I don't know if the theme this week is just, "Hey, let's make the whole office incompetent at doing our jobs," or what, but. I went in yesterday to pick up, like, a hotspot because I was doing data entry at one of our sites that was located in the city, so it was like a ten -- not even a ten minute drive from our office. And I was looking for a hotspot because the previous few weeks, there were some, there were some difficulties connecting to our VPN -- to the site's Wi-Fi. And so, of course, I was, like, freaking out. And come to find out. I was like, “Okay, can -- where --" So I FaceTimed somebody. I was like, "Where are the keys to our office supplies? Like, our additional office supplies." And they were like, "Oh, it's on this desk." I FaceTimed this person because I was like, “They're not there.” So I sent like a whole group text to everyone in the office, and I was like, "Hi, guys. Does anybody have a hotspot, and also, do you know where I can find keys in order to get into these sorts of things? And -- or these lockers or these cabinets, whatever it is." And our postdoc ended up texting and said, "Oh, yeah, I took the keys home,” that the PI didn't want them laying out in the open.  Okay, well why not lock the keys that the office needs somewhere on site where everyone in the office knows where they are because you're not the only one who goes in. So I was annoyed, and then she texted me. She's like, "Do you need me there? I can be there in 30 minutes." And I was like, "Yeah, sure. That's fine." It's not like two -- that these are keys that no one else in the office can replicate. The whole floor uses the same key, so I ended up finding one and checked, and by the time the -- our postdoc came, I had already looked through all of the cabinets, but I still looked to make it -- because -- yeah. I was just -- I just had it up to here, and she -- ‘cause she lives a walk away, but she's like, "Oh, it's gonna take me 30 minutes to get dressed, and everything." And then she…

A time I had to worm my way into a small space -- a couple of times. One time was to fix the -- to fix the plumbing under my sink because when we had built our house, my, my husband had done a lot of the finished plumbing. And we kinda used what, what we -- what was available, and you know, we’re always trying to kinda cut corners a little bit, and --  So the PVC didn't quite -- the PVC was just a tiny bit short on the kitchen drain, so it lasted the -- you know, for a long, long time. But eventually the -- it was kind of stretched to made it fit and then tighten it down, but then eventually that didn't, that didn't hold it anymore. So, I had put it together many times, and then eventually it would break apart at -- usually at the worst times, and then it would flood -- flood my whole under the counter, and, and sometimes I didn't realize that for a while. So it was a -- it was something that needed to be fixed.  So I decided I was just gonna -- PVC is not that hard to cut with the hacksaw. I was just gonna get the pieces I need, get all new connectors and the whole thing, and just redo it myself. So -- and that was the easy part, thinking about that, and planning it out, and cutting the pieces. But the hard part was actually -- because I have short arms, and I'm not that skinny, and I'm on the floor, which is already uncomfortable, trying to reach into this tiny little space with a body that's just a little bit too big to fit in there, but I got it done. It took me, it took me a lot of attempts and a lot of repositioning to get it done, but I got it done.  People were kind of impressed that I was able to do that all myself, but it's basically just PVC, and you just cut it, and you’re not going to ruin much if you don't cut it big enough. You go up -- have to go back to the hardware, and, and get another piece and, and start over. It’s not, not too expensive, it's not difficult, and it has not leaked since I finally…

When I was a little girl, probably, like, four or five years old -- um, I have a cassette tape of myself -- an audio cassette, and I'm singing, and I'm making up songs off the top of my head. And one of the songs that I made up was called "Lion Tang." T A N G. Lion Tang. And, I'm just singing like, "Oh, Lion Tang. Oh, Lion Tang." And I clearly remember what I was thinking. I was thinking it meant lions fighting. It’s a song about lions having a fight. They're having a tang, a lion tang.  And so I told my husband this many, many, many years later about Lion Tang. And in my mind, it wasn't just -- you couldn't -- you didn't just have to have a lion tang. I mean, it can be any animal having a fight. It's called a Tang. And so now, so now we’ll -- we look -- when we look out the window and we see, like, squirrels fighting, or, like, birds fighting, or cats fighting, we say, "Cat Tang. Squirrel Tang. Bird Tang." And that's our word for when we see two animals fighting. It's called a Tang, which is a word I made up when I was like five or six years old. Yup. I think it -- I think it, like, comes from, like, fang and tangle. I think that's what -- in my mind was, like -- I was thinking about a tangle with fangs was tang. Yeah. Like, I really do remember what I was thinking when I said that. So -- and that's what I meant.

