Welcome to a brief history of my life.


Where I’ve Lived:

I don’t remember a lot about where I lived when I was really small, other than what my parents tell me. And if I were to relay some of those stories, my Mom would inevitably complain that I told them wrong. (Of course, she wouldn’t correct me right away, because she only checks the website about once every six months. But when she does – hoo boy! – big, complainy emails. Whine whine whine.) (I love you, Mom!)

The earliest story I can remember was a place up in the Avenues of Salt Lake City, that was infested with box elder bugs (the apartment, not Salt Lake City). My mom would pull me out of the crib after a nap, and the little orange bugs would be all over my pajamas. There’s a good chance that the child in this story was my older brother. Like I said, I was young at the time, and don’t really remember.

Another notable apartment was the housing at the University of Utah. I was old enough to crawl and eat, but that was about it. I started getting sick quite a bit, but the doctors couldn’t figure out why. Finally, one day my dad was moving a filing cabinet and found a small tree growing out of the carpet. It turned out that the contractor had cut a few corners here and there, resulting in low-quality carpet padding (I think I heard it was made out of horse hair, but I could totally be making that up) and a moisture problem. You put the two together, and you’ve got a great big three-room Petrie dish. Tiny poisonous mushrooms were growing out of the carpet, and I, being a little crawly baby, was eating them before they got big enough for adults to notice.

Well, to make a long story short, the building was condemned, and the U of U lawyers held secret meetings in the lower levels of parking garages (and I’m not making that up), and we moved. But it explains a lot about me, don’t you think?

Then we lived somewhere. I don’t know where.

Then we moved to Kearns, Utah, the land of split-level, cookie-cutter homes. This is the first home from which I have real memories. They are: (1) rubbing my feet on the carpet and shocking myself on the stairway handrail. (2) losing the thermometer in my toy doctor’s kit, and being really upset. (3) standing in the backyard, looking at the swing set. That’s it, as far as memories of Kearns go.

Then, on Thanksgiving Day when I was three, we moved to Sugarhouse. It was the home that I grew up in, and that my parents still live in. It’s a nice place, with a good-sized backyard. We had a big empty garden back there when I was a kid, and my Dad would make us weed it for no reason whatsoever. I’m sure he’ll email me and tell me some baloney reason, but it just ain’t so – it was a big, empty garden, with cement-hard dirt, and I would sit out there all day, wasting my best years, weeding. And I know what you’re thinking, but rest assured that no character was ever built.

And then I went on a mission, and lived in New Mexico and Arizona and Colorado. My first area was deep on the reservation, and I lived in a trailer. The place had been abandoned for ten years, and the mission office agreed to fix it up in exchange for a few years rent. It wasn’t terribly nice. There was a hole in the kitchen floor, and you could look down onto the dirt and snakes and mice and whatever else was down there. At night, you could hear mice running around in the air ducts, their tiny little clawed feet tapping against the sheet metal – and this place was ten miles from the first reported fatality of the Hantavirus. Sweet.

I lived in other places on my mission, most notably in the small town of Grants, which is where On Second Thought is based. I was there – one area – for a grand total of thirteen months, more than half of my mission. Not that I would have it any other way, of course. I love that place. You should all go visit. And if you do, eat at El Cafecito or La Ventana. You can thank me later.

I came home, and soon got married to a very pretty girl named Erin, and we moved into my Grandpa’s house. He had Alzheimer’s at the time, and we took care of him. It wasn’t long, however, before he had to move into a specialized Alzheimer’s care facility (though, occasionally, he still showed up on the front porch at 3:00am). We enjoyed the house, knowing that it would be a long stinking time before we ever got into one of our own. I pretended to take care of the garden, and grew a couple of small pumpkins and some green bell peppers about the size of marbles.

Eventually, we moved and the house was sold to some people who said they were going to restore it to it’s original splendor (it was built way back when – my Grandpa lived there his entire life, and he was born in 1911). However, that was three years ago, and the only real changes the new owners have made is to install a sprinkler system, and paint the door red.

We moved to the University Village – not only the same housing where I ate mushrooms as a kid, but the very same court. Our RA’s lived in the notorious apartment, and didn’t seem altogether pleased to learn of it’s dubious past.

I graduated from the U, and we moved to a place in Holladay. When we moved out of there (watch for the recurring theme here) we moved a bunch of storage boxes and found mushrooms growing out of the carpet! Maybe it’s just me.

And then we housesat for some friends up in scenic South Ogden, during which time I decided two things: people who complain about commuting are big babies, and I hate moving this much.

And then we moved, and I hated it, mostly because we have a piano, and we never seem to live on the ground floor of anywhere. And guess where we went? The University Village again. I just couldn't get enough of the cinderblock-style partying.

We moved to West Jordan for two and a half years, during which time I tried to light the place on fire via a deep-frying accident. The neighbors all came out and watched, and wished we'd move. So we did.

We're currently living in scenic Wymount, the married student housing at BYU. It's almost exactly half the square footage of our place in West Jordan, and it has no air conditioning. But we love it because it's cheap.

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