What's the difference between a sweatshirt and a sweater? Material, obviously. And I dearly love sweatshirts. I have a whole collection of sweatshirts, and I wear a sweatshirt to work every day. Usually wear a t-shirt underneath them so that if it gets too hot in the office, I can take this sweatshirt off, but yeah. And I used to have a large supply of sweaters, also. I used to work in a very old building that had a very large bank of single pane windows that was right beside my desk. So, yeah, I would wear a sweater in, in the winter, especially. I would wear a sweater every day. And then when I discovered that I was allergic to wool, I had a lot of wool sweaters, so I'd make sure I wore a turtleneck underneath them so the wool didn't actually touch my skin, so I could still wear all these. I have since gotten rid of all the wool sweaters. I took them to be cleaned and donated them all. And I hope they're all living good lives with somebody who loves them as much as I did, ‘cause I used to have some really nice ones. I still have a few cotton sweaters. Very rarely wear any of them. Wear sweatshirts every day in the winter.

The night before my daughter's 18th birthday, so the day before her 18th birthday -- well, for actually a few weeks prior to it, my daughter had been in and out of the hospital. They had given her Benadryl and some other things and it had just made it worse and she didn't know what was wrong with her, but her roommates drug her back down to that hospital for a third time. And finally, the hospital really started to pay attention, and we got a call to rush to Kalamazoo. We live near Detroit. That [our daughter] might have meningitis. And, you know, meningitis can be deadly. So we -- our car couldn’t even make it. We took someone else's car that could make it and we drove straight there as fast as we could. And right when we got there --  it was right at midnight as my daughter was turning 18. And right as we got there, she was having a spinal tap. And then we came into the room and the doctor came back in, and he told us what was going on and my poor daughter was just -- her head was down. She couldn't look up at all. Her brain was just hurting so bad, she was just moaning, she couldn't even talk. And I said -- the doctor said, “It's meningitis. We won't know until we get cultures back if it's bacterial or if it's viral.” You know, “We've gotta quarantine her.” And this, that, and the other, and I said, “But she's gonna be okay, right?” And that doctor looked at me, and he said, “I can't tell you that right now.” And that was one of the most heartbreaking things I've ever heard in my entire life. And they went to go take my daughter up and put her in a room and me and my wife went outside. This is back when I still smoked, I went outside to smoke a cigarette. And there was a homeless gentleman out there. And he asked what we were -- he asked for a cigarette and then he asked what we were there for and we told him. And he said, “Can I pray with you right now? Can I pray for your daughter?” And we held hands and we stood there out in the freezing cold in the middle of the night, and that man prayed…

I love cute and interesting shoes which aren't always conducive to living in the Midwest, living in the Great Lakes region, especially in winter. And that has gotten to be more of an issue since I moved to the UP years ago, because the winters here are insane. And we were -- I wouldn't, I guess I wouldn't call it lucky, maybe lucky for like fashion-wise a couple years in a row recently, where we had really warm winters. Where it was easier to wear less functional and more aesthetic clothing. But this year has been a hell of a winter. And this year, I've had to go to court a few times and you -- I mean, you have to look presentable, and I have my own standards for that. And to me that means personally, I feel, I would feel so uncomfortable wearing professional-looking pants. I am a skirt girl. Just, I just am. Always will be. [...] Like I said, I walked to the courthouse in pants and boots, and then I took a bag with me with my heels, and walked to the courthouse. And then because I had the skirt over, I could reach under the skirt, undo my pants, take the pants off, and like, have -- and then be in my skirt and tights. And then I switched from boots to heels just for this court date, and -- which was a lot of sitting and a lot of waiting and a whole lot of nothing. But, I mean you, I don't know, for me personally, it doesn't, it doesn't matter. If I'm sitting in the freaking, what do you call those, pews? That's a church term, but like, whatever you call those, the benches. It doesn't matter. If I'm spending my time sitting here, it's just feels weird to show up in like anything else. So that's what I did. And I was there with my partner's mother and sister, and his sister is kind of the same with how she dresses, but she is a pants lady. She ended up doing the same thing and their mother was like, "You girls --" Like, she showed up in like, I don't know, like, you know, a nice sweater and nice pants and tennis shoes, ‘cause she, that's what she has to wear. But she was like, "I still --" She's like, "I would…

So my sister had lived in a home in a different city and then she came to get a degree at MSU. And so she was living in like a tiny apartment, and then she like lived with someone for a little while -- anyway, most importantly there was like a little liminal period where she like, didn't have a ton of room for all of her stuff. So she was like, "Well, I have this giant TV from my house." Like, "You're moving into --" It fell during the time that I was moving into an apartment in [city]. And so she was like, "Oh, this is good timing. Like just take my TV and like, just use it. And when I come down, like back down to [city] for the year or whatever, I'll take it. Or I'll use it or whatever." And I was like, "Oh, that's so nice. That's great. Thank you." And so the timing on this was crazy. So she unloaded it into my mom's garage. And it just sat there. And then we packed it super gently into the car. We brought it into the apartment super gently. And we like propped it against the wall. We just like, we didn't have a mount for it at the time, like -- and we just used like my really tiny ridiculous TV for like a month. Like, because we didn't have furniture to put this giant TV on or a mount to mount this giant TV. So we just used like my shoddy little TV, when we were still very much moving in and had like no furniture. And so then like a month into living here, we go to turn the TV on. And it's got issues. It looks as if somebody -- like, if you asked me what it looked like, it looked like somebody like punched it in one of the corners. Like it was like all like -- like when it's off it looked totally fine, totally normal. There's no external physical damage. But then you turn it on and it's like spider-webbed in one of the corners. So I don't know if like somebody pushed on the screen while we were moving it or what. I was with the TV the whole time though and I never saw anything like that occur. Maybe they're just gentler than they look.…

Note: There is language that is excluded in the transcript but not excluded in the audio.  There's not a whole lot to be grateful for, honestly. And I say that because, like, work is a sh**show. And we all know that work is a sh**show, but it's getting bad enough that people who said they would not be looking for jobs are looking for jobs. Which, you know, to some extent I was like, "Well, I kinda told you so. I told you it wasn't gonna get better." And so, you know, in that respect there is absolutely nothing to be grateful for. Like at my job, that is. And, I mean that, that's also like what's super difficult. That I cannot graduate fast enough. That I, I might be stuck here for another close to year and a half. Or, you know, if someone wants to pay me, you know, 30% more, I'm gonna be like, "Peace out. Come at me, bro." We will see. I mean it's, it's worth making a lateral move at this point. It's -- I went to a, you know, I went to a conference last Thursday. And explaining to people what is happening at my job, which is then followed by, "Please hire me. I'm good. I'm smart. I can do stuff." And then I went to a network event on Monday and it's like -- it is awful out there. There are CIOs getting laid off, who are looking for work. And, you know, my friend's husband's sister was CIO -- either CIO or CTO. And you know, she is getting ghosted on fourth, fifth rounds on interviews. It's like, if this is how bad it is for C-suite people, how are the rest of us going to survive? And, you know, I'm, I'm making friends with as many people as I can. I'm going to these networking events. I'm trying my best to not lose hope. But, it's, it's not, it's not good out there.