We were hanging out on Sunday. She was like, at one point. I don't know how this came up. But she was like, "What do you do about your rabbits? Like, when you travel? Like who - what do you, you know - where do you put them? Where do you take them?" And I was like, "Oh well, historically, you know, I would just give them - if I was gonna be gone for a week or so, I would just give them to my mom, you know, or my sister and just drop them off and we have a whole like secondary cage system and all that jazz." And like now I just haven't been traveling, you know, since I moved and stuff. And then I also had a kennel that I used to go to, but like I would never put them in a kennel like that anymore. It just seems like it was like super - it would stress the rabbits out a lot, and like instead if it was - if they could be either at home here, it would be the best. Or even then, I even got an Airbnb once for my rabbits because I took them quote unquote "with me", but like I couldn't take them, you know, in Lansing where I needed to go. So I set them up, I got an Airbnb in Lansing. It was super awkward because I was like asking on Airbnb like, "Can I have a day rental but not for a human? Like for a rabbit?" So I set up a cage in this person's like, you know, bedroom and then I just left them in there. But yeah, I just needed some place that was air conditioned, because I couldn't keep them in my car. Like, obviously that would be terrible and so. Anyway, it worked out really well.

The story that I'm thinking about I went into a food coma eating Hundred Grand bars when I was younger. My brother, I think he must've been doing a band fundraiser, but it was the very classic high school, middle school fundraiser with candy bars and he was selling them, but he wasn't really trying very hard. So he just had the box of candy bars at our house. But I knew well enough that I couldn't, you know, take them, steal them. So - and I obviously was not gainfully employed as a eight-year-old or whatever I was, so I was frantically trying to find money. I think they were a dollar a piece. So I just remember so clearly standing on a step ladder, and above our washer and dryer there were these bins of just odds-and-ends. The thing I used most often in those bins were Band-Aids, but they also had light bulbs and the thing that you use to suck boogers out of a baby's nose for some reason, even though there were no babies in our life - just like the odds and ends of a life, essentially. And I knew that interspersed amongst all of the debris were coins. So I was trying my hardest to find these coins that were like stuck to the bottom of these bins, covered in God knows what. I was also looking through the washer and dryer because my dad would often forget to remove his change from his pockets. The most lucrative place in my house was the windowsill looking out over our backyard. Every day, my dad would come home from work and he would empty out his pockets and he would put all of his change on the windowsill, and he never made a fuss when he came to pick up his things in the morning and his change was gone. So I could almost guarantee a candy bar every day with the windowsill money, but still I had to dig through all these bins but I remember for that, I don't know, whatever time period. A couple, a week maybe, a couple days, just eating so many Hundred Grand bars and they were the, like, extra big ones. So I think I would freeze them or refrigerate them. So it would take me longer to get through them, but I was just - I don't know. I…

Back to the salty theme. I'm German and I grew up eating potato klebas. In Norwegian they're called potato klubbs, but we always call them potato klebas. And one time, and they're very time-consuming and my aunt and my mother made them. And I'll read you the recipe: It's two cups all-purpose flour, one half teaspoon salt, one quarter teaspoon baking powder, one quarter teaspoon black pepper, four potatoes - four cups of potatoes peeled and grated, two tablespoons grated onion, eight ounces cooked ham cut into one-inch cubes, two tablespoons - er two teaspoons of salt, and one cup melted butter. You mix the flour, the salt, the baking powder, and pepper, and put it in a bowl. Place the potatoes and onions in a large bowl and stir in the flour mixture until thoroughly blended. Use floured hands to knead the potato mixture in a bowl until it takes on the quality of stiff bread dough. Add additional flour if the dough is too sticky. Pinch off tennis sized balls, a tennis-size piece of dough and shape it into a cube around a cube of ham completely covering the ham to form the ball. Repeat with remaining dough and ham cubes. Set aside any extra ham. Fill a large pot with water, add two teaspoons full of salt and any extra ham and bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Carefully slide the balls into the boiling water a few at a time. Loosen any sticking to the bottom of the pot. Simmer for 45 minutes to an hour, remove with slotted spoon and drain on a plate. Serve with hot melted butter.  Well, my aunt and my mom made it when I was about nine years old and I sat there watching them grate potatoes, grate the onions, and they made a huge amount. This was um, one recipe but they must have tripled it. So they were there for hours making potato klebas. And my mother instead of reading a half teaspoon salt, read a half cup of salt. And she poured the salt into the potato klebas. They were very salty, but they were still very good. But you added the ham, and it made it even saltier. I just remembered that after I had got done talking with you.

