Mailbag Q&A: Ask Us Anything Edition

00:00:02
Speaker 1: Hi. This is Laura Vandercamp. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist, and speaker.

00:00:08
Speaker 2: 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. 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 episode is airing in early October of twenty twenty three. Sarah and I are going to be doing a mailbag episode, but more exciting than that, we are in the same location. We are sitting here in a hotel in Boston, So if this sound is a little different than you usually experienced, that's why it is. We're trying to figure out how to place our microphone and our notes and all that so we can both talk into it. But thanks for bearing with us. So Hi, Sarah. Hi.

00:01:03
Speaker 2: Yes, we have like a perfect triangulation thing going where I feel like we're trying to keep our mouths each.

00:01:07
Speaker 1: About equidistant equidistant from this microfa. The question is who leans in when they're talking and who doesn't. It's an interesting question that you don't always experience when you're on remote places with the way we normally record. But we thought we'd start with a few quick life updates, you know, a month or so into the school year, A little bit more for you, maybe six weeks into the school year. How's life going.

00:01:31
Speaker 2: It's been a pretty busy school year so far. I do feel like we have reached a new level in evening activity, in part because.

00:01:38
Speaker 1: Of travel sports.

00:01:40
Speaker 2: I was saying, I think I'm adjusting to the life of a travel sports parent, but also because there are more dance and gymnastics classes in the evening than I have been used to, so we do have something almost every night. In fact, I would say every night except for Friday, and our Sundays are very empty, which is nice because I really enjoy the recovery day. But it's been steady and it's been okay. Our nanny has been a key player in this because we absolutely need a third driver. Even if Josh and I both were able to somehow miraculously leave work early, we would probably still need a third person helping most days, just because things are located in various places. We've been working on trying to establish some carpool relationships with some success, but nothing is really solidified yet, and so right now it's just it's a lot of driving around and a lot of evening thunderstorms that make sports very unpredictable.

00:02:40
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you have to have two schedules. What happens if the game happens. What you do if the game does not happen, Because if that happens enough times, then obviously you can have some backup plans for like this is what an evening will look like if we don't do that. Yeah, we've got a lot of we don't even have all our activities going at and the driving is still a little intent. It's The exciting news is that my eldest will hopefully have his driver's license within about two months of this episode airing, and so he can at least help with some of the evening and weekend driving, which is going to be great and that is a possibility. So yeah, we're you know, the school year is so far, so good. I mean nobody, I think nobody's like over the top thrilled, but no one's really unhappy either, So I mean, I think over the top thrilled would be a lot to ask for. In terms of children going to school. Maybe some of our listeners have children who bound out of bed every morning so excited to go to school, but I think many of us in life do not really bound out of bed. We'll have a question about whether we wish to ever bound out of bed later in this episode, so we've go ahead and dive right into the mail bag. As always, you can send us questions. I'm Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. You can post them on Sarah's blog. You want to join our Patreon community, I'm on social media. I can get them that way. First question, school choice. This person writes in I am another Monossori mom. This is addressed to Sarah. We have fourth grade, kindergarten and an infant. Can you both talk about how you have managed school choices in the context of bigger families with kids who may have different needs. So sorry, yours are all in the same place. Correct, they are, and it is a Montessori school. It's not that I'm necessarily wedded to Montessori philosophy. I think it has some great aspects of it, but it wasn't like I sought that out specifically. I mean, my approach was.

00:04:35
Speaker 2: To default to the public school or kind of the most convenient option, but then kind of turned towards logistics if that wasn't working for any one of the three children, and so we ended up And I don't know what role COVID played in this, Like I'm not sure if we'd be at the same school where we are if the pandemic hadn't happened. But regardless, we felt like, you know, one kid just was not thriving in that context, and investigated other options. Found the Montessori school where we were. We're really impressed with it. Well, actually, Genevieve had already been going there for preschool because it was kind of you know, there is no public preschool.

00:05:12
Speaker 1: So it was a good choice for her.

