Moving + Mailbag

00:00:02
Speaker 1: Hi.

00:00:03
Speaker 2: This is Laura Vandercamp. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist, and speaker.

00:00:08
Speaker 3: And this is Sarah Hartunger. I'm a mother of three, a practicing physician and blogger. On the side, we are two working parents who love our careers and our families.

00:00:17
Speaker 1: Welcome to best of both worlds.

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Speaker 2: Here we talk about how real women manage work, family, and time for fun, from figuring out childcare to mapping out long term career goals. We want you to get the most out of life.

00:00:32
Speaker 1: Welcome to best of both worlds. This is Laura.

00:00:35
Speaker 4: In this episode, we are going to be talking about moving, and we're going to be doing a bit of a mail bag. Actually the moving is part of the mail bag, but it was sort of a longer question and we thought we needed to talk about it a little bit more. So, hence we wound up with our alliterative title that we are sharing here toward the end of August twenty twenty three. So by the time those airs, Sarah, you will be back from kind of an epic journey, epic international Northern journey.

00:01:00
Speaker 1: Can tell us a little bit.

00:01:01
Speaker 3: About Yes, I'm reading my notes here and I wrote I hope I lived.

00:01:07
Speaker 1: Wow, well, guess we'll find out.

00:01:09
Speaker 3: I must have some deep seated thoughts that maybe I won't live. I hope I lived.

00:01:13
Speaker 1: I hope that I'm sure we won't be airing this as is.

00:01:17
Speaker 3: This is only gonna air if I made it. So we took a really long trip. We went on a Disney cruise, and we went to Vancouver. We went to Alaska, we went to Vancouver Island. I can give you more details about how awesome those things hopefully were once I'm actually back. But the thing I wanted to mention is that this is the first time we've taken a full two weeks off maybe ever, Like I I mean, obviously I took longer than two weeks off for maternity leave. I don't think my husband.

00:01:46
Speaker 5: Took two weeks off for maternity leave.

00:01:49
Speaker 3: It's not that easy, particularly for Josh, because his group is not very big, and so if there's only three surgeons in your group and one of them goes away for two weeks, that leads the other ones like every other night for two weeks, which is really hard. So it's not that easy to orchestrate, and in fact, he's not really offer a full two weeks he goes back on call to Friday, so it's like thirteen days or something like that.

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Speaker 5: But I'm super excited.

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Speaker 3: I've always heard people talk about how, you know, when you go away for this long, you can like really relax into it, versus when you go on a shorter trip kind of you're just getting in the groove by day five or six and then it's time to go back.

00:02:23
Speaker 5: And I can see some truth to that, because it can take a couple.

00:02:25
Speaker 3: Of days when we go on vacation as a family to kind of unwind and find our rhythm. So I'm just excited to report back and I'm excited we finally were ever able to make this happen.

00:02:36
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, and your kids are at the ages where the two weeks is a little bit less, like, oh my goodness, I want to sleep in my own bed with my kid and their crib actually sleeping, So there's that as well.

00:02:47
Speaker 3: One hundred percent. I mean, when we went into vacations and they were younger, it was still worth doing, but there was like a mix of trepidation and you know, anticipation in trepidation and.

00:02:55
Speaker 5: Dread like all mixed up into one. I don't have a.

00:02:58
Speaker 3: Lot of dread, like I think will be fine, especially when you choose Disney Cruise. You note you think kids club, and so I know we'll have some support on that end. We're going with friends, so they're going to have like playmates kind of built in for part of the trip. And I'm not really worried about how like the time zone differences will be handled. Maybe I'm being very naive, but I think it'll be okay.

00:03:20
Speaker 4: Just lots of hand sanitizer. Let's not have any norovirus episodes. Yeah, No, Well, when this is airing, we'll be doing We've got some beach time, some travel time, which I'll report back in September about. But yeah, on mooring from normal life for a while, which is why we had to record all these episodes ahead of time, so hopefully they still feel current done a few weeks ahead, but we thought we'd do.

00:03:46
Speaker 1: Some perennial topics.

