Grandma Jeanne

I've been meaning to write more about our living situation here in California.  We live with a lady who we call Grandma Jeanne, she isn't our Grandma, but everyone calls her Grandma, and she's of the age of a Grandma, so we call her by this name. She's a hoot!  P likes to describer her as a firecracker!  She definitely keeps me laughing.

How did we end up living with her?
Well, when we found out we were moving to California, my sister-in-law, Cris, told us that she wanted to come visit us because Grandma Jeanne had given them tickets to Disneyland as their wedding present.  Cris met Grandma Jeanne on her mission.   Well I asked Cris where Grandma Jeanne lived and when she told me I was so surprised.  Grandma Jeanne lives in the same city that P's internship is in!  What are the odds?  Well at this time P was planning on coming to Cali by himself while I stayed in UT to finish up school and my internship.  I asked Cris if she thought P could stay with Grandma Jeanne.  Cris said she'd email her.  Next thing we know, G-ma Jeanne is emailing us and telling us that yes, P can live with her, as long as he doesn't mind living with her and two elders. 

Eventually we changed our plans and I decided to come to Cali with P. Because rent here is outrageous and because we'd only be here temporarily, we wanted to live with a member of the church, if possible.  I assumed that we probably both couldn't live with G-ma Jeanne,because of the missionary situation and I didn't know if she had room for two of us, but we emailed her anyways and asked her if she knew of anyone else that we could live with.  (We also tried calling the Bishops in the area to ask them if they knew of any members that would let us live with them, but we didn't have any luck).  To our surprise, she said yes of course you can both live with me.  We were excited and relieved to have a place to live but I was a little uneasy about how the living situation would work so I decided to call her.

Here are some funny things that I remember about our phone conversation:
she said the word "freakin" which I though was hilarious because she's 81 years old!
she informed me that she calls the Elders "idiots" (hmm, interesting I thought)
she told me that the password to open her door is "open the damn door" (hmm, interesting I thought)

She also reassured me that we would have our own bathroom and room and  we could use her kitchen so we thought, what the heck, we'll save so much money living there so let's just do it.  Luckily, it has worked out really great.   And although there are downsides- we don't have a T.V., we live in a tiny bedroom, we don't have tons of privacy, I can't walk around in my robe, etc- there are also lots of benefits, number one being that we are saving money. We pay rent, but it's tons cheaper, even cheaper than what we were paying in Provo!  We feel so blessed to be here and to be in a great ward.
Here are some other random things that I never want to forget about G-ma Jeanne:

1. she calls everyone idiots, including us, the missionaries, her kids....
2. she says, "hello?" a lot.  It's the kind of "hello" as in "Hello? are you stupid?"
3. she loves to say, "what do you think I am, stupid?"
4. she loves to say, "do I care? No!"
5. she loves to do puzzles, she has a card table in her room and she works on puzzles most of the day.  I would say she's completed hundreds of puzzles in her life.  She likes to frame the puzzles and give them to her kids to put in their house.  In our room we have 5 of her puzzles on our walls :) 
6. she loves  Reeces Peanut Butter Cups
7. she LOVES to tell stories.  I've been privileged to hear some of her stories 5 times, I've heard them all at least 2 times.
8. All of her kitchen food/food storage (baking soda, oil, seasonings, canned food, etc) expired about 3 years ago.  Some of her spices are in tin boxes, she's had them for so long, they're totally vintage and I kind of want to steal them. 

Some of her stories that I don't want to forget:

1. The one about how she tried to kill her first husband.  :)
2. The one about Ed Bottom coming over to her house to give a blessing on the house after her 3rd husband died. 
3. The one about how she jumped on top of her mission companion and threatened to strangle her. Loved this one!
4. The one about her daddy being a judge, she read this story to me twice.
5. The one about her dead sister coming to her in the night.
6. "He was the town drunk" hahaha
7. The one about how she met her Vietnam son and how she used sign language in an orphanage.

She is so giving though, she'll offer you anything she has and obviously she's so nice to let us (strangers, whom she had never met) live with her.  She loves having the missionaries live with her and the missionaries who live here now (they've only been here for a couple weeks) are hilarious with her.  They love to listen to her stories, which I'm sure she loves, and they say the boldest things to her, it makes me laugh.  For instance: The power just went out and one of the missionaries yelled to her, "I think God didn't want you watching Jerry Springer"(she was in her room watching Jerry Springer before the power went out)  Her answer to the missionary, "too bad, I am still going to watch it."  The other day, her cell phone broke so she was going to go get a new one.  One of the missionaries said this to her, "G-ma Jeanne, you don't need a cell phone, you're 80 years old, who do you even have to call?" It was hilarious, she just laughed and said,  "yes I do need one!"
Anyways, I've rambled on long enough.  She's a hoot and I will definitely never forget her!  In case you want to put a face with all the randomness that I've just written, here she is