Speaker 1: I got, oh, welcome back to we know his parenting.
Speaker 1: I'm Peter McNerney and I'm Beth new One, and Beth
Speaker 1: is sick. I'm very sick, getting better, but I haven't
Speaker 1: been this sick in a while. I was comatose for
Speaker 1: the whole weekend. We um so sick, in fact, that
Speaker 1: we had a little vacation planned to the Berkshire's Airbnb
Speaker 1: cabin in the woods and it was canceled. I said, hey,
Speaker 1: if I can only keep a few bites of food
Speaker 1: down at a time, I want to be in my
Speaker 1: own home with my own kitchen. Did you know what
Speaker 1: it was the right move? Yeah, it was a little disappointed, um,
Speaker 1: but then I realized, So I drove the kids up
Speaker 1: to your parents house or met your dad halfway. So
Speaker 1: we were planning to get rid of the kids and
Speaker 1: then have a cozy, romantic weekend, two romantic nights alone
Speaker 1: in the woods in a cabin, and um, we just
Speaker 1: did it at home. And by romantic getaway it was
Speaker 1: it was me sleeping most of the day in my
Speaker 1: bed while you were in the other room ignoring me.
Speaker 1: Did you want me to not ignore you? I mean,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't have hated it to be brought a cup
Speaker 1: of herbal tea or something. At some point I did
Speaker 1: not exactly tend to your every night um, but I
Speaker 1: figured having no children around was the greatest gift of all. Yeah.
Speaker 1: As I slowly die, Yeah, here we are, UM on
Speaker 1: Saturday when the kids are still here, may Haven kept
Speaker 1: being like, what are you going to get up? It's
Speaker 1: like lazy mom. The kids they would play with toys
Speaker 1: right next to my head, like in character, and I
Speaker 1: was like, please do that in the living room and
Speaker 1: they actually listened. For once things have changed, They've like
Speaker 1: they become huge adult children. They become huge adult children.
Speaker 1: Do you want to know the incredible are a huge
Speaker 1: adult children? Moment I had with him. Yeah. So I
Speaker 1: drove them about two hours ish up to Sturbridge, where
Speaker 1: I made the past I passed them off to granddad
Speaker 1: at a local McDonald's and Maven historically, as we all
Speaker 1: know listen to the podcast, it gets car sick very easily.
Speaker 1: We all know, No, she doesn't very easily. She gets
Speaker 1: carsick on multiple our trip. Some people's kids get car
Speaker 1: sick if they're in the car for like a half
Speaker 1: You're right, she she reliably gets sick. An hour and
Speaker 1: a half to two hours into I think an hour
Speaker 1: and a half into a drive, she'll start to get sick.
Speaker 1: I don't know why I didn't give her the medication,
Speaker 1: but it's because she's little and she can't see out
Speaker 1: the window. It's hard. Yeah, well, brand never had the
Speaker 1: same level as her as consistently, but that's her thing.
Speaker 1: That's great, she's unique. She's made that choice. And so
Speaker 1: I was in on four heading up towards Hartford. There's
Speaker 1: a big carpool lane where you get off in this
Speaker 1: lane and it's like you can't get out of the
Speaker 1: carpool lane for like miles. So the second I go
Speaker 1: into this one pavement goes it feels sick, like, oh no,
Speaker 1: she goes, I'm gonna throw up. And I can see
Speaker 1: I don't know where this is about to happen. So
Speaker 1: I'm like, um, okay, hold on, And I opened up
Speaker 1: the middle arm compartment the console and inside is uh
Speaker 1: the secret stash of Beth's bag of combos that seemed
Speaker 1: to always be there. Well, probably because I've left them
Speaker 1: in there for five months or something. Is it the
Speaker 1: same bag every time? I don't know, Almost completely full,
Speaker 1: of this bag of combos but open and I that's
Speaker 1: all I have. And so I'm driving and I grabbed it.
Speaker 1: I go here, maybe it hold this throw up into
Speaker 1: this And a miracle occurred, which is she grabbed the bag,
Speaker 1: she looked inside. She barfed into the bag twice, and
Speaker 1: then went, they are you okay? Just I'm okay. She
Speaker 1: gave the bag back to me. I rolled it up.