Many, many, many, years ago when my son, who is now in his late 40s, was a baby, we had a dog, and back then, you -- they didn't have such good flea medications as they do now to keep their -- your animals from getting fleas and stuff, and we live in the country. And we got fleas in our house, and, and I don't know if you know anything about fleas, but they jump, and they jump on everything. Well, they seemed to like him in particular, you know, and I tried everything, trying to get rid of these darn fleas.  And my son had a doctor's appointment, he was just a baby, he had a doctor's appointment, and when I left to go to the doctor's appointment, I set off bombs in the house -- the bug bombs to get rid of the fleas. Anyway, took him to the doctor’s and we were talking about him, and I take his clothes off. I take his shirt off. He's got flea bites on him, and the doctor carefully ran her hand over the bites on his tummy, and she looked at me and she said, “Do we have a problem?" And I was so ashamed. Oh my gosh. I could have -- I wish there had been a hole in the floor that would have just opened up and swallowed me ‘cause I was so ashamed that my son had flea bites. So, for whatever reason, they really loved him.

So we went to a sushi bar, and the way they did it, I had never actually -- I'd had sushi in restaurants before, but I'd never had this kind of a -- the sushi experience at a sushi bar. So, the man, the chef, was preparing the sushi in front of us while we were at the bar, and one of the first things that he did was oysters. He asked us -- he was willing to make us whatever in this fabulous dinner that we wanted. It wasn't a predetermined menu. He had some go-tos, but no, you know, specific menu. We had no idea what was coming, no idea how many kinds of sushi we're having. It was all just kind of a mystery. So, we're -- he brought out oysters, and that was one of the things -- my son had really wanted to try oysters. I was indifferent about it, but um -- I was okay with it. I thought, "I can try one oyster." So, we are sitting. So we're looking up at him, he is up on a platform making the sushi. And he prepares -- he asks us if we want oysters and we said, "Yes, we do." And he puts the oysters in the bowl up on top. So it's like, we're like making like a 45 degree angle looking up at it. So all I can see is this silver bowl, which is probably the size of a softball. And on top, it looks like the bowl is filled with oysters. It looks like there's gotta be 20 or 30 oysters in there. And I just -- my eyes got huge, and I'm -- he's watching our impressions to see -- you know, he wants to provide a good experience for us. So -- this is the chef, I mean. So he's watching us, and he could tell by the look on my face. I thought this was a humongous bowl of oysters, and there was no way I wanted to eat that many oysters. So he goes, "Oh, you don't like, you don't like." And he starts to take it away and my son is like, he's reaching up, "No, no, no, don't take it away!!" And then, so I said "No, no, we'll try, we'll try them. It's okay." But he was so responsive to like, just my…

Have I ever gone through a phase that was drastically different than the rest of my life? I think maybe I'm in that moment right now. My husband and I have decided after four years of infertility, like, we're done trying. We have exhausted reasonable options and we're left with one option to try with a very low success rate given what our problem is. And so, I'm in this phase of like trying to get our poop in a group. I think we've just been kind of assuming like, "Everyone has debt, we'll just live with it forever." And with the state of the world, I'm like, "This isn't acceptable," and so we are budgeting, we're making sound decisions, we have a plan. I'm soaking up every opportunity to make extra money, doing all these little random things and then putting that money on credit cards to get them paid off. We've already paid off one, we're kind of like, momentum is there, and this is very different. I have never stuck with something as long. I've never made good financial decisions. I mean, I shouldn't say never, I’ve made some. But like, I've had debt since I was in college because I never knew how to like manage money effectively. And I never really thought too far into the future, and now even though my future doesn't look the way I thought it was. Like, I thought I would have kids by now. I'm 37. I thought I would be a mom with several, and now that may not happen and it's likely not happening through me. If I'm having kids, it's gonna to be a fostering or adopt situation more than likely, and that's probably a couple years away just because financially, I don't feel like we're in a place for it. And so we're really soaking up like being aunties and -- an auntie and uncle to several -- like of our actual niece and nephew, and then also, you know, friends' kids who call us that. And we are in a different phase of life. Our future that we're looking forward to is like, "How do we enjoy our time? How do we enjoy our marriage? How do we plan to have a good retirement?" Knowing it's probably just us. And what's that gonna look like? Because again, we both really envisioned children, and that's…

