just prayed that it would not die on me until I got there. As soon as I hit the drive way it died and never came back to life.