We’ve lived in Boise for almost a month in a half and I thought I’d blog about some of thing things that I like about Boise.

Parks: They are everywhere, I mean everywhere. We live outside of Boise in a little community and I’m pretty sure that every subdivision has their own. And the schools aren’t locked down like they are in California (at least where we lived) so you can go play on the playgrounds there too. Oh and of course there are city parks all over the place and a huge greenbelt. I wasn’t even sure what a greenbelt was before we moved here.

Food Co-Ops: Boise has no Whole Foods or Trader Joes: kill me dead right now, or I thought so before we moved here. Boise has a great food co-op store that is bigger than the Trader Joe’s in Fresno: The Boise Co-op. I can find just about everything that I need there. Yes it’s more expensive than Trader Joes, but close in price to Whole Foods and right on in the price department of what we were used to paying at the little organic foods stores in Montana.

Besides the Co-op I have found two other ways to get good fresh organic produce. Bountiful Basket and Full Circle Farm. I’ll talk more about these in another post, but I’m going to say that I LOVE them.

The people: Oh how I missed these people when I was in California. I’m going to admit that I’m not a super social person and I’m shy, but I am a people person. I know, very confusing. I love polite, nice people. I love smiling at people as our eyes meet while we pass each other on the street, or in the store. I love people that hold the door for you. I love stopping someone in Costco asking where they bought their daughter’s crown and having a quick conversation and I love being stopped in a different Costco by a woman that needed to borrow my pen. The people are so nice.

Oh I remembered one more thing, the Babywearing! Boise is a babywearing city. Everywhere I go I see a Mom or occasionally a Dad wearing a little peanut. Mostly they are using Bjorns, but I have seen a lot of mei tais and Moby’s and one beautiful green woven wrap in Old Navy. I stopped and told that Mom how pretty her wrap was, I couldn’t not.

So far I love Boise.

When I’m laying in bed at night I have blog posts writing in my head while I try to go to sleep. When I am sitting in the car I have stories on an endless loop in my head. When I’m cooking dinner I have ideas a plenty. But when I sit down in front of my keyboard I have nothing to say. I just stare blankly at my screen and the little blinking cursor. I know I have a lot to talk about but I just can’t seem to get it out my fingers. I have a ton of cute pictures to share but they aren’t uploaded yet and I just know that the second I start something Lily is going to wake up/want to nurse/ want to eat and it seems to daunting to even start.
I need to keep a note pad with me at all times to keep track of all these great ideas. Hey maybe I could find an app for my phone that would be useful for this. I think my phone might make a good post so I’m off to find some more apps.

From the time that I was pregnant I had planned to limit Lily’s TV time and we did a pretty good job of it… until now.  We had showed Lily some clips from Yo Gabba Gabba a  few times over the last six months or so and she really showed no interest.  Then a few weeks ago Waldo turned on a episode on the living room tv and I think Lily finally saw all the dancing and now she’s head over heals addicted.  We didn’t know how strong the addiction was until later in the day when she came up to me and pointed to my computer and said “Dabba Dabba”.  I was shocked!  Now she asks for it on the TV, our computers and our phones all the time.  Sometimes we give in, sometimes we don’t.

The first I had heard of YGG was a clip I saw on Whoorl and I thought it was crazy.

I showed it to Waldo and he loved it. It is so colorful and good natured and old school that he knew he wanted to share it with Lily. After I saw another episode I knew I loved it too. I even saw a episode where they were telling kids not to eat things off the ground, I mean really, I am forever saying “we don’t eat floor food”, there is no three second rule in our house.

Each episode is full of good kid friendly lessons, dancing and music and sometimes really cool bands and actors.

Lily is in good company when it comes to her YGG addiction. I know that Gretchen, Maia and Em are also hug fans.

I have never really made a written list of Goals for myself and the other day I was ready a blog (sorry I don’t remember which one) and she was talking about her “life list) and it got me thinking.  Oh yeah, I was reading She Likes Purple, I just love her and her son.  I’m going to start small with my Goals.  If this goes well maybe I’ll move on to larger, loftier goals.