00:05:15
Speaker 2: Moved over a kid, then moved over another kid, because at the end of the day, logistics matter a lot to me too, So having you know, one kid in one school and another kid in another school, Yes, it could have been cheaper and everybody's needs would have been met, but my needs were not being met. Because everybody's calendar was different, the drop offs were different, the daily routines were completely more difficult, and so I would say that it was about meeting the most toughest to meet its needs and then putting everybody else there based on logistics. So that's kind of how we figured it out. And it will have to change though in a couple of years, right, yes, but there'll be a question of whether I want to move everybody to a K to twelve school, okay, or have to in one and one on the other. And I think that will depend on bussing options and such.

00:06:06
Speaker 1: Okay, sounds good a couple of years down the road for you, yeah. I mean, my very strong default is the local public schools, and one of the reasons we moved to our area is that it's known for having good schools with a lot of challenging classes and a lot of families who do care a great deal about education and how their children are doing, and so there's a lot of just back up for the schools that way and resources associated with it. So it would take a lot to leave that. If one child was having a lot of trouble with it, then I would definitely investigate it, and there are a lot of private school options in our area that might, you know, if something happened that I needed at I'm glad that we have those available. The only time we do that was during COVID, when I was not one hundred percent sure that the public schools were going to open for full time instruction. We decided to put Alex in a private kindergarten that was pledging to be open and less like forcibly shut basically, so that was what we needed for him. He had experienced a little bit of zoom pre k and it was terrible. Not that the teacher, the teachers are amazing, but you know, a child can't he can't do that, So you know, it was.

00:07:34
Speaker 2: You were trying to avoid zoom kindergarten.

00:07:35
Speaker 1: We were trying to avoid zoom kindergarten, and we did, and as it turned out, our public schools wound up opening the kindergarten completely for that same reason, because nobody can do zoom kindergarten. But we did that for the year and then put him in public school for first grade, and hopefully we'll be able to continue to do that for everyone through to twelfth grade.

00:07:57
Speaker 2: Love it all, right, This is a fun question. It makes me think of your second book, third book, Something who Knows. If you had all the money in the world, what would you have done or what do you do? I guess kind of uncleared don't have all the money in the world to make life easier with two big jobs and lots of kids, I e. What kind of outsourcing childcaret et cetera. Has been a great investment in your happiness.

00:08:21
Speaker 1: So there's a more interesting question here, Like, you have all the money in the world, would you actually have the two big jobs? I don't know. Like mine, I love what I do regardless, I don't know. Maybe I think Michael probably would do something as well. So in our case, maybe we would still have the two big jobs with all the money in the world. But I think we both come down pretty strong on the side of having enough childcare in the forum that supports your life and not just keeps safe and healthy care of them from working hours. So for most people that means having a full time employee like a nan or if your children are older, that might mean that you have somebody who helps with the household and with driving, but somebody who has that extra availability to not just support the childcare needs, but also various household logistics. I mean, some flexibility with it, so it's not only available certain hours, so whatever that looks like. And people truly do work long and unpredictable hours, and if you have two of you doing that, it's probably going to be more than one person, because you know, most people who have a full time job don't want to work more than forty to fifty hours a week. So if you need more than that, then it's going to be more than one person. But if you have all the money in the world, then I guess that sounds hunky dory.

00:09:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, options for hours outside of work or the ability to take if I had all the money in the world, maybe, I mean, but see it's not money, Like that's not money.

00:09:55
Speaker 1: It's just thinking about it.

00:09:56
Speaker 2: I'm like, oh, well, I could technically hire someone to take more or more weekends away with my husband or something, but like there are other reasons that I Yeah, this is an interesting question because the question is what's stopping you.

00:10:09
Speaker 1: What's stopping you from I mean, and it's more both the logistics, because the more employees you have, the more you're managing, and so you know, we've managed people at work, and all of a sudden, you're doing the exact same thing on the home front. If you have a whole team there, you know, smaller number of people is somewhat easier to keep track of. And also just that you want to do stuff with your family members, and so yes, could I find somewhere somebody who might drive an extra shift of something? And sometimes I need it, but that is a time that my teenagers might talk to me, and so you know, if they're willing to talk to me, then probably I should be the one doing it. And so it's more that there needs to be a or there. We feel there should be a parent doing it, and sometimes it becomes a question of well is it equitable which parent is taking that on? But again that's not a money question.

00:11:02
Speaker 2: So yeah, I feel like this would be a good reality show, not that anybody would agree to be on it, but like, how do billionaires run their household?

