Reclaiming the fun
This week Kathy and Michelle talk about reclaiming the fun where you can. Silver linings? We find them!
Episode transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:03 Hi Kathy. Michelle, how are you?
Speaker 0 00:00:07 I’m good. Like I always say it’s so good to see your face. I love that we get to work with each other on projects and things like that. It is kind of funny though because I know one section of your house, . I know what’s in the frame and that’s it. And I’ve had to, You would be surprised at what the rest of your house looks like. In my head. That’s all I’m gonna say. a whole Sie Enda layout from where you are. Like in my head. Oh, really? Like what I imagine the rest of Cathy’s house must look like based on that one corner ,
Speaker 1 00:00:37 This is the best corner.
Speaker 0 00:00:39 It’s be Love it. It’s,
Speaker 1 00:00:42 It’s so nice. I’ve got like a couple of little built in bookcase in a fireplace and then, you know, the husband is right on the other side of this wall, so it’s kind of like a, a nice place to set up for an office cuz I’m close by. I can see him even though I’ve got like the little baby video monitor so I can watch him
Speaker 0 00:00:59 . Yeah. And wants got plants. I, I assume they’re real plants that they are alive. Yes. And you’ve got your solid lamp and all of that other good stuff. All my stuff.
Speaker 1 00:01:10 I
Speaker 0 00:01:11 Nail polish remover at the corner.
Speaker 1 00:01:13 there is probably only nail polish remover in the corner. Cuz sometimes when I’m on a long call I’ll just like, you’re things
Speaker 0 00:01:22 And you’re human. Like I have, I have nail files and everything else on my desk as well. You just don’t see it. Cuz right now I’ve got candy, corn behind me. Oh, look at that. My hands. You wait. .
Speaker 1 00:01:33 Fun. That is, Yes. You are in Candy Land this week already for Halloween, huh?
Speaker 0 00:01:40 I am. I even got right here to got like, I guess put it in front of my face. , my, my, what do you call it? McDonald’s pumpkin bucket for
Speaker 1 00:01:50 My,
Speaker 0 00:01:50 Yeah, I, for my Happy Meal,
Speaker 1 00:01:51 Been like, it’s a happy meal you get with that. Like you have to just get a happy meal and you get your,
Speaker 0 00:01:57 That’s the toy that cuz of the Happy Meal. So I, I tweeted about it. I said my, I said childhood called. I answered with that picture and I’d sent the tweet to my mom just thinking she’d think it was funny. No, what does my mother do? She makes a Twitter account just so she could follow me and reply to that one tweet with gift found. Well she wasn’t, she did it. So she replied twice in five minutes.
Speaker 1 00:02:23 That’s the
Speaker 0 00:02:25 God bless her. God bless
Speaker 1 00:02:26 Mom. It’s the best . Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:02:29 Completely
Speaker 1 00:02:30 The same. Oh my gosh. That’s so funny. Well, she probably remembers your childhood fondly and all of the trick or treating that you did.
Speaker 0 00:02:38 Probably, probably You had this one. Um, we lived in me in um, St. Louis at the time. And my mom, I wanted me to be an angel. So I had this little white dress, I don’t remember, it might have been my first communion dress or something. At that time. I had this little white dress for an angel little halo over my head. And she f she cut these wings out of cardboard, but in order to get a box big enough, she went down and got like a refrigerator box, like the old boxes refrigerators came in and cut these, the must have been like an inch thick cardboard. She strapped me to it, but I fell backwards. My
Speaker 1 00:03:17 Gosh.
Speaker 0 00:03:18 I, I figured out how to get my balance and walk and then she goes to put us in the car to take us to a friend’s house to trick or treat only they were longer than my butt was. So I was like angled back against the seat. Just likes, I remember it like it was yesterday. ,
Speaker 1 00:03:40 That is the best you have to get,
Speaker 0 00:03:42 You have to get me out too cause I can’t walk this way. .
Speaker 1 00:03:48 Oh my gosh. I’m having like visions of a Christmas story where the little kids like so wrapped up and he’s like this and falls into this. Ralphie was, no, it wasn’t Ralphie, it was the other kid, but, Oh
Speaker 0 00:03:58 Right. I don’t remember the other kid’s name, but you’re right. It was the, it was the brother. The little brother. Yeah. Oh my gosh. And I live in the north of course. So it’s freezing by the time Halloween hits. So we would get, we have big costumes. We’d buy costumes that we’d have to wear a winter coat over the top and be like, But mom, you can’t see by whatever costume
Speaker 1 00:04:18 Exactly in those plastic, remember those plastic max, you couldn’t even breathe through them. And it was just like so horrifying. You just like all of this like humidity and you’re wrapped up in a coat and yeah. I don’t
Speaker 0 00:04:34 Know. Sensation that built up and dripped on your lip cuz of your nose breathing against the plastic. Yeah,
Speaker 1 00:04:39 Exactly. I think that’s why I like, I trick or treated until I was a senior in high school and then I just, I didn’t go like through neighborhoods, but I drive to my friend’s houses. . Yeah. Yeah. I knew were like handed out candy, so drove all over town. The last costume that I had, I was a bag of leaves, so I just like took a bag of leaves, put Legos in it and wrote glad across the front . And then we just like drove around. It was like a few of us. We just drove to people’s houses and then we’d hang out with them and then some of ’em would jump in with us and we’d go to somebody else’s house. I dunno, I think you can celebrate Halloween no matter what age you are.
