I remember riding bikes with my brother. My brother was like, "I wanna go ride around the block." And so he was able to do it alone. He was only three years older than me. And I was probably like seven. And I wanted to do it too, but I wasn't allowed to because I'm a girl. That's lame. I'm just a girl. Oh no, in the world.  But during that time I was riding my bicycle, and for some reason -- I didn't realize it, but something had jumped in my shirt. And it was hurting, and so I started yelling, "Bee! A bee is stinging me in my shirt!" And I fell off my bike, and then I found out it was a grasshopper. So I have beef with grasshoppers. If I ever see a grasshopper, I'm telling it to leave me alone. They can jump way too high, and they can bite. And I don't like that. I don't like that at all. And also they have this thing where they can spit tobacco, which I don't even know what that is.

The phrase in a pickle means to be in a tough spot. Tell us about a time you have been in a real pickle. I was 20 years old, and I was single and pregnant. And when I told my parents, they kicked me out of the house. They put me on a bus to my brother's house. And there was a transfer from one bus to another, and I lost my transfer ticket. And I was in a pickle, and I didn't know what to do. So I started hitchhiking. Now mind you, I'm five months pregnant. I'm in the middle of nowhere in North Carolina where my brother lived. But I had to get from one end of North Carolina to the other.  There's some really gross people out there. Men who would pick me up for sex in the car to give me a ride. One man offered to buy me a hamburger if I gave him a sexual favors. I was starving, and that -- I just couldn't, I just couldn't do some of the things that these men were asking me to do just to get across the state. So I climbed over the embankment, and I came down in a town. I didn't even know the town's name. It was Charlotte, North Carolina, I found out later. But I saw this green, luscious grass, and I went over to it there was like a little hillside incline. Just a little one, and I laid down on that incline, and I fell sound asleep, middle of the day. When I woke up there was three women surrounding me, asking me if I was alright. And then a cop showed up and asked me, you know, who I was, and what I was doing there, and why I was there. And the ladies had talked to the cop and pretty soon the cop left. And the ladies said they would take me home, give me a hot meal, listen to my story, and they did. I told them my story. They asked me why I didn't abort the baby, and I'm a firm believer in choice. But for me, it wasn't the right choice. So I maintained the pregnancy as best I could, I was in a real pickle. I hadn't eaten in five days. My brother didn't know where I was, I was somewhere in…

But I do remember some incidences with the hay. One time, I was driving the tractor and the field had quite a hill on it and we were going up the hill. The wagon was almost full. It was up to the top of that back rack and my brother was up on there and I had had to stop part way up this hill and with the tractor you use the clutch. It had a brake and a clutch and, and you had to keep your foot kinda on the brake and then letting up on the clutch. And when you're on a hill like that, it's really tricky to not roll backwards and, and my brother threatened me. He says, "Don't you dare pop that clutch getting started because you're gonna knock me off the wagon." And of course then because he had said that it made me nervous and I popped the clutch and sure enough, him and a couple of bales flipped off the wagon, and he was not very happy. Let's just put it that way. He was not happy. But anyway, I never forgot that how if he hadn't said anything, I probably woulda been just fine and had started up, but because he said he thought I was probably gonna pop the clutch, that's exactly what I did and flipped him off the back.

I wanna say, was that 2006 or 2007, my husband had the -- we had the bird flu thing before. And my husband was concerned about the fact that we might have like a pandemic and we wouldn't be able to go to the grocery store and so he stockpiled some food. And he stockpiled food, things like Campbell Soup and Kraft macaroni and cheese, you know the standards. And he had stockpiled those in the basement and that was okay. We ate those because we would have eaten them anyway, I mean, you know chicken noodle soup, tomato soup, you, you go downstairs and you go "Oh, well, there's some soup in the basement. I'll go get it." You eat it. But there were some odd things that he bought that we didn't eat. And in 2014 -- no '15 we went on a cruise and my son was still living -- he had come back to live at the house for a year and he was gonna move and I said, "You know what? We're gonna be gone for three weeks and I would really appreciate it if you would just -- if you're looking at apart- -- for an apartment, if you wait till after we are gone for three weeks, and you could just house sit here and be here for three weeks and then move." And he said "Well, that's good 'cause I didn't wanna move till the first of June." And I was like, "Fine." So he stayed. But he said, "I'm going down to the basement and I'm gonna get rid of the stuff that dad insists is still good in the, in the bird flu food." And I said "Get rid of all the bird flu food. Just get rid of it." I said, "When I come back, I don't wanna know -- I want it to be empty shelves down there." And so he did, he went down there and he, he got rid of it all and hauled it up and out to the trash and got rid of it. And that was a very good thing because there were some cans down there that I kept thinking were gonna explode and every time I'd say to my husband, "We need to get rid of this food. And you need to carry it upstairs." He would always go, "It's fine."…

