Uh, grateful this week – well, I mentioned at the top, it's the eve of my 2 year anniversary contributing to Michigan Diaries Project. I feel like it's only fitting to say that I'm grateful for Michigan Diaries Project and the team. You know, helps me feel less alone. Feels like I have a place to record my thoughts for my own benefit and, you know, for this potentially linguistic research benefit and potentially historical benefits. It's – and of course, just it’s fun to me to participate in the project. You know, hopefully with the – we don't have to keep going over the COVID news. If it's here, I think we'll go over it. But, you know, fingers crossed we’re getting out of the COVID stuff. But uh, but yeah. Just really appreciate it, Michigan Diaries. I don't have a super clear idea about everything that goes on behind the scenes, but seems like a lot of work, seems like, seems like you enjoy it. And I appreciate you doing what you do.

“Am I a person who gets convinced to do dares?” No. But have I been convinced to do a dare? Yes, and it fills me with great regret to this day. It was so stupid. No one even was – no one was hurt during this dare. So yes, I have been convinced to do a dare. And the first one that came to my mind was when I was in fourth grade, maybe fifth grade, and my mom's boyfriend was in the kitchen with me and my brother and the phone rang. I was a very shy child, and I'm still afraid of the phone to this day, talking on the phone, just – I get so nervous. The phone rang. And for some reason, I have no idea why. I don't know why he said it, I don't know why I agreed to it. But my mom's boyfriend dared me to pick up the telephone and just say in a – like the meanest tone, not yelling, but like louder than normal – to just pick up the phone and say, "What?!" And I think the presumption is it was probably my mom calling home from, from work because she always did right around that time, you know, to check in or to let us know what's going on. So, I picked up the phone in the kitchen believing it was going to be my mom. And so I went through with it and picked up the phone and I go "What?!" And it was my fifth grade teacher and I have no idea why she was calling 'cause I was a good kid and teachers don't usually call home in my house. I just know that I melted with embarrassment. I handed the phone off to my mom's boyfriend. I don't even remember what became of it, but it was the worst. It might have been the last time I ever took a dare, 'cause it was just – I died of embarrassment. And in hindsight I wonder what she thought. I mean, at the time, I wondered what she walked away thinking. But now that I'm a teacher myself, she had to have gone and gossiped to her fellow co-teachers like, "I just called like my sweetest boy, and he answered the phone by just yelling “what” into my ear. He didn't even say hello." She…

Well, this was maybe more of a last week kind of thing, but about a year ago, I probably came on here talking about going to a birthday party for a friend's dad who turned a hundred. And that was significant because oh my gosh, you know, this guy was turning a hundred, that's a big deal. It also was the first time I think I really subjected myself to a gathering like that. Like to travel like I did and then to, like, be in a big room full of people. Anyway, I – Mr. [friend’s father’s name] lived for another year. So I went back for his hundred and first birthday party. And it was interesting because in, in some ways it was like a very different right now, everyone's vaccinated and nobody's masking. But my friend [friend’s name], his daughter who's, you know, my close friend, she flew from California to be there. I came in on the train from Michigan to be there, you know, other people were coming from all around and we were talking about it and you know, like, numbers are going up and [friend’s name] was like, "I really wanted to do this, but in some ways this feels like it's maybe even more dangerous than last year and like am I hosting a super spreader event?" And you know, she obviously, she wants to protect her dad, he's one hundred and one, but it ended up being a really nice celebration. And no – just about nobody masked. I obviously masked on the train all the way to well, okay, most of the way not all of the way, I think I took it off for part of the trip. But – ‘cause, you know, it's no longer required, but I just felt like I, you know, I just wanted to stay safe. Like, when you're around a whole bunch of people you don't know. Anyway, I guess I'm, I guess I'm getting off topic, but I actually think COVID-19 continues to permeate nearly everything I talk about. I mean feels like that's the, the new normal. Anyway, the party was really nice. Instead of last time instead of – they, they, like, everybody had their own plate set in front of them because I think then people were still concerned about, you know, like how much you might transmit it…

I was gonna go through my diary, my online journal that I write - I write in it every day, it helps with my anxiety. If I put things down and on paper. I was gonna go through it and, and kinda write a book about mine and my husband's love story 'cause it's all in my journal. How we started talking on the telephone. He called me and then later, I mentioned to him that I was moving and I was having a big yard sale and he offered to come help me with my yard sale. And he brought things over for him, for him to sell at the yard sale, you know, kinda making it bigger for me. I thought, you know, you can – as, as I read my journal during certain parts of the, certain parts of the year, it was about a year love story that took place. And you can see the progression in the journal, until we got married and now we're waiting for our leases to be over so that we can finally move in together as husband and wife and, and start living our lives together instead of separately. And we live our lives together now, but he goes home to his house and I stay at my apartment at the end of the day. But I thought that would be cool. A cool book to, to have, a self-published book about our love story. I don't know what I'd call it, but, I met him on Plenty of Fish, POF, about fifteen years ago. And we dated way back then for a little over a year and then he asked me to marry him. And I, I said, yes, and then I couldn't do it. I wasn't, I wasn't ready to, to be married. And so we – I broke it up, off with him. I broke up with him, broke it off with him, however you wanna say it. And then we got back together. We took baby steps, phone call, the garage sale, then he helped me move into my apartment. And we'd go out to dinner. We'd go places and do things. It just progressed. It was pretty awesome. But that's something I've been thinking about doing here as a next big project.