I went to Horrocks, which is like a chain in Michigan, that has a bunch of like, hmm it seems fresher, I don't know, they have a lot of produce, they have a lot of stuff, they have a lot of products that are kind of, not what you would get, and like, Meijer. So, I – I’m going shopping and I just feel like everybody is strangely rude, like what is actually happening? Like -- like it's one thing for one person to be a little rude, but it was just like everybody was rude and it was like, everybody lacks spatial awareness collectively and it was really pissing me off and the point where it was like so prolonged and like, I don't -- the guy felt seen and therefore it was more annoying is that I am going by the mushrooms, I look around at the mushrooms that I want to purchase. I see the mushroom I want to purchase. So now I am now leaning towards the bags, but there's a guy in the way between me and the plastic bags, and so I kind of wait and try to get out of his way so that I can like, “uh, uh, uh,” you know? Because he wants to go where I am, I want to go where he's going. So finally, we do this little shuffle dance thing and he, now is like looking at the mushrooms and now I have the plastic bag and now he -- now I need to be where he's at and he needs to now -- he wants a plastic bag now, even though, like he just was where the plastic bags were. Okay? So then were now doing this weird shuffle thing and I'm like, waiting for him, and he's like staring at the mushrooms and he's like, “Excuse me.” You know? And then so then I like move again and then he wants to now be where I am by the mushroom, but I like, am -- I'm about to scoop my mushrooms but because this man is just now really like annoyed with me. So now I am just on standby. Watching him, now that he has his bag, scoop the exact mushroom that I was gonna get, you know? And so now I'm standing there, waiting for him, watching him do this. And I'm like,…

One of my co-workers she got engaged over the weekend, and it was like, I think it was kinda cute she like could see it coming. Like I think she like, she was like sitting in the work room on like Thursday and there's something and she's like, “Both my boy –” both my boyfriend and my best friend have been talking about doing like this and this thing together like a lot, and I'm starting to like -- I'm starting to think I might be getting -- like my boyfriend talking about her boyfriend was going to propose. And I think, I honestly think that is the best proposal. It's like, it should be like a Christmas present, you know. It's like you should have some inkling. Because I feel like just springing it, stringing on someone that they'd like, it should be like a surprise, like, you should try to make it as a surprise, I'm not im okay. Like I said, there's like a lot of people like, depending on how you how your relationship is like, it's okay, I think it's okay if you don't make it a surprise. But like I think it should be like, a Christmas present. Like you like it can be a like, you make it a surprise and it's fun to try to make it a surprise. But you should ultimately, like it should be something that the person knows, the person receiving the proposal, like is kind of aware of and should at least like, they should know about it I think, like have an inkling.

Yeah, I think one of the most annoying things about the trip, though is that -- so Sunday morning, I said like, “Hey, on Sunday morning, I want to go to mass”, but I didn't want to go alone because, the university is paying for us to have phone plans, but when the phone plan renewed, everyone's got screwed up so they'd like no longer could -- actually use their phone plan, so that was really sucky, right? And because I didn't have a phone plan I was completely dependent on like, I need to stay with [friend] because [friend] is the only one with the working phone. Like if I get lost I can't do anything I can't access my Google Maps and also to get into our Airbnb you had to make a phone call, which I could not do without a working phone plan. I mean, my phone worked on the Wi-Fi but you had to be like in in the building for the Wi-Fi to work. So, I got up at 8:30 and I like had to make the decision, do I wake up [friend]? Because [friend] was very much not  – she was not awake. She had been up late the night before like all of us and unlike me, she was actually sleeping. I had naturally woken up at 6:20 in the morning because of nightmares and, I couldn't really sleep at all after that so I just sat up and I talked to my friend. But I ended up getting to go to mass at the Duomo which was really cool. Going to mass at the Duomo is weird. Because like at a lot of churches, like the ones in Spain -- they like closed the church down for mass, right? So like the tourists can't come in, but in the Duomo in Italy they don't, like they have tours going on at the same time as mass. So it was really weird, like I felt like I was in this little fish bowl being watched as I was one of the mass parishioners. But like, hey, it worked, I got to do what I wanted to do and everyone else got to hang around the city center. The only somewhat unfortunate thing is, is that we had like, decided on this place as our meeting location, and when I get out there,…

I love running down by the beach, I live really close to Lake Michigan. And earlier this week I went and ran some stairs. Did some plyometrics, the usual and I brought a book with me too ‘cus I figured I don't know, maybe when I'm done I can just get some reading done. A little windy, a little breezy, a little cool, so I actually finished my workout and just read in my car for a while, while I watched some storm clouds move over the lake and it's been so mild lately and it was in the middle of the afternoon. I was like, you know what? I'm here for it, I want to see like a light rainstorm come over -- come over the Great Lake. And it’ll be peaceful, had my windows down. And it was peaceful, until it wasn't. Hail began to fall, which fine we get hail from time to time. But then I realized the hail was bigger than typical and I started to panic a little bit. It's gonna sound dramatic but it sounded like the hail was shattering my windows as it was falling and to be sure, it wasn't, but it just sounded like it. Every single piece that fell felt like it was denting or damaging my car and it happened so fast that I didn't panic, but I had to move quickly. I quickly turned my car on and I had to get out so fast I didn't even put my seat belt on and I never drive without a seat belt. I sped out of the beach parking lot, sped up out of the beach road, apologies, but I was probably doing 60 plus on a road that's like 30 miles per hour because it felt like the hail was ripping my car to shreds, every piece that fell did not splat, it crashed against my car. I sped up about a mile and a half until I found a highway overpass and I hid underneath the overpass with probably seven other cars as the hailstorm worked its way through. I was trying to think of the perfect size after the storm subsided, of the pieces of hail and it's such like a ‘tweener. Not as big as a meatball but just a little bit smaller than a meatball, which is pretty substantial for Michigan. I think…

