We all have tempers, and mine used to be kind of epic at times. I still get mad and very angry when I get forgotten about. My husband this year forgot my birthday and it's not like it changes and it's not like he hasn't been dealing with it for 50 years, but he didn't do anything for my birthday and I really let him have it. I was not happy. And he could have done so many different options. And I had already gotten his birthday present, and he actually had already received it that day. And he had the option of saying, "Oh, I forgot your birthday. What would you like, or what would you like to do?"  He could have done any of those things, I'm fairly flexible, but he didn't do any of them, he just pretended it didn't happen. And yeah, he's going to pay for that one for a long time. He's done it before. He's forgotten my birthday. And I think every so many years he just does it to see what will happen, but it really pisses me off. And I am not -- of all the things that I do, that, I think, is the thing that makes me the most angry. Especially made me angry this year because I had gotten him a really great birthday present. And he had already received it. His birthday's two weeks after mine, but this present came and I couldn't hide it. So, I gave it to him. So, there he is, and he has his beautiful suncatcher present that's out in the front lawn doing its thing, going around and around and it's really cool. And he hasn't done anything for me. So it's -- yeah, that's been fun. He did yesterday on Mother's Day, give me a very nice Mother's Day present. He said that was supposed to make up for it, which I'll give him some slack on that ‘cause that's -- he’s done that before too.

When I saw the word prank, I thought about how my friends in high school for, for some reason, I don't know why they do this -- they did this, but one day, they came in and they took all of my stuffed animals.  So you have to understand, like, it -- I lived in a small town. And our house was always unlocked, and my friend just lived about a block and a half away. So, you know, it wasn't a big stretch for them to say, “Oh,” you know, like, “just go over to [diarist name’s] house.” They must have known that we weren’t home but that the house would be unlocked and they went up to my bedroom and they took all my stuffed animals and took them, like, I don't know where. But the wild thing was -- is that when I got home, I saw there was like, just a stuffed animal randomly on our back steps. And I was really puzzled by this. Because I, I was like, you know, “Did our dog, like, grab a stuffed animal?” It -- that’s nothing that the dog had ever done before. Had shown no interest in my stuffed animals. But I just assumed that's what it was. And then I guess I never went upstairs for like, the rest of the day. And my -- so my friends were, like, so disappointed. They pulled off this kinda funny prank and I completely didn't get it ‘cause I didn't go up and notice.

One of the important lessons that I learned about myself, when I vacationed in Japan in March, was that I have a balance problem. I sort of knew it but was not really paying it a lot of attention because it really was not interfering with my lifestyle that much. But when I went to Japan in March, and I was walking through camellia gardens, I found myself needing to walk on hillsides because Japan is a series of islands that are volcanic and, therefore, that are slopes. And also shallow roots made it a tripping hazard to, to walk through camellia gardens that were interspersed with pine trees. Pine trees are a -- provide a natural mulch. The needles fall off the pine trees and mulch the camellias below, but then, there are shallow roots that one can trip on. And I was -- became very afraid of falling. In fact, I often asked some of the gentlemen in our tour to let me hold their arms while I was walking through the gardens because I was afraid that I was gonna fall down. There was a very kind lady in our tour who noticed that I was having a problem walking, and she told me that she had brought along an extra walking cane. And she said she didn't need it but she brought it just in case. And she said, "Would you like me to lend you my walking cane?" And I said, "Yes, ma'am. That would just be wonderful." So she lent me her walking cane, and I used it for the rest of the tour.