Anything I regret not doing？Not necessarily in college, but in high school, I sort of do wish I'd been more involved. I really -- didn't -- I didn't do anything, and it was just because I was stubborn and still kind of felt like an outcast from being the kid that moved every year. And so I just kind of got into this habit of thinking like, well, won't matter in a few years. So I'm just gonna, you know, not just do what I want to do, rather than join some club and be on somebody else's time. But I do, I have joined a lot of stuff in college now, as an adult in college. So now I'm like the representative for my cohort for the American OT Association, which isn't really that big of a responsibility but, I'm in a research project, and all this other stuff, basically, I'm doing a lot of stuff and it's kind of rewarding, and I feel like I've become the popular person that I never was in grade school. And now that I'm in my grad school. Yeah, you know, we did like the superlatives kind of thing, like the yearbook Awards. Somebody made like a document, and we all nominated each other for certain ones. And I mean, I was nominated for half of them, and I was like kind of amazed. People put me as Most Organized, which they just don't know, whoever nominated me for that, which doesn't know me. I think. I am not organized at all. But what else do we have? I mean, I was -- somebody said Silent Hero, or your driftwood, which is a reference to something we did in one of our courses, but basically it's nominating somebody as your person that you go to whenever you just need some support from a friend and that was pretty, a pretty big honor. I also got nominated for Most Extra, and then Best Dress I also got nominated for, which I mean those are all huge honors to me. I'm pretty excited about all those. I thought they were pretty cool. So yeah. I would say there's a lot of like fear that goes along with being a younger kid. At least it was for me and like going into grade school, or high school, or college, or anywhere where it's almost like…

But what I want to talk about this week is how a face mask brought me close to a complete stranger. And right now, being that I'm in Minnesota, I wear my Michigan State face mask almost all the time when I'm out in public. And most people don't comment or notice, but I had to go for a diagnostic procedure this week, and the nurse that came out to get me in the lobby and was going to help me get set up, as soon as she saw me she said, "oh, Michigan State, go green!" And I'm like "oh wow! Are you a Spartan fan?" And she said "yes, I am!" And then we proceeded to talk about how she became a Spartan fan. Her father went to Michigan State and I said, “oh, you know, my husband and I went to Michigan State and met there” and she said, “yeah, my dad went there too,” and how much he loved it and they had been to visit in East Lansing a few times and had been to a football game and how they always try to go see Michigan State play Minnesota when they're here in town. And I said, "I was there during the magic years." She goes "Oh, so is my dad!" And so that magical season of 1979-80 and I said, yeah, it made me and my kids lifelong, we're lifelong Spartan fans, including my kids who have no association with Michigan state except that their father and I are both loyal fans and love MSU. She said "so are we!" The kids of her you know, her father went there but the family is all loyal MSU fans. So, that was fun.

I love books. Ever since I was a little girl, when we lived out in the country, and the bookmobile would come to our little neighborhood grocery store about a half mile down the dirt road. And it came on Saturday mornings and I would go with my mother and my sisters and I would get, I don't know, an arm full of books. That was back when I was reading short story books as a young child, but advanced as the years went by, I forget when it stopped coming but I was pretty heartbroken when the bookmobile no longer came to our little rural community, it was a kind of like a bus filled with books. It was a wonderful thing and my favorite day of the week, because then I could go and read to my heart's content. So, I've always loved books.

Am I -- envelope or envelope? And I think I vacillate between the two, which may be hard to believe, I think. But I've been making a point of trying to correct some -- would want to call it -- like speech patterns I may have, just from growing up where I did. Some of them I just roll with and I'm like, that's me. This's what I know. But I do know the word “inning” in baseball instead of “quarters” or “periods” or "halves" they have "innings", the top of the first "inning". I'm one hundred percent I was raised as an "enning" guy as though it's spelled "E-N-N" and my girlfriend brought that up to me a few years ago, and I was in denial briefly. But then I was like, yeah, I probably do that. I should probably try to change that, and so I've been actively trying to switch that up. Same goes for "Illinois", which I was -- one hundred percent and "Ellinois" type of person, like you spell -- as though the state started with an "E". I was "meracle" person, like "do you believe in miracles" and I've been trying to actively change that to "miracles", because I feel like "mir" is probably closer to what it should be, closer to the "M-I-R" sound than "mer-". "Envelope" I just haven't really decided. I think naturally an envelope, but sometimes if I can take my time, if I'm reading the word, I'll be like this time I want to say it like envelope. My girlfriend is a first grade, and she's big on spelling rules, so I asked her this question and she was firmly "envelope" cause that's what the spelling dictates. But the quick counter argument would be --and I don't know this, I didn't care enough to look it up -- but it's like how about the word "entourage" or "entree" do you pronounce that "entree" and "entourage"? I'm guessing it probably has to do with the language of origin. But yeah, I guess I'm sufficiently curious now and I’ll have to go get to the bottom of that. But yeah, I guess if I had to pick one, I'm team envelope for now, but I'm open to change.

