Favorite Things Episode.

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Speaker 1: Hi. This is Laura Vandercam. I'm a mother of four, an author, journalist, and speaker. And this is Sarah Hart Hunger. I'm a mother of three, practicing physician and blogger. On the side, we are two working parents who love our careers and our families. Welcome to best of both worlds. 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. Welcome to best of both worlds. This is Laura. This is episode one hundred and twenty seven, which is first airing in early January twenty twenty. It is the New Year, and longtime listeners know that Sarah and I love all things New Years related and pretty standard Upholder fashion. We make our New Year's resolutions and goals and love the idea of a fresh start, and so we thought we'd start this year with an all love of the Week episode. This is an episode with all of our favorite things, with many of your favorite things that people sent in through our Instagram account. And so if you got a lot of gift cards for the holidays, or if you are checking out those post holiday sales. You might wish to look up some of these love of the week slash favorite things. Although some are probably ones we may have mentioned before, we still love our favorites. You may not be surprised that Sarah still loves coffee. You want to get a little bit more specific about that, Sarah. Well, as we created these lists, they were a bit stream of conscious right. In fact, you did yours first, so I tried very hard not to cheat off of you. This is the advantage of doing it first, by the way, But I just kind of sat down and didn't really discriminate between things we've spoken about before on the podcast, because I really wanted us to come up with just a list of the things in life that make us feel like we've discovered awesome things and make every day a little more fun, and just our true loves of the week that seem pretty perennial, although there are some new random things in here, especially in the realm of Faudi products. So yeah, coffee made the list. Can you believe it? What are you drinking? They say? It's like, what kind of coffee is it? And what's your coffee maker? Oh wow? Yeah, so I think I mentioned our coffee maker on a previous episode. It is an Oxo coffee maker, and it's this weird setup where the water is on one side and then it kind of bubbles up through and then percolates. It's a little weird. I will give them a shout out because it was not a cheap coffee maker and a piece on it broke and they have a great website where you can just go and put in a customer service, and we were like, the top broke and the coffee maker is maybe a year old or maybe two at the most, and they shipped us a new one for free, so that was pretty awesome. And so it's going strong. And we typically buy ground coffee various brands. Actually we're not super brand loyal. We like Light Roast. Sometimes we get Caribou because it's easy to find it supermarket or Gibalia. But I don't really care, Honestly, I'm not that discriminating. It's just the fact that I set it up the night before, which I do pretty much without fail, and always wake up to a fully brewed hot caraffe makes me so happy, very happy. Yes, I've been checking out. There's a lot of new products on the market that they have the combination of the kind of K Cup thing. Although it's not just the K Cup people, it's also other brands as well that do the individual serving size. Or there's a pot so you can opt for what the day is going to call for. Whether it's a pot, I wonder. I think it's set up so that it's for groups or individual but I wonder how often it's just like, no, I'm going to need a whole pot. That totally makes sense though, because sometimes, like right now, I totally would have made myself a little extra one, but I wasn't going to make the effort of brewing an entire pot. Plus, I've seen people talk about using that as their decaf option is to have one of those. You know, you don't have to brew a whole cup of pot of decaf, but if you have one decaf drinker, then you can have a little cons for them. Yes, so somebody who's particularly particular about dark or light roast or whatever it happens to be exactly all right, Well, at this rate, we're going to get through about five favorites. Sorry, I'll be quiet. No, you don't have to be quiet. I just won't go into so much detail, all right. So I have some running and athletic wear favorites to share. I still love my A six running shoes. I did run in Brooks at one point, but I've been loyal to A six for like a decade now and I really love them. I particularly enjoy the gel Nimbus. But I've run in others as well, and I found I discovered a new sports line at our local running store called Rabbit that is just really cute stuff. I have a new sports pro from there that I wear both for running and for other workouts. And their fabrics are very light, their colors are super bright. I can't discuss how well they hold up yet because it's a fairly new purchase for me, but style wise, really