Note: There is language that is excluded in the transcript but not excluded in the audio.   So when we went to Spain a few years ago, two things: I hate London Heathrow. If you can avoid London Heathrow, do it. Go to like, some other country or a different, whatever you can, but like, avoid doing a layover there.   A belt broke with my boyfriend's checked bag. It was funny because like, I work with a lady. I worked with a lady from Spain, and she was like, you know, "There's so many uneven roads and you're gonna be in an Airbnb with a washer / dryer, so, just take -- just take a little like, carry on bag with clothes and do laundry." And he was like "No, no, no." You know, so he got a checked bag. And we were stupid and like the night before, someway, somehow, we took my medicine and put it in there, which was really stupid.   The belts at London Heathrow broke. And then, Europe is really good at going on strike, which is awesome. But, they -- there was some sort of like airport, some sort of like, strikes related to airports or whatever. So less people, and then the belt broke and sh**. So, he didn't get his checked bag until like, three months later. And they sent it back to Michigan. Um, but, but, but we learned 'cause like, I didn't have my anxiety medicine and if you don't have that, you are going to be so f****ed. So bad.   So I called my doctor and the receptionist lady or whatever, nurse, whatever, was like, "Hey, I don't know about Spain." But when, when she went to Italy, there were all these little market -- like, corner pharmacies. And you don't need a prescription for the most part, and it's cheaper. So she's like, trying to see if there's a corner pharmacy and see what they can do. So I went in, and I just told them the name and the dosage. And it was like six dollar -- no prescription, no appointment. And it was like six dollars for a month's supply of that medicine. Yeah.  

When you came into the building in the morning, you would sit in the bleachers in the gym until about seven minutes before the first class. Normally it was just a time where you'd catch up on homework or say hello to friends. Kind of, you chitchat a little bit as long as you weren't, you know, being disruptive. But one day, with everybody sitting in the bleachers in sections, there were some kids in one section of the gym that for some reason or another just started throwing pennies onto the floor. Which, okay, looking at it with an adult's eye, was something that shouldn't have been allowed. But things went back and forth with this group of students and one of the teachers who was on duty that day to supervise things, I remember her last name being [teacher name], Ms [teacher name] was trying to get some of these students to stop. Then things got heated. And they started yelling at Ms [teacher name]. Then there was a response, because they wouldn't stop cutting up, that everybody was to be held back when the bell would normally dismiss us to go to our locker and get out to first period class. So we were in this tense freeze for two or three minutes. Then people relented, we were released, we got to class, but the rumor mill had started. And it's not impossible that something was said that may have been offensive to one party or the other. But the rumor mill had gone through, and then all of a sudden by fifth or sixth period that day, the word had spread that there was going to be a walkout at the end of sixth period class going into seventh. And again, I'm never gonna truly know what was said that sparked it, who started it, because the main students that were involved in the original altercation, they weren't in my circle. We were a big enough school that you had circles, and different socioeconomic classes, different academic classes. Even, you know, three or four elementary schools feeding into our junior high. So being what it is, people just start milling around at the main hallway. Which, given the design of the school being mostly ‘50s construction, you just had a mass of people in one area and then the administrators trying to maintain order and remind…

So, I went to this new cafe that I've never been to before. It's like a new cafe. And it was really nice inside, and I was like, "Hey, this place is nice and cozy." And they had a list, they had a menu, you know, on the wall. And there was a list of lattes, and they all had cute little names. And I decided I wanted to get the one called the Buddha. And so I said to the barista, "I would like a small Buddha." And I saw her type it. She took a really long time. She's like typing a lot of things in, and she finally typed in my order and it popped up on the screen. And it said, "Green Buddha." And I was, like Green Buddha? I didn't say that. So I looked at the menu again and way off to the other side of the menu there was a thing that says matcha, and one of the things you could get was the Green Buddha, and it had matcha in it. And I said "No, no, sorry I didn't want the Green Buddha. I just want the regular Buddha." And then she was like, "Oh." And I was like "Yeah, I don't want -- I don't want any matcha," and she's like, "Oh." And so, then she starts typing in some more stuff, and I see it change from Green Buddha to regular Buddha. So I thought she understood what I meant. So I paid for it.  And then she hands it to me, and it's matcha! And I'm like, "I'm sorry. I, I said I didn't want matcha," and she's like, "Well, you said you wanted the Buddha." And I'm like, "Yeah, but you typed in Green Buddha, which is the matcha, and I said no, and then you changed it to the regular Buddha, and that's what I got." And I said that, and she was like, "Well, the Buddha has matcha in it." I'm like, "No, look at the menu. It's listed under lattes. It's a latte." And she's like, "Well, that's what it is." I was like, "But it doesn't say it has matcha in it! It's listed under lattes, which in my definition is espresso. Like it's made with espresso, not with matcha." And she was like, "Well, um, the Buddha has matcha in it." And I'm…

One of my new, newest students lost her brother in a car wreck on Friday night and that was really, really difficult. I have not seen my student, but his girlfriend also went to our school. He had graduated last year, but his girlfriend went there and she always sat at our, at our table with us and she was kind of a, very much a friend and ally of our, of our program, was pretty involved with a lot of the kids, knew a lot of the kids, and she had been a link previously. So this morning they gathered our students at our program to let them know, ‘cause this happened Friday evening, so we hadn't seen our students yet. And we gathered them, the two rooms full of kids and so that we could tell them about -- that their friend had lost her brother, and so that they were aware of it. And some of them might know -- and they definitely knew his girlfriend, and so that they knew that people would be sad. And when she came back to school, she would be sad. And, and just so they were able to process that a little bit.  But when they did it -- and our kids are cognitively impaired at different levels. They said that he, that he passed away. And there was some confusion with some of the kids and I -- they as- -- they were, wanted me to read the paper before they read it out loud, and I should have done it, 'cause I would have caught that. Instead of saying that he died. So they were very confused, like some people weren't really sure what that exactly meant. And people don't want to say the word ‘died.’ So, it's just kind of -- it makes us feel better to say ‘passed away,’ but little kids, and I suspect the same is true with a cognitive impairment, if you're not clear, it leaves you a little bit confused. That you use those euphemisms and in your, and in your mind, you don't really know what they mean, and it can be very confusing. It sounds like they just went somewhere. Which is, again, it's a way to make us feel better, but it's not, it's not really an accurate way of saying it and it leads to a lot of…

I went to a small Catholic middle school, and they were very strict on the dress code. Like green polos, pants if you were a guy, skirts if you were a girl. Skirt length had to be a certain distance from the floor. They would actually have the teachers measure this with a ruler in homeroom, which was so annoying. Knee-high socks. Like black shoes. But here's the thing, it’s like, girls were technically allowed to wear pants, right? Just none of them did. Like the one girl who wore pants, she was like basically one of the guys, if you know what I mean. But the boys thought that this was unfair and some of the girls were like, "Yeah, this is unfair," too. That if girls can wear pants, guys should be able to wear skirts. So I remember it was my eighth grade year, and me and this one other girl, we decided to bring a bunch of skirts to the school for the guys, because it was funny and it was like our eighth grade prank. Yeah, the teachers like did not tolerate this at all, and basically all of the boys that did it got detention. However, they didn't rat out the girls who provided them skirts. So that's really all you can ask for. 

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.