I love reading books. And the first time I ever went -- first time my mom ever took me to the library when I was a kid, I was probably, I don't know, eight, nine, ten, maybe. And the librarian asked me what kind of books I enjoyed, and I said horse books. And she took me to a shelf that had nothing but horse books on it. And I am pretty sure I read every single one of those horse books that were in that library. The first day, I took out four and read them all, you know in the two weeks that I could have them. And then went back and probably got four more, I don't know. But anyway, one of the, one of the series of horse books that I really, really liked when I was a kid were the Black Stallion books. And they were just amazing. I loved them all and got most of them from the library. But there was one year for Christmas -- my grandma lived in Florida, and Walter Farley who wrote the Black Stallion series also lived in Florida. And she bought a copy of his latest book and I, I can't remember right off hand which one it was. She bought a copy, a hard, a hardcover copy of his book and she had him autograph it for me. And I still have it here somewhere. And, oh! It was a prized possession, let me tell you. I was thrilled.

I proposed to my then-boyfriend on the dock. I think it was yesterday or was, has it already been two days? It's already been two days. So, two days ago, I proposed in the afternoon. It was like one of our best days. It was so hot, but once the start -- sun started setting, I told him I had a surprise out for him by the water. And I had written him a little poem, and I read it out loud. And then, of course, he said, yes. And then we both jumped into the water. And we thought the water would be really chilly 'cause it's been like below, below 55 degrees Fahrenheit in the water, but when we jumped in, it was so nice and so refreshing. And I, like, video taped the whole thing. Well, it was a time-lapse, but it was kind of funny. We're like, just running around in the video. And yeah. Then I made blueberry scones to celebrate the occasion. I told my mom and posted it to my socials 'cause I don't have any cell service over here, so, but oddly enough we have Wi-Fi. So I was using my Wi-Fi and letting all my friends know, and we were just getting so many congrats, congratulations and stuff. So, yeah, now we're engaged! It doesn't feel any different, obviously, and I wrote this in my poem, too, to him that, you know, nothing changes. It's pretty much just like, the name or the label that we’re putting it on to let other people know how serious our relationship is. 'Cause like, that's just how I felt. It's just so weird to be with someone that, you know, you're going to choose for the rest of your life and then but still call them like your boyfriend, you know, like when talking to other people or people who don't know you that well, and so it's nice to be able to say fiancé now to those people. Because it's just like -- it holds a different connotation to it, like it's more of a, a deeper commitment.  ‘Cause you never know, like, how long people have been together for, and if they say, “oh, this my boyfriend" or “this my girlfriend,” or even “partner.” Partner is even more ambiguous, I feel. So, just having that label of, like, with that whole --…

I just completed my last day of work and I am fully retired now. So I just wanted to answer the question about ending a chapter in your life, and, and, and all of those things that go with that. So, definitely ended a chapter in my life. Yesterday was my last day and it was a pretty emotional day. There was several things that happened during the week that were -- that added to that.  It was quite interesting because I was -- because I have 32 years of experience as a para in the school system and I've known a lot of people and I've done a lot of different roles. A lot of people just think I work with these high special needs kids, but I've done many, many things over the years and I've been in many teachers’ classrooms. With my students, I did captioning for hearing impaired students for a long time. I worked in emotionally impaired classrooms. There were lots and lots of things that I did.  So, um, I was invited to the staff meeting which normally I wouldn't attend but because they wanted to honor us and there were seven of us, so our principal had asked for a memorable moment, which was really kind of hard to come up with one moment out of 32 years that I really wanted to talk about. I wanted someone else to share. So, but she -- when it was my turn to go up, and she clearly had no idea what I did. It – she’d really never been in my classroom. We had never really had a conversation. She knew my name and that was about it. So, it was very interesting as she went and told these -- this roomful of people where two thirds of the people knew me way better than she did, telling them what I did and telling them about me. And it was, it was, it was pretty uncomfortable. And I just wanted it to go quick, and it went quick, and she mispronounced my name when she called me up to begin the -- So, but the funny thing was that -- and the rewarding thing was that night, a friend of mine who's an English teacher invited me to go out to a brew pub, our local brew pub, and -- after school and have…

I gotta go down on Monday and visit my friend [Name]. [Name] is a native of Moscow. And the story on [Name] is that his parents, his father was an engineering professor and his mother was an economics professor at a university in Moscow. And as a young boy, they thought that he should learn how to speak English. So he had taken English classes. And when he went through school, and he finished getting his doctorate degree in engineering, he wanted to go to an English -- to get a job in an English-speaking country. And somewhere, he found a directory and he wrote letters to everybody in that directory in, I think, Australia, New Zealand, England, and the United States, of course. And I received one of those letters. And I was involved in selling my product all over the world and the Russian market looked like it was just going to be -- start becoming available to the world. And so, I wrote him and answered his letter and said, "Hey, if you ever come to the United States, I sure would be interested in talking to you." And I got a letter back from him saying, well, he wasn't -- wouldn't be able to come to the United States unless he had an invitation. And, you know, that he would need an invitation from me to be able to come to the United States. So I wrote back to him and said, "Well, I'm gonna be at a trade show in Warsaw, Poland. And if you could come over to Warsaw, Poland, we could maybe work something out." So, I went to the trade show in Warsaw and [Name] came over there to visit me. And we made a deal that I was going to pick up his cost of coming to -- he was gonna meet me in Paris, at a trade show in Paris. And then after the Paris show, he could accompany me to the United States, and he would attend a trade show in the United States and he would be living with me at my home. And after, he'd have a six months tourist visa, in effect an invitation to visit the trade show in Las Vegas. So that's what we did, he -- I picked up his airline ticket and came to Paris. Got him another ticket into the US…