Oh, one of the things you had in there was the Batcave and that kind of is humorous. I used to have a secret hideout in my classroom, there was an actual storage room next to my classroom and I used to hide in there sometimes and people wouldn't know that it was not just a closet, and they wouldn't come in there. Was a very great place to hide and kind of a nice thing to be able to do sometimes during the day, to hide in there. And I used to keep things down there too, that were kind of, kind of funny. But I had to laugh one time because our principal came to me and he said, “I need you to hide something for me,” and I said, “Why me?” And he says, “You’ve got the room.” I said, “What do you mean?” He says, “You've got that back room,” he says, “if you put something,” he says -- there's so much stuff in there, in file cabinets and things like that. He said, “If you put one of my things that I need to hide for the summer, and you put it in a filling cabinet in a file that's mis-marked, or it's marked history maps or something like that,” he said, “no one's ever going to look in there. They're just gonna think it's your stuff that you've had because you taught for all those years.” So, I went, “Okay.”  He said “I'm trying to prevent,” he said, “I'm afraid that one of the school board members is going to go through my desk, he doesn’t like his stuff that I have on his grandson. And he said he -- I'm afraid he's going to try to take it and I need to keep it because his, his grandson's mother is going to need it so he can be registered for another school when she moves, but his grandfather is not happy and I do not want to be in part of the midst of this, so I'm going to hide the information I have in your back room.”  He said, “I'm going to put it in a file that says history maps, and I want you to give me some history maps to put over the top of it in the file so if somebody just opened it and all they would see…

Thinking about a time when you were more independent. Well, I was thinking about something that happened with my son, actually. His fourth grade teacher was bringing their class to the campus where I worked to go to a museum, and then they were going to have lunch in the Student Union. And I, my schedule was such that it was gonna allow me to -- like, I wasn't gonna meet them at the museum, but I could meet them when they came for lunch. And, um, you know, I remember I walked in and I saw there's this group of like, you know, really rambunctious fourth graders and their teacher just sat down. And he's like going around some tables, he's like, "All right, go get your lunch. When you get it, you know, come back here. You know, we'll sit and we'll have our lunch before you get back on the bus." And my first impulse was like, "I need to go up there to the counter with my son and figure out what he wants and, you know, pay for it, and, just to make the transaction as smooth as possible, you know, using my adult self and my experience with ordering," which I had -- every time we'd go into a restaurant like this, or like to a, you know, to a fast food restaurant, I would handle the ordering. I'd say like, "What do you want?" And, you know, he would tell me and I'd tell the person. Or maybe he would tell the person, but I still would be the one who would like, you know, whip out the card or the cash and get it paid for and handle everything.  Um, but I realized... I mean, I don't know what stopped me from doing that. But I, I did stop and I just let it unfold. And I watched, you know, when these kids would go up to, and I think at the time that it was like a Wendy's in the basement of the Union, and they would go up and they would, you know, go up and they'd hem and haw, you know, like, "I'll have..." and they'd really have to think about it. You know, and then maybe they would have to look at the money that they had and didn't -- you know, it was just like taking forever.…

Note: There is language that is excluded in the transcript but not excluded in the audio. You know the movie The Blair Witch Project? So, I went to the movie theaters to see that movie with my friends, and, um, when it first came out, whenever -- whatever year that was. And I did not read up about the movie at all, I was just told there's this movie that’s a horror movie, it’s supposed to be really scary. And my friend who I went with was a guy who was known for kind of being a joker. He liked to make s*** up and watch people -- watch the chaos happen, and then he would fess up later, or you would figure it out and then he would just kind of sit there and laugh like, maniacally. Well, he told me that this was a real movie, that was real like a documentary. This was found footage, and it was real. And he told me that, and -- and, so I went into the movie believing everything that I was seeing was, was real. And by the time I got out of that movie, I was so -- not only sick to my stomach because of the camera, um, the way the camera was, like how it was not shot on a regular, like a regular movie. It was, you know, hand-held like camcorder style which is -- gives me motion sickness already. But I felt sick to my stomach thinking about the people who had been killed in the woods and like how they showed the guy’s like red flannel shirt. For some reason that part really upset me, when they showed like a chunk of his shirt with like some flesh in it or something, I think, I don't know. I haven't watched it since then. So, there was something about a red flannel shirt, and it had like a chunk of his arm in it or something. And it was so upsetting to me thinking that that was that guy's arm in his flannel shirt, and like it was real. And I was just thinking like "Why, why isn't anyone, like, researching this? Why isn't anyone -- why didn't anybody get like in- go to jail for this?"  And I came out of that theater and I crumpled onto the sidewalk outside of the movie theater into a…

