i've been told (and so has someone else)

so i've been m.i.a. on the blogosphere for a long, long time. i have no excuse. i don't have a pressing job or active lifestyle. in fact, i do the same thing most days--shower, eat, hang out with izzy, run minor errands, cook, clean up messes. oh yeah, i watch t.v. and waste time on facebook too. don't judge. i'm admitting i am a slug.

i guess i'll give you a brief rundown of one particular life event of late.

mid-august: pack up seattle apartment. *we do not check out with landlord, because he happens to be out of town. (this foreshadowing.) return to utah from seattle summer internship

late-august: got ripped off by seattle slumlord on deposit fee. he claimed we did not clean and left the apartment "soiled beyond normal wear and tear." bunch of crock. fought on phone. then, finally agreed to send someone over to clean to get the rest of deposit back.

early-sept: slumlord pretends that bro-in-law did not call in time to go clean. stiffs us our arrangement and deposit.

mid-sept: contact BBB and slumlord's property management company. lodged complaint about slumlords cheaty-cheat face. had proof that on inspection checklist that EVERYTHING was ok, so there should not have been a $120 cleaning fee charge. got email from prop. mgr. that we would get our $ back. semi-celebration!

late-sept: received check in mail! ha slumlord! take that!

so i did get an email from said slumlord that he was in the right for charging us, but out of courtesy was gonna give us our $ back. hmmm...if he wanted to be so courteous, he shouldn't have been a jerk when we asked him what he was charging us a cleaning fee for and just given us our $ back when we asked for it initially. my guess is that he wanted to stick it to us one last time (in his own dumb way), even though i know he was told by his boss that it needed to be returned per the proof we had from his check-out inspection.

we are now $120 happier. lesson learned-we will never leave an apartment without having done a physical walk-thru inspection.

is it just mine?

so izzy is a total contrarian lately. much of what she does or says makes no sense. i don't know if it's just her processing the words and concepts or what, but it can get kind of annoying. (*note: i still love my kid. i just think she does lame stuff sometimes.)

for example, she likes to ask pete and i to do something and then gets mad that we do it. so she asks us to sing "twinkle stars" (twinkle, twinkle little star) or "baa baa sheep" a lot lately. but as soon as we do it, she gets mad and tells us to stop. maybe she is not getting mad. i don't know. but she has hit us in the face if we don't stop. it probably doesn't help that we are cracking up.

also, she asks for food that she really doesn't want. she asks me to hold something that she doesn't want me to hold. she knows she has pooped in her diaper, but if i ask her she'll say "no." she says she likes to brush her teeth, but she tries to run away when we help her. she loves dogs, but she is scared to go up to 90% of them (which is fine with me). she cried when aunt maggie or g-ma left our presence, but when they were around she was acting all coy and put off. the list just goes on and on.

i guess i am just gonna have to remember this behavior for when she becomes a teenager. goodness knows, she won't make much more sense then.

what's happening hot stuff

so we've been here a month now, and we've only got a snippet of new news to share. pete is plugging away at his internship, and he is hopefully going to take on some new projects that will bring even more networks and more experience. after all, that is what it is all about.

the ward is great. we're in the seattle first ward, which meets in the magnolia neighborhood. out of all of seattle that i have seen, it is the one that i would love to live in if pete got a job out here (that made millions). we currently live in the first hill neighborhood, which is right next to downtown and capitol hill. i walk practically everyday to things--library, park, grocery store, restaurants. i even made a friend who has a lil' girl izzy's age at the nearby park. we are going to have an accelerated friendship here, but i am excited to have a nearby playmate for the biz. i have a giant list of things for us to see while we are here, so i hope our new friends are game.

i found a gold's within walking distance that i can do yoga at, which is great. i was really afraid to not be able to do yoga the whole summer. the walking is helping me do some exercise, but not enough to stretch out my old teeny muscles. i think i might be getting a little tone from all the walking, but who knows. i haven't been measuring.

our apartment is not the best. it sort of reminds me of my old college apartment (the katy) in provo. they weren't terrible, but they were kind of old and blah. that's what it is like in these apartments. i think these here in seattle are way dirtier though. the location if fabulous though, so i can't really complain too much. it's mostly the bathroom and kitchen which everyone knows is the most important parts of a dwelling (to a woman).