Note: Some language has been edited out of the transcript that has not been edited out of the audio.  My great-grandmother envisioned herself as being a wealthy woman, although she was far from it. She had lived her entire life in poverty. And because she was unable to pay taxes on her farm during the Great Depression, she lost her farm and became homeless. In her later years she ended up in a nursing home. But despite her poverty, she imagined that she was a wealthy woman. And she would use one of her salty expressions. She would say, "I'm as rich as six feet up a bull's a**." Referring to the fact that animal manure is often used as fertilizer. And when my father would hear her say this he would laugh. And he would tell my sister and me, "She's talking salty."

What am I grateful for this week? I didn't think I would get to see my boyfriend at all this weekend because he was originally scheduled to work Saturday, and I was doing a 5K in Lansing on Sunday that he didn't sign up for, but then at the last minute he ended up getting Saturday off. So we ended up doing a 10K. Um and it was like closer to where he -- where he lives which was more interesting to him, and um the 5K used to end in the ballpark, which he liked and a lot of people liked, but they stopped doing that. Anyway, so I went there Friday night and we did the race Saturday. So that was a lot of fun. We both came in second in our age groups. He was the sixth male to finish overall, and I was the third female, and we were both happy with our performance. Neither of us, like, felt great at the end. He said, he was like, "Yeah, it hurt the whole time." I'm like, "But you" -- like he went out super fast as he was trying to keep up with these really fast guys, and then I think that kind of like threw him off for the whole race because he went from just standing there to like sprinting and then he -- like he slowed down and I think that just kind of messed him up for the whole race and made him feel overtired. But his time was still like 42 minutes. I didn't feel yucky until the second half. I might have been like dehydrated or something, or I might have worked too hard too early in the week, because like I didn't know I had a race, so I was working super hard earlier in the week. The first half was okay, like the middle was not as much. I, like, was kind of alone for a lot of it, like there were people ahead of me and people behind me but not like near me at all, which I didn't really like. So I ended up slowing down a lot, but I didn't walk, which I was happy about, but by the end like I was shivering, which is weird, 'cause it was like hot outside and I had a really bad stomach ache. But I still finished in 49 something, so under…

Have I ever accidentally eaten something that I shouldn't have? Um. When I was a kid, oh my God, so when I was a kid -- so I love on like olives and pickles. So when I was a kid, I had gone to this like graduation party for a cousin, and it was kind of like a ritzier branch of the family, and they had these like giant olives and I was like, "Oh my God, like, giant olives, I've never had that before," and I was thinking it was just like regular olives, but like big. I didn't realize it was like -- like spicy or I don't know if it was like peppers stuffed inside. I don't know what, but, you know, I took a big bite, and I just had this like sour like, puckered like, maybe even like teary eyed like face. It was just like so spicy and hot, and I was like -- and, you know, one of my cousins was like sitting across from me, and I rarely ever see her. And I was just so embarrassed, and plus she was like really pretty, she's always been really pretty, and I'm just really embarrassed, and now like whenever she sees me at like -- and this is rare, like at a funeral or something like that or get together, which is like rare, like years in between. She's always like, "Careful with those olives!" and I'm like, "Oh..." And it's like, ugh, so yeah, nasty spicy olives and then a cousin who doesn't know how to let an unwanted event go.