00:11:12
Speaker 1: Well, I'm always curious, I mean, because again, you can hire out a lot of stuff, and so sure you may never be cooking or cleaning, but you still have to exercise for yourself, right, Like nobody can exercise for you, nobody can sleep for you. Nobody can be if you want to be an involved parent, nobody can take on some of that. Obviously, they can do certain things with you know, your kids, and watch your kids while you're working or you know, while you have a date night or whatever. And maybe your date nights are better than our date nights. But it like you still, Yeah, everyone has twenty four hours in a day, so I would watch that show, you'd watch the show. I mean, i'd be curious too, But you know, we'll get back to you on that. Speaking of date nights, why don't we do this one more before we take the ad break, We had a a question of how to come up with affordable date night coverage, so people who are not billionaires. This person is noting that her kid is starting to age out of parents' night out type events that are held in her community, but still too young to stay at home alone babysitters in this area, which is, you know, a higher cost area of living. Even teenagers are twenty dollars plus an hour. So she says, I just wonder what other people do. So I guess there's the rubric. You've got to think of this if you're trying to spend less on this, which we'll address the question of whether that's something you want to do later. Is you either figure out how to spend less on the coverage or less on the date, right, because they're both things that cost money. If you want to spend less on the coverage, you might want to think outside the kind of weekend night box. If this is a one kid family, maybe that child is if they have travel soccer like Sarah, you know, you could go for a walk together during soccer practice, or go to a coffee shop nearby or something like that. If the child is in school or daycare or something, so there's already coverage during the day, maybe the two of you can meet up for a date lunch. Or if you can leave work at like four o'clock someday and daycare pickup is five thirty, then you could do a quick like drink somewhere before going to pick up the child. You can swap play dates with another family, or even just use the time like presumably this child is occasionally invited over to other people's houses, so if you know that's coming up this weekend, like oh hey, he's going to play at Johnny's house from three to five on Saturday, you're like, hey, guess what we're going to be doing from three to five Saturday. We'll have our couple time whatever that looks like together, so or go on cheaper dates, right. Yeah.

00:13:41
Speaker 2: I think it's interesting to like make sure you're really looking at scale with something like this, because even though it feels maybe it feels more dramatic because maybe you're handing over cash and you're not used to handing over cash for things, Like if you do the math of how much it costs over the course of the year, you may find that it's actually not a huge amount of money in the grand scheme of things, or that it does feel large, but it feels worthwhile. And so I kind of did some fairly inflated math thinking like if a family took twenty date nights a year and really paid one hundred and fifty dollars for each night of babysitting, which would be like, you know, at thirty dollars an hour, that's a five hour date of County cocks.

00:14:18
Speaker 1: You know, there may be seven hours at twenty dollars. So we're being really like going you're going along far away.

00:14:25
Speaker 2: Then that would be three thousand dollars a year. Which is absolutely a lot of money. But for some couples, like having that time together or like knowing that it's going to happen is going to be really valuable for their relationship and perhaps to that level, or if it's going to be something that really prevents a relationship from going downhill, couples, counseling sessions.

00:14:44
Speaker 1: Are probably much more expensive than that I divorced, also way more expensive than three thousand dollars, so something to keep in mind.

00:14:51
Speaker 2: So I guess I just think it's important to keep perspective.

00:14:54
Speaker 1: Now.

00:14:54
Speaker 2: A way to save money on dates other than using cheaper childcare is to keep the dates really inexpensive. So sometimes it might make sense to spend out for the childcare, but then make your date be using a museum membership that you already have to like tour the art museum and then just get a drink instead of getting a fancy dinner or like you know, sometimes we go out to fancy meals out and that's really fun, and then other times we like to go to like a group hub and like you know, just something really casual that's not going to break the bank. So I think that like actually being analytical about this and figuring out cost benefit ratios and works for you rather than being like ough paying a teenager twenty dollars, like being a reflexive feeling, It just makes sense to actually look.