Another fun thing that I encountered when I was in Japan was that I got to eat eel for the first time in my life. It was delicious. I had grilled eel served to me on top of a mound of rice, and it was absolutely scrumptious. Eel, I understand, is the most expensive fish that is consumed in Japan. The price depends on whether you're eating a baby eel or an adult eel. And the price depends on whether you are talking about the wholesale price or the retail price. But, retail, it can cost between ten and twenty dollars a pound in Japan. I also ate blowfish in the same restaurant where I ate eel. Blowfish has to be prepared by a highly trained chef. Because blowfish contains a sac of poison. If you eat that sac, you're gonna die. So, the chef has to know how to remove that sac from the body of the blowfish without spilling the contents of the sac all over the fish which would make it inedible. So lic- um, restaurants that serve blowfish have to be licensed to sell it and serve it, and they have to have a chef on hand licensed to prepare the blowfish for consumption. The blowfish were also absolutely delicious. And I can understand why a Japanese person would risk his or her life in order to eat a blowfish.

Our fertility specialist basically told us we don't have any chances besides IVF. So I'm off of all of my meds, and we decided to just try to get through the holidays and maybe enjoy up and through spring before we really try to make a decision. While I don't have any like moral, like, objections to IVF or anything of that nature, it sounds exhausting. The prep work sounds just very difficult, emotionally and physically, and the price tag, of course, doesn't instill a lot of excitement in me because I just don't know how we would do it. And on one hand, kids are kind of like a, you only have a little bit of time, especially if you're a woman. And so like, yeah, you might have debt. You could find a way -- you might get better, better paying jobs in the future. So it might be short term. And so making a decision based off financials about expanding your family is really short-sighted. But it's still just really concerning to think about. And we'd have to go to New York, which is just quite a bit of travel and time off, and I don't know how much I want to do that right now, or just take some time to, to breathe. So that might be more of our play right now. I'm not sure. So that's been a bummer. It's really hard to go through the holidays knowing that this isn't an option for me like my friends, to just get pregnant. Um. It's, it's quite a bummer. Um. I don't want this for us. But maybe we're not supposed to, which is also a really hard pill to swallow. And do you force that with IVF? What if it never works? Like, what do you do then? How far do you go? How badly do you want it? And I don't know the answer to those questions at the moment, because I feel very emotional about it. And I really just am angry. Like, it's so unfair. And so many people I know that -- of course, the holidays, everyone has announcements, you know, and people that, "Ope, he got us again! Wasn't planning it, but I guess we'll have another!" And you're just like, you're so flippant about it and it's -- I just want one. So, just trying to like, focus on what…

Note: There is language that is excluded in the transcript but not excluded in the audio. So, the night before this [diarist's boyfriend's] hearing recently to determine whether or not the judge would possibly reduce his bond or anything like that, I was setting up a Christmas tree I got as a surprise gift, and the Northern Lights were supposed to be out a little bit. And I had kind of seen them, little hints of them, during the night before I tried setting up this tree. And I needed to take a break because the lights on the tree were just bothering me. And I went outside and I saw a shooting star, and I tend to think those are good luck and it's not -- I mean, I know it's during sort of a meteor shower right now, but the meteor shower in December isn't like super crazy compared to the Perseids. And I was only out there for maybe ten minutes because it was so cold. So, I chose to see that as good luck. I did not at all think that his bond would be changed. But I insisted on walking to the courthouse for this hearing, even though his family was in town from a different state for it, and offered to drive me. Because it's relatively close to where I live, and I walk there every week to do a video conference visit for free. And I just needed to do it. And because I have such a terrible sense of direction in buildings, other than hospitals, I went to the second floor of the building first. Which, normally, I mean, the second -- it's a two-story building that has the main courthouse in an annex. And I normally am familiar with the annex and am not familiar with how it connects to the courthouse. So I went upstairs first and then tried to cross over, but it was under construction. And I stopped and asked for directions from somebody who is, just happened to be absolutely f***ing terrible at giving directions. They were talking about wooden doors, and they were all wooden doors. It's a courthouse. Built a long time ago. And I was already somewhat late. I was getting, I was within five minutes of the hearing. And I was real confused, and so when I turned around to go back the…