00:03:48
Speaker 4: However, in this episode, we got a question from a Patreon member who asked us to do a little bit of a deep dive into our moves about one year out, so not necessarily like logistical, like how do you change your address? I think we've all figured that out, but how long has it taken to do some of the longer term things that are associated with moving, And when do you really feel like your new home is actually home? So Sarah, maybe can talk a little bit about your most recent move.

00:04:16
Speaker 3: Yeah, so we took a bigger move in twenty nineteen. That's when we went from Miami Beach up north to Broward County up north to south What.

00:04:27
Speaker 1: Yeah, yes, and.

00:04:28
Speaker 3: That's about a forty five minute drive thereabouts. And then in twenty twenty two in the spring, we moved a whole mile within the same community, but to a house that we now own versus a house we were renting. And I mean, to some extent, we had to do the logistical things associated with moving, like fix up the house a little bit, move boxes, et cetera. And in other ways we didn't have to do anything because in terms of like knowing the community and knowing the schools, knowing the kids activities, like knowing even some of them, like we were friends with people that we now would live next door to, but we were actually friends with them already just from being in the neighborhood. That was a little bit less effortful, just because we moved such a short distance. But at the same time, I do feel like, well, it's interesting because I think when you're renting, there's also this feeling of like transience, so you don't necessarily make as much effort, and so I do feel like we've put in a little bit of work over the past year to just like feel a little bit more ingrained. And so some of the things we've done are like too. If neighbors ask us to do something, we try to say yes, or we ask others with similar age kids to have playdates and like come over after school. I use the like community What's up thread to get a good idea for like activities, Like if I'm looking to have my kids do piano lessons or get a tutor or something, I'll just send to our neighborhood group, and often I get some really good recommendations. I pushed myself to start a book group. You guys heard about that, although that was I think before we moved, and that's done well. And I even invited our neighbors for wine and cheese, like we hadn't hosted anything since we so that was kind of like a push, but actually it ended up being really fun. I'm pretty easy and then the running group that I join has also really made me feel like part of living here because they all live really close by, and like we have a text chain going. And now I just feel like I have local friends. Where we're not succeeding and where Laura is doing much better. Is we bought zero like new furniture or decors just because well, honestly, we blow all our money into week vacations, so there's nothing left to buy furniture. And I'm fine with that so pretty much. I just it's not a priority for me. Like my one piece of daycore is like a paper calendar I taped up to the wall because that's important.

00:06:39
Speaker 1: That's fine, that's useful.

00:06:41
Speaker 4: Well, I was just saying, you know, you could be like, so, I'm a huge fan of the Frugal Girls blog, right, and I don't know if you've been Readingly, she outfitted a whole house with stuff from her local like buy nothing groups off Facebook, and her brother was rehabbing a house that had been abandoned and so it had a random stuff in it, some of which could be rehabbed, like you know, silverware or an end table that could be sanded down and used again. So she has outfitted a whole house like beautifully with that.

00:07:12
Speaker 3: So with hours of her own hours of her own time, you have money more time. I just don't really have either. So I want to give either.

00:07:20
Speaker 4: You pay in time or money, and either is it's totally possible to pay in time instead of money. But if you do not wish to spend either, then I guess that's then you've got a calendar on the wall. Yeah. Well that's cool though, but and you're sort of still you're doing though the declutter and do you still have boxes or you got we.

00:07:38
Speaker 5: Don't have boxes.

00:07:39
Speaker 3: No, our house is very functional, it's just not like decorated, and we're using couches from like the oughts are twenty tahs for my Kia that are skull lasting.

00:07:50
Speaker 5: No.

00:07:50
Speaker 3: I started an area by area declutter because that I do actually really care about being able to find things, having clear surfaces, et cetera. So that's my own like answer to not really wanting to do elaborate amounts of cleaning up, but just being like, you know what I can do fifteen minutes and it's been really satisfying so far, so that's good.