Speaker 1: It didn't smell. I put it on the ground and
Speaker 1: we just kept driving. And then she was fine and
Speaker 1: I didn't pull over, and we made an incredible time,
Speaker 1: kept right well like it was a long time to
Speaker 1: get an exit. By time I got there, she was
Speaker 1: super happy and we were like twenty minutes away. Um,
Speaker 1: and I was like, wow, she just handled her own
Speaker 1: vomit and there's no mess anywhere. Can I tell you
Speaker 1: my Maven grown up story, which um, Saturday morning, she
Speaker 1: found this box. Someone got this for her for Christmas,
Speaker 1: this craft of yarn unicorns. Goddamn yarn unicorns made out
Speaker 1: of yarn. It's a craft. You have to make the
Speaker 1: unicorns by wrapping a bunch of yarn around piece of cardboard.
Speaker 1: And she found it somehow it had gotten down. She
Speaker 1: got the box, and then she came. She came into
Speaker 1: the bedroom with the box and a butter knife, and
Speaker 1: she cut open the tape that was holding the box shut,
Speaker 1: and then she pulled out all the yarn and unspooled
Speaker 1: all of the yarn. Yeah, and she laid it out
Speaker 1: all over the floor, and she kept being like, help
Speaker 1: me do these yarn unicorns. And I was again comatose
Speaker 1: and could not I could not move um. And eventually
Speaker 1: she got you to make the yarn. I came in.
Speaker 1: I saw that she was the most effort I did
Speaker 1: to keep her away from you. It's like, come on,
Speaker 1: let's do the yarn unicorn. By the way, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm sick and not nowhere close to where you are,
Speaker 1: so I don't want to do this yarn unicorn. But
Speaker 1: but I'm I am totally fine compared to what you're
Speaker 1: going through. It's like, oh, come on, let's do the
Speaker 1: yarn unicorn. This excuse my French. This fucking yarn unicorn
Speaker 1: was super hard and like there's no way Mavid could
Speaker 1: ever do. I'm sure it's for older kids. That's why
Speaker 1: it's February and I still have not attempted to make
Speaker 1: yarn unicorn. I mean, what age I didn't look. I
Speaker 1: could look at the box, but I had a tricky
Speaker 1: time with it. I don't think it was an age appropriate.
Speaker 1: I spent two hours on one of these yarn unicorns.
Speaker 1: But she did like it. I mean, she loves it. Um.
Speaker 1: But I was rushing in the beginning and I forgot
Speaker 1: one of the At the end, I realized I didn't
Speaker 1: put one of the pieces of cardboard in. So our
Speaker 1: yarn unicorn was a little skinnier than it normally normally
Speaker 1: should be. So every time I pull out, like they're
Speaker 1: like seven yards of this yarn, I'd measure all of it,
Speaker 1: and I keep getting to the end, and I'd be like,
Speaker 1: why do I have all this extra yarn? I like
Speaker 1: these moments where do you feel like a failure of
Speaker 1: a mom. The yarn unicorn is too skinny. It won't
Speaker 1: stand up. The adhesive strips are impossible. To get the
Speaker 1: paper off of both sides. I had to get a
Speaker 1: pair of tweezers, a yard stick, some scissors. But boy,
Speaker 1: it's pretty beautiful yarn unicorn that's already falling apart instantly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: oh well, oh well, you're in unicorn you had fun
Speaker 1: with it for a while. I had fun with it.
Speaker 1: It's you know, it's like legos or I kea furniture.
Speaker 1: I love instructions. I love put any thing together. But
Speaker 1: the last forty five minutes where Maven was like can
Speaker 1: I put the horn on? And she can't. She wants
Speaker 1: to help, but there's nothing she can do to help.
Speaker 1: It's so complicated, and so I was just getting frantic
Speaker 1: trying to end it. And then I had to I
Speaker 1: had to braid the reins, and so I tried to
Speaker 1: have Maven I tied these three pieces together and not
Speaker 1: I go here, hold the end and then I'll braid it. Boy,
Speaker 1: she was really crap at that job. I was like
Speaker 1: holding pole, Paul. Did she get distracted? Not as old
Speaker 1: as we think. There's also I think it was yesterday.