really cute and different, you know, not the same brands you see all the time, so be on lookout for that. I think they're also all USA made and the company is based in California. Also on the athletic side of things, athleta bathing suits and cover ups. Laura and I have discussed that before. I love their zip up cover ups. I love their two piece suits. I have yet to find a one piece suit there that works for me. But maybe someday I will and I just enjoy their bathing suit lines. I think that's it for athletic things. We have somebody who mentioned a reader or a listener of Beach Body, which is my other favorite workout of choice other than running. Oh, training plans, just training plans in general. I love a good training plan. It's new year, perfect time to start a new training plan or even you know, like an eighty day series or something like that. There's just something fun about training plans. How did you find your training plan? Which one is it? Well, the current one that I'm using I made up. Oh, but I've done like the twenty one day fixed before. I like to combine. I actually my current running training plan is kind of inspired by the train like a mother book. But then I want to add strength training and I wanted to kind of build around my calendar, so I altered it myself. Great, Yeah, do you want to do any health and fitness ones from yours before I go back? Maybe we can do categories a little bit, or should I just keep going? Just keep going? Okay, all right, I will keep going. So next on the list are some sort of paper and stationary items I can't leave my favorite planner off the list. We all know Homodichi, but there are many other wonderful planners as well, so paper planners can be their own section to write in that planner. I love Zebra Mildliner highlighters. If you haven't checked those out, they are now available really widely. I've seen them at Target. You can also get about fifteen of them for like twelve bucks on Amazon, and they're fantastic to add little bits of color, which always helps you organize. Also perfect for decorating your new planner this year. And my other favorite stationary item confession. I did write this list during a lunch break in my office, so I was reminded of some of my items there. But my Neon green Poppin' stapler that is like bright green and so nobody can ever steal it and I never lose it. Well, how did you come across this? Was it a gift or did you think? At one point I was browsing the pop in website and I don't even know they still have a lot of stuff. I don't know if they still have Neon staplers. I hope they do, and I was just like, yes, I want this because you know, like your stapler in the office had always well you're kid office, but they yes, and you could be like a mean note on the top of it, like don't steal my stapler, or it could be neon green so that no one would be able to get away with that. Yes, you could finger the culprit pretty quickly on somebody else's office exactly. Okay, we will move on to beauty. Yeah items here, Yeah, I do actually well, first of all, my beloved Japanese hair straightening shout out to that been doing it for twelve years now, cannot really stop. I love it. So Japanese hair straightening for those curious because people always ask me, it's completely permanent. Your hair is pin straight. You'd have to curl it to get any curl, and I don't even know how well the curl would hold. But you will be frizz free until your hair out, which makes for very low maintenance straight hair if that's your thing, and it's my thing. So I love my Japanese hair streaming. On a prior episode, we talked about exploring some new products for the face and kind of a funny thing. I started a bunch of things all at once, and I do feel like my skin has improved. It just feels a little bit softer. I was able to get through like a month hormonal cycle with no acne, which for me is like miracle. Like I almost always get like one giant sit and it sucks. So I don't really know what's working. It's not a controlled experiment. No, it was a terrible experiment. I mean any scientists would know. And actually I when I, you know, see patients, I'm really good about like, no, we are not doing three meds at once, like we're starting one thing and then we can add another thing and maybe add another thing, because you don't, you know, know what helps and you can't identify side effects. So I did a dumb thing. But I'm suspecting that maybe it's my There is a retinal face oil, and I know Rents and All can be a more active product, so it may be that it's the Luna face oil by Sunday Riley, and I also use their vitamin C serum and their good genes, So maybe it's that line because that is something that I added that I wasn't using previously. I also still use and much more consistently use a face cream by Fresh called the Lotus Youth Preserve, and I feel like I'm just using more and more of it as time goes on. I'm like getting more addicted. I don't know. It just it's super smooth. It smells lightly like cucumbers, and it makes me feel like when