00:08:11
Speaker 4: Yeah. I mean, so we only moved about you know, two miles away. Although it's funny I think about it, we had to readjust a lot of the driving times for the local stuff because you know, everything's pretty finally calibrated in terms of, you know, getting five kids to where they need to go and such. But that five minutes actually does change things. You know, if you are five minutes We were five minutes north from where we are, so the stuff that we were going to that was north would take five minutes less.

00:08:37
Speaker 1: The stuff are going to south is five minutes.

00:08:39
Speaker 4: You know, the you know, anyway, you know what I mean, it took five minutes more going north, five minutes less going south, and so we are. You had to readjust that, like you're going to be late to karate if you're leaving at the time that you would have left at the old house. However, it takes slightly less time to go to church, but that's it's like going a different way. And have any entirely reaped the benefits of being closer to some stuff yet, because this bridge near our house has now been out for two years, but hopefully that will be fixed eventually and then it will be even closer to you know, have suburban square right right around the corner that mall Starbucks and all that good stuff.

00:09:17
Speaker 1: But anyway, it's been long and involved.

00:09:21
Speaker 4: I think one thing I would say for anyone who is doing any sort of move is to have a bit of patience about it. And I think many of us want to have our lives all buttoned up and put in a certain way, like instantly, and yeah, you want to be able to find your spatula like that you want to have right away, But a lot of stuff is not going to be like that, and it's okay to sort of sit with things a little bit undone for a while, both to figure out what you really want there and just as you sort of get used to your living style in the new place, and that can keep you from, you know, making mistake that you might then need to redo later. So I would say one thing we've still had. We bought the house in twenty twenty, didn't move in until early twenty twenty two, had a couple of projects still going then, like these bathrooms getting redone the only ones we didn't do in the original house. And then of course they started leaking, like immediately after people used them. It turns out they hadn't really been used in years, and you know, hold up to seven people using bathrooms, you have to have a little bit more plumbing functionality, let's just put it that way. So those had to get redone. But we got furniture for some rooms and then kind of waited and see what we were going to get in others. I just finally got a rug for the living room and it does look better. But it's like I needed to sort of figure out what we were going to do, and I didn't wind up going with a more sort of expensive thing. I wound up just going with pottery barn and it was fine, and so I'm kind of glad that I didn't do it. At the same time, when I was buying the other furniture, which I wouldn't have even it was like just all huge numbers that I wasn't even processing individual choices. And then it's like now like, okay, well, actually this is perfectly fine, and you know, it's a good rug. And I think if you realize it won't be done instantly, that can help you feel more patient a lot of things. But I would say, despite your you know, just a calendar, putting stuff on your walls is actually something that really.

00:11:30
Speaker 1: Can make it feel like home to you. So if you have.

00:11:36
Speaker 4: Artwork or something that was up in your previous house, a lot of what you think about what feels like your home is that that was there, and so if you find a new spot for it, then you're seeing it again.

00:11:46
Speaker 1: It's like, oh, yeah, that's it looks like my house or family.

00:11:50
Speaker 3: To vote by telling you that I don't even know if we have art up or.

00:11:53
Speaker 5: Not, Like I think, what's wrong with my.

00:11:56
Speaker 3: Brain, but like I just don't see that stuff like maybe my I think there's some photos in here, which means it's probably not up. But I guess I'm gonna validate for some people, like they're just never gonna notice and they're never gonna care you might have art up. I don't even know. Like my was gonna listen to this and be like I can't well.

00:12:12
Speaker 1: I mean just I don't know.

00:12:13
Speaker 4: It's it's something I like, you know, and and there's a lot of like affordable people, you know, like a van go up on the wall. It's like, you know, we find a cool artist on Etsy and get like, you know, an affordable print from them. But it like looks really cool. It's fun to look at it. It's like, you know, this little shot of joy every time you come out of the bathroom.

00:12:31
Speaker 3: You know, I am not downplaying it for more normal people. I'm just I'm just I guess if anybody else is an outlier, that's okay too.

00:12:39
Speaker 1: All right, well, photos of your kids? Do you have photos of your kids anywhere?

00:12:42
Speaker 3: I have some in my office.

00:12:44
Speaker 5: Okay, my kids are in the house all the time.

