I am a fairly new mother. My child is, a year and some change, and I feel like I'm pretty constantly getting reality checks when it comes to parenting, an example, like, when I was not a parent, I could, you know, have a bad day and just like couch-rot after work or whatever and that's just not even in the cards. Like I have to be present and feed my child and even if I really wanted to just lounge around and do nothing, I can't do that. And that's just not something I really thought about, how you're like, on all the time, I like did, but I guess I couldn't appreciate it until, you know, I was experiencing it. ‘Cause like people do say, like “It's not a job you can take a break from” or whatever. But I never really knew that they do mean, like every moment of the day or like, I think the reality check too about being a parent is like, suddenly you are the adult in the room. Like something happens, and it needs to be dealt with and like I'm so used to- I'm the youngest sibling, youngest cousin, like, I was always for most of my life looking to someone else like “you'll deal with this”, and obviously I mean I haven't done that in a long time in my adult life but yeah, now it's like doubly so that oh yeah I'm a person that needs to like know what's going on, and be organized, and respond to this and, uh yeah, crazy.

Note: There is language that is excluded in the transcript but not excluded in the audio Tell us about something that your neighbors did that annoys you. Sure, when I was going to Michigan State in undergrad, this was about [year] going into [year]. I was living with a roommate in the Oaks Apartment Complex, and it was like, cutie, it was just the two of us and we would have a fruit basket because we like having lots of fruit. We were both into running and being healthy. Well, then we started getting like, fruit flies. So like, "Okay, let's not keep the fruit out anymore." We got some -- yeah. Well then they turned into house flies. And I'm like, "What the f***?" Like, the fruit basket -- or, bowl is now in the fridge and it's making our bananas hella brown super quick. Why the f*** do we have flies? So we're both getting like, kind of annoyed and she was like,  like I -- I feel like there was a conversation that was had that was like, "Are we not clean?" So we doubled down on like, wiping down all the surfaces. Lo and behold, one day I'm walking by our next-door neighbors, in the apartment, and the door is ajar, and there are boxes of pizzas, like, sitting on the counter, and flies. So I'm like, "Holy s***." This was never us being dirty, those f***ers are migrating over to our apartment, probably because they can't even stand the stench of that place. They come for the food and they're like, "Ugh, this place is rancid, I'm outie!" Anyway, he ended up getting arrested, which is crazy, I think like, twice while living there.

When a train is coming, there's the clanging of the bells. There's the red lights. There's the -- it's very noisy. It's just really noisy when the train is coming, 'cause you've got all the alarms going off. The visual alarms of the, the, the red lights, you've -- and the clanging of the bells, add the horns -- it's all noisy. And, to make it worse, you could see the train coming. It was that close. You could see the train coming, you could hear the train coming. It was that close. But this family who decided to park and block off that ingress, they had a little boy, a toddler, and a baby in a stroller. And they were just about to go across. Go walk -- not only did they park right in front of the ingress, which is in front of the train tracks. They were just about to go walk across the train tracks, to come to the station. And I had to run over there and I'm yelling at them, "No! Stay on that side. Stop! Stop!" I'm yelling at them, "Stop! Stay over there. The train's coming. Stop, stay over there!" It's like, how did they not notice all the alarms going off? The red lights, the clanging of the bells, the horn, the sound of the train. How did they not look and see that the train was coming? So, I'm yelling at them to "Stop, stop!" And then the staff hears me yelling, and he comes over and says, "Stop!" And he's yelling at them too. "Stop, don't come over, stay --" He's yelling at them to stay, stay where they are. Don't walk across the train tracks. Because these people were about to walk across the train tracks. With a train coming. They can see -- the train is that close. We can see the train coming. With a toddler and a baby stroller. It, it's just un- incredible that they were doing that. So, we, we get to -- I mean this, this family is just looking at us telling them to stop. And then the train crosses right in front of them. And it's a long train, and if they had just -- if -- you know, they were not paying attention to all the, the alarm signals that the trains have for safety. They just were not.…

I'm grateful for my son this week. I made -- I'm really into, hyper focused on needle felting. I found it in my craft class. We did a needle felting, um, ball for the laundry. And, I fell in love. So, I've been trying to see how long it would take me to make a sphere. I wanted a six-inch sphere, and I am gonna end up with the two-inch sphere. It's taking me a little longer than I imagined, but I'm getting there. I wanna make my son a Christmas gift -- but, back to why I'm grateful for my son, I made him a night sky out of needle felting, and it meant a lot to him. I knew it would. It meant a lot to me. So, I made it for him, and I filled in the night sky with all the night sky. That is important to him. And we -- I mailed it off to him. I framed it and mailed it off to him. And he responded with a poem.

