Finished that interview -- it felt like I was like interviewing for a six-figure, seven-figure job. Like, I don't know, it just felt insane to put me through this wringer for a fifth grade teaching position. They told me they'd let me know and days went by and they never let me know. And I was like, "Well it seems like they ghosted me. I don't know what's happening here," and my girlfriend's like, "Did you check your, your work email?" 'cause I was currently in a separate position. I was like, "No," but I specifically told them like right off the top like when they asked me I was like, "Yeah please don't -- please don't use my work email 'cause I'm currently employed." But on a whim, I checked my work email and they had in fact responded, or reached out to me through my work email and they'd actually sent me an email about fifteen minutes after I left the interview rejecting me. So I got pretty dejected about that, pretty sad, pretty broken up, and I went to the beach to cool out.  I -- there's this like private access point to Lake Michigan that I know about. I went there and I just sat on a piece of driftwood, and, you know, focused on the finer things in life. I looked out over the horizon as the sun was, you know, right in that like not quite setting position but it's getting ready to set, and just kind of pondered life and I had this moment where I was like, "You know, things aren't so bad."   And then this deer came out of the woods and began drinking from the river and -- or from the lake, excuse me. And I was like, "Yeah, I mean, like look at this right now, here I am, sun setting, on the shores of Lake Michigan and nature just coming out of the woodwork literally." And you know, setting this beautiful scene, and then the deer began like frolicking in the shallow waves and I couldn't imagine a more grounding scene laying before me. And pretty soon I was, you know, I'd kind of forgotten about the interview situation as I watched that deer play around.  But then, um, but then, the deer drowned. It -- it died in front of my eyes. It was playing in the water and then I saw the water kinda had gotten a little bit deeper…

I had said last week, I was looking forward to the Cyndi Lauper concert this week and, well, we went on Friday. And, started out good. We were all having fun. We went out to eat before and -- get a little bite to eat, you know? And, while we were at the concert, my wife passed out, like, hit the ground, unconscious. Cops and people -- security ran over. They got the medic and they tended to her pretty quickly. Then, um, they got her back to the first aid and her blood pressure would not stay up for nothing. I mean, they got -- it was 60 something over nothing. 70 something over -- you know, a top number -- the highest they could get the top number was 82. The lowest the top number was was 51. Like, it was sketchy. And they finally put some fluids in her and let us take her home. They wanted us to take her to the hospital, but my wife, you know, she's just ornery, you know, so she, she refused to go. Sometimes she is -- she refused to go.   And she came home and now she hasn't been taking her blood pressure medicine for the last couple days because she used to have high blood pressure. But here's the thing, when they put her on the blood pressure medication, this was umpteen years ago, I mean, I can't even recall how many years ago -- but she has lost over 60 pounds since then, and quit drinking, and quit drugging for the most part -- we're California sober. So, she has gotten significantly healthier and better since she was put on that high blood pressure medication. So, we've been trying to get a hold of her doctor, having a hard time, but like I said, she's just quit taking it because I think that was really dropping it down too low. So, she seems to have been doing better. She seems to be feeling better. She's back to work. Over this, over this weekend, she mowed the lawn, she trimmed the trees. So I mean, she was feeling better, praise God, you know. 

When I was 14 years old, I started taking a Latin course at [name of] High School. I was required to take two years of a foreign language in order to be on the college track. My Latin teacher required the students in our class to take every new vocabulary word that we learned that day and keep a spiral back notebook. We had to write the Latin word in the notebook -- the new Latin word -- write the definition of this word, and then find three English words derived from the Latin word. We had to write down the English word below the Latin word, define the English word, and then write a sentence correctly using the English word. I used my mother's Webster's Collegiate dictionary to do my assignment for Latin class. It was a wonderful assignment because that year, I tripled my vocabulary in the English language.