I put it over either the good genes of the luna. By the way, I alternate, I don't do both at once, that it sort of seals everything in And yeah, so something's helping. I don't know what. I guess I'm just gonna have to keep doing all of it. Well, the problem is you don't even know if it was something totally different either too. I mean, it could be like a lifestyle change. Well, have any lifestyle changes, though I did start putting like a million products on my face, so you know, my skin does feel slightly better and or different. So I feel like it's either the combination of products or or maybe just the fact that I'm better about washing my makeup off every night. That could be too. I mean I could have just that, honestly, well, but I didn't wear that much before, so taking more time on your skin and maybe that, I know, I just don't know where did you buy all these from these are a storm. Sephora carries every one of these items, and actually all the Sunday Rally stuff was in a like a sample type set, and so far it's lasted about a month month and a half when they don't seem like they're quite empty. Yet they're fairly expensive, so I wasn't ready to commit to the large sizes, but now maybe I will. I don't know the price point on Okay, well, yeah, so the full the Sunday Rilly set that came with the Vitamin C serum, a small size, the Good Genes which is a lactic acid serum, and the Luna retinal face oil, and I would say a month to two month supply was like ninety dollars, so not cheap. Not, I mean, I've heard worse. It's not lamaire, so good for a gift card to dive in. Yeah, if somebody gave you like a hundred, maybe smarter and use one at a time. Because I don't really necessarily feel like buy full size refills of all of them. I'd rather just buy like the one that I feel is working. But it's all good. I'll figure it out. My one other beauty thing is that I still love my beloved leng Coum Definisiles mascara because I just feel like it's the only one that doesn't make my lashes stick together or itch my eyes, and it's easy to take off and it's just not like overblown, so I like it. Okay, almost through, I will give a shout out to my MacBook Pro because I really do love this computer. It's very It's actually nice and small so I can tuck it into things. I like the little touch bar at the top. And this is the twenty eighteen edition, and I will likely remain loyal to MacBooks for a while. And finally, the Fort Lauderdale Airport, I love you. Normally fly out of Miami. I used to fly out of Mia a lot, and I still fly out of Miami Airport on occasion, but the Fort Lauderdale Airport is much much much easier, always faster. It is smaller, there are fewer food options, but I don't care because I'm not walking like miles and people seem to be nicer there. So how far is it compared to Miami? Oh from where I live now, it's closer. Oh, it's closer. Yeah, Yeah, it's about twenty minutes from where I live, a big it's very close. It's very close to work, so if I ever need to just like leave from work, but is it then not serviced by more of the major airline, so you have to do I think they are only international flights or to Canada, so it is technically an international airport, but it's one of those where they have one flight a day to Toronto. There may be more flights that leave out of fl to go to like South American destinations or islands, but not like to London or Europe yet, but you're probably going to the Bahamas or something, and then yeah, that's that's it. Yeah, but yeah, FL if you're flying down to Florida, definitely compare prices and know that the convenience factor may be higher at Fort Lauderdale small airport could be great for that. And finally I will end with my actually two more ready my favorite kids clothing tea collection. Oh my goodness, not for like their everyday stuff because they're not cheap, but for holiday dresses. So for two years in a row, I've gotten matching outfits for the kids for photos and I just can't get enough. I love it and My final list is my favorite foods list. It's very healthy. I want to hear all right, let's see it. Pizza, peanut butter, and items containing peanut butter. I feel like that's fair. I like that ice cream, dark chocolate, and wine. Yeah, all known for great skin developing, great for your skin, right for your body mass index? Yeah, terrible, Like you know, moderation and moderation. But that's my It was like easy. I was going to say one favorite food and then I was like, no, I can't come up with one. And then but those five kind of stand above all others, so well, those are good choices. I would be happy with any of this. And now we'll hack through my list. If anyone was traveling over the holidays and noticed that the TSA pre check line or the clear line was shorter at your airport, it's less of an issue for places like Fort Lauderdale, but if you're in any of the big ones like O'Hare or Dallas or whatever, Orlando, which is ridiculous, just go get pre check now, please please just go do it. For my sake. I really hate the thought of