I love books, I read all the time. It didn't start out that way. When I was a little kid, I went to a country school and you had to know how to read proficiently by the time you left kindergarten. And I had a really hard time when I first started learning to read. And I remember my mother worked nights, and she would come home in the morning from the hospital and, and I had to read to her before I went to school and I can't even imagine the torture that must have been for her after working all night, having to listen to somebody who did not read well read to her, out of a children's book no less. So anyway, I had kind of a rough start and I never got into it, reading, myself. But I loved to be read to, 'cause I can remember at school frequently, grade school teachers would have a book that they would read every day to the students and I just absolutely loved it. In fact, that’s the first time I ever heard Anne of Green Gables, was from a teacher that read to us every afternoon. And it was just amazing, I just loved that, but I couldn't get myself to read proficiently enough that I could get into, you know, feeling the story, feeling part of the story, until I probably was, gosh, I don't know, third or fourth grade, maybe, that my aunt, one of my aunts sent me a Bobbsey Twin book for Christmas. And I was not that thrilled about it, but, you know, I was gracious. And later during the winter, I remember this so clear, that one time I was, I think it was a Sunday afternoon. Everybody in my family was curled up at a chair or someplace wrapped up in a blanket, 'cause it was usually cold in the house in the wintertime, reading a book. And I didn't have anybody to play with and I didn't know what to do with myself, and then I remembered that book that my aunt had given me, The Bobbsey Twins. And so I thought, "Well, I'll give it a try." And so I sat down with that book, and I like to say the magic happened. The magic happened for me that I had learned to read well enough that I was…

Interesting note, my girlfriend had a wire down in her backyard after a storm blew it down. And the electric company showed up and did their part, but then said that there was a PVC pipe on the side of her house holding a particular portion of the wire, and the fact that the PVC pipe broke was her problem. It was on the consumer side, not on the electric company side. As a result, she had to -- I'd never realized that it was this complicated, she had to go to City Hall and she had to get -- I think the, what, permit pulled? No, she had to get something pulled, like, why am I blanking on the word? She had to go get paperwork for her house pulled. She had to present it to an electrician. Had to hire an electrician who had to fix the problem and then she had to reach back out to the electric company after she had an inspector come through, and the electric company had to essentially charge her -- 'essentially?' -- not essentially, they did, they charged her $122 to reconnect the power afterward. To come back out and flip the switch.  So, when I went over to her house to take a look at the wire, we were both like, "Well, we gotta call the electric company and they'll come through and they'll fix it, it should be fine by morning." And instead, she ended up shelling out more than $700 just to get the PVC pipe that was encasing the wire replaced, and just so AEP, the electric company around this way, could come through and flip the switch. A real learning experience honestly, and I'm chuckling about it, but she certainly was not expecting that this was gonna be a almost $1,000 endeavor when she saw the wire down. So that was a big bummer.

I used to read three or four books at one time when I was a kid. And I used to have multiple books from the library and from my own library going at the same [time]. Sometimes got into trouble because I didn't get up and move as fast as I was supposed to sometimes, and I didn't get moving on my chores sometimes as fast as I was supposed to. And sometimes my father, who didn't like to read much, couldn't understand why I read some of the books I read over and over and over again, and I'll get to that more later. One summer, when I was about 13, I was supposed to do some house cleaning for my mother and I did not do it when I was supposed to, and she was very busy and she got very disgusted with me. And she threatened me that if I didn't get my stuff done around the house, she would not take me to the library. Well, we lived about a mile and a half from the library and it was a walk I took -- a frequent, frequently, because it was next to my elementary school and I sometimes walked there when I was a kid. So, I thought, "Well, really doesn't matter if she doesn't want to take me, it's summer, I can walk to the library." So, I walked. I did my chores, but I also walked to the library and my mother laughed at me when I came back. And she never really threatened me with that again because she knew if I really wanted to go to the library, I would just walk. And one of my really good friends was also a big reader, and if I wanted to go to the library, most of the time, one of us would go, we would go together. So, we also at the age of 13 had to get notes from our mothers, to leave at the library, saying that we were able to read certain things. The thing I really wanted to read at 13 was Gone with the Wind. It had just come out at the movie theater for the first time in many, many years. And my mother had taken both me and my friend to see it. And we loved it and it was great and I wanted to…

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…