Speaker 1: You're trying to get her. We were trying to get
Speaker 1: her to get dressed and kept wandering around and we're like, Maven,
Speaker 1: can you just go get dressed? And she's like okay,
Speaker 1: and then she just goes and starts playing. And there's
Speaker 1: a moment where you were like, Maven, do you know
Speaker 1: what I'm going to ask you to do? And she
Speaker 1: goes to get dressed, like, yes, sorry, sorry, what that's like, Gilly,
Speaker 1: She sounds like the sorry. Um, I can't believe. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is not a unique parenting complained, but the amount
Speaker 1: of times I now I have to say put on
Speaker 1: your shoes every single day is driving me insane. Put
Speaker 1: on your shoes, put on your shoes. I go, Britt,
Speaker 1: how many times have I said put on your shoes
Speaker 1: to no? Forty forty times? Oh, he had a bit
Speaker 1: of a freak out and I picked him up at
Speaker 1: his friend's house the other day. Um, that's that's that
Speaker 1: whole story. That's the whole story. It's not interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he doesn't like to leave. I texted his friend's dad
Speaker 1: and I was like, please give my kids a twenty
Speaker 1: minute warning. It didn't help. No, of course, what can
Speaker 1: we talk about our neighbors? Next story that we don't
Speaker 1: really know what? What about them? I can't figure out
Speaker 1: who lives there? What. There's definitely a little kid that's there, right,
Speaker 1: but then there's also like at least two older kids. No, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're there right now. That's like their cousins. Well, they're
Speaker 1: they're a lot. They're there once a week on like
Speaker 1: a Sunday. But to whom do they belong? That's the cause.
Speaker 1: Since they're so loud, we moved in. They have one
Speaker 1: two year old child. He is so loud. I'm not complaining.
Speaker 1: I mean, he's not louder than our kids. Yes he is.
Speaker 1: You might be if you go back to the view
Speaker 1: of the podcast, you might have heard them all yelling
Speaker 1: at each other. You are underestimating the noise that our
Speaker 1: children make through the walls. Oh, I'm not saying our
Speaker 1: kids are not loud. Our kids are very loud. When
Speaker 1: I first met our neighbors, he the dad introduced me
Speaker 1: to the little kids. Apologize now, this one's very loud,
Speaker 1: and I was like, oh, I think we'll give you
Speaker 1: a run for your money. But since then I'm like, no,
Speaker 1: that guy was right, this two year oldest intense. I
Speaker 1: think we're just as loud over here. Should we have
Speaker 1: a competition? No, yeah, I don't. I don't know how
Speaker 1: you engage what that competition is? Can you hear him now?
Speaker 1: Speaking of competition? My so, our kids are with my
Speaker 1: parents and they were doing chalk drawings today on the
Speaker 1: driveway and they started drawing, you know, like stick figures
Speaker 1: and sons and then they had the biggest son competition
Speaker 1: where they just threw the biggest circle around the driveway
Speaker 1: and then Maven was trying to carefully put little lines
Speaker 1: on the outer edge all the way around. It looked
Speaker 1: like so painstaking. You know what this reminds me. I
Speaker 1: had an interesting parenting moment relating to drawing. So Brit
Speaker 1: is not he's very smart boy, he's he's he's ahead
Speaker 1: of the game and reading and math and all that um.
Speaker 1: But he's his hand eye coordination and his drawing is
Speaker 1: creative but not great, Like he can't drop inside the lines. Uh.
Speaker 1: He was doing this project where he needed to of
Speaker 1: like filling these circles and he can't even begin to
Speaker 1: do a circular motion to fill in the colors. And
Speaker 1: so he filled it in and it was all a mess.
Speaker 1: And he commented on it like he knows that about himself.
Speaker 1: He goes, I'm not very good at drawing. Didn't seem
Speaker 1: or of coloring, didn't seem that upset by it. But
Speaker 1: then I forget what happened to. Maven was there and
Speaker 1: Maven was like, I am I'm the best at drawing.
Speaker 1: I'm better than Bryn. Mommy, and I are better than Bryn,
Speaker 1: and you could see it's sort of it hurt Bryn's feelings. Um,
Speaker 1: I feel like kids at school have to have commented
Speaker 1: on his drawing because he colors things in so haphazardly,
Speaker 1: and like he's clearly rushing through his school work at school.