anyone waiting in a line longer than they need to, particularly if you're traveling with kids and other relatives and things like that, so go get that. Another of my love of the weeks constantly has been uber because it is so changed travel in the sense of you go somewhere and you know you can get back from there. So if you're visiting town for work and you normally just take a hotel a taxi to the hotel, now you can leave the hotel. You could go to an art museum somewhere and know you'll be able to get there and get back, even if it's a that doesn't have a great amount of taxi service, which was always an issue. I have been using. I'm just this is totally random list. By the way, I've been using an app called Seek that people may wish to download if you are interested in botany at all or you like to do hikes. It identifies plants, so it uses the camera function on your phone to look at a plant, and then it goes through what the you know, genus, is, the species, all that stuff, and so you know, it could be helpful if it's like, is this poison ivy? It will tell you that. But it's also just cool to be like, oh yeah, that's the name of that plant that's been growing in my yard and I liked but didn't know what it was. So you can go get more of it if you want. I have been eating Power Bowls frozen lunches. Is this a brand health No, it's sorry, it's Healthy Choice. So one of their lines is the Power Bowls lunches, and the thing about them is their base is like riced cauliflower, so it's low carb. Which I'm not saying anyone needs to eat low carb or whatever, but often the rice that comes in frozen lunches is not exactly rice that's worth spending your carbs on. So you know, these things are relatively tasty, and they are limited in terms of the low value carbs low taste carbs. Yeah, so it's fun. Yeah. I often will have one of those, and I will at the same time, since I'm working at home, saute up extra veggies and then just throw it on top. So whatever veggies were in the bowl I cut up, saute put them in, so it's a hacked microwave lunch. One of the unsung benefits of working from home. If anyone has goals to do better with your finances in the new year. Another love of the week for me is the How to Money podcast. I have been listening to this quite a bit. I was a guest on it last March April somewhere in there. It was, you know, fun. They're really cool guys. But Joel and Matt I I feel like they have a similar sort of thing going to you and me, Sarah that you know, we don't drink a beer on our podcare on the poject though, maybe we should start. I don't know. It might be fun, it might be fun. I'm not sure if it would. No. I love them too. I've I think I've listened to like every episode in the last few months. I'm I'm with you, yeah, And and I think one of the things our listeners might appreciate is obviously they are there dudes, they're men, but they are both like very involved in their young families. I mean, one of them has three kids, one of them has four. They both just had babies this past year, where their wives did obviously, but they're you know, they're they're talking about things like kids from a day to day perspective, which I think is cool and good to have those voices they're plus, they just got a great chemistry so even if you're not terribly into the money, I got to say, I mean, the financial advice is not things I have necessarily care about all that much necessarily, but it's really fun to listen to them. So I will do a shout out for Joel and Matt so with that they have a craft beer every episode. I also, while not pregnant, tend to like my craft beer, although my favorite is probably Blue Moon, which is of course available in supermarkets and normal liquor stores and such, and so not very difficult to find at all. So looking forward to kind of getting back to that soon. Like Sarah, I also like dark chocolate and peanut butter. I like them together, like I've been I like the Justin's Dark Chocolate peanut butter cups. Do you have those at all? I have had those before. Yes, they're delicious, although I usually hack my own and I didn't take a square of THEO dark chocolate and just smear little peanut butter on it. You know that that works too, and probably is a more frugal way of doing this. I'm sure you can. You can control the race, control the ratio. I never feel like there's enough peanut butter. Well, I was yeah, I like chocolate peanut butter ice cream. I would say the Hogen DAW's chocolate peanut butter ice cream that was not quite enough peanut butter to chocolate ratio. I'm with you, Yeah, with you. I like some of the stuff I get in ice cream parlors, but basically I get that at ice cream parlors, like I will only have it when I'm at an ice cream parlor. I like the Trader Joe's Dark Chocolate peanut butter cups as well Trader Joe's Dark chocolate caramels. But again, this is why I stopped shopping at Trader Joe's. Because I would go in for the cheap fruit. I would emerge with a cartful of dark chocolate covered stuff and next thing you know, you're and everyone's