Speaker 0 00:05:16 You know, I don’t care if you’re 18 years old, you come up to my door, I’ve giving you candy, you know.
Speaker 1 00:05:21 Sounds good. I’m thinking
Speaker 0 00:05:22 That could be out . I mean those teenagers could be out vandalizing or anything else. They’re just wanting to extend their youth a little bit, so why not? Here’s a Snickers bar, you know?
Speaker 1 00:05:34 Yeah, Yeah. We live in a neighborhood now where the houses are pretty far apart from each other. And so everybody like drives through and so there’s like, a van will show up and the door room flies open and like 10 kids come out and I’m like, How do you get in there? But they’re small I guess. And, but yeah, we get a ton of kids and then a bunch of people will like, lots of golf carts will come by and then some people will just like hook up a trailer and it’s like full of kids and they’ll put like speakers in music. And so our name is like so much fun for Halloween, so I’m looking forward to it.
Speaker 0 00:06:08 Do you dress up to give the candy out?
Speaker 1 00:06:10 I didn’t last year. Um, but this year I think I, I think I will. I think I should. Yeah. Last year be fun. My husband was, was sick. Like he had his, I didn’t know it was his first stroke, but he had, he was sick and so I was like half dealing with that and I was just like, all right, take your gandy. And so, um, yeah, so I was kind of like, I don’t know, this year though, this year I’m reclaiming the happy cause Good. That’s what I’m here for. I’m here to have fun. That’s my why.
Speaker 0 00:06:41 Yeah. I like it. Reclaiming the fun. I think that should be like everybody’s mantra, right? So the last three years, and we talk about the pandemic a lot. It’s not over, of course it’s, yeah. My daughter has, it’s just getting over Covid you know, on Monday she’s like, I had a cold, she had a cold all weekend. She was, she was testing, it was negative. She went to work on Monday wearing a mask because she didn’t wanna get anybody else to catch her cold. And suddenly realized that she couldn’t taste or smell her coffee. Oh. So she had a vial of peppermint oil on her desk. And so she whipped that thing over. She looked practically stuffed it up her nose and she’s like, I can feel my nose hairs burning, but I can’t smell the
Speaker 1 00:07:21 Peppermint. Oh no. She had had snow.
Speaker 0 00:07:26 No, she’s feeling better of course now. But, um, but yeah, we’re not done with the pandemic. However, the last three years I think we’ve all been through so much. Um, some of us more than others. We’ve talked about that before. Your, your last year? My last year have not been great. Reclaiming the fun. Sounds like a good mantra going forward.
Speaker 1 00:07:45 Yeah, totally. I mean I , this might sound horrible, but my, my husband, you know, we just got the, this motorized school, uh, wheelchair, you know, it’s like the, the real deal. It goes up, it’s goes back it like he can spend the whole day in it. Not that he wants to, but when he, when he is in it and he, he can drive himself around pretty well actually. And I’ll put on low rider , it me laugh
Speaker 0 00:08:14 That gets like, what are doing the, hey,
Speaker 1 00:08:19 Well yeah, I should do that one too. Oh my gosh. Yeah. I’m just gonna create an entire Spotify playlist of things that when he’s like tooling around the house and sometimes it’s like, where are you going?
Speaker 0 00:08:34 Change,
Speaker 1 00:08:35 Change. That’s about it. Yeah. So, but that’s the thing is like, you can either focus on it and say, okay, this, he’s in a wheelchair and he is probably gonna be in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. Um, or we can have some fun with it. Yep. So
Speaker 0 00:08:52 Yeah, there’s a woman on tic, there’s a woman on TikTok that I follow. I think, I think it was 2020. It might have been 2019. I don’t remember for sure. She was in a horrific car accident. She’s a young woman. She was studying to be a nurse or she was, had just graduated, was a nurse, um, engaged or had a long term boyfriend, I can’t remember exactly. Anyway, she, as a result of her accident, she was like, she was just driving along and another car just came outta the blue and hit her really hard. Um, she’s in a wheelchair now and um, she’s been, she got engaged since then. Like life is good. She has her struggles, but life is good. And she, she had TikTok yesterday and where she showed her last two, um, Halloween costumes plus what she has for this year. And I wish I could remember all of them, but basically they had to do with like putting things on a wheelchair and being like, she was a crash cart. That was one of them. Cuz she’s a nurse. She was the crash cart, she had the paddles and everything, you know, And this year, instead of making something cuz she’s busy with wedding planning, she ordered a Cinderella. Um, you know, the, the, the thing you ride in, I can’t think of the word, the
Speaker 1 00:10:03 Like chariot thing or like the
Speaker 0 00:10:05 Thing the horse, The carriage.