Okay, so this is like an ongoing issue that I've always had, is my parents, never seem to like my friends. Like never. A lot of it is because I had a lot of queer friends, and my parents are like, very conservative, so they would just like never let them come over. Whenever I mentioned their names they would like, get freaked out. Actually my parents one time went through my phone and then like, made me promise to delete those friends’ numbers and never talk to them again. Obviously, I did not do that. I just chat with them all over Discord and it's chill. And now we still use Discord to this day. So yeah, by telling me that I can't hang out with my friends, that's just gonna make my friends not like you, it's not gonna make me stop hanging out with my friends. And the funny thing is, is that my parents were like, "It doesn't matter, they're just high school friends, they're not going to talk to you after." Well guess what? Those are the friends that still talk to me after high school, are all the ones my parents didn't like.

And of course, across the street, when we moved here, was another couple that had actually lived in the same apartments as we did while we were building the house, they lived there also. And I was pregnant and she was pregnant, and our daughters were born a week apart. They are still friends, we are all still friends. And when my husband had to have stomach surgery in the middle of the night, I called her and said, "Can you come over and stay with my kids so I can take [Name] to the hospital because he's really sick, and I don't know what else to do. I need to go to the emergency room." And she said, "Yep, I'll be there." And she just came over and she says, "I'm just wearing my pajamas," and I said, "I don't really care what you wear." And she came over and climbed in our bed and stayed with -- and the kids came and climbed in bed with her and she stayed there until we got back -- I got back like a couple hours later. It was a horrible night and I appreciated her forever. When her mother died, I kept her kids so they didn't have to be at the funeral home the entire time and all the rest of that. When her kids -- and she has grandkids and I make them toys. I -- I'm a crocheter of course, and I like to make toys for kids, so I do that and I have made her grandkids toys. I just made her grandson, who's three, a turtle, and got him a couple of books about turtles. And, um, so, I like my neighbors. I like my neighbors very, very much.

And this week I am very, very thankful for food banks, let me tell you. I went to I believe three this week and got some great stuff, some stuff that can really help us out. I went to three food banks and got some stuff that can really help us out over the next few weeks. We got some fresh fruit, some fresh vegetables, five pounds of halal beef, that was a great blessing. We got some bagged -- some, you know how you can get canned chicken, canned tuna, well this is like bagged chicken -- it's like white chicken breast but it's like vacuum sealed in bags, you know, it's kind of like the canned stuff. But we can use that to make chicken pot pies and stuff like that, chicken soup. And a lot of you know boxed goods, things like, you know, rice and beans and all that kind of good stuff, of course. And we got -- we had a couple really good licks. Actually, the one I went to out in [city], there wasn't very many people. Usually, when you go to these food banks, the ones that have the trucks, there can be a hundred, two hundred people in line, even more. One we went to last Saturday, that one easily had three hundred cars in line, like, I know people didn't get food, that broke my heart and that's a testament to how hard times are for folks right now, is just exactly how many people are at these food banks. But the one I went to in [city], I think a lot of people don't go to those ones on the far side of [city] because they just either just don't trust it or think it's a sketchy area or you know, whatever. And I'll tell you the truth, when I pulled up to get in line, I saw a skunk. I thought there was a skunk, or my gran used to call them a pole cat. Out on the, down on the side of the road where I was pulling up. And then I looked to my right and I wish I could send a picture through this because I took a picture of it. There was about twenty jugs of urine, laying like underneath some trees and bushes, just on the side of the road, and they weren't…