00:12:47
Speaker 1: Why do we they were you know, they were younger, they were like cute little babies. Maybe I'm a fugre of them, then fair enough? Oh my goodness.

00:12:56
Speaker 4: All right, Well, you know, personality difference as we learn over the core of six years of having this, and maybe maybe Sarah will get family portraits taken and put something up.

00:13:04
Speaker 1: On the wall, or maybe she won't. Maybe we'll we'll see how that evolves in the cars.

00:13:09
Speaker 4: But I would I will put that out there as something that helped me feel more like it was my home when my stuff was up on the wall. So I think it might be worth investing in that either. You know, obviously you.

00:13:22
Speaker 1: Can do it.

00:13:23
Speaker 4: There's also if you're a little bit intimidated about you know, you've just had a bunch of work done in a house, like, well where do I put the nails? Like you can hire people who are professional hangers, Like they come in for a day and get everything put up, and I often you know, they have design advice as well too, So that's something you can in fact outsource if you wished to do so. So yeah, it's we finally got a lot of the boxes. I just had a bunch in my office that I'd shove there when we had a party because they were in the hall and I, you know, people were gonna come to the bathroom and I'm like, I don't want my boxes in the hall. So they all came into my office and I just finally went through them.

00:13:57
Speaker 1: It was such a trip.

00:13:58
Speaker 4: It's like my old business cards from like twenty fourteen with like a pacifier next to them. I mean it's just you know, like, what was this time capsule that was thrown in there?

00:14:09
Speaker 3: To be clear, the passifier was not featured on the business card.

00:14:12
Speaker 4: No, no, it was just a literal pacifier. If that was in there, I don't know how od of there. Henry doesn't use them, but two of my kids were sort of obsessed with them, so we went up with a lot.

00:14:22
Speaker 1: I'm sure they're like hidden all.

00:14:23
Speaker 3: Over the house in various places, but yeah, I love it.

00:14:28
Speaker 4: So uh yeah, no, we that was I could say, ye know, a couple of years. It's definitely feeling like home for us. It feels like home for you too, right, I mean.

00:14:36
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, it does. I think again, even being visually blind, like you know, gradually you shape your space, how you use it, where you put things, You get used to being in it, you get used to the outdoors around it. I do think running in my neighborhood has made it feel like like I have such a routine with my routes and stuff. Also that just makes me like have more of a sense of place, like, especially because now that I've seen we don't have a lot of season change, but I've had a whole year to notice the different sense and like stuff that's going on. So it'll happen. Just give it, give it time.

00:15:08
Speaker 1: Give it time.

00:15:09
Speaker 4: All right, We'll take a real quick ad break and then we'll come back with the rest of our questions. Well, we are back with the rest of our mail bag. Here we encourage listener questions. Please write to us. You can always go Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. I'm happy to forward them along if that's often an easy one for people to remember the email there. So the next question, Sarah, can you talk about how you approach kid activities.

00:15:47
Speaker 1: That end late at night.

00:15:49
Speaker 4: This person's eight year old won't sleep past seven in the morning, no matter when she goes to bed. She comes home from activities after seven pm, then it messes up their dinner, bath, in bedtime routine. This person notes that some activities seem to end as late as seven thirty or eight for children that age. She says, I don't understand how other families do this, and just there was an addition that came in that this family, they sort of work a schedule such that their child, their eight year old, is in after care until six and so it's kind of already a longer day by that point, and I think that's why the evening routine has been as set as it is. So she's just wondering how they make this all fit. So, Sarah, do you have any advice for her?