Speaker 1 00:10:06 The carriage. The carriage, Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:10:08 Cinderella’s carriage. And it’s basically made for wheelchairs. So like it fits down, like the wheels go, like has have a thing go, goes over your wheels and then it’s like around it. So you sit in there looking like the princess as you roll around in your wheelchair. And I was like, oh, I love the inclusivity of some of the, what people are building as far as yeah. Making sure that kids and even adults have a lot of fun with being able to dress up and participate, which is pretty cool.
Speaker 1 00:10:33 Yeah, I think it’s, I think it’s the best. It’s, it’s fun because a lot of, you know, that’s the other thing is like sometimes really negative things happen and Yeah, it’s, it’s a hard adjustment to it, but then there’s a, like things that happened because of that. Yeah. That would’ve never happened otherwise. You know, there’s been a lot of stuff with my husband that like his life, I hate to say it because maybe it sounds weird, but maybe his life is a little bit better because of the stroke. You know, like he used to get really like that the pandemic was really hard on him. Um, it’s been hard on a lot of people, but a lot of worries, a lot of stresses and things that, you know, I’d be like, it’s gonna be fine honey. And he would just like, Yeah, no it’s not. And like he was like really getting down on it and then like last night I’m like talking to him and he completely forgot that Covid had even existed.
Speaker 0 00:11:26 Oh yeah.
Speaker 1 00:11:26 Like, and he’s had it, but it’s like he, he doesn’t have to engage with like, you know, the new variants that are, or that it’s circulating her again or whatever. And I just have to stay healthy and not bring it home so he doesn’t go to the hospital again or anything. But he doesn’t have to worry about any of it. I can mm-hmm. , you know, he doesn’t wanna watch the news anymore. He doesn’t wanna like, he doesn’t wanna be upset by it. He’s not really clued into the fact that that’s happening. And that’s been a blessing mm-hmm. because I’m pretty good at like getting myself into a space where I’m not too worried about it. But he was not able to do that. And so I think in a lot of ways it’s been a blessing that he’s not like from a spiritual, more like emotional perspective.
Speaker 0 00:12:08 He’s not focused on
Speaker 1 00:12:09 Better for him.
Speaker 0 00:12:10 Yeah, for sure. Well you and I both use, and I can’t remember if we talked about this last week or not, so forgive me if I say something again, but um, I know that you and I both use humor to deal with the dark stuff sometimes. And I don’t remember if I’ve told you some of my dark jokes about my dad, my dad’s death . If I haven’t anybody that’s listening right now, you’ll have to forgive me if you find these incredibly offensive. It’s my father, my joke and I get to laugh at it , but after my dad died, I I called my sister up and I said, knock, knock. She said, Who’s there? I said, Not
Speaker 2 00:12:51 Dad’s.
Speaker 0 00:12:53 A little bit of humor about those things. So
Speaker 1 00:12:55 Yeah,
Speaker 0 00:12:56 There have been years, including last year when my father forgot about my birthday and the oldest you’d think he’d remember. Yeah. So I was talking to my brother Monday, I go, Well dad didn’t forget to call me this year.
Speaker 2 00:13:08 .
Speaker 1 00:13:09 Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2 00:13:12 I
Speaker 0 00:13:13 Go, he didn’t call but he didn’t forget either,
Speaker 1 00:13:15 So. Yeah, yeah. You
Speaker 0 00:13:16 Know, it’s just the little things
Speaker 2 00:13:19 .
Speaker 1 00:13:20 Oh my gosh. Well it take you off of it cuz now you can laugh, right?
Speaker 0 00:13:24 Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. So yeah, I was, um, most people know I’m a liberal. I’m a very, very left wing. And you know, just within days of dying I was like, well now he knows C’S real. It wasn’t a pandemic. global warming’s a real thing. And women belong in the ministry. Damn it. So there you go,
Speaker 2 00:13:47 .
Speaker 0 00:13:50 Oh, anyway. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:13:51 Well if he did, if he did go to to heaven and meet God, I hope she was happy to see him.
Speaker 0 00:13:57 Exactly. Somebody said, somebody sent me a tic where a guy said something like, um, you know, well I hope my parents, you know, his parents were dead. I hope my parents are looking up at me and satisfied. They go looking up, they go, Yeah, they treated me like shit. Well they were alive. There’s no way they’re looking down on.
