Have I ever desperately tried to fix something only to be disappointed with the result? Um, I'm actually coming to the end of a situation like that. It was with a good friend, and essentially have reached a stage where it feels like there're some kind of irrec- irreconcilable -- is that the word? Irreconcilable differences, which is a huge bummer. I don't personally feel like it needed to be that way, but the person that I was having a conflict with is really avoidant and just is not willing to talk about anything, is not willing to take any responsibility, even if I am. And so, it was really hard. And I kept wanting to keep trying to solve it, but you obviously reach a stage where you're just either talking in circles or screaming into the void, or whatever. Like, it was not a two-sided effort. And so, you know, I had to call it -- or, we had to call it, I guess. But, yeah, just -- I don't know, friend breakups are brutal. And I can't say that I've gone through it often, maybe only one other time in my life, but it's just painful, man. And this particular one, like I said, it just started with what could’ve been a relatively small issue, and then, uh, magnified because it was not talked about. I -- that's kinda my interpretation. So yeah, it just really stinks.

Growing up in our house, we had a plate that was, like, for serving deviled eggs. So it had indentations in it, so if you had a deviled egg, you know, you -- in -- on the plate, it would be kind of nestled in. And it held, I don't know, probably 12 or however many indentations there were. And then in the center was a place for two matching salt and pepper shakers. And the salt and pepper shakers each looked like a deviled egg, and so if you nestled them against each other, like, flat side to flat side, they sat very nicely. And I took it when my -- after my mom died, I took it home with me. And I don't know, I don't know necessarily why. I mean, I always liked deviled eggs and I Iiked the plate, and I knew I wouldn't use it often, but when I did I would, you know, think of home.  Unfortunately, one of my cats knocked it off the counter and it broke in a whole bunch of pieces. And I wasn't willing to just sweep it into the trash. I got some glue and started to -- I tried to fix it. The problem is, is the kind of, um, material that it is -- I don't know. I hesitate to use the word porcelain because it was kind of a -- I don't know what kind of clay or, you know, what kind of ceramics it was. But, when I would put the glue on the s- -- you know, the side of the -- you know, the raw edge of the plate, you know, to, to glue two pieces together, it would immediately soak into the broken, unglazed part. And, um, I tried a couple different kinds of glue and that problem kept occurring. You know, I would put ‘em together, and then it, it ju- -- would just break apart. So, I think in my utter frustration, I put all of the pieces into a bag and put it on top of my kitchen cupboards where there's, um -- there's a little bit of a lip at the top of my cupboard, so if you put something there, you wouldn't necessarily see it, especially with, like, the angle. You know, the cupboards are up high, so if you're looking, you just can't see what's…

This is a good story, which is why we decided to feature it even though there are some issues with the audio quality. Overall, yesterday was such an amazing experience. We sticky noted the entirety of my teacher's car. Okay, wait, I have to tell you the story now. So, I never thought that I was going to be the person to plan my senior prank, but somehow it ended up being me. I'm known to be, like, not really a jokester, not something that I would particularly do. But in my friend group chat, my one friend said, "Hey, we don't have a senior prank." And then my other friend said, "Let's sticky note someone's car." And then I'm like, "Okay, let's do our chem teacher." So we decided to sticky note our chem teacher's car. So essentially how this worked is that, once they brought up this idea, I went and got it approved with the principal, because senior pranks have to get approved by the principal. And then I went out and I bought like 3,000 sticky notes and I spread the information to our school Discord server, and just generally our Google Classroom, and eventually what turned into something that two of my friends and I were going to do turned into, like, our full class like senior prank. Like this was the senior prank, is sticky noting the chemistry teacher's car. So, on the day of it, about 50 kids came outside and we were just putting all of these sticky notes on this teacher's car. And you know what was even funnier is that he left his door open and we had actually brought balloons, so we blew up like 50 balloons and shoved them in his car. So then here was the end of the joke, of how we were going to get him outside to see the car while we were all watching, is this chemistry and -- teacher and I park right by each other every day. He always parks behind me. So he parked behind me today like always, so after I had moved my car so it was more visible, I went inside and told him, "When I was cleaning out my locker, I had to move my car to try to get in my trunk, and when I backed into the spot, I hit your car. It's not…

This year, what my boyfriend and I -- and I did differently, was that since my boyfriend is part Lithuanian, we decided to do Lithuanian Easter egg dyeing. Which is very, like, I'd say prettier and it's a different technique. So you would take, instead of like the crayon wax that they usually give you in those kits, we would have melted wax. And I think this, this kind of dyeing is like more, more so for adults, maybe. And you can take a little pin needle -- usually, from what I've seen in videos, they have like a special pen where they would either dip it into the wax or they would have the pen burn the wax as it goes. But then you would make the marks on your Easter egg and you would dye it once. And then you would make more marks, dye it again. And then after however many dyes or, you know, baths you want to give it, at the very end, you heat it again, heat the egg, or melt all the wax off of the egg and you would get this, like, really beautiful intricate design. And so that was our hope. But we did not prepare that much. We went to the Dollar Store to buy the dye and that's about it. And then without knowing, ‘cause we just assumed that all the dye would just be, you know, like one color, we got this dye that was tie-dye dye. Like, where you just dunk it in the water and it does all the tie-dyeing for you, or, it was like speckled. And, you know, there were different types of -- that we were using. And so when we put in our egg into the yellow and then we brought it out and then we put it into the green, we were like, okay, the egg is gonna turn green, you know, ‘cause color theory. But what ended up happening was after like a few minutes in the, in the green bath, the egg came out purple on one side and then pink on the other side. And so we were just like, “What? That's crazy!” So, yeah. Regardless, it actually came out really nice.