My mother loved picnics and she quite often would organize a picnic for a Sunday afternoon, and we would go maybe down by the river. We lived along the Grand River. It was across the field and stuff, but we lived fairly close to the Grand River on our property and, and there was woods and stuff. And my mom would say, "How about if we have a picnic today?" And so she would start fixing stuff, and we'd be thinking about what we could take on the picnic, and getting things organized. Taking them, what we need to take with us, ‘cause we would go down by the bank of the river, and we'd build a fire, and we would cook over the open fire. And we would most always cook hot dogs because that was the easiest thing to cook over an open fire without having to bring along dishes and a tripod and all that kind of stuff. But I remember so many times of going on picnics at various places along the river or, there was one very special time, I remember. It was before my father died. He died twenty eight years ago. And my sister was home from Seattle for a visit and Mom said, "Let's go on a picnic." And so, my dad was in really poor health, and he said, "I don't think I can go on a picnic." He said, "I, I can't get down to the river." And I said -- my sister and I said, "Well, we'll figure out a way to get you there." And so what we did instead of everybody walking down there, we took the pickup truck, and we loaded my dad in the truck, and we drove down and got as close as we could get to our picnic site, and then my sister and I used -- my sister was in mountain rescue in -- out in Washington, out of Seattle, she was on a mountain rescue team, and she knew how to carry people that were injured and stuff. And so, her and I made what she called a basket with our arms crossed under my dad, and we carried my dad from the truck over to the area where we were gonna have our picnic. And that's such a special memory because that was his last picnic. And I was so…

So we managed to get on the Mackinac Bridge and it’s, it's a nice bridge. I, I was really, I was so apprehensive about going on it, but my daughter wanted to go so I thought, “I'll brave it for her.” And the reason I was apprehensive is, many years ago when I took them on a road trip through California, we got on the Golden Gate Bridge. I can't remember if we got on the Oakland Bridge, we might have. But the Golden Gate Bridge was so terrifying that as soon as -- as soon as we were on it, I just wanted to get off. But you're stuck, you're committed to it. Once you get on the bridge, you have to cross over the bridge. I think what made the Golden Gate Bridge so terrifying was, it's up so high that you can see all the way down and you, you realize you're so far up in the air, and if there's some horrible mishap, you could plummet down into the ocean. It was, it was just, really frightening and probably the traffic on the Golden Gate Bridge. That probably add, added to it. Today coming up on the Mackinac Bridge, it wasn't frightening and that really surprised me that it wasn't frightening. I did steal glimpses off to each side to the lake and it looked like we're traveling over the ocean, and it's, it was such a far, far bridge, because it just kept going for several minutes. I think one of the reasons it wasn't so frightening was that it's much lower than the -- or it seems much lower than the Golden Gate Bridge. Another one is maybe that they used the steel cables instead of the steel construction ‘cause Golden Gate Bridge has a lot of steel bars. And maybe the -- I don't think it's the color of the Golden Gate Bridge versus the color of the Mackinac Bridge. The Mackinac Bridge has a lot more openness to it because of the steel cables. So you, you’re just looking into the sky and the lake. So you have that feeling of openness and nature. The Golden Gate Bridge, you see the concrete, the bases for the pillars that are holding up the bridge. Maybe it's the cragginess of the rocks on either side. The Mackinac Bridge is just straight through, you’re looking…

I feel like every guy that I've liked has kinda just rejected me. Which, it's totally fine and cool it -- for the most part it turns out to be for the best because I find out really horrible things about them. And so it's always like “Oh I've kinda dodged a bullet” but this is the first guy that, you know, it kinda hurts, it kinda stings. But on the plus side, I mean I didn't cry about it until like I was on the phone call with my mom like talking with -- like our weekly phone calls and she asked me how I was and then I just broke down into tears. So I'm kind of using this as sort of a motivational thing. It sounds like I haven't processed it. I think I was waiting for this rejection in order to make a change. I feel like it's what I needed in order to actually implement the next phases of my life, which is, I’m actually gonna do running again. I really loved running. It's one of those things where I don't like doing it in public, but I love running like a track or on the treadmill. Just something that gets my blood pumping. And, you know, I don't like doing it competitively either but it's just something that I've been wanting to do for the longest time, but really haven't found the confidence to do. So I'm kind of using this whole situation of this guy rejecting me as a way to run more. I did today. I ran for three miles. I was pacing myself, so I'm just very excited, I think, about you know, now I don't have to focus on him and whether or not “do I look good” or anything. I know I look good. I know I'm killing it. Now it's just a matter of actually implementing my life changes, which now I have time to think about ‘cause I'm not thinking about him. So I'm actually super excited to begin this new phase in life and you know, it turns out that the way that it works in my situation, ro- uh, romantic relationships always hit when I least expect them or when I'm not looking for them. So maybe this is a good opportunity.