00:16:31
Speaker 3: I mean, I guess I'd start with the fact that some kids need more sleep than others, and I guess the way she's framing this is that her eight year old is having trouble getting enough sleep. So I'm wondering how long the like post eight pm routine is taking, because conceivably, if it's taking them two hours and the kid isn't going to bed until ten and they're sleeping until seven, that's going to be enough for some kids, and it's not going to be enough for other kids. It's going to kind of like depend on the kid. So I guess that's my preface to say that, like your mileage may vary, because some of this is going to depend on how fast your kids are to wind down after an activity and how much sleep they need as to how painful this is necessarily is going to be. I will say I don't love nighttime activities either, but I just posted like kind of a sketch, not but it's like specific locations or anything, but of our like already kind of knowing our schedule for next fall, and I mean, we're gonna have something every night most nights until seven fifteen, some nights until eight, which is not super super late. Actually, we've had later activities in the past, like stuff that ends at eight thirty nine, which is a little tougher. But I think the key for us has been on really streamlining that post activity routine, like kind of training the kid like okay, when you get home, like straight in, like to do dinner prior if that's possible. I don't know if it is for this family hearing about how the aftercare works, but dinner is something super easy and quick prior to the activity. The kid goes to the activity and then has kind of mastered the like come home from activity, shower, bed, kind of a thing like that that doesn't have to be a long drawn out thing, because I think in the beginning, when we had less practice with it, it did take a long time, and so an activity the end of at eight thirty might mean like a ten pm bedtime for one of my kids, which we have to be up a little earlier than seven, and that isn't necessarily enough sleep for that child. So it's been about making sure the post activity can just like be nice and smooth. But I don't know, I've also just gotten to a place of acceptance when my kids are only going to get older, They're only going to want to do more stuff, and the stuff is probably only going to get later. So I just have to roll with it.

00:18:35
Speaker 1: Roll with it.

00:18:36
Speaker 4: Yeah, as I was going to say, when I read this question, I wanted to push back a little bit on this framing, because if this family's schedule is such that their child is an after karen til six every day, then the fact that there are later activities is actually a benefit to them. Like I thought, you know, originally I'd be like, well, my kid can't do anything because I can't pick them up and from after Karen Til's six, so we haven't been able to do any sports. It's like, well, no, no, no, that's not the framing here. It's that there are later activities and because you know, they can't pick them up until six, they get to still do them.

00:19:03
Speaker 1: It's like best of both worlds here.

00:19:05
Speaker 4: So I you know, in my mind, I'm like, well, this is not fundamentally like an issue. This is actually a benefit to the family that there are later activities. But just I think we need to learn to be a little bit flexible about routines. And my guess is that possibly this child was such that when they were like two or three, like everything had to be carefully scripted if they were a bad sleeper or whatever, and you know, it's like they're in that mindset and the child's getting older.

00:19:32
Speaker 1: They're eight now.

00:19:34
Speaker 4: Things are changing with that, and I think if you can learn that the routine can be a little bit more flexible as your child gets older, that can be a helpful mindset shift. Because there's nothing in this schedule that sounds particularly problematic to me. If you've got something that's an activity from seven to eight pm, you just eat something quick beforehand and go pick them up afterwards and then get them to bed. So if you've got something that starts at six thirty, like bring them a sandwich, you eat in the car, like it's dinner does not have to involve sitting at a table every night. You know, I love family dinner as much as the next person. But you can do that on other nights. Like if you've got an activity two nights a week, then five nights a week. You don't do that five nights a week. You're doing your sit down dinner at six thirty as you are used to doing. But on those two nights you have an activity, You bring a sandwich for your kid in the car, they eat that in the apple, they go to the activity, and then you know, they come home afterwards. I would say that eight year olds generally don't need to shower daily. This is one of these things that is perhaps people have different mindsets about, but you might decide that again, if you're doing it five nights when you're having your normal routine, you don't necessarily have to do it on the two nights when you have your later routine. And then, just as Sarah was saying, be care, you know, be good about like coaching the kid, and like, okay, this is how the transition is going to work.

00:20:58
Speaker 1: But if you're your kid is.

00:21:00
Speaker 4: In bed with lights out, like you're getting home at eight and you're getting you know, the kids in bed with lights out at nine, nine to seven is still ten hours, which is what the guidelines are for children who are that age. So this does all fit. I think you just need to be a little bit more flexible about the routine and view this as a gift that your community has later activities, because that still means that you, as a working parent with some you know, hours that maybe aren't that flexible, can still have your kid participate in them. So I don't know that's how I saw this.