I recently went on vacation and part of that vacation was going to a yarn festival. And I'm a big knitter. And I was really excited. I hadn't been to something quite like that before. It was in a different country. So I was just -- I mean, I was excited to visit the country. I was excited to see what this type of thing would be like. So when we got there, some things that I didn't expect were, um -- there's a website called Ravelry, but it's where a lot of people who knit and crochet, they can look for patterns and they can save things they'd like to do in the future. And so I have all of these patterns saved that at one point I would like to make, and it was really cool to see people walking by me in person wearing those patterns, and just see the creativity and the ways that different people combined different yarns together, different colors. And, really everyone that walked by, even if they weren't wearing something that I myself wanted to make, they were wearing something handmade. Like, 90% of the people. And that was really cool, to just be seeing hand-knits in the wild, I guess. You know, some -- I might see that every now and then around here, but it's harder to know, like, if something is handmade, um, if it's not very obviously handmade. And, um, it was just cool to, like, know because they were all there and because I've seen the patterns that they've made those. And then, there was quite a few vendors selling yarn and knitting and crochet related things. And, um, one of the things I've never really done before is different vendors will have samples, so they'll have knit up different patterns, using their yarn usually or, you know, a technique or whatever. And, um, there were all of these different samples I could try on. So that was really exciting to be able to see like, "Oh, does this size fit me? If I made it, would I want to make it bigger or smaller? What yarn did they use?" Um, obviously the vendor's hoping that you'll try it on, like the yarn, and then buy the yarn there, which I wanted to do. But because people have traveled from so far, many of them didn't have…

So when my son graduated, my husband asked his mother if she would like to come to my son's graduation, and she did not want to, and that was okay because she is mean and all that. We didn't -- we were not upset by that. But when my husband tried to show her pictures of his graduation and a, a few things that went along with his high school graduation, his prom pictures, and that kind of stuff -- and this is her youngest grandchild, the baby of all the grandchildren. He said, "Would you like to see the pictures of [Name’s] graduation?" And she -- he and I were the only ones with his mother at the time, and she looked at my husband, and she said, "You're just trying to get me to give him a gift, aren't you?" And my husband said, "Well, I really don't care if you give him a gift, it would be nice if you did, but you don't have to. But we thought you might want to see pictures of his graduation from high school. He did very well. He got some awards. We thought you might like to see some of the pictures." "No, you just want a present for him. And you're just trying to get me to write you a check with money." And she got up and walked away. And my husband said, "I think that's the last time I'm gonna do this." And I looked at my husband, and I said, "I think I'm gonna let you talk to her and deal with her, and I'm gonna go to the car, and we can go home." And he said, "Yeah, I think it's time to go home." And I went to the car -- he gave me the keys, I went to the car, and about five minutes later he came back and he said, "We're done making special trips to see her." She died about nine months later. He had visited her several times, but not -- I did not visit her again, and I came and helped them clean up her house and all the rest of that. And I did not visit her again, and I did not attend her funeral. My husband didn't want to go either, but he had to. But, uh -- ‘cause they were going to read her will…

One time I was visiting a friend in Vancouver and the thing that was blowing my mind about Vancouver is that the public buses go to the mountains. The mountains are right next to the city and the buses will take you to them. So my friend was at work during the day. I had the day to explore, so I made a plan. I took a bus to a mountain, and then actually took a ferry across to an island. And there was a mountain on this island, and the ferry was beautiful, the mountain was beautiful, but it was in the middle of winter and other people in Vancouver were not hiking up mountains in the winter. So it was only me on this trail going up this mountain. And the woods in Vancouver are different than the woods in the midwest. They just feel different. They’re -- it's partly -- it's some type of a rainforest ‘cause of how close it is to the ocean. And I don't know the types of rainforest but I knew enough to know that this, this forest felt different. And it looked really cool, but it started to slowly feel spooky as I'm going. I'm like, “These are not the woods I feel comfortable in.” And I'm looking around and I'm feeling a little more spooked as the minutes go on but I'm still going up this mountain. Like, I, I made this whole trip here. I did this whole thing. I'm going. And then some giant bird -- I don't know what kind, but some giant, all-black bird, came down through the trees and sat on a branch right above my head where I was walking and started just squawking. And I was like, “Okay, this is a lot,” but I -- you know, "Hello, bird, I'm so sorry. I, I am going as fast as I can on my way up this mountain,” so I keep going. I round the next curve, the bird flies after me, sits on a branch up ahead of me and does it again. And it's just squawking and squawking and squawking. So, I walk under the bird. I politely say, “I'm sorry,” and I keep going. I make another curve ‘cause this trail is doing switchbacks. And the bird does it again. And then I do another curve and the bird does it…