eating it. Everyone's new. That's awesome. We love getting family photos taken, and here I will say that I like having taken them. The taking itself is often painful, But this is one of those things where I think you need to consider your experiencing self versus your remembering self. That the experiencing self is not happy to get the kids into clothes they may not wish to wear, have them be naughty while the photographer is trying to get them to smile and pose in different places. But it's awesome to look at the photos afterwards. So we did ones in the fall with one of my favorite photographers, Yanna Shellman. If anyone has seen my headshot on my website, that is her work, and she has done some wonderful family photos for us. We have huge ones in our hall upstairs of us with fall leaves from a year ago. We took photos again to get some pregnancy shots and then we plan to have her come and take some newborn shots. She did some of those for us when Alex was born and it was I love having them. I mean, this is really take the photos, like whatever you do, take more photos. Speaking of which, there's a couple different school photography companies that have been aiming a little different and the one that our local, our preschool that we send Alex to, does they actually pose the kids outside. I mean it's so great, like the background is better, like the lights better. They take you know, three or four poses too, so it's like you got a professional photo shoot, only it's the price of school photos. I mean, maybe just a tiny bit more. But you know, we had a similar at our preschool and it was great and actually when we did our family photos, we hired that photography to our family. It's a good idea for anyone. Yeah, that's how you could find a good photographer if any of your local schools do something like that. I love tasting menus. If anyone is in Philadelphia, shout out to Tallula's Daily Secret Supper Club. Sarah and I have had dinner there before, but they do a different tasting menu every month and it's awesome seasonally inspired. But it's just really cool to find restaurants like that because then you're not making a choice and wondering, well did I get the good stuff? Like maybe the chef is known for something else and I didn't know to order it. But that way you try everything that the chef wants to show off. And I find that really cool running gear. I am a big fan as well of Athleta. I have their dobby Go what is it Knickers I think they call them, and the key thing I love about them is that they have these huge side pockets so you can stick your phone in there. If you're the sort of person who doesn't really like wearing it on your arm. I know a lot of people have those armbands for their phones, but I know I don't like having something that feels like a blood pressure cuff on my arm while I'm running, so I stick my phone in the pocket. My headphones are long enough that it works. Like if I'm on a treadmill and I've got the headphones on, I can just stick it in my pocket and run with the headphones on without it being an issue. But when I'm running outside, I don't use headphones, so it's just there and it's great. You know. Then you could put your key and ID card in the zipper pocket in the back and not need any additional carrying sort of belts or such, which is which is great for long runs. And I find that so much women's athletic gear. It assumes that you are i don't know, in a gym, like you have access to a locker or someplace to put your stuff. But of course if you are running eight miles on a trail, you don't have have that, so you need to take your gear with you. And I don't care if I look like a camel, It's all good. Are these like stretchy or are they more well, I've worn them all through my pregnancy, so they're stretching enough for that. They're not like Licra pants. They're like more well, I mean they're not designed to like I mean they're they're running material gear. Okay they are, yeah, yeah, but they just somehow have pockets. Yeah, that is amazing. That is unusual. Well, I mean you just design it on the side like it goes down the side. They're deep pockets on the side, but they're so it's like a double layer of fabric on the side, right, and you put your phone in between the two layers of fabric. I am a fan of Brooks running shoes. I have the the Brooks Ghost ones and they come in all sorts of colors, which is fun, and they never need to be broken in which I find awesome. I tend to buy them through Zappos, which is a great place to get shoes in general, because they're they're good about returns and you know, order two three sizes you need to and just ship back the two you don't want and they're totally cool with it. I have a new balanced jacket that has worked really well. Not I haven't been able to wear it for the last month and a half, but for other winters it has been awesome because it is waterproof or at least water resistant wind proof. You can wear it in the cold and it's great. And then finally, a last food related love of the week. So I don't know