00:21:31
Speaker 3: No totally makes sense. I wonder if some of this all, like it all goes back to like this picture of like the nineteen fifties when everybody sits down for a formal dinner together because mom stayed home and mom took the kids to their sports team after school and sat on the sidelines and everyone got home Like that is just like not how many people are going to operate their family And there's nothing wrong with that. I mean, I've said it many times, but I'll mention it again. We don't do family dinners most nights and it's fine, Yeah.

00:22:01
Speaker 1: Totally fine.

00:22:03
Speaker 4: All right, So the next question, what is your experience with boundaries setting with others? Is this something you struggle with and how do you handle it?

00:22:13
Speaker 5: This was an.

00:22:14
Speaker 1: Interesting pack can of worms.

00:22:16
Speaker 3: There anybody likes anyone like I'm excellent?

00:22:20
Speaker 5: Maybe they are.

00:22:20
Speaker 3: We should have that person on there is an expound She's probably good at it, but I think she probably that's like Nedra to Wab. I think she would still say that it's not easy, right, Like so I say, of course I struggle with boundaries at times, but I do think I've thought through the idea.

00:22:36
Speaker 5: Of boundaries a little bit more.

00:22:39
Speaker 3: I do think being a good planner or organizer, or like knowing what you have on your plate and like a really clear idea of it helps me be better at setting boundaries only because like, if someone asked me something, I really can quickly do a mental inventory as to whether it would really be tough for me and say no, like with clarity about like what it would mean to say yes. I guess like I don't have this fantasy idea of like, oh, three months from now, I have nothing to do, Like I know what I'm kind of going to be have stuff to do, and like what it might look like. So I do think that can be helpful. Boundaries are tough. I do think therapy can be a really helpful resource if boundaries are something you're struggling with, because I think many therapists will kind of give you permission to set boundaries if that's something that you don't feel like you're allowed to do.

00:23:26
Speaker 4: Yeah, I would say I'm pretty good about boundaries with anyone who is not immediate family members.

00:23:35
Speaker 1: I think where the things get more.

00:23:36
Speaker 4: Problematic is setting boundaries with family members.

00:23:41
Speaker 1: And I was.

00:23:41
Speaker 4: Particularly think of this as your kids get older, because obviously you want to do stuff for them and you want to be helpful, but there are ways that they can be more respectful of your time and less respectful of your time.

00:23:54
Speaker 1: And so you know, impressing behind.

00:23:56
Speaker 4: People that I would like to help you, and it is challenging for me to drop everything and come pick you up or you know, drive you somewhere without advanced notice. And so if you think you are going to need a ride, we need to talk this through. And as much as you know notice you can give me ahead of time, I will move heaven and earth to make it happen. But if you're asking me to do it right at the last second, then the answer may be no, and you're just going.

00:24:25
Speaker 1: To have to deal with that.

00:24:27
Speaker 4: So, you know, I think that's a conversation you can definitely have with older children to impress upon them that you know, you have your own life and schedule and can't necessarily always be at there back in call.

00:24:44
Speaker 3: I think that was a tough question, and we welcome others thoughts on boundaries.

00:24:49
Speaker 4: Yeah, so this next question is going to be more for Sarah because I didn't have a good answer for it. Are there any strategy that you use to accommodate how you feel throughout different points in your menstrual cycle. So you know, Sarah's our cormona expert here, so maybe she can.

00:25:09
Speaker 3: I have a.

00:25:10
Speaker 1: Tediater hormone expert.

00:25:12
Speaker 4: And eventually they go through puberty, right, I mean you'd have to know about it still.

