medical update

so we have this problem in our apartment. invisible bugs continuously and voraciously feed on my skin. it's hard to say if they are everywhere and are eating brandon too and maybe his body just doesn't react to them like mine does, or if they are truly zeroing in on only me.

i have always had problems with bug bites though. at girls camp i got bit on the shoulder and it swelled up like a baseball. i'm not joking. i wish i had a picture of that. another time in summer we were in utah sitting out by the pool and when i got home i had nine bites on my back -- and no one else out there had any. normally i'm pretty good...they itch like crazy but i never itch them till they bleed or become infected or anything.

so for the past few months i have been ATTACKED. i have fourteen bites at this moment in various stages of itchiness, but i swear to you i have had more than 30 since oh, say, march.

one morning i woke up and one of the bites had grown a huge disgusting blister and was all swelled up.

of course i totally freaked out. (wouldn't you?) i went to the doctor who didn't tell me anything i didn't know and wrote me a prescription for anti-itch cream that i have yet to fill.

i was thinking it was something in our bed so we washed ALL of our bedding and dusted, swept and vacuumed our whole room (dang hardwood floors are hard to clean). i also stopped using this sunless tanning lotion i had been experimenting with because the bites seemed to be popping up in the areas i applied it...all on my arms, lower legs and feet.

things were better for a little while. and then they weren't. that was when seven popped up on my back. let's just say i constantly itch. and it SUCKS.

now i feel itchy. i did see some a little bug land on my foot today so i'm sure more bites will pop up. if anyone has suggestions on anti-itch cream, bug spray, how to de-bug your home, etc. i would love to hear it.

as if that's not traumatic enough for my skin, i spent a day outside at toyota HQ for analyst day and came home looking like this, thanks to a combination of the sun, my pasty cubicle-dweller skin and a bracelet i had been wearing. i'm peeling a little on my arms now.

i swear i keep feeling bugs on my legs. maybe i'm going crazy. but that's the latest update from the body of lyndsey...hope you enjoyed. :(

father's day trip to utah

last weekend we went to SLC to visit the in-laws. utah means a lot of different things to me: BYU, friends, cafe rio, provo, temple square, my grandparents, the in-laws. but i have learned that now, because i am married and i have dragged a certain in-laws' favorite son to a far-away state, utah only means in-law time.

fortunately i was able to attend my cousin's wedding at thanksgiving point.

june 15, 2007

shuree, tom & wedding party (look at little hyrum at the bottom...he is so freaking cute)

the ceremony...it was like 100 degrees...

this is my newest little cousin, olivia. i like her.

brandon, me and my cousin kaylene...inside recovering from the heat.

sad day

i don't like to waste things. there was a small chunk of margarine, still in its wrapper, in my fridge. tonight for dinner i made these fiesta panini sandwiches (which brandon hated...but that's another story) and i wanted to butter the outside of the bread, so i got out that piece of margarine to use it up before i got into the butter.

this was my first mistake. i have married into a decidedly NO-MARGARINE family. i'm not kidding. brandon abhors margarine. my MIL is so intently pro-butter that she brought her own to a fathers day brunch. she says she gags if she tastes it on anything. i have tested brandon before and made things with margarine and he can't tell the difference. but don't tell him that.

anyway, the marg was a little hard from being in the fridge. so i put it on a plate and stuck it in the microwave for 10 seconds. yes, margarine wrappers are foil.

i should have learned the whole no-metal-in-the-microwave bit when i was 12, when i tried to slightly defrost a frozen capri sun. i had never seen blue fireworks like that before.

until today.

metal + microwave = fire

my poor little plate. :(

see that black line in the middle? that is a burn, permanently etched into my great little plate. i am sad.

welcome to 1755 hauser blvd.

apartment #1

lyndsey & brandon wells.

we are pretty tame tenants. don't throw loud parties, aren't around that much, never cause trouble. i think the biggest complaint anyone could have about us is ... that we complain. only about relevant things, of course. our landlord's name is shwanna but we have never met her in person. she's like the wizard on the wizard of oz -- i've talked to her lots of times on the phone but i'm not really convinced she's an actual person. she sends the on-site manager to check things out when we have a problem.

once our bathroom sink was leaking so we had to turn the water off. no one came to check it for a week and i had to brush my teeth in the kitchen. it was like being at camp.

another time, apartment #5 flooded her bathroom (presumably with an overflowing toilet) and let it sit out all night. then it leaked through her floor, which happens to be our ceiling, and dripped into our bathroom. that was gross.

other than that, it's not too bad here. i can't wait to have decent water pressure, air conditioning and my own washer and dryer, but i'll live.

apartment #2

some woman and her young daughter, although i went in her apartment once when my mom and i came to check out the property and only saw one bed. pretty much the only interaction i've had with this woman was also that day, when i told her i was getting married and she said "oh! me too! in 2009!"

apartment #3

this is julie #1. she's young and a hippie and her boyfriend sleeps over sometimes. they also fight at night. i know this because her bedroom wall is also our bedroom wall.

apartment #4

julie #2. she's nice. middle-aged lady who lives alone and has lots of books. once she let brandon borrow an egg. that's basically all i know.

apartment #5

this is where heather lives, right above us. heather is like a cat lady with no cats. she lives alone and listens to loud music late at night. on sundays it's nice irish instrumental stuff or classical, which i like. on other nights it can be random mixes, oldies, or peter paul & mary (she especially likes "puff the magic dragon.") one night it was "philadelphia" by bruce springsteen. that night she played it six times in a row.

heather likes plants. she is the self-appointed gardener of our building and waters the plants on the balcony above our entrance until they rain water all over the walkway and make coming home with groceries a little bit of a struggle. she also likes plants in another way. brandon has seen/smelled her smoking weed in the backyard a few times.

apartment #6

never seen this person in my life. all i know is that it is a woman, because alicia told me only women live in the building when we moved in.

apartment #7

alicia is the on-site manager who has been there to show me around the apartment, watch us sign the contract, bring workmen by to fix things and takes our trash to the street. she is always talking importantly on her blue tooth and running around like she has a ton to do, but i don't think she has a real job.

apartment #8

some black girl. never really met her either. she drives a car with "certified notary" painted on the sign, which is good to know. i guess you always want to live near a certified notary...just in case.

blog up and running!

so...once upon a time i had a blog. it was designed to keep family and friends updated on my life when i was in new york city in summer 2006 for an internship. however i didn't have time to keep it accurately taken care of...as you can see by the crudely re-sized pictures and whatnot included. it's actually kind of embarassing. although i still get crazy satisfaction from looking at it because i had a lot of fun in nyc.

but i digress. that blog lasted only until my birthday...which was in july...of 2006. that was a long time ago, because it's almost my birthday again. here's my theory on blogging: i like to keep a real, hard-copy, paper journal. i also like to play on facebook. if i want to keep a journal, i write in my real journal. if i want to post pictures, i put them on facebook. therefore, if i write or post pictures on a blog, i feel like i am repeating myself. however i am going to try to remedy this and keep them all updated simultaneously.

we'll see how it goes.

until then, feel free to visit once in a while. i'll try my best to post about all the exciting (and probably not-so-exciting) activities we do.