Last Friday night, I had a winter pajama party and stuffed animal sleepover at the library. So the kids came in their PJs and we had all kinds of fun activities and games and crafts and snacks and stuff for them. I read them a story and, and then they got to bring a stuffed toy with them and leave it at the library. And after they left, I took a bunch of pictures of the stuffed toys all around the library, doing exciting things and kind of getting into some mischief. They went into the director's office and they went into the dropbox and were searching things on the internet at the computer, behind the desk, that's -- that kind of stuff. And I put together like a little take home sheet for them so that they could see all the pictures and a little write-up of what everybody did. So, that was kind of fun. We had a couple of kids who brought stuffed toys with the intention of leaving them and then decided that they weren't able to do that. They didn't want to leave their stuffed toy overnight -- or over the weekend, 'cause this was Friday and then they could pick them up on Monday. So we had a few families pick theirs up today and they were, they were pretty cute getting their stuffed toys back and kind of looking through the pictures and seeing what they, what they did. It was kind of fun to see the kids react to, to that. So it was a good event.

They were having a retrospective art collection for the three founders of the museum, and this had been in the works for a long time. Like, my dad, it was -- we thought it actually might happen when my dad was alive, and then my dad passed away. So, he wasn’t gonna be there to talk, they asked if I would talk about my dad's art. And I was like, "Sure, absolutely," but I was a little bit nervous about it because, you know, I was still grieving and talking about my dad's art, I knew I was going to get really -- it was going to get kind of emotional. So, it's kind of -- I was nervous about that, but I was really happy I was going back for it. And at the same time I told my sister, you know, I'll stay and I think I was gonna make a long weekend out of it, and we would try to get through as much of the house stuff as possible. And I had mentioned this to my group of girlfriends that, you know, I have this group of girlfriends, none of them live in Michigan. They're all kind of scattered around and one day, my friends said, "We're, we’re coming." [...] So, this -- you know, this was like a really big enterprise for them, and they just said, "We're doing it." And sure enough they came out, and I mean, they arranged everything, you know, flights, their own hotel, they took care of that themselves, and they, you know, they came out, and they were like, "Put us to work," and I, you know, we just, like, hand them a note pad and point them, you know, off to something that, you know, something that they could catalog obviously. Like, really -- some stuff, you know, you need to have, like, content knowledge, but, you know, there was other stuff where they -- we just needed like a record of, you know, what stuff was, and they were, like, so helpful. And they made it, like, so, like, fun, because it's like, it was really kind of dusty work, and it was kind of a grind to go through all this stuff. But, you know, many hands make light work, right? And -- God, it was like so much. It was just such a great day…

So this week, I got news unexpectedly that I had to have a surgery and it's really minor, but still not what you wanna hear. And I was feeling bad about that, just the cost, the anxiety around having the procedure. And so, I decided I'd go out and get myself a cookie at lunch to cheer myself up. And I was working from home that day, so I asked my mom, who's the primary caretaker for my child, if she wanted something, and I asked my husband if he wanted something. And he obviously knew that I was feeling a little bit stressed about the procedure. And I didn't say I was going into town to cheer myself up, but he read between the lines and he said, "Oh, you need something bigger when you go into town." And I thought he meant like a cake, so I was like, "What are you talking about?" And he's like, "You need to do, like, something else that's nice for yourself." And so he went over and grabbed money for me to get a pedicure and that was just like a really nice kind of self-care thing to do when I was feeling a little bit wired. And it -- you know, I don't think someone expressing their care for you always has to come in the form of money. In this case it did, but it was just he was thinking about me, he anticipated that I was feeling this way and wanted to make me feel a little bit better, which was really sweet.