i found a monkey replacement for izzy. he looks a tad different, but he looks the same to her. and she's happy. so that's all that matters.

i did break my passenger mirror on our car, which totally sucked. i drove around for over a week without it, and it was really hard to manage around some of the streets here. stupid thing cost me $200 to order, but it only cost me $10 for the repair. *note: i did not take it to the dealership. they were charging $100 for labor and such. i found a reputable and honest auto repair place in the international district, and the guys spent 10 minutes working on it and charged an awesome price. i also loved it, because all the guys that worked in that auto repair shop were asian or asian-mixes.

well...i'm sure that post was totally boring. oh well. i'll try and be more interesting the next time. maybe.

babies are banned in strollers

well, not "real" babies. that's just what we call stuffed animals or dolls in our house. we have lost not one, but two, babies in only one week of moving to seattle.

i'm not sure if there is some strange vortex that swallows these said babies, but i wish that there was so it would be an easy explanation to why they disappear. i could blame it on the hippies. or the hipsters. there are a lot of them in our neighborhood. or tell her that bad babies go to bad babyland, without hopes of returning. i have yet to be truthful to my child about where her favorite babies, ooh-oohs (monkey) and pony (my little pony, rainbow dash specifically) have gone. thankfully, pony is replaceable. i spent way too much time looking for a limited edition christmas monkey with pacifier released in 2008 made by ganz (webkinz).

here is a last look at what ooh-oohs looked like, in case there is some friend or stranger out there who reads my blog (all 2 of you) and has some crazy ganz connections.



in the meantime, i will scour the intraweb and hope that it pops up for me to blow all my guilt money on.

not so new, but oh so cute

so i recently watched "where the wild things are," and i was really into the soundtrack done by karen o. and the kids (her kids? random kids? just a name? anyone know?). the movie was okay. it was pretty depressing through most of the movie, but i still recommend everyone see it at least once. it's an interesting take on the classic book, and it's still a pretty good movie.

i'm tangenting back to music now. so i was thinking about that music and whether or not i wanted to get that soundtrack or whatever, but i only heard snippets of songs in the movie obviously. while looking at the soundtrack info for the movie on amazon, the site gave me a recommendation for this album:



i know it looks like it could be a really long name for an indie band, but it's actual recordings a teacher did of his students back in the 70s. they covered songs from the beach boys, fleetwood mac, bowie, the eagles, and so much more. it sounds soooooooo good and darling that it made me want to cry. i am totally buying a copy of it for our family, so i can sing these songs with my kids. (i don't know about you, but i've got a lot of music with inaudible words that are not that fun for izzy and i to sing in the car.) the original songs are great, don't get me wrong. but hearing kids sing songs like these is completely amazing and heartfelt to me. it's like hearing angels sing your favorite songs in heaven or something. anyway, the kids singing is accompanied by them playing instruments too, so it's a billion times better with the different arrangements that mr. ferger (the teacher) put together. this only makes me hope that whatever school we put our kids in still has a music program and that there is an innovative (rockin') teacher like mr. hans ferger.

p.s. i may or may not get the "where the wild things are" soundtrack. guess you will have to find out later.

grunge rock, coffee and microsoft

did you guess it? if you're not my facebook friend too, then you might be confused.

PETE GOT AN INTERNSHIP IN SEATTLE!!!



yes! finally! after all his hard work and "rejections"-poor guy, things finally paid off and he got an offer this past friday. i waited a little while to say anything, because he still had to call today for the particulars. it starts may 16th, so we will probably drive up a few days before that to get settled. not really sure where we will live yet, but i am excited nonetheless. we want to keep it within a budget, since his internship is commission-based (there is high potential to earn mad money, though. wish us luck on that one!). however, we do know we would like to live somewhere fun and close-ish to the city. afterall, this is our only internship and one chance to experience urban living finally (been suburbanites for so long). i want to walk to the grocery store, park and library as much as possible. i don't think that's too much to ask for in a neighborhood...

pete's brother and sister-in-law, 2 cousins and grandma all live up there too, so it will be faleschini funhouse this summer! i can't wait!

what to do if:

you spill nail polish on the carpet

1) don't use nail polish remover. it only makes it worse.

2) don't cut out the stain with scissors. you'll only leave a bald spot.

3) look it up on the internet, because someone always post something about everything. use window cleaner or vinegar-water. it takes some elbow grease, but it will come out and look normal again.