Speaker 1: He just scribbles all over it and then he's like
Speaker 1: the next page and he's told us they're like, we're
Speaker 1: talking about his best friend at school, and he was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: he's so funny and he does jokes, but like the
Speaker 1: other kids are like telling us not to do jokes
Speaker 1: and telling us to do our work, and and I
Speaker 1: was like, there's definitely other kids who have commented on
Speaker 1: Britain not focusing on what he's supposed to be doing. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: it's a funny thing because it's that fine line of
Speaker 1: between knowing that you're not as strong at something as
Speaker 1: something else and like knowing it and owning that identity
Speaker 1: suddenly makes it more true than maybe it needs to
Speaker 1: me needs to be because I remember I was at uh,
Speaker 1: not a strong reader, and I couldn't spell, and I
Speaker 1: have very strong memories of other kids noticing and like
Speaker 1: making fun of me and I wonder, I wonder what
Speaker 1: would be different if if I hadn't seen myself as that. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think he's not actually bad at drawing. It's just
Speaker 1: they have a lot of assignments at school that's kind
Speaker 1: of like busy work where all the kids have to
Speaker 1: color in the same five pages. And I think that's
Speaker 1: where he's like, whatever, let me just get this done. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well there is I mean in pre k, you know
Speaker 1: he couldn't do he couldn't use the scissors. Well, he
Speaker 1: can't follow the line. There's something. And you know, Maven,
Speaker 1: I think it's it's not his greatest strength. She's better
Speaker 1: at throwing and catching in general. So there's a hand
Speaker 1: eye thing there. I'm not worried about it at all, Um,
Speaker 1: but it is that, you know, kids get cruel as
Speaker 1: they get older. Ah, this is what every parent worries
Speaker 1: about his teasing. It's you know, he's like, he's pretty
Speaker 1: resilient to teasing. I think, I mean, his confidences rock
Speaker 1: solid as a rock. Baby. And now it's time for
Speaker 1: we knows wins. This is where we discuss a parenting victory. Um,
Speaker 1: that's happened in our lives, Beth, Well, this is sort
Speaker 1: of a you win. But uh, do you remember this
Speaker 1: week when you acknowledged that you went to the grocery
Speaker 1: store and bought band aids and conditioner for the first
Speaker 1: time in maybe your entire life. Um, yep, yeah, Um.
Speaker 1: Explain why this is significant. Well, this is significant because
Speaker 1: historically these are the types of purchases where you'll turn
Speaker 1: to me and say, we need better band aids, we
Speaker 1: need more conditioner, or why don't we have conditioner, and
Speaker 1: you like, you actually do most of our grocery shopping
Speaker 1: at this point, but you love to do like a
Speaker 1: ninja strike type of grocery shopping, a surgical strike where
Speaker 1: you buy five items and come home. I don't want
Speaker 1: to throw anything away. Um, I've loosened that up. But
Speaker 1: the band aids in some ways felt like a real
Speaker 1: coming of age of dad age. I think because a
Speaker 1: long time ago we had I don't know if it
Speaker 1: was a big fight, but we had some hitty band aids.
Speaker 1: They're generic whatever band aids. And because I say everything
Speaker 1: I'm thinking out loud without really thinking, I put on
Speaker 1: one of these band aids and they were just sort
Speaker 1: of cheap, and I was like, well, I guess I'm
Speaker 1: crappy band aids. And of course, in your mind, you
Speaker 1: were the one that bought the band aids and so
Speaker 1: and I said, you've never bought band aids in your
Speaker 1: entire life. You don't get to complain about the band aids.
Speaker 1: It's not true. I have about band aids in my life. Well,
Speaker 1: now you have. I bought band aids in college. Maybe
Speaker 1: maybe really maybe one time. Every college male has a
Speaker 1: well stocked band aid supply, as we all know, probably
Speaker 1: bought a single, probably found a band aid. I'm thinking
Speaker 1: of the time I found a you're thinking of when
Speaker 1: you went into another dorm room where a female student
Speaker 1: lived and said, can I have a band aid? And
Speaker 1: she said, okay, you know what, I'm not gonna say
Speaker 1: that's never happened. Uh, And it turned into a big fight.
Speaker 1: I didn't understand it at all at the time, because
Speaker 1: in my mind, I wasn't criticizing you. I was just
Speaker 1: I was more like, wow, I didn't know band aids
Speaker 1: could be so shitty. And you got so mad at me.