00:15:35
Speaker 1: At the numbers. Yeah, and it's not eternal either. I mean, if this, if you have one child, and this child is let's say seven years old, I mean in another another four five years, they will be able to stay home by themselves. So it's a time limited sort of thing. So if you can get your head around, Okay, we're gonna spend out a little bit for this to still have time together as a couple, you know, until he is old enough to stay home alone. And maybe that can feel a little bit more like a number to get your head around versus oh, we're going to be watching money fly out the door forever. Yes, all right, Well we're going to take a quick ad break and we'll be back with more with this mailbag episode. All right, So this next question was sent I think to Sarah again, but maybe is something we can both address. How do you differentiate goals from to do's. My list of goals always ends up looking and feeling like a to do list of stuff all the things I have to do. So, as an example, she was recently setting monthly goals, and the goals all looked like, schedule my daughter's birthday party, finalize a budget for a house project, and get the puppy signed up for training. All of those worthwhile endeavors, but feel very administrative and not like she is moving her life forward on any big personal goal sort of sense. So talk about the difference between goals to dos and how you deal with the fact that there are these sort of compulsory to dos and you still have big goals.

00:17:15
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, first, I think it's interesting to address just like the difference between the two, which might be somewhat artificial, but to me, I consider a to do like a one and done task, like when you check it off, it's finished and then you're moving on. And a goal is something larger in your life that you're hoping to achieve. And so I use an example, your workout of the day, if you have our following a training plan would be your to do and you check it off and you're done. But your goal is to qualify for Boston and run it by this year or whatever. You know, it's a larger thing and I do think that, like you're usually going to be writing down tasks that relate to larger goals, but part of it is just the practice of a spending time thinking about your larger goals, which a lot of people really don't do. It takes time, it takes bandwidth, it takes space, and looking at those every once in a while. I mean, I advocate doing it kind of in a structured way, like every week you're going to look at the goals you wrote for the month, so that you're not forgetting about what they are. And then Laura has some very practical kind of tip to well.

00:18:14
Speaker 1: First I'll throw in a little advertisement here for Sarah's Best Blade Plans courses, because she will teach you to think a little bit more about setting goals even in the middle of a busy life, and what that might look like to have big goals that then you can turn into to dos alongside the other to dos that have to get done. I mean, and what you're talking about some of those to dos, I mean, some of those are in fact related to probably larger goals that you do have. I mean, you want to have a happy household of thriving children, and part of that is, you know, having your daughter celebrate her birthday in a way that she finds fun and memorable. And you've introduced this puppy into the house probably as part of you know, a goal to have you know, a household with animals that you value that and the companionship of that, and so you know, obviously the puppy needs to learn to behave itself as part of that. So you know, that's a goal to that. And you're making a warm and welcoming home with space that works for you. And I'm sure that your home renovation is part of that as well. So sometimes it helps to have a little bit of that perspective on what might seem like annoying to dos. But you also just have to decide to make progress on your big personal goals even in the middle of all those to dos, and sometimes that means working on them first, even if all the little to dos aren't done. Because yes, you may need to call the bouncy house place to schedule the birthday party, but when do you have your most energy, because at nine am, like, maybe don't call them at nine am, right, like, go work on whatever the big goal is in the you know, morning hours. Or whenever you have the most energy, and then you got that time at the end of the day you're like, oh, yeah, okay, I'm feeling a little like, oh I need another cup of coffee. You check off a couple of these things, then you call the bouncy house place, right, let's still pick up the phone. Then, so there are certain you know can make progress on those to dos and kind of after you've done the stuff that is the meat of moving forward on your big goals.

00:20:08
Speaker 2: Love it and I love this next question too. This one came for our Patreon and I just it's a great question. Do you ever have a day when you just want to hide in bed and do pretty much nothing? And she writes, although I guess that would still be intentional. I have that dream, but if the opportunity actually presents itself, it never really appeals. Maybe I need to plan it in Laura, do you have a day when you just want to hide in bed and do pretty much nothing?