about you. When you're traveling, what do you get for breakfast? Well, it depends because you mentioned your Starbucks item of choice, and I tend to get a Starbucks scone or they're omeal depending on how I'm feeling. Yeah, so I get There's sausage, egg and cheese breakfast sandwich because it's very filling. I would totally try it, yeah next time. And a lot of hotels have a Starbucks in there, so I know I will be able to get it. Or if you're in downtown in a city, there's inevitably one within half a block of you because they're everywhere, so it's pretty easy to get that. So I know I will be able to find it somewhere. And then that takes breakfast off the decision making tree. That's great. So that's my favorite Starbucks item. So we we can just read through a few of our readers ones real quick. Yeah, okay, yeah, we got more than we can share today, so maybe we'll do another favorites roundup in the future, but maybe we'll just alternate, all right. We had a shout out to class pass, which is an amazing way, she says to book fun new workouts. Several people said grocery delivery. We're a big fan of that too, Target or Walmart, order online and it's waiting for you to pick it up. Listener Gina mentioned the Circle Round podcast, which apparently is great for kids and especially in the car. So listener Jen says bringing seasonal coffee to work because it feels festive. It's a very easy way to share the love with your colleagues, but doesn't touch on the same issues as bringing donuts, which can bring up all sorts of issues for for people. Although I feel like, just bring the donuts. If you want to bring the donuts, it's all good. We'll just leave that right there. Another listener mentioned my well, I guess this is a pregnant listener, so congratulations to Nick her pregnancy pillow and her roomba. I just say I've never tried the roomba. Well. We had another shout out for a room but later so people like their rum. Yeah, listener Quinny Day says scribbed script? Is it scribbed or scribd? Say subscript spelled d r scr ibd, So like scribbed or scribed scribed. I'm probably ascribed a reading service. I should know this because I'm in this business. But it's a reading service that provides unlimited reading for a great price. Cool. Molly Beck, who I think is a friend of Laura's, mentioned something called Tea Drops where apparently you can make tea without a tea bag and it's a female owned company, so an added bonus there. Great, And listeners Imob says untitled Goose game. Yeah, be careful because I was like, what is that? So I googled it and then it was like, do not play this. Hackers will get your information so they read the list. Yeah, I don't know. I'm sure it's a fun game. Maybe just don't put any personal info in the game. All right, let's get to the next one, Shine Dance, Fitness and Girls. All right. The Bandolier cell phone carrier. For those of us that like to wear a cell phone, I guess it's like slings across the shoulder or you can wear it around your neck. Mommy call Blog says a cute pair of fall boots always good. I have some fry boots that I really love. Sandra Stelle says the recipe app copy me that so you can download and edit recipes, meal plan and grocery lists. And in the app category, listener Erica was says the Paprika app, which is also a recipe. I put those together. Rachel says her toaster oven is the best twenty dollars she has ever spent. I do like the toaster up. Yeah, toasters are awesome. Listener Nidling says my Spectra pump. That's something we've talked about a few times. It's like that's kind of love hate ye but okay, necessary necessary evil. JK. Dublin mentioned Muji gel Ink pens. Yes, these are awesome. I like them too. D Stroganova says the keep cup. What is the keep cup? Oh? My husband has them. There are glass like just coffee munks like the Yeah, but that really they come in different colors. I think they're based in Australia. But Josh found them a couple of years ago and I think he's like on his second one. But they they last forever if you don't break them, they're great. Great, And finally, list Kat McGee says, add a few drops of an illuminator to foundation. It's the adult equivalent of teen bath and bodywork sparkle lotion. I think I had that. Does that help for the new year? I have one bonus one, which is that my my lovely sister in law wanted to mention Peloton, which actually, like everyone I know, is obsessed with so Peloton could be awesome. All right, let's get to this Q and A want I get through this now. So our listener writes in that she is a long time listener that has a question regarding her husband, who is currently an engineer manager at a private firm that does a lot of consulting work for a state agency. He worked at that state agency for seven years but left to kind of grow his career. But what he's found over the past few years is that he's overwhelmed by an intense workload, pressures to meet a certain required number of billable hours, and he doesn't have much paid time off. He did recently negotiate a small pay increase, but