I think boats are really relaxing, and, um -- but one time, my boyfriend, this is before I met him, he was like, early 20s I think. Him and his friend were -- I think it was Pictured Rocks? So they were going up on that Pictured Rocks -- Pictured Rocks boat tour. And it was kinda like cool and a little chilly that weekend, and then they were gonna go camping.  So like, he said that he was on like the first level, and he's like looking at the rocks and stuff, looking at stuff, and then he got thrown up on by somebody from up above. And he didn't bring a blanket or anything, it was just his hoodie. And so he's like in the bathroom like, washing his hoodie off and he's like, "Oh my gosh, that's like so gross."  And then he comes out and as they're getting off the boat, these little kids come up to him, and they said, "Our grandma told us to tell you that she's really sorry and she- she's really embarrassed." Aw! And then, um, because him and his friend were camping, like, and he didn't bring any blankets or whatever, all he had was like that wet sweater. And I'm just like, "Ah, ew." So I think he rolled it up and used it -- had to use it as a pillow or something. But like I'm just like, "Ah. You know, that's a good reason not to go camping." So whenever we talk about like, up north or Pictured Rocks or whatever, he always has to tell that story. Not like it was traumatizing or anything! Aw, poor guy.

You know, I remember like, one time my car was making a sound it obviously shouldn't have. A sign -- a sound that was like, "Your car is broken" type of sound. So I remember in a panic I pulled into someone's driveway, because I was in like -- oh, on a rural road. So I was like, "I just need to get off this shoulder here." So I pulled into a driveway and, um, to make a phone call. To call my parents and be like, "My car is broke." And I remember having a, uh, a man come out and confront me and, uh, threaten me in a pretty hostile manner. And it was, it was a lot of things: it was confusing, it was scary, and it was a wake up call. And that was before 2016, um, so I guess -- I don't know, I guess that was a wake up call to me that, uh, I kind of assumed like, "Yeah, people understand I'm not threatening. I'm just here 'cause my cars broken." And then I'm like, "Man, some people just see the worst in other people or assume the worst." And I feel like it's just become easier and easier to make those assumptions, and I do that as well! When I see -- sometimes when I see someone plop down a particular political sign, there's a part of me that goes like, "Oh. I, I can't unsee that." Like, "Oh, how -- why -- no." Um, and I really never really used to feel that way.

Oh, would I want my thoughts in a bubble above my head? I think they already are. I used to sit in staff meetings as a teacher. And I would not say anything, I'd just be sitting there. I'd be writing things down if I needed to, or taking notes on something, or drawing a picture or doing whatever you do when you're sitting at a staff meeting. And one time I was sitting with one of my friends, who was also an older teacher, and we were sitting with one of our mentees who was the brand new band director. Evidently my mind could be read by her, because she's -- we're sitting there and the principal's going on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on about some new thing we're gonna have to do. And she looks at me and she goes in a rather loud voice, "Hey, [Name]. Why don't you say what you really are thinking about all of this?" And I kinda looked at her.  And the principal looked at my face and he went, "No, don't bother. We already know what you think about all this. We can see it all over your face." I said, "I didn't say a word!" He said, "You don't have to say a word. We already know what you think of this. And we're gonna leave it at that, because we all kind of agree with you, but it's the new state mandate."  So, we left it at that. But I don't think I need to have bubbles over my head, because obviously, I'm too easy to read.

Coolest spot, though, that I saw was Delphi. Delphi is incredible. It is beautiful and it is -- um, like. And it is just incredible that it exists. It's one of the um -- I mean, you know, it's not as well preserved as like Pompei or Ostia Antica, but it's still pretty well-preserved for being a mountain town of such ancient -- I mean, again, mountain town from like the, you know, 400s BCE, I think is when some of those buildings were built, and some of them were built a lot longer ago than that. And there's -- like, one of the most incredible things there was the Athenian treasury, which, I mean, it's -- might not sound like a lot, but it still had four -- like four walls and a roof. Like the building was more or less still standing after so many centuries and after being buried underground, I mean, that's just incredible to me. And for that matter, I mean, the Temple of, the Temple of Apollo where the oracle spoke and gave prophecies, where so many different figures visited and all that. It was -- again, everything, ugh! Incredible.

And I kind of got into canoeing mostly when I convinced my friends to buy a canoe with me, which was a little bit silly 'cause none of us had a car or way to transport a canoe, and a couple of us knew how to canoe and a couple of us didn't. But we were convinced. Well, I was convinced and I convinced them and they went ahead or we went ahead. We scoured Facebook Marketplace, found a canoe there, and the person selling it lived near the Huron River and we live -- we were living in Ann Arbor at the time and now we live in [city] and the person lived in Dexter near the Huron River which is like a little bit upriver from Ann Arbor. Uh, and he agreed to meet us at the river and sell us this canoe so he met in there at this boat launch and we bought his canoe for a hundred dollars. And then we canoed it back to Ann Arbor. And we did this the first week of April a handful of years ago, and it snowed a little bit on the way. We were the only ones on the river, but we had a blast. And then we get back to a little outside Ann Arbor and we start looking in the woods just for a patch of what looks like unused land and we find some between the river and the train tracks, and we pull our canoe up into the woods, and then we walk back into town. We had got dropped off by a friend in Dexter. Oh, and we brought a bike lock with us, and we bike locked the canoe to a tree. And there the canoe has lived pretty much since. It's actually worked out great. Everyone told us we were so silly, and it's been incredible. We did have to move the canoe a couple times because it accidentally did end up being somebody's land, but the people were very nice in both cases and one even gave us canoe paddles and stuff like that. And now the canoe's in a really good spot where it doesn't get bothered. I don't think it's privately owned land. Just like between the road and the river, and you can't really get there unless you walk through the river because it's this huge…

I am not a very reactionary person. But I am emotional, so sometimes I do need, like, to just clear my head before I respond to things. Probably the last time I had to do it was my roommate hung up, like, funny porn in the living room recently. It was, like, some postcards that she had gotten from Amsterdam. And I wouldn't consider myself prude by any means but, like, nudity certainly makes me shy. And so I just kind of saw it and was bothered but didn't really know how to address it or how to, like -- I'm like, is this just funny and I'm not, I'm not hip and with it? Is this what the cool kids do nowadays? But, um, I left to go to the gym and that helped, like, just kind of clear my head a little bit. And I was like, "Hey, girly pop. I don't think I want that in our common space." And she was so understanding and super cool about it.