So, we went to this reunion and I don't remember it at all, I’ve just been told the story.  They were standing in a crowd of people. My sister was on my mom's side and my dad was -- had me on his side and he thought that I was with my mom. And of course, my mom thought that I was with him. And then she looked around for me and she couldn't find me. And she said, “Where's [name]?” He said, “I thought you had her.” And she said, “I thought you had her!” And so they started looking around yelling my name and they couldn't find me. I can only imagine how scary that would be to lose your two-year-old in a crowd of strangers. And then my dad spotted me. And he -- a man had me by the hand, and was walking me out toward a barn. And my dad took off running, and he ran across the field. And the man just disappeared around the corner of the barn and my dad was -- he came around the corner of that barn and he gr- -- he said “[Name]!” and he grabbed me. And he, he said to the man, “What the hell are you doing?” And the man said, “Oh, I was just taking her to see the pony.” And my dad said, “That is my daughter. And I didn't give you permission to take her.” And, um, he just, he grabbed my hand and picked me up and you know took me back to the assembly and then said, “We're leaving.” So, my parents got in the car and we drove away. And he, he said later that he should have -- First of all, he said he felt like he should have just popped the guy a good one, right in his mouth. But, um, and then he said that he called the police and reported this man. He didn't know the man's name and they just left. But they were so scared. It was such a scary experience for them so I could understand that they just weren’t thinking straight. So I heard this story growing up and was told, you know, to not talk to strangers repeatedly.

So, I did have an experience when I walked in the other day, and the -- it was children who had completed third grade. So when I, when I walked in to take my afternoon shift, um, they were talking about being servants. So like, they were trying to decide who, you know, who could be somebody else's servant and who could be their master, and, um, they were grouping up and they're like, "Well, can we have --" And they asked this one girl, who definitely takes the alpha position, and they said, "Can we have two servants?" Or, you know, so, "Can so-and-so be my servant? Can I be somebody else's servant?" And it just, um, was clearly not a good, not a good, um, situation. Not very considerate, definitely bordering on, you know, some pretty dark areas. So I, um, told them at that point, like, "We're not doing this all day. This is done, this is done at the end of the day." And I ended up talking to the administrator that, that was in our building and, and I told her about it. And I said, I said -- and she said, "Yeah, just, just shut that down." So, when we went, um -- they continued to like -- this was, this was all they talked about with each other, was like, "Who could be somebody’s servant? And who could be somebody else's servant?" And then they were making them take -- you know, telling them what to do, and they were taking, you know, taking each other's waters and like waiting on them and it was, it was kinda ugly.  But I, um -- So when I got them back to the room, I sat them down. I said, "I wanna sit down, I wanna talk to you." And I started out being very vulnerable with them 'cause I had just tried to do an art project which involved Perler beads, which is my absolute least favorite craft activity because you have to iron them and you have to get them just right. And, you know, I did -- and I told them, "This is my first time actually doing it, and you know, I didn't do the best job but, um, but I did my best, and I apologize if your -- some turned out really good and some didn't turn out quite…

When I was seven years old, we went to Pompeii, the city in Italy that was covered in ash by Mount Vesuvius where it erupted, the famous Pompeii. And it was great. I had never seen ruins before 'cause, I mean, I was seven, and how would you in Michigan? But it was really cool, and I was really a curious seven year old. But at a certain point, I realized that I had gotten interested in something and I had wandered away a little bit, and when I turned around, my parents weren't there. So, I looked for them, it was not that big a deal. I went around a corner, and I went around a second corner, and then I found my mom. She was wearing the same shirt. She was -- I thought she'd worn her hair different that day, but it's okay, 'cause I walked up behind her and said whatever it was I said. Something like, "Hey, you've gotta see the cool thing, it was really neat," and she turned around and started speaking in Italian and it was very much not my mother. Now, I don't know what she was saying, obviously, because I was seven and from Michigan. I don't know if she was concerned [that] there was a little boy speaking not-Italian with no adults around or what, but I looked at her and my eyes probably got as big as saucers, and I said something like, "Ope, sorry, wrong person, my bad!" and I ran. And went around a corner, went around a couple more corners, maybe down a street, and then found my actual mom and parents. And they never actually knew that I was gone. So I told them what had happened and they're like, "Oh well, you weren't gone very long," they were unconcerned. But for me, that's when I realized that, uh, I maybe should pay attention more to what my mom was wearing in -- on a particular day, on the day I said hello to someone who was not my mother. And that was a fun time. I remember it. It's a long time ago, but that sticks out in my mind.