By the end of June I had completed my time with Dustin and Lisa. My last month with them was the most stressful. While the insurance covered the damages to their house, it would be some time before the house was livable again. They ended up renting another house down the street in the mean time and the kids got head lice AGAIN... The new house didn't have laundry machines so I ended up carting the laundry back and forth between the two houses. We sprayed and shampooed and this time we were finally rid of the lice.
By August I had sold my car and flown back to Utah. My parents lived in Payson at this time. They had bought a town home with three bedrooms and Heather had come to live with them. I took up temporary residence until I could find an apartment. I got a bike and was determine to use the bus and get an apartment in Orem, so as to be close to Nate and have plenty of opportunity to spend time with him. I began working for Express personnel, a temp service that was very useful. At the time there were a lot of businesses employing the temps and I rarely had difficulty making the money I needed for the month.
After some searching I found a shared room for rent in an apartment in Provo toward the end of August. My roommate's name was... Well, she introduced herself and everyone called her Scooby. I wondered what kind of parent would actually name their daughter Scooby. When I asked her about it she explained that her legal first name was actually Shannon but her dad had nicknamed her Scooby and it had stuck... Scooby was busy with school and work and dating and I rarely saw her.
Our apartment-mate's name was Jenn. Jenn was a real character. She was really into role playing a creating little works of art for her game all the time. She had a fantastic sense of humor and could keep me entertained for hours.
Jenn and Scooby both worked full time at a telephone survey company and for a short time I actually started working at the same place through the temp service... It was okay most of the time, until we had been working on one survey so long that if someone said hello to me while I was sleeping I would give them the entire survey from memory.
Nate and I continued dating while Nate attended some classes at UVSC (Later to be known as UVU).
For my birthday Nate said he had a special surprise. He asked my what day I wanted it and he listed a few options. I thought this was interesting and could hardly wait... I chose the day that was the soonest of the three. The night of the surprise I was all flustered. I wondered if this might be the night he would propose. I wanted to look right and couldn't seem to decide on the right thing from my closet. My roommates came home while I was still getting ready and I asked what they would wear if they thought it might be that special night... They both looked at what I was wearing and said in unison "Not that."
After finally decided on an appropriate outfit, Nate showed up at the door with flowers and pumkin pie. The flowers were bright yellow/orange ball mum bums. They were artificial because Nate had remembered I told him real flowers didn't last long enough. The pie was his favorite and Nate had remembered I wasn't a huge fan of chocolates, so he said "Why not get something we could enjoy together?"
We had a car for the evening and Nate asked me to drive while he gave me instructions so I wouldn't know where we were going until we got there. Somewhere we took a wrong turn and it took a great deal of patience not to get upset that he wouldn't at least let me look at the map. Finally he told me to pull into a parking spot and said "SURPRISE!"
I was confused. Immediately in front of the car was an empty sidewalk and the wall of a building with no visible door for some distance. I looked back at Nate questioningly. He pointing back at the wall and said "Read the sign." I looked again and realized that across the whole wall were giant letters spelling "SOUTH PACIFIC."
"OH!" I said. "oh." I thought. A few weeks earlier I had watched the movie South Pacific with Nate and he had asked if I had ever seen it in a live theater. I told him I hadn't but that would be fun sometime. So tonight was that sometime. Nate had bought tickets to see a live performance and I was horribly unexcited because I had hoped there would be a proposal. Nate seemed to notice my disappointment and asked what was wrong. I was embarrassed but I told him anyway. He was surprised and felt very sorry that the evening hadn't lived up to my expectation.
We went into the Center Street Musical Theater and enjoyed the show anyway. The actors had really great energy but it wasn't so well received as the rest of the audience as Nate and I. We clapped after every song and laughed aloud, while for some reason all the other guests sat quietly as if the performance was nothing to applaud.
I went home still happy that at least I had looked great and had a good time.