he's not terribly happy about all this. He was approached by a colleague who works at that state agency about coming back, and so he is trying to figure out what would be the right thing to do. The state agency pays a little bit less, it's about ten percent less, but it would come with no billable hours, a shorter work week, no promised raises, but a lot more paid leave. And this matters because our listener is currently pregnant with her second child. They're weighing the option of having him lean out of his career a little bit to help care for the family and take a less stressful position, and have her lean in a little bit more to her job because she loves what she does. Is the beginning of her career progression. So any advice you have for breaking gender norms and having the husband take a back seat while the wife pursues her career aspirations, or should we both just continue to push forward? Since she says you and Sarah both have husbands in demanding careers and seem to balance at all, well, I'm glad we come across that way. Can anyone really balance it all? Who knows? I thought this was just a great question, and I mean, my first layer to peel back is I would like to hear from this guy what does he really want? The way, you know, I had to read into it a little bit. The way she's writing makes me feel like he is not very happy at his current position, but he may be worried just sort of he doesn't want to end up in a complete dead end. And probably there are some like normative gender things where he's worried about taking this drop in salary and what will that do for the family. But I mean, we didn't share specific numbers, and I'm not going to share the salary numbers, but he was going to go from three weeks of pay leave to seven weeks, so that's kind of an enormous ability to contribute more on the family front where he to switch. So Laura also we both were saying, you know that he's talking about this as maybe a more dead end opportunity, but whoever's leaving the job is advancing, so it can't be completely something that he wouldn't be able to move up from. So I think the key here is like what does he want? Like it almost sounds to me like he's looking for permission from you to take the easier job, and if you're excited about leaning in a little bit more, I think it totally makes sense. You should also my favorite trick like try to like neutralize the genders and kind of think about it that way. And if it would have been a no brainer, if this was a mother with these scenario, then probably go for it. Yeah. I think it's a great question. And certainly nobody has to lean back. I mean, we want to make sure the conversation is not that like, Okay, well, if if I want to lean in, he needs to step back. He doesn't have to step back. But the two bigger career concept works best when both parties love what they do. And it sounds like she loves what she does, but from what she's written, that doesn't sound so much for him. Now, obviously we're not talking to him, so we don't know this for sure. A ten percent salary differential is not that huge. It's something it's not, you know, game changer. Also, there's often benefits from public sector employment that may not be there in the private sector, whether it's job security, whether it's access to the state pension system. If you're in a state where that doesn't seem like it's about to implode, if you know, you might have access to a better health plan, depending on what the various public employee unions have negotiated. So there may be some benefits that are not coming across in the salary per se. And it's important that you guys really compare the roles as well if you're looking at that money. But you know, I mean more reasonable hours, like he'll be earning more per hour like it with the limit of ours. So and if he doesn't think it's a dead end it clearly people do get promoted. It might be an option for him too. So yeah, that's a fascin I didn't think about that. The hourly pay may actually increase. That may help him frame it may help him with that, and you know, if they may have to pay for less childcare hours too if his are more reasonable. Now, I don't generally like to think about the idea of saving money on childcare because I know that that's a thing that a lot of women get tripped up on. But when his work week is capped at thirty seven and a half based on the contract, like, you're not going to need as much as you would when it's an uncertain private sector billable hours scenario. So that's just maybe he'll he could end up pursuing either hobbies or even like a side hustle if there's something that he's interested in doing as well, just because that does it's a lot of paid leave. I mean, it gives him a lot of options. Well, this has been best of both worlds. We've been doing an all Love of the Week episode to ring in the new year, and we hope you'll us next week for more on making work in life together. Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram, and you 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.