I was teaching fifth grade and it was the end of the school day when kids are getting their stuff. It's a little hectic, you know, you're just getting your backpacks, you're waiting for the bell to ring. Kids are chatting with each other, whatever. And then someone's like, "Heyyyyyy, someone needs you in the hallway," and I could see that there was a student I didn't recognize in the hallway, which is usually not a great sign. If a student you don't know is asking for you, that makes you think, like, "Uh-oh, something serious must have happened." Because if it wasn't that serious, they'd probably just tell their own teacher. But apparently it needs to be handled now and here. And so I went out to the hallway and I braced for the worst. And, you know, the other bad omen at the time was that the student waited for the door to close before she told me what happened or what was going on, which is also a sign where I was prepping myself, I was like, "Oh my god, she needs privacy. This must be pretty bad." Um, I thought maybe someone hit her or like touched her inappropriately, I was ready for anything. And, you know, she had a hard time getting started, you know, she couldn't make eye contact, and she was like, "This is pretty awkward, but..." And I was like "Ah no, oh please." And she's like, "But, my mom was curious as to whether you'd ever wanna date her friend?" Which was a complete -- completely unexpected. And so unexpected that I didn't know how to formulate a response because my mind went 100 different ways in a split second. One of the prevailing directions my brain went was like, "Alright, am I getting match-made by a ten-year-old?" And, "Is that -- that's not okay, right? That's weird. This is weird. Yeah, this is weird." So I didn't know what to say. You know, maybe I should have said, "Well you know that's not really my place to say, and I don't know if it's your place to bring this up." Instead, I just kinda like mumbled and I was like, "I, I, hnghuh, hah, ahduhna." And I kind of just made like a knowing, like, "I gotta get going, sorry I can't do this," and I walked away. And this…

On Saturday I feel like I was doing a bunch of stuff, but I was like -- but I don't feel like I was getting through my to-do list. So then I, instead of writing a to-do list, I wrote like an 'accomplished' list, like, parallel to my to-do list, and my joy skyrocketed, okay? Like I was really sad that I just barely got a fraction -- I couldn't cross anything off the to-do list, because everything that I had done, it was partially -- as much as I could get done of that to-do list item. Like for example, laundry. I had two ginormous baskets with some extra, so in the end it ended up breaking down into about six loads of laundry. And did I finish all six loads of laundry? No, I did three loads of laundry, and that was about all I could really, that I really wanted to get done. And like, could I have really pushed to get it done? Yes. But I just had other things that I was like, constant -- you know, a little bit over here, a little bit over there, a little over there. And um, I think in the past, I would have like really beat myself up for like not finishing. Like, "Oh, you get so distracted." Well, no, because life -- I only have so much time. And to do three loads of laundry instead of six is just much more beneficial to me, because now I have all the basics that I need to keep going. And I will get these other three done at some point, but it's not critical anymore. And so it like lowers -- it's like real-time re-sorting of my priorities as the task gets like partially completed. Or like food prep. Like, I feel like I did food prep, like pretty significantly. Everything that was going to rot in the next two days has been cooked or frozen. Is everything food prepped? No, but now I have four more days on like the remaining items in the fridge, of unprepared uncooked things. So, like again that -- like the frequent -- like the urgency of that has like diminished. But again, I didn't like accomplish every aspect of that task and so it just makes me feel -- I was feeling extremely defeated and just like, "Wow, I can't get anything…

Actually, over the summer, I was down in Indiana, like Southern Indiana. And it was really hot and humid. And at one point in my stay, like I was in a old house, like pretty old house, and the windowsill -- like, well I guess before that, I saw that on the ground, there was a lot of maggots. I don't know where it was coming from, because more just kept appearing for no reason. I kept vacuuming them up, right? And then I looked above the area where it just seemed to appear from, and it was dropping out of like, the lower part of the windowsill. Like, I don't know where that’s coming from.   But yeah, that was not great. I was thinking, I was telling them, I think the property manager about it, and stuff like that. But um, so I had -- and filled a request, but it ended up that I just kept vacuuming it for a couple of days and then just no more came out anymore. So maybe I just vacuumed them all up. But yeah. So even after that, there was sometimes flies appearing out of nowhere. So I’m like, "Is that from the maggots or is there like a way for them to come in?" Because neither is a very good. But yeah, I don't really like that. 

Well, when I was about five years old, I would sometimes take Nestlé Quik powder and put it in a little cup and keep it hidden upstairs in my house, in my granny's room, where I would sleep sometimes. And my granny had dementia and Alzheimer's, and she didn't know what was going on. She didn't know I even snuck that little cup in her bedroom if she didn't keep her bedroom too clean. And this was the 80s, when I swear there was more mice, more ants, more bugs, more everything.   And I used to stick my little finger in that little cup of Nesquik, and stick it in my tongue. And you know, sometimes hold the cup up and shake some into my mouth. And I don't know how long I had it there. Again, I was five years old. I don't know how long I had it there. I don't know how long it had been sitting there.  All I know is that one day, one day I went up there to Granny's room, and I tipped that cup up, and started drinking the little powder out of it. And then when I opened my eyes, as it was tipping into my mouth, all I could see were ants in the bottom of the cup, crawling all around. In the Quik powder! In the Nesquik powder! Eugh! I can barely think of it right now. But yeah, literally that was one of the grossest creepiest, crawliest things that has ever happened to me in my life. And I spit out what was in my mouth, and there were ants in my mouth. And that was just absolutely ew. My skin just crawls now to think of it. So that's my story and I wish I didn't have to stick to it.