00:20:32
Speaker 1: No? I don't do really well with like sitting in bed. I would get antsy, right, I want to get up. And so I read this question more as like a day when you don't do anything that you don't want to which is a different matter. So I've had some days when I do have complete control of my time, not that many, but like if everyone's out of the house for like multiple days and I'm there, and you know, obviously I run my own business. Sometimes I interact with the outside world. I have scheduled calls and meetings and things like that all the time. But if i didn't have any of those on a day, I'd left it open for some reason, I would, you know, I think about what I would do. I'd probably wake up when I woke up, but then I'd go for a run somewhere. I'd come back. I would in fact work because I like what I do, and do that for a couple hours. Then maybe putter around and do some fun things, like i'd play the piano, and I'd maybe I'd go somewhere like go walk in a pretty garden or go to an art museum, figure out something really cool for dinner, probably read at the night. You know, that's the sort of thing I would do with the day. So it's not that i'd be completely in bed, but if I'm getting at what I think, it is fun to create a day where you don't have any should I've heard somebody call it a should list day, but that might be something you would enjoy thinking about what would you do on a should list day? And maybe it's that you'd stay in bed all day, but maybe it isn't. I don't know.

00:22:03
Speaker 2: So I absolutely have days when I want to hide in bed and do pretty much nothing. And sometimes I especially like if I've had a week of call and then it's Tuesday, so that's like the first day I don't have to go into the office and like see patients. I'm like, what I really want to do is stay in bed all day and watch stupid documentaries or something like that. But I my schedule, I mean, for better or for worse, And I recognize that I'm to some degree in charge of all this, but it's just not usually totally feasible with the.

00:22:32
Speaker 1: Larger goals that I have of.

00:22:34
Speaker 2: Keeping the podcast going, keeping the things I'm creating going, et cetera. So I usually look at my planner on Tuesday and it's not empty. It's actually usually quite full after a busy season because I've had to push everything forward.

00:22:44
Speaker 1: So I guess the.

00:22:45
Speaker 2: Reality is that, like I don't usually plan out these empty days, do I wish I could have them sometimes. Yes, it's not necessarily something I do regularly. I do sometimes get massages with a friend, and I do plan those far out in advance. It's like, I know my next one is like in December, because we just booked it, and that to me is like, okay, I know I'm going to spend at least half the day basically doing nothing because the massage place is far away, and we usually have lunch too, so it's kind of like it's kind of.

00:23:11
Speaker 1: Like a wash.

00:23:13
Speaker 2: I also really enjoy with my husband sometimes when we go away, like for our anniversary, we do so little.

00:23:20
Speaker 1: We just like hang out and like watch TV.

00:23:22
Speaker 2: So I guess I really do sometimes when it's feasible, I do enjoy the do nothing days. And actually this question kind of motivates me to try to maybe add one or two more. I think they're best used fairly sparingly, but they can be rejuvenating.

00:23:38
Speaker 1: For me, yeah, I think. Yeah. My husband and I don't do well with sitting still. He does even less well than I do. I don't know, it's a I remember, very very early in our relationship, we were out, like on a beach somewhere like on these chairs, and he kept like getting up and going like in the water and then coming back out and like go a on, Okay, guess we're not sitting still, you know, like I'm gonna go see what the ref looks like over here. I'm gonna go do this might go kayak anyway, Okay, Sarah, what task are you most likely to procrastinate on? What you would put yourself in bed all day to avoid doing? I mean, I had trouble at first.

00:24:15
Speaker 2: I was like, I don't think I procrastinate all that much. Usually if I'm like delaying something, it's purposeful. Like sometimes I don't put the dishes away because I'd rather do them later when the kids are there. But that's not about procrastinating. That's about like strategy. However, I will say sometimes I procrastinate going to bed, and even though my screen used is so much less, every once in a while I just find myself like reading blogs or like looking at Strava or something when I know I'm better off just going to sleep. And then that also extends to putting the kids to bed, especially if like I'm the only parent home and everybody's like happily playing and it's a weekend or something. It's just like, ugh, I have to get up and end this nice, peaceful time.