Speaker 1: And I got so mad because I'm like, this isn't
Speaker 1: even about you. I'm just talking about this band aid
Speaker 1: and and you took it as a personal attack, and
Speaker 1: and I thought it was overblown and didn't understand that
Speaker 1: it's a larger thing, which is that like there's there's
Speaker 1: band aids here at all because it's something you thought about, uh,
Speaker 1: And there's a lot of things like that that you
Speaker 1: know in my life up to that point, I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'll buy shampoo because it's been five days of not
Speaker 1: having any shampoo, and I'm like, I really need to
Speaker 1: solve this problem, uh, as opposed to now in my life,
Speaker 1: when I realized, oh, this shampoo is very low. Do
Speaker 1: we have any backups? And I look at it now,
Speaker 1: if I'm like there's one spare bottle, that's when it's
Speaker 1: time to buy new shampoo, and not when it's been
Speaker 1: absent for a week. And so I noticed we had
Speaker 1: one band aid left recently, and so I went to
Speaker 1: the store when I was there about a big, multi
Speaker 1: sized box of band Aid brand band aids. And I
Speaker 1: didn't think it was a big deal, but your reaction
Speaker 1: to it, um made me feel good. Well, no, you've
Speaker 1: announced it like it was a big deal. And you
Speaker 1: were like, do you know I bought shampoo? Um, well
Speaker 1: I didn't. I'm not the one who brought it up
Speaker 1: like it was a big deal. It was. It was
Speaker 1: what wasn't what we were talking about. We were talking
Speaker 1: about you were talking about the kids shampoo. What I
Speaker 1: refilled the kids shampoo? Okay, I told maybe I was bragging.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you though, when when you had a positive
Speaker 1: reaction to it, um, alarm bells went off in my head,
Speaker 1: which were the Peter, do not celebrate yourself for doing
Speaker 1: the what is in no way an above and beyond thing,
Speaker 1: which is to get band aids because we need band aids.
Speaker 1: Um So I was very mindful not to congratulate myself.
Speaker 1: But um it looks like I didn't. I didn't succeed
Speaker 1: in that. Like anyway, it was sort of a win.
Speaker 1: I didn't. I didn't know the wind was going to be.
Speaker 1: I'm so torn right now because the wind is. I
Speaker 1: take it one of two ways. One the win is
Speaker 1: Beth is pleased with her husband. The negative side is
Speaker 1: like Beth is pleased that she's trained her man to
Speaker 1: be a responsible adult, like it no longer the animal
Speaker 1: he once was. I was pleased, and I then you
Speaker 1: started changing the story of what happened, and then it anyway,
Speaker 1: how do I change this story. I don't want to
Speaker 1: relive it. No one wants to relive what we just discussed, Beth.
Speaker 1: I just want to say that I'm am very pleased
Speaker 1: with our relationship right now. I feel like, Ah, I
Speaker 1: feel like we're communicating better than we ever have. Do
Speaker 1: you agree that's true? Oh, that reminds me of another win,
Speaker 1: which is that we had a date night. Oh my gosh, Yes,
Speaker 1: Valentine's we had it. Although that is unfortunately the start
Speaker 1: of my slide into extreme illness. It's like I was
Speaker 1: getting sick and I was like, on a normal healthy occasion,
Speaker 1: I would stay inside tonight while I feel sick, But
Speaker 1: because it's such a rare opportunity, I'm going to go
Speaker 1: out and have two drinks and then my body completely
Speaker 1: revolted on me. But anyway, we had a really great
Speaker 1: dinner night out. Um and we it was nice to
Speaker 1: be alone, the two of us and talk in a
Speaker 1: way where we're not talking to an audience. Um and yeah.
Speaker 1: And I don't want to get into it, but even
Speaker 1: the point we even talked about politics in a very
Speaker 1: civil way. We even talked civilly about politics. Um, it
Speaker 1: was great. There is something insanely weird about this podcast,
Speaker 1: which we've joked jokingly and not jokingly described as our therapy,
Speaker 1: because we do have to talk about our relationship and
Speaker 1: our kids and our lives, knowing that their styles of
Speaker 1: people listening. So we have to be on our best behavior,
Speaker 1: which has been super productive, and I've started giving friends advice.
