My first shared bathroom I ever used was down in West Virginia. I was 12 years old and my parents had taken the family down there to hang out with family members. And my aunt and uncle lived up a holler in, in West Virginia, and they had no running water. They had a pump at the sink that pumped cold water. They would have to heat their water. And of course they had an outhouse. And me being a city slicker girl never saw an outhouse, let alone used one. And being that that's all they had and I had to pee, I had to use the, the outhouse. So I went in there, and it was dark and dingy, and up in the holler in West Virginia, there's little -- I can't remember what they call them, but they're little lizards. And I'm sitting there with my pants around my ankles trying my best to pee and not cry. And I looked up at the corner and there was a, a lizard sticking his tongue out at me and I screamed. I'm crying. I ran out of the outhouse with my pants around my ankles, everybody looking at me. My mom came running. "What in the world?" She’s laughing at me. My dad's laughing at me. My mom helped me pull up my pants, which were now wet because I had peed all the way on them. Oh, it was just a nightmare trying to use that outhouse the very first time. Nobody had warned me about the lizards. I don't think it would have mattered had they warned me or not. I would have still ran out of the bathroom. I found out that another uncle who lived up the next holler had a bathroom. So I would hold it until we went to my other uncle's house and I would use his toilet. First time using a shared bathroom was not a success.

I have a new moss friend. Last week there was a little, um -- I went out on the porch, and this perfect little moss ball had fallen off the roof. Like a little, little, like, moss island. It was dirt on the underside. It was flat -- like flat dirt on the underside or -- who knows if it's dirt. It's probably like part of our roof that's broken down, because our roof needs to be replaced. And then it was this little rounded, like, hill of moss on the top side. And I set aside -- because I was like, I don't want to bring it in until I have like the stuff to take care of it. Like you need a, a -- I wanted to get a cup with a narrow top so that the, the moisture would stay in there, and I still need to get a spritz bottle and some, um -- oh, what's the word? -- distilled water. I have it inside now. Because what happened -- I set it aside to the edge of the porch because I was like, "I don't wanna bring it in until I have stuff to take care of it, so it doesn't -- I don't just bring it in and kill it." And then my son, who's eight, he, um, he was leaving to go with his grandma, and he was like, "{Gasp} Look at that!" And you know, of course being, being eight, he just like went and picked it up and I, I didn't want him to, to, to touch it and damage it. Like, cuz he's, he's a lovely child, but he's also like an accidental force of destruction. Um, so I was like, "Put it down!" which in hindsight is not how I should have reacted, like, at all in any way. I should have been calm and been like, "Please, child, put that thing down carefully." Instead, I freaked out and he thought that, um -- cuz mommy has germ issues. And he thought that I was freaking out because there was something like dirty or germy about it. And so he didn't wanna put it down on the porch because we don't wanna put dirty things down on the porch. So he threw it.And he threw it out into the lawn. Have you ever tried to find a like one inch…

So this is the first time that my mom had come with us. Cuz I've gone twice before and on the last time my brother came with me, but today it was all three of us. And there was a flute, a viola, and a harp trio. And it was really fun. Like, in these concerts, they usually play a mix of, um, classical music and modern music. Like, stuff by contemporary, alive composers. So the big piece, the piece that I really like, was called Submerged. Um, it was by this -- Let's see. I have the, I have the flyer here. So it's called Submerged by Miguel del Ag- -- Miguel del Aguila. I should know how to pronounce that. I don't know why --Anyway, so it starts off like this dance music. And then there's this chord change. And it's li- -- the way that the musicians introduced it is that it's like falling into a body of water. And then from there the harp takes on a solo, and so it's like listening to everything from underwater and seeing all the colors and all the life. And then the flute and the viola players walked off the stage. And I thought they were just leaving space for the harp player to do her solo, but later on, we hear the flute playing and it turns out that they walked in from the back, and so they're standing at the back playing, like, little chirps and trills. And so combined with the harp, it's like being underwater, but you can still hear the noise on the surface. And that was really interesting to me, and it made me think that this is one area -- one thing you can do with live music that you can't do with recorded music. That physical change. Where the musicians go, and how that affects the sounds that you hear. So I'm really happy that MSU has programs that teach people how to play music, and I'm glad that we have a symphony orchestra. And I'm really happy to be part of a community that has those things.

We were living in an off campus apartment and it probably didn't have functional, uh, smoke detectors if I'm being honest. Um, but I was just doing something so simple. I was making hard boiled eggs. So I put the eggs on the stove, was waiting for the water to boil, and then I don't know what happened. I clearly got very distracted, but I fully like left the apartment, went shopping or something, like grocery shopping. I don't know. And it wasn't for what I was making. Like I had no memory of even putting the eggs on the stove. And I came home and I was actually living with that same person that burnt the meat and all of the water had evaporated from the eggs. And then, just in case you were wondering what happens if you just, like, continue to boil eggs without water, they exploded like bombs all over the ceiling. So there was like chunks of egg -- thankfully it was like -- they were -- they had been boiled obviously, so it wasn't, you know, like yolk that was caked on the walls. It was like chunks of egg that was easier to get off, but I came home to that roommate like picking egg off of the ceiling and, um, she was surprisingly good natured about it. Maybe she was remembering her mishap, but she wasn't really that upset which was a nice relief.