I am going with this week's featured question. Would you rather have anchovies or pineapple on your pizza? This is both easy, but hits on a topic that's been very confusing for me. I would rather have pineapple, I'm vegetarian, so not interested in the anchovies, for obvious reasons, though I don't mind that people eat other ways. Even when I did eat meat, I didn't like anchovies. I understand, they're probably delicious for somebody, just not me. But a confusion, I don't understand at all the internet rage over -- it was like a year ago -- the pineapple on a pizza is a horrible thing. I don't know where that came from, or how that could be a concept cause I enjoy pineapple on a pizza. It becomes the sweet to the savory balance. Sweet and savory. It's like a nice addition to a pizza. And back when I did eat meat like ham and pineapple on a pizza. Oh my goodness. I remember when that was this crazy new thing when I was a kid, and we went to Pizza Hut and got ham and pineapple pizza. Oh, I'm telling you, that was like "OH WOW". And then it's delicious for the same reason that putting pineapples on a ham when you roast it is delicious. So I remember when that was novel, like, oh hey, there's that idea. You could put pineapple on your pizza with ham, and wow and it works, it does. Even as a vegetarian I'll put on, you know, savory ingredients galore and olives and stuff, and pineapple can make a really wonderful compliment to it. So I don't understand how it suddenly became gross or weird or whatever.

This week I am grateful for my students. I teach fourth and fifth grade as I've mentioned many times before and this had all the makings of a very difficult and very complicated and very frustrating, very stressful school year. And I was pretty cynical in August of 2020. I was relatively certain it was gonna be terrible for everybody. I was ready to do what we had to do to stay safe. But that didn't mean I was going to enjoy the year. I thought my kids would hate their masks. I thought my kids would hate staying in their seats longer than they used to. I thought my kids would hate not learning in groups like they used to. I thought every day it was gonna be this awful fight just to get through. But as it turns out, I was just reminded of how resilient kids can be and how awesome they can be. And surely we're all going through this collectively, which almost makes this class perhaps more special than many other classes I've taught. Most of the time I have not taught a class while going through a pandemic in my life. So it's been a struggle in many degrees, but it blows my mind every week how well my kids have handled things, and how optimistic they've been, and just what pros they've been. Sometimes I hear parents speaking for children, speaking of how they can't stand another day wearing masks, or not being able to high-five their friends. My class and I collectively agree that we can't wait for the day where we never have to wear a mask again, when we can take the plastic barriers off our desks and emphatically throw them into the trash or recycle, and when we can high five for real again. We all miss that, but on the same hand, we're not gonna sit here and just mope in the meantime until we get back to it. What almost everyone's done is just -- my kids have just gone on with life and they've adjusted to the way things are. You can still smile at kids, and you can still read smiles. We've had to change we've had to adjust, but you find this equilibrium where things are anything but normal but it feels normal. I can still give a nod to -- a nod of…

Okay, I have had a weird experience with a salesperson. And this is with a door to door salesperson and it was about -- let's see four years ago. I was living in Aztec, New Mexico in a rental house. My husband was at work, I had two small kids at the time, and a man came to the door selling vacuums, which would, y'know, like "no, thank you." Not only was he selling vacuums, but he was selling like --I think the vacuum cost thousands of dollars for a vacuum, which especially at the time we were just so broke, with my husband working as a poverty lawyer on the Navajo Reservation. We had no money and I was certainly not going to buy a thousand -- multi thousand dollar vacuum cleaner, but for some reason and I can't remember why, uh possibly because I've been bred to be very uh accommodating, I let the guy in the door so he could -- he said " couldn't I just vacuum your rug. You looks like -- if -- you just look like you could use some help vacuuming the rug, which is in hindsight a little bit offensive, but I do remember that was the -- that was the sales pitch to get in the door. "I'll just clean some surfaces. You tell me no, I leave." Well, this person -- this man, he must've been in his, I'd say, early thirties maybe. He would not leave. And he kept pushing these articles at me about how like all of my furniture and pillows and mattresses must be just like 98% bed bug and dust and mite poop and like -- so like went for the terror angle and kept vacuuming different things and just like, "oh look at all this dirt, can you even believe this filth that you've been living in?" Like, "thank you. Thank you for showing me how dirty I am. Please go. I cannot afford a thousand -- multi thousand dollar vacuum cleaner. Please go." But he wouldn't go. Finally my husband comes back and I'm hoping that he's quite a bit more direct and a lot less worried about hurting people's feelings, that he'll get the guy out of the door, and even he couldn't get the guy out of the door and it had to get to the point of the most…