Speaker 1: I was like, don't. I was like, well, maybe it
Speaker 1: doesn't matter if anyone listens to it, but do the equivalent,
Speaker 1: which is pick an hour a week where you're have
Speaker 1: to be five ft away from five that's the exact
Speaker 1: distance you have to be five feet away. You should
Speaker 1: have a microphone and sound muffling equipment in front of
Speaker 1: your face so you can barely see each other. I
Speaker 1: can't see you at all, Um, I can see the
Speaker 1: top of your head. Oh yeah, that's charting why it
Speaker 1: works for me, Um, But for say that you have
Speaker 1: to be together for an hour and you without looking
Speaker 1: at your phones or a movie and talk to each
Speaker 1: other and uh boy, I know more about you as
Speaker 1: a result. But it was suddenly interesting to you know,
Speaker 1: have time away from the show, what we can tell
Speaker 1: all of our real secrets that we don't talk about here,
Speaker 1: of our real deep dark secrets right in to guess
Speaker 1: what our deep dark secrets are or tell us your
Speaker 1: deep dark secrets. Yeah, tell us something weird about you. Um,
Speaker 1: here's a question. What would you not share on a podcast?
Speaker 1: What I don't know who I'm talking to, to whom
Speaker 1: I'm speaking There's a few things we don't talk about here,
Speaker 1: but mostly we're pretty honest. Boy. This is a great segment.
Speaker 1: This is a segment where we let's talk about refer
Speaker 1: to the things that we're not going to talk about.
Speaker 1: Is this good content? Yeah? This is great. This next
Speaker 1: segment is called Listeners Want to Know. So that's where
Speaker 1: we take questions and comments from you guys. Oh right,
Speaker 1: all right. First, UM, a quick fun one. Ah. This
Speaker 1: one comes to us from Jade. There's no manual dot
Speaker 1: dot dot Indonesia. Hello. I'm in my late twenties and
Speaker 1: have no children yet. I have loved listening to your
Speaker 1: podcast since near its beginning. I just had to write
Speaker 1: to tell you I'm currently seven months into a one
Speaker 1: year trip with my partner. We are in Indonesia walking
Speaker 1: through Java airport awaiting our next flight. Much to my
Speaker 1: partner's bewilderment and then embarrassment, I shrieked and hurtled myself
Speaker 1: toward the bookshop, coming in at high speed, arms flayling,
Speaker 1: I collided with the books and several went flying. Embarrassed,
Speaker 1: I apologized, yet still brimming with excitement. I held up
Speaker 1: your book, Beth. There's no manual, turning to my partner,
Speaker 1: are grinning, exclaimed, it's my podcast. We have one bag
Speaker 1: each for the entirety of the trip, and your book
Speaker 1: is now in mind along for the ride. Thanks for
Speaker 1: what you do, Jade. It's not a small book. That's great,
Speaker 1: that's so sweet. I love that the book is in
Speaker 1: Indonesian airport. It's exciting. It's in a lot of places. Yeah,
Speaker 1: people have been sending pictures from bookstores where the book
Speaker 1: is facing out, which, um, if you haven't written a book,
Speaker 1: or if you don't if you're not familiar with these things,
Speaker 1: you know, putting the book faced out on the shelf
Speaker 1: instead of like just seeing the binding is like, it
Speaker 1: feels very special when I realized this. But you can
Speaker 1: see more of them, You can see more of the book,
Speaker 1: and it says to people, hey, look at this book
Speaker 1: in particular, and that is exciting. It really says that
Speaker 1: people is Hey, there's a book here, and if you
Speaker 1: wish to purchase it, you may. Yeah, that's what it's saying. Um,
Speaker 1: send us your pictures of Beth's book. Yeah, please, it's ah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's I obviously know it's in bookstores, but
Speaker 1: it's still surreal to see it in bookstores. Yeah, no joke.
Speaker 1: If you see it in a bookstore, take a picture
Speaker 1: of it on the shelf and then send it to
Speaker 1: us and let us know where where it is. Um,
Speaker 1: because that's fun for my sick, sad wife. She's so sad.
Speaker 1: Capitalism can feel better with capitalism. Um, that's fantastic, Jade.