00:24:55
Speaker 1: Who wants to do that? So I would say that's the task I'm most likely to procrastinate on. I mean, for me, it's anything that is difficult, unpleasant, or nebulous what the next step is. I mean, that's pretty textbook what everyone procrastinates on. So you know, if you have on your list, like do your taxes, it's like, oh, well, I really don't feel like doing that, and if the deadline isn't tomorrow, you know, put that forward. But I've over the years, I've gotten better at figuring out, well, let me break it down into steps. So knowing that I need to get everything in soon for the October fifteenth, you know there's a six month extension thing involved here, But anyway, you I'm like, Okay, I'm going to just pull together all the receipts for the credit card I use for all business expenses. Okay, now I've got that, so then I can another day I'll go through and just like highlight the stuff I want to make sure that I have deducted, and then another day I'll like look to make sure that all the other expenses and then top line revenue is all like in one place, and then like the next day I'll be able to like compile it all and you know, maybe the next time send it into the accountant. But all of that will be very few minutes on any given day, and so it feels a little bit more doable than this nebulous do taxes kind of thing. So I think if you can break it down into doable and less unpleasant steps, you might find yourself able to make a little bit more progress.

00:26:19
Speaker 2: Does it count as procrastination if you put something last on your list, but then every time you get to it, you're like, no, I'm too tired, I'm not doing it at all.

00:26:27
Speaker 1: Yeah, I do that with declo oh yeah, I mean, well, I mean and sometimes it's not so issue if you're pic you don't want to do it, Like if you don't want to do it, then like sometimes we don't want to acknowledge that. So you want to have it done. You want to have it done. But there's a difference between wanting to have something done and you know, wanting to do it or actually moving into the process of doing it. And so then if you truly want to have it done. You can either suck it up and do it anyway, or figure out another way to have it be done. That's my relationship with clutter. All right. Next, Oh those scroll up? Scroll up? Okay, we're we're still working on it. How do we have a Google Docs open while we're trying to record this in the same place? All right?

00:27:07
Speaker 2: How do you garner a new reserve of equanimity? I love that equanimity?

00:27:11
Speaker 1: Ecity.

00:27:12
Speaker 2: It's a good word, though, for your children after a very hectic and stressful work day, workday business and stress is certainly not their fault. Yet I find it hard to reset and keep it from impacting the patience and understanding that I have for them.

00:27:25
Speaker 1: Yeah, because I guess you're a human. I mean, I don't know, I feel like you also. I mean, first, there's a couple of things. I mean, for me, it feels like such a different kind of stress unless your job is like very closely related to what you're doing with your kids. So I'm saying, like, maybe if you're a kindergarten teacher or worked in a daycare or something like, then it would be a very similar sort of stress. And so I could see that it would be particularly challenging. But if it's just like, Okay, well I'm dealing with these unpleasant people at work or demanding things, and then I come home and I have the kids, and you know they're there, and you know, it just feels so different what you're going to be doing with them versus the spreadsheets at work, that I guess I would say maybe you could even embrace the idea that it's stressful, but it's different stress, and that alone can put you in a different mindset you talked about.

00:28:20
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I experienced this sometimes just because like sometimes my workplace can feel very like hectic or like they like overly busy, like too much stimuli or something. And then my kids are a lot of stimuli too. I don't have like quiet, meek children, and so sometimes if it's dire, or especially when I was having a lot of migraines, I would ask our nanny to stay later or be like Josh, I need a night where like I can't, I'm not going to be patient with them. I really really need your help tonight. Again, just like the staying in bed all day, you can't use this like every night. It's got to be when you really really need it. But I have done that at times and it's been helpful. And then I've also when there is no help of bailable, told my children like, guys, mommy's head hurts and I had the really horrible day and I need you to be kind to me. I need you to really help me out tonight. And what that's going to look like is x y Z. And I'm not going to say that they're then perfect angels and they like put themselves to bed, but I feel like they do as they've gotten older, they hear it more and more and then maybe, like Annabelle will help Genevieve a little bit more and it just won't be as much of a struggle. So being honest, if you're totally dreamed, maybe let them know.

00:29:28
Speaker 1: There may be other things you can do to sort of reset as well, like if you want to build in a reset. I mean, one of the problems is many people. Then you have a stressful day and then you have like a stressful drive home in traffic, and like that doesn't make you feel less stressed. But you know, sometimes people who have the ability to say walk home from work or bike home from work, that provides a reset. But you know, even if you don't do that, if you could come up with a way that you could go for a fifteen minute walk before entering kid mood. And again, it may not be that you can drive home and do that because then they see you, but it could part five minutes away and walk there and then come home, or maybe walk around where your workplace is and then come home. But something to do that to reset in a way that would allow you to be in a different headspace. But again, you don't have to be too precious about this. I mean, we all want to be good parents, but there is no parent who is one hundred percent equananimous or however, we say that word every single night. And so if you've had a rough day and yet you still have these toddlers that you got to deal with. You know, if you've got like a playroom or something like, go shut the door in the playroom, lie on the floor and let them like throw balls around you and just kind of sit there, and you know, it's it's not perfect, but that's life. That is life.

