Tell a story about a prank. This one just shot to my brain. Old one, pretty uncomfortable story. Not exactly. It's a prank on my friend in high school. His name was John. For the purposes of this recording, I will not use his real name, is John. And he was my friend in high school and I was also friends with another guy named [redacted friend's name]. And they hated each other just could not stand each other. I forget what sparked it, but something sparked it and they just thought of both of them just hated each other so much, thought the other one was useless.  And after some event, some school gathering or something, I thought we, I was in the parking lot by myself, walking, to my car walking past John's car, and he left his window open in his car, and his book of CDs was sitting on his passenger seat and, back when CDs where like the most common form of media, music. And I just was like, "Oh, I'm gonna steal these and John’s, gonna freak out and think that someone stole all of his CDs." Tthis is like a big deal, like you invested lots of money and I got this huge book with like 200 CDs, right? Well, 20 bucks, a pop. You do the math because I don't want to. So, I just took that giant book and thought it’d be funny. And waited. I took it and he, like I thought, he freaked out. And then, I told [the other friend] about the joke when he was at my house. And he was like, "Oh, that's hilarious. That's so funny. Let me take some of his CDs out of there and then when you give it back, he'll be like, 'Oh phew, it was just a prank.' But then later, he'll realize he's actually missing more CDs." I went along with that part of it and I kind of -- I definitely regret that because I don't know if John ever got those few CDs back afterwards. And I think I told John in conversation, like, after I gave him the CD book back and he's like, "Oh, like prank" and then later he's like, "Dude, there's still some missing." I was like, "oh, I bet {he} took some because he was at my house." And then I think…

I just found out over the weekend that my great uncle passed on early, early Sunday morning. He had been struggling for quite some time, several months. He hasn't been doing that great and it was sort of a blessing, but it's always really hard. He was 91 and lived in [town,] Michigan most of his life. He taught for 30 years at the high school in [town] and I read the obituary and learned several things about him that I really did not know he -- he's not a blood relation, he married my mom's dad's sister. So again, my mom's uncle by marriage. So, I didn't grow up hearing as many stories about as about him, as I did about, Aunt [name]. But he was always a very, very nice man. Super hard worker. He said he worked at the high school for 30 years, but they also owned a cattle farm. Beef cattle farm. And he was a farmer through and through just really spent his life working on the farm and when he wasn't able to do that anymore, very recently, as I said 91, and he was still, still wanting to be out on the farm and it was just really hard for him when he no longer could really do that. And they sold their herd a while back, maybe a couple of years ago they sold that and then they just, like I think they're not even out yet, I think they have to be out of their farm, it's like 100 acres, 100 acre farm. I think they have to be out in September 1st or now my my aunt has to be out September 1st. So lots of changes happening up there, and I'm hoping it should work out that I can get a couple of days off work, so Mom and I can go up and see, see the family and my aunt is the only one left in that generation on that side of the family, so my grandpa passed and his two other sisters have already passed. So she's, she's kind of the last one.

I went with my friends and I asked one of my friends to put lotion on my back because we were all doing it and like spraying each other and, this one friend, she like sprayed an ‘S’ onto my back and then she was like, “Okay, you're good.” And I believed her like cause I was not paying attention and after that entire day of swimming, the next day, I have an insane sun -- what is it called? I just like got burnt so bad on my back and when I looked in the mirror because like obviously my lower back got it worse. But it was like a perfect ‘S’ on the back and, I was horrified. My skin was peeling. There was a huge line of distinction between my lower back and like, my butt like underneath where my swimsuit would have been and that was horrible. And I had to go to work the next day and it was just like hard to even have anything on my back. And so after that, I was like scarred basically. Like, I don't get it, like who -- who just sprays it and then leaves it like that? I don't get it, I really don't. Um but that will be one of the greater mysteries of my life.

All throughout middle school and then, my senior year in high school, that's when classes started moving to like the beginning of August and of course, you know, being a kid, you're like, “What the heck, man? Like I don't want to be in school right now.” I mean, my parents -- I was in the unfortunate situation where you know fortunately both of my parents worked and made their own money and living but unfortunately that meant as a kid, my parents always put me in a summer camp. Which again, I'm neurodivergent, a lot of the times I would be in the summer camp and I would go up to the teachers and be like, “Hey,” you know, like imagine an eight year old little me walking up to a teacher and being like, “Hey, I don't feel like socializing. I don't feel like talking to these kids. Do you mind?” Um, like literally I remember one summer before middle school, I hated the program, like the summer school or not the summer school because it wasn't summer school. It was just like a summer like daycare, after school type thing but they offered like summer hours. And I just remember I hated going to that so much, to the point where I asked my teacher -- I went to my teacher first and then I went to my parents. Well, I went to my mom first, I was like, “Can I do summer school?” And of course, my mom was like, “Ah, I mean, well, we'll talk to your teacher and see about it.” Of course, you know, my teacher’s first reaction was, “Why does she want to be in summer school? She doesn't need summer school.” And my mom -- you know, very unfortunately I think for a lot of us neurotypical women -- neurodivergent women is that, a lot of us were not diagnosed as kids but you have the “Hindsight is 20-20” moment where you're looking back at it and your parents are looking back at it and you were like, “You know, you asking to go to summer school -- is weird. Like most kids do not want to be spending their summer in school and learning any more than they have to, but you do.”