Speaker 2 00:14:15 Oh my gosh.
Speaker 0 00:14:17 So yeah. So Dr. My, it definitely is a coping mechanism and if y’all tell me I need therapy, you’re probably right. .
Speaker 1 00:14:23 Hey, my therapy starts in 20 minutes, like actual therapy, so I’m ready for it.
Speaker 0 00:14:30 I’m not one You should the things my friend Michelle.
Speaker 1 00:14:35 Exactly. Too funny. Too funny. But yeah, I mean humor is, I, it’s, I think it’s, um, you know, people have said, I don’t know if I said, I said this to somebody recently, maybe I said little week, I dunno, but Robin Williams, you know, he had, he committed suicide mm-hmm. and had a lot of darkness that he didn’t share with the world. But I think the fact that he had that and the fact that he wanted other people not to was yeah. So commendable. But I think there’s a lot, I’ve, I have friends who are comedians and they’ve, they’ve gone through some tough times in their lives. Like, I think that whole idea of like sharing that happy face to the world and making sure other people don’t feel the sadness that they know exists. Yeah. Um, I think the best comedians are the ones that feel that deeply.
Speaker 0 00:15:25 Yep. Uh, but the most well-balanced people are the ones that are able to share both the happy and the sad. Right? Yeah. So it’s, it’s okay that you and I talk about the things that are affecting us. Um, I can laugh about the funny things around my dad’s death and still acknowledge that it was a hard time to go through and that I missed. So happy tears folks. These are happy tears. No . But, but seriously, I’m gonna leave you with a little note. Um, you asked me before we even got on, why do I have candy corn in my background? So I do social media for other people as well as myself, and I come up with ideas and there was a great candy corn debate the other day on post status slack. Do you like it? Don’t you like it? Whether you’re in the United States or not in the United States.
Speaker 0 00:16:15 Have you even had it before? And so I posted that on Nev uh, Harris’s Twitter account. Like, do you like candy corn? Love it. I could take it, leave it, hate it. Never had it. And he, I’m like, I’m like, I know if you saw this, but I’m really going somewhere with this. And so the candy corn is a lot like your business because you have a product and you have a service and people love it. They hate it or they’re indifferent to it. And you need to market to the people who love it and not try to convince the people who hate it and not even, like, maybe you were to persuade a little bit of the people who could take it or leave it, Right. Because if they could take it, there might be straight over there. But the same thing is true with just us in life, right? Not everybody’s gonna like me. Some people could take or leave me. Some people probably just think I’m an idiot and don’t wanna be anywhere near me and that’s okay. And I have people and
Speaker 1 00:17:05 Some people love you.
Speaker 0 00:17:06 Exactly. Right. That’s true of all of us, right? So yes. So don’t, don’t worry about the people who don’t like you, don’t worry about the people who you know, ab whore you, I hate the word hate, but, you know, um, and, and, and the people who could take or leave you, ah, whatever, they can take some of the good from who you are too, but focus on the people who build you up. Focus on the people who Yeah. Um, feed your soul and the people who that you, who’s accompany you enjoy and who you want to spend time with. So yeah. And I’m grateful for you because you are one of those people for me. So
Speaker 1 00:17:41 Thank you. Thank you. And vice versa for sure. Even though I don’t like candy corn. I love you enough to give you all of mine that I get and
Speaker 0 00:17:48 I go, go out for trick feeding. See, I, I’m good for like a handful a year and after that handful I’m like, this tastes like, I don’t know, but I don’t want anymore . You can just taste the ingredients and not the overall sweetness after about a handful. But anyway, Yeah. Yeah. And I’m not that folks, we are gonna leave you for another week. Hopefully you found some, some good in our compost of this week. . I’m just gonna talk about the compost all the time. Now I actually have, um, an image that I’m gonna use for this. I have, uh, a three part image that I took of the dog several years ago and it’s, I was taking a picture of a sunset at a friend’s house. They live right on the lake, Lake Ontario. It was the most gorgeous oranges and red sunset. And their dog started walking right in where I was trying to take this picture in front of the sunset. And one picture is the dog walking. Another picture is the dog just admiring the sunset, or at least that’s what it looks like. And the third picture is the dog taking a shit , .
Speaker 0 00:18:52 We were downwind of that dog and it was not pleasant. Oh my gosh, that is so funny. But you never know. So I always tell people, do you like picture number one or do you like number two, . I think I’ll use that picture for this week’s episode because there’s beauty all around us even when the dog’s taking a shit. So there you go. . There you go. There you go. That says it all. Oh, for sure. All right, we’ll see you all next week and in the meantime be motivated to have a great week.