When my youngest daughter was -- gosh, she must have been about -- well, yeah, I think she was around 2. She walked really early, so like she was already walking by this point, but I think she might have been like 18 months or, or whatever -- she was no older than two. And, um, she loved to be wrapped up like a burrito in a blanket and then we'd like, while she was standing up, we'd like wrap it all around her and then like tuck it in under her chin so she could move her feet but nothing else, you know? And then she'd like walk around like that and she just -- she loved it. And so we would do that for her all the time. Just wrap her up like a burrito and then she'd hobble, hobble through the apartment, like a burrito and then, um -- Oh, one weekend, it was Sunday. We had friends in town and they had just left that morning, thank goodness. And, um, she wanted to be wrapped up like a burrito, so we wrapped her up and she was just having a great old time, you know, tottering around like that. And then she was tottering back over to me, and she tripped, and she couldn't put her hands down, right? 'Cause they were in the burrito blanket. And she hit her head on the side table next to the couch. And the moment I heard the sound of her head hitting that table -- and it was like an IKEA cheapo table, it wasn't like, solid oak or anything like that -- but just the thunk that it made, I knew it was bad, you know? And so she's on the floor, she's crying and like I run over there, pick her up, and there's just blood gushing from like -- it looks like her eye. And it's still a bit, like, absurdly funny in a way because she's like, wrapped up in the blanket, so she can't really move or do anything, right? And so, I'm like yelling for my husband to get me a towel and he doesn't really realize what's happened, and as soon as I saw it I was like -- well, I had to clean it, I had to get rid of the blood a little bit so I could see if…

I have lots of Christmas memories. One of my very favorite was the year -- my son was probably three years old, I think. Yeah, I think he must have been about two or three years old. And I used to take my daughter to ballet lessons and we would drive by this farm service business. And they had these huge bundles of wood fence posts. And when [son] saw those big bundles of wood fence posts, he was like, "Oh my gosh, Grandpa would love a bundle of fence posts!" And I said, "Well, I don't think I can afford a bundle of fence posts for Grandpa, but let's, let's look into it." And so one time, when we were going by our -- on the way home, we stopped and I checked it out and I said, "Well, I think that we could afford three wood fence posts for Grandpa." And so we bought three wood fence posts and hid 'em away for Christmas. And [son] was so excited about those fence posts. And Christmas night, when we were at Grandma and Grandpa's to open presents, we had brought 'em down and I'd wrapped a red ribbon and a bow around these three wood fence posts. And when it came time for him to give Grandpa the fence post, him and I went out on the porch and he helped me carry 'em in. And when we came in the living room, with those three wood fence posts, [son's] face was beaming. And my father broke down and cried. It was, it was a happy, happy moment.  As you can tell by my voice, we're a family of criers when you're happy. So anyway, that was -- I would have to say, that was probably one of the best Christmas presents that anybody in our family ever got was Grandpa getting the three fence posts from a- his little grandson and the joy that it gave both of them.

Something that I thought was common knowledge was that country roads are laid out on a grid. A mile by mile grid. I thought everyone would just know this. And then I showed up to my first city I was living in and I was going on some runs with people on country roads, and they all had these GPS watches that told them how fast we were going and I did not use one. And my high school coach was old school running, so he had been really like -- taught me the tips and tricks. Like I knew how to recognize the survey markers that were half a mile apart in the middle of the road, and how to look at the county roads and measure off them and then just kind of go by feel and figure it out. And you could just guess your mileage and be pretty close and it's what people had done for decades.  But I was with -- running with people who no one had ever talked to them about that, and they had always had their watches, I think. And then somehow, everyone's watched died all on the same run and they were like, "Oh my God, how are we gonna know?" And I was like, "Well, we've run this far, and then if we like, go this way and then this way and then this way, it'll be the right number 'cause of how the miles work." And they all thought I had lost it. They were like, "There's no way. You're crazy." And I was like, "I'm not kidding! This is like -- that's just how roads work, what are you talking about?!" And then, in fact, we went my way and it was exactly the mileage we need when they like, got back home and looked it up on their maps. And to this day, they still think I am just like, the mastermind of mileage. Which I am not, but they think that.