00:25:15
Speaker 3: Yes, but like the whole like perimenopause thing, like I know nothing. I know very little actually, Like there's the other things that I send my patients to the adult endo when they get to a certain point. So I'm gonna just like frame this by the fact that I did not experience like true hormonal cycles until I was probably in my mid thirties because I started my period really late. It was never regular. I immediately started on birth control. I stayed on birth control for like forever until I wanted to have babies, then in trouble getting pregnant, didn't cycle, finally got pregnant, and so again like this takes us to age like thirty five for me to be like oh and then breastfeeding, Like this is what periods are. And it turns out when they happened, like my brain experiencing these natural swings for like the first time, literally I could not handle them at all, and I think maybe if I had, like it took me a while to like figure out the pattern, which was for me that basically I felt really good like the week like ten days after my period, and then like terrible the rest of the time. But maybe if I had more awareness of like what a normal not normal, but what potential effects, Like some people get really moody around ovulation. Some people are more tired, and you have bloating and then like leading up to your period, and you can be more irritable, like a lot of there are a lot of commonalities and if maybe I had understood them, maybe I would have reacted. But I mean, I don't know, because the right decision for me at the time was to resume hormonal birth control, which I still take to this day and works pretty well for me. But I guess I think that really journaling and like looking and seeing trying to pick up patterns and realizing that many people do have their mood and energy affected by the different phases of their cycle, like normalizing that can be really really helpful because then you can figure out either a if you can find like ways to deal with it, like oh, maybe I schedule some more downtime during the parts that are hard, or just like knowing that it's going to be hard and that if you're in a horrible mood to maybe like take that with a grain of salt because you know that you just ovulated, or to say, oh, no, this is actually too much for me, like is there a medical way around this, which, again I'm not saying that's the answer for everyone, Please do not like that was just for me the right choice after considering various pros and cons. So, and it is a potential option depending on what your history is for some people, So speak with your healthcare provider about that if that's something you want to talk about. But I'm just glad this person brought this up, and I just I don't know that I'm giving you strategies, but I'm giving you validation that like you're normal.

00:27:45
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, I think the idea of tracking anything is helpful, right, and you know there's apps if you want to do that, but obviously you could just do it in a notebook and note like on a calendar and just sort of having a rough sense of when things are likely to happen where you are.

00:28:01
Speaker 1: You know, if you just.

00:28:02
Speaker 4: Awareness is great, just like tracking time so, yeah, encourage people to get to know themselves in all ways. And so if you are a woman who is of the age where that is part of your life, then you know that might be also good to add to the useful knowledge that you can gain.

00:28:22
Speaker 3: So the next question also kind of foresho, this is for you too. You are a great planner, even if you don't have a planning podcast.

00:28:30
Speaker 4: A planning podcast now, not planning to start one either. Any advice for encouraging someone to be more intentional with their planning. I have a friend who I think it would help based on their complaints about things not working out, but that person isn't always open to help.

00:28:48
Speaker 1: So Sarah, kind of a thorny question here.

00:28:51
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would say leading by example is probably the right move here. And I don't even mean like curating yourself in front of them, be like, look, I knew when the meeting was, but just like you know, for them to like maybe subtly notice and if they want to see like what you're doing, then you can tell them, or like, if it's something that affects both of you, Like I had an idea that let's say we're having lunch together and you knew that she was always going to forget. You could like offer alternative ways to like help remind the person, Like, Hey, for Tuesday, do you want me to send you a Google invite? Or are you just gonna like, you know, do you not need me to or do you want me to text the week before to remind you, like throw out little little potential kernels of ideas of how they might want to tract things. But unless someone's actually looking for help, I just don't know how much planning is so personal because it's really like the way someone thinks about how they're using their life, And so unless they are looking for help in that realm, I think it's hard. I do think if it's your partner or someone that like how they plan is going to absolutely impact you on a day to day basis. Then carving out like regular touch points to plan things together, like we've talked about many times on this podcast, I think is.

00:29:59
Speaker 5: Really really important.

00:30:00
Speaker 3: Whether it alters their overall planning or not, it's hard to know, but at least to create plans for the family together and make sure everybody is all on the same page.