1. Open a local bank account.  Okay, I actually mean a Credit Union account because after working at a great Credit Union for 6 years I don’t think I can ever bank at a bank again.  I don’t even know if we need a local account but I feel like we should get one.  I have no intention of closing the account we had at my previous place of employment, all of our bills are set up for auto debit and our checks get direct deposited.  Our debit and credit card is there, I know how it works and I know a lot of the employees. I feel it would be good to start an account here for little things and maybe start a relationship that might work into a house someday.
2. Find out about first time home buyer loans and get the loan app.  I’m starting small with just the loan app.  I’ll add buying a house to a longer goal list someday.
3. Visit family or friends for at least 1 hour a week.  I know that doesn’t sound like much of a goal, but I have found that between working, Lily and her nap and everyday life visiting anyone at all is a challenge.
4. Blog more.  I really want to get up to 3 posts a week, if not more.

z                                   ‘p17160;[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[””””””””””’;'/;’/;’/;’/;’/;’/;’/;’/;’/;’/;’/;’/;’/;’/;’/;’/;’/;’/;’/;’/;’/;’/;’/;’/;’/;’/;’/;’/;’/;’/;’/;’/;’/;’/;’/;’/;’/;’/;’/;’/;’/;’/;’/???????????–Lily says HI.

I think this is a nice little list of Goals.  I’ll revisit it in a month and see how I did.

I haven’t fallen off the face of the earth but I am in the process of uprooting our lives to move back to California. I’ll talk more about the move later, we are taking lots of pictures and are pretty excited about it. For the next couple of weeks I will be continuing my not-posting-at-all streak, but I will be back eventually.

My computer is acting up again. I can’t say it’s broken just yet but it sure is making life difficult. So now I’m back to using Waldo’s computer and not having my photo editing software and I have so many great pictures and things to share. Thankfully I am married to a hardcore geek who will be looking at my computer tomorrow evening and I’m betting that I will be back to using my own computer by the weekend.

Sometimes life gets in the way of blogging and that is what happened to me in the last couple of weeks.  The main things are Lily (of course she’s my main distraction) and work, I try to get in as much work time as possible which usually amounts to 2 hours a day.  Since Lily is my first priority I try to only work when she’s playing happily or napping and since she doesn’t really nap much I don’t get much time in, oh well.  On top of these two important things I’ve had two other dramas or at least semi-drama stuff keeping me away.  And that is what I’m here to tell you about tonight.

First the simple one.  I turned my computer on one morning last week, I think it was Monday and while Waldo and I talked I started smelling something really weird.  We determined it was my computer and so I turned it off and used Waldo’s all day.  After work my Knight in shining geeky armor pulled my tower out of my desk and started inspecting it.  We realized my power supply fan wasn’t running, turned it off and ordered a new one.  It came in Thursday evening and pretty much the second he got off work Waldo went to work putting the new power supply in because he wanted his computer back.  This whole power supply crap is what kept me from uploading Lily’s Monday picture.

The other drama that I’ve been dealing with is a whole lot stinkier and energy draining.  Oh funny I just went and got a piece of angel food cake and when I got back reread that last sentence and realized how accidentally funny I am.  The situation was energy draining but that was the only thing draining.  You see the whole time we’ve lived in this rental the kitchen sink has drained really slowly.  At first we used drain cleaner and it would fix the problem temporally.  Then I bought one of those tiny plungers and that along with the drain cleaner would work and then all of the sudden not a darn thing worked. And just in case you are wondering this wasn’t a problem because we were putting food down the drain, we are very careful to not let stuff go down especially since we don’t have a garbage disposal and the drains have always been slow. So a month or two ago it started taking about an hour for the water to drain and then one day I was nursing Lily and the dish washer was running and I hear the very distinct sound of water hitting the floor. I checked on it and sure enough the sinks were full and water was running onto the floor. I swore a blue streak at Waldo on AIM, I was so mad.

The water hitting the floor started a very long annoying DIY streak at Casa Jinxyisms. Yes we are renters but didn’t want to call our landlord because they have been weird about repairing stuff in the past and just didn’t want to deal with it. My Dad suggested a shop vac so Lily and I went to Home Depot and bought one, it worked great to empty the water out of the sink but it did nothing for the clog. We bought a cheap pipe snake, it did nothing. My Mom said that you can rent stuff like a snake so I found a place in town and rented a pretty hefty one and can you take a wild guess at what happened? Not a darn thing, well Waldo did pull some white flakes out of the pipes. Oh and during the whole snaking fun Waldo also took a lot of pipes apart and really stinky water went all over the basement and him. I felt so bad for him. This DIY plumbing adventure took over a week and during it my cousin Melissa and my Dad kept telling me to call our landlord but we just didn’t want to. Oh and after Waldo got done with in the basement with the hefty snake he burst into the living room stating that he was going to the hardware store to get some really scary acid that is labeled for professional plumbers. When he got home he poured it down the drain and I went and got in the shower, when I got out I inquired about it’s effectiveness and was totally shocked when he told me that the water isn’t draining at all. I mean this stuff is sold with a protective plastic bag around it and when you pour it down the drain you have to put a pot over the drain in case water volcanos out of the drain or something like that.