Speaker 1: Good luck on all your your journeys. Um, and uh
Speaker 1: read that. Enjoy that trip? Yeah, enjoy that trip. Are
Speaker 1: we got another email? Are you ready? Do you need
Speaker 1: more drugs? How do you feel? Hmm? Let's mull over
Speaker 1: whether I'm ready or not for this email? Um, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm ready? Okay, good. This comes to us from Lisa.
Speaker 1: Subject line help us our brains are broken. Hi, Beth
Speaker 1: and Peter. Longtime listener, first time emailer here. You guys
Speaker 1: work irregular hours and have two children's worth of stuff
Speaker 1: to do, so I wonder how do you keep your
Speaker 1: lives organized. Do you have shared calendars on your phone?
Speaker 1: A physical calendar in the kitchen. Since having our daughter
Speaker 1: fourteen months ago, my husband and I have both missed
Speaker 1: dentist appointments, and it's not unusual for one of us
Speaker 1: to sprint out the door after realizing we have a
Speaker 1: haircut in three minutes. Before this child, I would have
Speaker 1: described us as reliable people, but now it feels like
Speaker 1: our brains are broken and we're barely on top of anything.
Speaker 1: Do you have any advice, any tips on how to
Speaker 1: remember to check the calendar? You're the best, Lisa from
Speaker 1: Quebec oh Man, Yeah, that's relatable. Um, your brains are
Speaker 1: supposed to be broken. UM. We do have a shared
Speaker 1: calendar on phones and computers. UM, that's really helpful. Um,
Speaker 1: for I have too many calendars I need to condense
Speaker 1: to me, it's hard with The hard thing with the
Speaker 1: calendar is like this week, for example, if you have
Speaker 1: a trip planned and it's taking up multiple days, it
Speaker 1: like pushes everything else down on the calendar so you
Speaker 1: can't see at a glance. I got a notification that
Speaker 1: you deleted the reservation to the Berkshire's Airbnb and it
Speaker 1: was such a sad notification. Again, it was just like, well,
Speaker 1: because I'm trying to see what's on the calendar, like
Speaker 1: all the other two does. So anyway, Um, what was
Speaker 1: he saying? Calendars are good? I think like if you
Speaker 1: can set a reminder and alert on your your phone
Speaker 1: calendar that says like remind me thirty minutes before this happens,
Speaker 1: I think that's always good. If it's like a day
Speaker 1: where you're not to be necessarily like at your computer
Speaker 1: looking at the the calendar. Um, yeah, just anything. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know your schedule better than we do. But I
Speaker 1: know that there are certain things in my week that
Speaker 1: fit into ah the general structure of things that I'm
Speaker 1: not going to forget about anything A typical, it's a
Speaker 1: it's a it's a reminder, it's one of those. But
Speaker 1: then if it's a call, I'll always have the reminder
Speaker 1: be the moment the call starts. If I get a
Speaker 1: reminder of fifteen minutes before the call, I'm so much
Speaker 1: more likely to then forget forget about it in fifteen minutes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: me too. The call and reminder has to be like
Speaker 1: five minutes before I do it at the moment the
Speaker 1: call starts because I've still forgotten about it, and then
Speaker 1: you're calling in like last second while everyone's waiting for you.
Speaker 1: I can call it so fast, well, okay, one minute before.
Speaker 1: I don't know. And there's other things that, Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: like pretty good at checking my calendar and knowing what's
Speaker 1: up on days when I'm at work. It's that it's
Speaker 1: the days where I'm starting to like work from home
Speaker 1: or on the weekends, if I have stuff to do
Speaker 1: that it will really slip my mind, and it like
Speaker 1: especially need the reminders. Like if I'm working from home
Speaker 1: and I have to go pick up the kids, I
Speaker 1: have to set an alarm on my phone because I'll
Speaker 1: get sucked into work and just lose track of time.
Speaker 1: Routine routine routine. Um, looking at you right before going
Speaker 1: into bed, looking at the next day. It seems like
Speaker 1: a real no brainer. Routine routine routine. When I forget something,
Speaker 1: it's because I I haven't looked my calendar for two days. Boy,
Speaker 1: maybe people, just maybe it's just one reminder twenty minutes
Speaker 1: before bedtime that says, look at tomorrow's calendar. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't know. Life is so hard. I feel like I
Speaker 1: just feel like at a certain point, if you have
Speaker 1: too many like alerts and reminders, then you're just like
Speaker 1: constantly stressed out like it's and it becomes white noise.
