in the heat of it all

canyonlands. hot. really hot. very very very hot. and not the good kind of hot-t. it was incredibly good to see my family again. i can't believe every one made it. let me start from the beginning and attempt at making this brief so it's not another marathon blog. my birthday was great. we went to a japanese grill called benihanas- a national chain where the asian chef grills everything from fried rice to your entree right in front of you. they sang a very bad rendition of happy birthday to me, which made me very nervous. i hate being sung at- but it is always worth it for the free desert. in this case it was only ice cream. i've had better birthday deserts, but at least it was something. at this point, eric lost his credit card. it has still not been found, although apparently no one has been using it. it might be lost in our apartment, but it's not that big, so there aren't that man yplaces to hide. eric still hasn't found it yet. eric gave me a nano for my birthday! it's the coolest litle gadget i've ever seen, and i am very proud of it. i put it in my purse to go grocery shopping with- which has its pros and cons. con b/c then i can't talk to the employees (but if i shop at walmart this isn't a problem since there aren't any employ ees around to help you anyway!) but a big pro of listening to your own music while shopping. eric even got it inscribed on the back: "Polly's cosmic soundtrack". that's the super human power i've always wanted- to hear the right theme song at the right time in my life. now i can! he bought a bunch of extremely cool soundtracks to go on it- including the theme from the new pride and prejudice. i am super happy about it. so, sunday we are driving around and our little 1988 honda overheats. we make it back home and park it b/c we are leaving that afternoon for canyonlands. so we can't do anything about it fora week. so i leave for vacation for a week with eric's credit card missing and a broken down car in the parking lot. but i forgot all about these things with the excitement of seeing my family. gosh, it was so good. and canyon lands truly is beautiful, however i will never recommend it in may to anyone. we were desperate for water, and were filtering our water out of scum holes. it was disgusting- shoving aside the algea and tadpoles so we didn't drink them.. ugh! and it was too hot to want to move, but we had several miles a day to hike. and we ha my 18 month nephew with us. he was great when he was in the baby carrier, but as soon as we put him down he wante to run everywhere, and ther eare cactus, and cliffs, and all sorts of awful things out there for him to get into. so it wasn't relaxing at all b/c we all had to constantly watch him. but it was the kind of hot that all you wanted to do was sit in the shade and drink wter, any kind of water, even that filtered from a super scum hole. so i was super low energy the whole time. i am very affected by my environment. maybe too much so. if i am cold it is hard for me to concentrate and i am mostly unhappy and can only think about warm things. but if ia m hot i get really lethargic and my brain slows way down and you still can't get a descent conversation out of me b/c i am so hot. that is the way i was the whole time. my mom thought iw as having a horrible time, but i was just hot! we ended up coming out a day eraly b/c we ran out of water and the water source was a 4 mile round trip away. and none of us wanted to hiek more! so we spent a day in arches nat'l park and the fischer towers (which made me want to climb b/c it's a great place for it) we got in some good conversations, but my concensus is if you want a relaxing vacation with your family in which you get good , quality time and conversations in, you need ab ase camp. likea cabin, or a beach or something. b/c as soon as we had the tents up and had eaten what little dniner we felt like eating, we all went to bed. eric and i played cards in thet ent, but we couldn't talk with any one else. so it was kinda lame that way. and then during the day we were too hot to talk. so i missed the deep conversations we usually have together. still, it was a great trip and it made me wish once again that all my family could live together somewhere. we came home with my sister and bro in alw and then adrian (my nephew) got the flu and barfed all day saturday and sunday mroning. talk about more stress. we only have carpet in our apartment so it kept getting dirty, and hwe didn't have enough rags to clean him and us and the carpet up and so every one ewas stressed out. plus, he's a cute little kid who cant' tell you what's wrong, he just can cry and look really sad. so it breaks your heart! miranda went skiing with us on saturday mornhing (yeah from hot moab to snow covered little cotton wood canyon!) but the snow was mediocre for sure and tiring skiing. she left sunday morning to visit some friends in boise, and ended up havingt to rent a car instead of borrowing ours b/c turns out the honda's head gasget was blown. and that's going to cost us 800+$ to fix. the car is only worth 1200 max. go figure. eric wants to keep a second car though, so i guess we'll have to fix it. we keep an "oh crap" fund int he bank for this sort of thing so we're not going t broke. but the 'oh crap' fund comes out of our house savings. so it still kinda hurts. then miranda calls from idaho and says she is sick too. what a bummer. she came back to slc on wednesday and i took her to the airport. so we got to hang out a little more. all in all, it was a very stressful vacation, but still good to see my family again.
the patagonia outlet had a sale yesterday, and i had some money to spend, but i coudln't believe it: i coudlnt' find anything. everything i thought i wanted i realized i already had something kinda like it, or it was too expensive or i just didn't like it. i can't believe it. i thought i would always be able to buy something ther. i am actually to ap oint where i feel i have enough clothes/gear. wow. i still love the 'less is more' concept and decided that's what i am finally livign subconsciously. i can't even buy s omething when i try! it'sw a good problem to have. i finally figured out what to do with my bday money- i bought some sunglasses, some climbing pants, and a windproof climbing shirt. and ia m very happy with the purchases. plus, i used someof my money to get eric some pants too. life is back to normal now- working, having a few days off next week. however, the apartment quest 2006 is in full effect now. we are desperately searchign for an apartment close to work and the U so we can ride oru bikes to work or ride the bus. it's stinking hard! i look on craig's list (a very efficient local to anywhere classified online thing- if you are looking for anything in your area check out craig's list- it's great) an di call a bout 10 ppl a day trying to find a place that is new, clean, and has washer/dryer hookups. i am finally coming to the concl usiong we will have to sell our old washer, and store our dryer some way. like put a sheet and plants over it or something. it's a nice dryer and i'll want it in 4 years when we buy a house so it's not worth getting rid of. anyway, it's my daily quest to find an apartment. i have found a couple so far, but now they are 100$ more expensive per month than i wanted. i am figuring though, if we really don't have to use our cars more than absolutely n ecessary we can probably afford the extra rent. $800 a month plus utilities. kinda expensive huh? more than i want to pay, but i think we can affrod it. all the ones in our price range don't have washers, are super old, and really ugly and very dirty. i can't stand dirty. it's frustrating looking for a place. i want it to be fun,but all the money and time and all the bad places i've lookied at so far have deterred me a bit.
that's the update! if you want to see pictures from the trip see eric's blog at dacus.blogspot.com. he's got some good ones!