At this point I gave in and called our landlord the next day. Mr. Landlord came over the next evening and had a bottle under his arm of the same scary acid and when I told him we already tried it he was shocked. I told him everything we had done and he left because he knew he didn’t have what he needed and wasn’t going to be able to come back till after the weekend (it was Friday by then). We weren’t happy with the fact that he wasn’t coming back till Monday or Tuesday but we had called the real plumber (yes that’s right we were going to pay out of pocket to have a plumber come, that was where I drew the line) and knew that Monday afternoon was the soonest we could get a appointment. So we ate more fast food and waited. Tuesday afternoon Mr. Landlord showed back up and worked and toiled in the basement cutting pipes apart and making the whole house stink. In the end he had to replace about 12 feet of pipe because the guy he had hired to paint the house before we moved in had cleaned his paint brushes in the kitchen sink night after night and the pipes were full of dried white paint. Waldo looked at one of the pipes and was amazed that we ever had water drain at all, he said there was about this (hold your index finger and thumb very close together) much room under the paint for drainage.

After Mr. Landlord left I cooked my little heart out I was so happy to have a usable kitchen again.

The moral of the story is DIY plumbing sucks.

We went to our office Christmas party on Friday night and had a great time. It was at a nice local restaurant and just about everyone we work with was there including Lily. Who was just an angel, she only got upset once and we nursed for a few minutes but she really just wanted to look around at everyone and check everything out.

The only other woman that works for our company ended up with my name for the gift exchange and let me tell you I’m so happy that she did. She’s a scrapbooker and she took all the letters that I write Lily and the weekly pictures I put on my blog and made it into a beautiful scrapbook. I couldn’t look at it at the party because I didn’t want to cry and smear my makeup. Heck I still can’t hardly look at it without crying but I guess at home that’s acceptable. I told everyone at the party that I didn’t care what they got I got the best gift and I was showing it off to everyone.

Thank you Renda, I will cherish it forever!

After the crappy way that yesterday started I have been thinking a lot about things that make me happy. In no particular order…

• waking up being crushed between Waldo and Lily.
• see how excited Lily gets when I come in the room
• days Waldo get to come home for lunch
• being able to stay home and spend all day with Lily
• the silly little face Lily has been making all the time lately
• a nice long shower with a good face scrub
• reconnecting with an old friend (Hi Melissa)
• being able to work a little from home
• brownies
• a clean kitchen, especially since Waldo cleaned it

Thinking about all this wonderful stuff really helped turn the day around.

Our Halloween got started with a bang or a bell really, the door bell. The very nice police officer had to ring our door bell probably 20 times before he woke us up at about 3 am today. He wanted to let us know that a not so nice drunk guy had plowed into Waldo’s truck which was minding its own business parked safely in front of our house. He also wanted me to know that Waldo’s truck then crunched my Honda’s rear end. This is how all great days start right?

I got dressed and went outside with the cops while Waldo cuddled Lily and kept her calm. She wasn’t thrilled to be awake so early, I will have to remind her of this next time she decides to play in the middle of the night.

I took pictures outside in the dark rainy street and was so glad I did. Both because now I can blog about it and show you all and because I had no idea how bad it really was till I edited these pictures this morning.

By the time I got outside the drunk guy was either already taken away or in the back of a squad car because I never saw him and I don’t recognize the car as one from my neighborhood so I asked the cop if he lived around here and he said he didn’t know. He must have been going pretty fast because Waldo’s truck ended up with the front right tire on the curb and my car was like 5 feet further forward then where I parked it.

This morning we found out this wonderful human being is uninsured. We thankfully have full-coverage insurance because it’s a good thing they are financed. Waldo is on his way to pick up a rental car. We’ll find out Monday or Tuesday if they are repairable. Man I really hate this guy.

Happy Halloween everyone!!