Grandma, Mom's mom, had a stroke. Um let's see, it's been, I don't know, months now, months months months. And this was a stroke that was so bad that the only two choices were; let her die in peace or go to extraordinary measures financially, medically, every way you can think of it extraordinary measures. So Mom doesn't want Grandma to die. So, Mom ends up going to the extraordinary measures. I'm talking life, flights, private jets, every doctor you can think of, everything. Well, while Grandma is all over the country getting rehabilitated and ends up coming back here to Michigan and finally starts doing well.  Well anyway while she's getting rehabilitated the oldest child has decided they're going to move into her house, right? Because they're thinking Grandma's gonna kick it. Well Grandma's been getting better and better and better. Grandma got her trach tube out, Grandma's walking, Grandma's talking, Grandma's gonna come home in a couple weeks, right? And you would think, “Oh, well she's not going to be happy that her grandson has moved into her house.” The thing she's gonna be unhappiest about is the fact that grandson has thrown out all of her earthly belongings or gave them away or sold them. Grandson cleared out Grandma's house because he thought she was gonna die and now Grandma's coming home to a house that is no longer hers. And I would love to be a fly on the wall that day but I feel -- I feel terrible for Grandma in this situation. Okay? Grandma don’t seem that lovely either. But boy, do I feel sorry for her. Can you imagine being however old she is? 80 years old well say and you have built a whole life up of things that you treasure and your grandson thinks you’re kicking it. And just gives it all to Goodwill, gives it all away! I know a few different people who have a few pieces. I mean it is just insane.

I dated and lived with somebody that I thought wanted to spend the rest of their life with me. And the — virtually the entire relationship they were seeking comfort elsewhere, but I was misled. We had -- I remember it so clearly, we were at a mutual friend's wedding and he was talking about what our wedding would look like. And obviously things didn't shake out that way and he's with one of the girls he had been seeing while we were dating and when they got married, a friend forwarded me one particular photo because she knew we had talked about this.  We would collect growlers from breweries we went to, it was our thing. And when we broke up I just gave him all the growlers. I didn't want them. I wasn't the biggest beer drinker in the relationship like you can have them and he and his now wife use those as their centerpieces to hold flowers. And I thought, “That’s kind of funny.” And then I wondered how she was misled, because like, did he not tell her he collected those with his ex? I don't know. How weird, right? [laughs]

Last year, the last couple years we've had all this milkweed growing which we have treated like it is like a sacred plant because we know it's important for monarchs and we want to support monarch migration and all of that. Procreation. But what has happened is we'll see some butterflies flipping around. Flitting around, I should say. But we never actually get baby butterflies. We don't get caterpillars. And meanwhile, we have these tall, sappy, weird, falling over things. I mean, they're not that attractive. And last year, I told my husband, I said like, “I've had it. I think next year, I think we should just like pull them up as they come and just like stop worrying about these butterflies.” And he agreed with me, like, which is growth because a couple years ago when some like some weeders -- the condo association sent some people out to weed the flower beds and a couple of them pulled up the milkweed, I thought he was going to lose his mind ‘cause he was like, so worried about the butterflies. Anyway, he agreed with me that like, the butterflies are not really making the most of it and we could do that. And, um, but, we had a couple rainy days, and I wasn't spending much time outside. And, oh my gosh, milkweed grows so fast, it's unbelievable. We went from having like these tiny little shoots to having these really like robust plants and I guess because they looked so healthy, I could not bring myself to pull them out. And so now I got the exact same problem. You can't see the pretty plants that I chose to put in there ‘cause they're completely overwhelmed by the stupid milkweed. We have had monarchs. I saw one, and my husband saw two. I saw one this morning, but I swear to God, those idiots are not like laying eggs and having babies, they're just coming in and getting me all excited and taking off again. So, um, yeah, I got flower beds for my milkweed and it's driving me crazy.