Speaker 1: You need. You needed time to get away from your
Speaker 1: calendar and not be thinking about it's. It changed my
Speaker 1: life the day I spent forever going through every single
Speaker 1: notification and like beep and ding that my computer and
Speaker 1: phone makes, and just turned almost all of them off.
Speaker 1: My phone doesn't give me a lot of beeps. First
Speaker 1: of all, my phone is always on vibrate. Second of all,
Speaker 1: what would I be getting things for? I don't None
Speaker 1: of my apps are allowed to tell me anything that's great.
Speaker 1: That's you don't need that. That's what drives you crazy. Um,
Speaker 1: I have a The v I P function on my
Speaker 1: mail is huge. There's a few people like our real
Speaker 1: litteral at my agent. But the second a tone goes off,
Speaker 1: ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding
Speaker 1: ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding, Peter, it's
Speaker 1: your agent, not you don't know that you've been released
Speaker 1: from the PEPSI spot. I don't need to hold those
Speaker 1: dates anymore because you're not getting paid. I don't think
Speaker 1: I've ever auditioned for PEPSI. I don't know where that
Speaker 1: came from. Did book a commercial this week? Congratulations? Are
Speaker 1: you so excited? I'm so excited. I'm so excited for
Speaker 1: us to have health insurance. That is, that's the only
Speaker 1: thing I care about these days, health insurance. Um. So, anyway,
Speaker 1: how do you share? Well, okay, so she's mostly just
Speaker 1: asking about calendar. She she she's not asking about other
Speaker 1: shared responsibilities. Well, I think it's it's communicating. Logistics of
Speaker 1: communicating with your partner about kids is something you have
Speaker 1: to figure out. Yeah, we do not have a kitchen calendar.
Speaker 1: Were very digital. Folks were very digital. Um, we do
Speaker 1: have like we know when your classes are, we know
Speaker 1: when your shows are, and then we kind of like
Speaker 1: have like a first come, first serve basis in terms
Speaker 1: of claiming nights on the calendar. Well, for a long time,
Speaker 1: because I taught so much, I just I didn't really
Speaker 1: have claimed any of the other ones. And I didn't
Speaker 1: because I knew if I did, if that's something I'm
Speaker 1: asking you to cover the whole week over time. Well,
Speaker 1: I also wasn't claiming them because it was like, well,
Speaker 1: I could go out that night while I'm exhausted, or
Speaker 1: I could maybe have our whole family be in the
Speaker 1: same location for two hours. Yeah, there was a hard
Speaker 1: learning curve when Britain was born because I taught a
Speaker 1: lot more and we've settled into a much better system. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And once we went to Brooklyn. Ah, oh, you guys,
Speaker 1: the commute time I'm gonna save like ten hours a
Speaker 1: week not being on a train. Yeah. I mean we're
Speaker 1: being a little bit over optimistic about how much our
Speaker 1: life is going to be easier when we moved to Brooklyn.
Speaker 1: But just travel time is undeniably the travel time will
Speaker 1: be better. The other logistics of living will not. We
Speaker 1: don't know, we're gonna We're always going to find something
Speaker 1: to be stressed about. Um, Like like the seller of
Speaker 1: their house who won't let anyone in. Guys, we're trying
Speaker 1: to do work on this place and she won't let
Speaker 1: the architects and to take measurements. Yeah, she was recovering.
Speaker 1: But for how long we're going crazy? You know what,
Speaker 1: Let's not get into it. It's not stressful at all
Speaker 1: to move. That's the lesson here. Well, friends, you know what,
Speaker 1: everyone's sick. We're gonna we're gonna take a good night early, um,
Speaker 1: because listen to us, listen to us. We're terrible and
Speaker 1: you're sick, sad wife over here. We have one more
Speaker 1: night with no kids, so like, let us leave us alone,
Speaker 1: leave us alone. We're all alone. We have no kids.
Speaker 1: That's never happened, and we're recording a podcast as insanity.
Speaker 1: We're hanging up right now, all right, thank you for listening. Guys,
Speaker 1: you're the best. If he liked us a minute question,
Speaker 1: your story gives some advice or a parenting hypothetical. First,
Speaker 1: would you know segments? Send a picture of Beth's book
Speaker 1: in a in a fun place, yeah, or a boring place.
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