From 3rd grade through 8th grade, I attended a small, private school that met at my church. Our gymnasium was a bit of a multi-purpose room, and one of those purposes inspired the builders to install wall-to-wall carpeting. (Actually, the carpeting ascends halfway up the walls; the idea of someone vacuuming the walls was the funniest thing in the world to eight-year-old me.) If you start imagining children playing sports like kickball and basketball and volleyball in this space, you should also start imagining a never-ending supply of rugburns.

That said, all nine of the students in my graduating class probably had physical reminders on their bodies of the work they put in during P.E. My scar is on the knuckle of the middle finger of my right hand, and I still carry it to this day. It was not, however, a gift of the carpet gods. It was the handiwork of an awkward young boy by the name of Aaron.

Aaron never really fit in with his peers, from what I can tell, which was mostly due to his ongoing fascination with bionic limbs. My clearest memory of him—aside from the incident with the scar—is from an art class, where he insisted on building the Mary figurine for a nativity scene as a macaroni yellow creature with a bionic leg.

Anyway, I was already predisposed to disliking Aaron when he drove his hockey stick into my knuckle as part of the most outlandish backswing in the history of floor hockey. From then on out, I hated him.

For years after that, I continued thinking poorly of him every time I saw the blemish on my previously beautiful hand. When I wrote in my journals, I would pause and stare and sigh. When I played piano, I would wince and stare and sigh. When I fell asleep, I would have recurring nightmares about Tyra Banks banning me from America's Next Top Model on account of my hideously deformed hands and my uncontrollable sighing.

But that all stopped two years ago when I found out that another guy from our class made it to the NHL. When I heard the news, I remember instinctively checking my hand for the scar. All at once, the smells and sounds of the gymnasium came rushing back to me. I was in sixth grade P.E. class all over again. Aaron did take a hole out of my finger with some illegal "high-sticking," but I went on to block every shot he tried to take. I also stopped every other guy from making almost every other shot. I was the only girl who could. In hockey and in soccer, I was Brick Wall Skirts. Nobody got through my defense, not even the punk who went on to the NHL.

So now I have a battle wound instead of a pity scar, and I absolutely love it. I also feel pretty crummy about all the bad vibes I was sending Aaron over the years, so this is my public apology along with the promise of a face-to-face apology with some cupcakes if I ever bump into him again. As for Hockeypants McPuckerson in the NHL? He's safe for now, but only because I've never been ice-skating and because I'm really attached to my teeth.

Tonight, I finished the final episode of the fourth season of Bones. (Netflix Instant is my new best friend.) I have learned oh so many things from the show about human anatomy, psychology, murder techniques, and dreamy FBI agents named Booth. I have also learned that I really want to be a pretty genius who works with other pretty geniuses to solve crimes. If this sounds intriguing to you, add the show to your Netflix queue and then call me with your lab coat size. But first, read my handy tips for surviving the show:

1. Don't be fooled by the first season. The writing improves dramatically by the second season. Stick with it. The first season of The Office was pretty cringeworthy, too.
2. Do not be embarrassed when you totally bond with the characters and then weep at every character-building moment throughout the seasons. "OH MY GOSH, THEY HUGGED! AWWW SOB SOB SOB!" is a completely normal response.
3. You might think, "Oh, hey, I've seen Dexter. I no longer flinch during episodes of 24. I can definitely watch a show about skeletons while eating dinner." For the most part, you are correct, but all episodes are not created equal.
4. The voodoo episode made me afraid of the dark for one night. Watch that one in the daylight or with a friend or with a teddy bear or with a sock monkey.
5. MOST IMPORTANT TIP: Never ever consume Raisin Bran Crunch while watching any part of an episode that deals with brains. Raisins kind of look like tiny brains, and when soaked in milk, they kind of squish like brains. Super worst idea of all time, okay? Just trust me here.

On a related note, I will most definitely be marketing Raisin BRAIN Crunch to the zombie crowd when the time comes.

When I was a wee child, our family vacations centered around historical sites in the Midwest. Log cabins, rock formations, museums, and for several years, any place that had a connection to Laura Ingalls Wilder. (Someone in the family had a slight obsession.)

Sometimes I envied the kids whose parents took them on more exotic vacations, the kind with sun and sand and beautiful views, but mostly I really loved our quirky getaways. Nothing bonds a family together like getting stranded in South Dakota before the days of cell phones, only to be rescued by four nuns with a car phone in a town that proudly hosts the world's largest Jolly Green Giant statue.

The tales have only gotten stranger as the years go by. Two years ago, I ran out of patience trying to document all the strange things we saw and encountered in Milwaukee. I never even finished putting the pictures on Flickr. There were just too many adventures there.

This year's trip to Michigan was a littler tamer, but there are still too many stories to be told. When the first day starts out with a trip to a wooden shoe factory / painted porcelain factory / tulip farm / buffalo farm, you know you're in for a good time. And when that one location can only be accessed by a long series of u-turns (because Michigan has some weird phobia about left turn lanes at major intersections), you are too dizzy to remember any of the bad times.

Although Michigan is not on my list of States to Hate, it is under arrest for crimes against pizza. "Biscuit-like crust" should never be the best way to describe your award-winning Chicago-style pizza, especially when the restaurant serving said fare is within spitting distance of authentic Chicago pizza. (Heck yes, I train my pizza to spit.) However, we did survive the experience and live on to find much better food, like the steak from Crazy Horse and the gourmet chocolate from Kilwin's and the tasty subs from some little place in downtown Holland.

When we weren't busy gorging on food or buying more snacks from the grocery store, we found time to do what we do best—seek out the tallest, the oldest, the ugliest, the prettiest, the dirtiest, and the most bizarre. Our adventures took us to a functioning windmill, on a dune buggy ride, up and down one of the top beaches in America, through a mosquito-infested hiking trail overlooking the lake, past the world's largest weather vane, inside a rather old lighthouse, and aboard the Friends Good Will (a replica of a merchant vessel from the 1800s that was stolen by the British for use in combat in the War of 1812).

I hope I never forget how funny Mark was as he took us past the city on the lake that was buried under the dunes, but I won't mind forgetting how stuffy and crowded and falling apart it was on the fifth story of the windmill. My ankle will never forgive me for hiking in platform flip-flops, and my dad will never forgive Lake Michigan for his non-stop seasickness during our two-hour sailing trip. Adam will forever be held responsible for our bad experience with Younkers, and I think we all decided to blame my mother for the lame museum in the lighthouse.

What really matters, though, is that we endured all the good times and the bad times as a family. The uniqueness of Michigan and its people was the perfect distraction from all the stresses of life, and for that, we are all grateful.

Thanks for being weird, Michigan.