00:30:41
Speaker 2: I once saw some blog posts about like games you can play with toddlers that involve you just lying there like one of them's, Like, I don't know, they pretend to be like as quiet as possible, you know. Yeah, yeah, execute that strategy all right. Next question, this person writes, I recently quick drinking alcohol after realizing how it impacted my sleep and headaches. I know you've mentioned alcohol before on your blog. Would love to hear both of your thoughts on alcohol consumption. Seems like lots of non alcoholic options are more and more popular these days.

00:31:13
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think in this case most of both of us are sort of moderators on it. If somebody is noticing that alcohol is affecting, you know, their sleep, their health, their relationship with people, their mood, then probably it's a good idea to cut back. And yeah, there are more options now than ever before that are kind of feel like grown up drinks as opposed to having a soda or juice or something like that. It may also be that certain kinds of alcohol affect you more than others. I know I've personally found that I feel quite bad after drinking red wine, whereas I can drink white wine, not to access or anything, but like one glass is less likely to make me have those same symptom generally, though, I would drink beer instead of wine to avoid the problem altogether. Right, So, you know, it's you might find that certain things are more of a problem than others. So while it's absolutely fine if you wish to or need to quit drinking and we think that's awesome, it may be that, you know, if we've been on the wine train, maybe that is specifically a problem. And if you decided to, you know, have a cocktail once a week while you were out with your girlfriends, that would not cause the same issues.

00:32:33
Speaker 2: Yeah, So experimenting to figure out what works for me, I prefer to do it kind of like context specific. I'm also like really don't like to cut anything out entirely, although you know, there are extremes to that. I'm not going to be like occasionally doing hard drugs or something like that. But I generally don't drink at home, and so since I don't lead the world's most exciting life, that's a very self limiting factor.

00:32:57
Speaker 1: And then when I go out to dinner, I usually have one.

00:33:00
Speaker 2: Sometimes too, when I'm traveling, I try to like alternate days where I have a drink and don't to kind of catch up on sleep. So you just you gotta like figure out your own personal policies. But I agree that it's it is really nicer to see a lot more fun like mocktails on menus or like canned options or things like that, so you can feel like kind of the same experience without the alcohol.

00:33:20
Speaker 1: Absolutely, we both had a very nice what was a spicy pineapple margarita last night?

00:33:26
Speaker 2: That probably would have been fine About the alcohol, ye, I've had a lot of I don't know, all right, Okay, two more toomorrow.

00:33:35
Speaker 1: Okay. Do you do you make how or how did you make time for hobbies and sleep? With small kids? So, this person has a one year old and a five year old often finds herself trading off between time for sleep and time for reading after completing the necessary tasks for work at home. She says she does manage to read upwards of forty books a year, but never feel like she has read a lot in day because it has to fit in ten minute chunks or she has to stay up late reading, which, by the way, we want to say, forty books a year is not a small amount. And so that's one of the fun things about having a podcast that's listened to by highly overachieving people. They're like, well, I only trained for one marathon this year, and I only read forty books, and so I'm wondering if you could help me a little bit more with my time management. It's so true.

00:34:26
Speaker 2: Forty books is a lot of reading, whether it feels like a lot or not. But I guess I will say that when my children were younger, I did have less time for hobbies, and part of that was my unwillingness to sacrifice already interrupted sleep. Like so right now, I generally don't get interrupted overnight, and so setting my alarm for seven hours after I go to bed is much more doable and kind to myself than it would have been if I was like getting up to breastfeed or like you know, sue a kid or something like that. So I do feel like this is one of those things where like to stomachs and it gets better. But I also want to say and acknowledge, like something isn't nothing, and if you are reading forty books, you already are doing a lot, and maybe acknowledging that will kind of help you recognize that you're not starting from zero here.