00:30:10
Speaker 4: Yeah, absolutely, I mean I think you also have to like this person thinks that the person is like complaining about things not working out. But you have to sort of suss out if your friend is actually bothered by the chaos in their life or if it's just someone who loves to complain about how crazy busy they are. You know, complaining is this currency that people use in their interactions with each other and and time. I have no idea why this is appealing, Like, yes, your life sucks, let's be friends. But yeah, that's how people bond. So take that as you will. But if they do, in fact seem legitimately bothered by the chaos, then simply describe what you do. I mean, sometimes you be amazed, Like people get to a point in their life where they're like a grown up and like maybe even have had some reasonable professional success or whatever, but they don't think about certain things. And so just you're narrating something like, oh, yeah, you know, when we I was looking forward to us being here at noon today, and so I made sure that I did X, Y and Z so I could leave at eleven thirty five because I noticed that this was going to get They're like, oh, people count back and build in the constituent steps and like leave a tiny buffer because, like, you know, a parking spot might not magically open up in front of the restaurant or whatever, so you can kind of narrate your life as such. If they ask you, you know, like, well how did you you might mention like, oh, yeah, I got my kids signed up for this thing even though it closes immediately, But how did you do that?

00:31:48
Speaker 1: How'd you score that?

00:31:49
Speaker 4: Like, oh, well, because I had the date on my calendar, and I have a weekly planning practice, and I looked forward and saw that the date was coming up Tuesday morning, so I made sure to be available Tuesday at eight am so I could sign up. And I'm like, oh, that's an interesting concept. But that's how you can have these conversations. If they seem interested, if they do not, if they just like the cast, then don't make plans with this person where it's willing to truly inconvenience you if they are late or don't show or whatever else. Like, it can also be a friend that you see in a group, right, like that five of you are meeting for coffee and when it's only four of you half the time, so it goes right.

00:32:29
Speaker 1: It's still a good time either way. So, Sarah, I love of the week. What do you have this week?

00:32:35
Speaker 3: I'm too busy laughing at your love of the week because that's one of my favorite Well you go first.

00:32:40
Speaker 1: Okay, fine, So the Pentel Energel pens.

00:32:45
Speaker 4: So I gave a talk at a law firm a little while ago where they had this brand of pens with their logo on them, and I'm sitting there signing books with their pens.

00:32:55
Speaker 1: I'm like, I like this pen.

00:32:56
Speaker 4: So it is possible that I left that law firm with me many of their pens.

00:33:03
Speaker 3: I love energels.

00:33:05
Speaker 5: They come in a lot of colors.

00:33:06
Speaker 3: I personally like the If you've seen pictures I often have, these pens are like white and then part of its stripe those are energels. They're Energel Klenas, which is like I think a line that's sold in Japan because of course, but they're very similar. And yes, energels are amazing. What tipped are yours? Like? Point four?

00:33:21
Speaker 1: I have no idea. All I know is that they are really nice writing. I mean they're like a normal, normal sort of thing. I mean, you know what what would be the normal that people would use?

00:33:30
Speaker 3: Right? Probably point five point five okay for those pens.

00:33:33
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, well.

00:33:34
Speaker 4: Then that's I mean, if you assume that's what a law firm is using, then that's probably what it is.

00:33:39
Speaker 1: But uh yeah, no, big big shout out to those that is awesome.

00:33:43
Speaker 3: I will just give a positive shout out to We did Target school supply shopping. I gotta say it was very efficient, like they had a nice little section. We just kind of put everything in there. And I have done like you know, Amazon in the past, and I have to fill in a couple of gap with that, but then it comes in all different millions of boxes on different days and stuff, and I actually felt like this was in a way faster plus a little bit more fun for the kids because they could get to pick out stuff. Obviously, we'll do our school supply school episode later down the.

00:34:15
Speaker 4: Road, but Target good job. Yeah, not that long from now, in fact, from when this is airing.

00:34:20
Speaker 1: Yah.

00:34:21
Speaker 4: I was just trying to you, Yes, just a preview of the back to school episode that you.

00:34:26
Speaker 1: All know is coming. All right, Well, this has been best of both worlds.

00:34:30
Speaker 4: We've been talking about moving and then a general mail bag episode. We will be back next week with more on making work in life fit together.

00:34:40
Speaker 3: Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com or at the Underscore shoe Box on Instagram, and you.

00:34:48
Speaker 2: Can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. This has been the best of both worlds podcasts. Please join us next time for more on making work and life work together. OU