Years ago for Christmas, my son said, "Oh, you have one more gift coming." And I'm like, okay, that's cool. You know, but it isn't here yet. So, then all of a sudden it did come, like sometime in January. And it was a sequined pillow with the face of Nicholas Cage on it. And I just texted him, "Why?" And he just thought it was the funniest thing ever. You know, you can take, you can take Nicholas Cage and you can turn the sequins a different way and give him a mustache or make his hair long. I mean, there's all kinds of things you can do to play around with it. So this Christmas -- so I have it, I've kept the original one and this Christmas, I opened up my last gift and it was a sequined pillow of Danny DeVito. So I have the two of them now, side by side in the arm chair that I have in the living room. But yeah, that was -- then that one came from my daughter because she found it. And they used to joke with me about, just calling me Danny DeVito. I'm not really sure why they were -- they just thought it was funny. So it is kind of an inside joke and again, you know, when people do that it's because they love you. If they did not love me, they would not make fun of me and call me Danny DeVito.

It was Christmas Day and I was cooking in the kitchen. And the kids were playing. They were three and five. And I lived in Detroit. And they were playing with their toys. But as I was cooking in the kitchen, I noticed the silence. And I was like, "Hmm, what's going on?" So I snuck into their bedroom, and they were making Christmas cards for my mother, who was coming over that night. Here I thought they were getting into things. And they were so -- doing something nice, and nothing to worry about. It was amazing. Usually, when it's all too quiet in a house with kids, anybody knows, in a house with kids when it gets too quiet, something's up. Not that day. That day, they were making Christmas cards for their Po-Po.

“Tell us about your worst driving in the snow story.” Oh, man. Okay, so I was driving home. This was like two years ago, last year maybe. And I was trying to get to church. It was the Advent Penance service. Yeah, so it was last year around Christmas. I was driving back from Lansing, and I'm driving home, and it was bad but it then got really bad the last five miles, okay, to my church. Like real -- like I have never been able to just not -- I couldn't even tell if my car was moving, because the whiteout was so whiteout. The motion of the snow, and there was -- and you couldn't -- in relation to nothingness, right? Like there was nothing. I couldn't see the snow land, I couldn't see beyond the snow. And I'm driving, and I'm like, at this point, like, it's just full-blown talking to God at this point. Because I'm just like, "Lord, like if you want -- Don't you want me to go to church?" Like, "Why are you making this harder?" Like, "Why are you making this so hard on me right now?" Like, "This is scary and this is crazy." Well. After that, after that prayer, you know, there was a brief, a brief clearing. And in front of me were people in the road, because their cars had completely fallen off the side. It wasn't just like a ditch. It's like a cliff. Okay, so their cars are vertical. Like, the engine part's up in the air, the trunk is like on the ground. You know, on this very steep hill. There's two cars like this. And the people, they had gotten out and they were standing in the road. And I'm thinking -- and I would, I would have hit them and killed them, okay? Because one, I was trying to stay on the -- and I could barely feel any kind of rumbles and I'm just trying to stay on any kind of rumble that I could barely feel through all the layers of snow. I couldn't see, again, I couldn't even tell you -- I had to look at the speedometer to see if I was even moving, because at this point, I wasn't even adding gas anymore. I wasn't really braking. I'm just kind of like, I don't really know if I'm…