00:35:14
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, and good for you for using those ten minute chunks because most people use that for social media or random headline scrolling or email checks, and then they feel like they have zero time. So it may feel to you like you have no time to read because you are using those ten minute chunks. But as you see, it's adding up to forty books a year. I do agree it's fun to have the time before bed to read. So maybe you could be like a little bit more militant about like getting yourself ready for bed and in bed with your book, like forty minutes before bedtime, whatever that happens to be. And maybe that happens by you said all the tasks you have to do for work and home, I want you to be a little bit more ruthless about ascertaining what is truly necessary for both work and home. Like if you are sitting there being like I have to lay everything out for the morning and I have to have the house completely clean before I go to bed, well yeah, then you're gonna have less time to read. But if you're like, okay, like I want to pick up at night, but I'm gonna do it for ten minutes max, not just until I think it's done, then maybe that opens up a little bit more time for having a longer stretch of reading time at night.

00:36:21
Speaker 2: Awesome, Okay, do we have two more? Okay, something I've been curious about. Do you and Laura make your bed every day?

00:36:30
Speaker 1: I will point out that we are sitting here in Sarah's hotel room and she has made her bed like sort of so well, I mean, what are you gonna do. You're not gonna do like little bounce a quarter off the sheets in your in your hotel room. But yeah, But the thing is I often do which not because I have some like compulsive need to do it or I think it like nobody's gonna see the bed until I'm back there at night in any case. But it's so easy, Like I just have a sheet and a duvet cover, and you know, I don't move the pillows around or anything, so it's not like I'm putting a giant arrangement of sixteen throw pillows. So I just like move the pillow back a little bit, pull up the sheet, and like, hey, it's done. So that literally it's like three seconds as I'm getting out of bed, which I don't even think about it. You know, I don't know that that says anything about me, like in terms of or even that I think making a bed is important. It's just that I do that.

00:37:26
Speaker 2: I'm quite inconsistent. I mean, I feel like sometimes I didn't remember making it, so this wasn't honest. Maybe I did it because you were coming in here to record.

00:37:32
Speaker 1: I don't know.

00:37:33
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I would say like sometimes I do, sometimes I don't. Sometimes mid afternoon, if I'm working from home, I'll be like, hi, I never made my bed and I'll make it now. But same as Laura, Like, this is not fancy bed making. This is like ten second, ten seconds, ten second bed making. We're usually okay with ten second bed making. All right, And finally, last question, Sarah. This person said you guys should have said you and Laura, I'm like reading my own name, which is okay. You are both very positive about working and family conversation, dispelling myths that is impossible to be your best self.

00:38:04
Speaker 1: She says, I've greatly benefit from this. But she says, I'm curious what specific narratives you might have had to dispel. For example, in my world as an academic, people like to say you write one less book for every kid you have, So she's curious how we have reckoned with any costs, or what we think about the parenting having a parenting conversation at work, like letting people know about your life outside of work. I'm going to throw in right here that I really hate these like stupid rules of thumb, like you write one less book for every kid you have. You know, Okay, a lot of people don't write that many books anyway, and a lot of people write really crappy books. And you know, I'm not sure that you know it's fun to blame your children for like the fact that you haven't written that many great books. But I'm not sure if that's the case. So Sarah, how about you think this?

00:39:00
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't know that there are like narratives that are like spoken out loud, but certainly when I had a role that had a more leadership component into it, I felt like an outlier, like there weren't a lot of women, and then the women were there actually didn't Like at one point, I think of all the program directors, like I was the only female with children, and that was kind of interesting because there was a bunch of people. I think that's changed a little bit now, which is awesome. So I don't know about a narrative rather than just feeling like, huh, do I belong here? And then I felt like the answer was yes. And then this gets a little complicated because then when I decided to move on from that, I think a lot of people assumed it was mostly to have more time for the kids, and to some extent, there is some truth for that, because it was a position that felt kind of like you were never done and there was always something that could come up, and I didn't want to be on call twenty four to seven for that type of thing. So but then I also have other things that I wanted to do or other avenues I wanted to explore in life, and it was easier to not emphasize those.

00:40:00
Speaker 1: So yeah, well, I mean I just have the sort of unique to me case that I'm trying to convince people that I'm a time management expert. And while I did not have five children as a personal branding exercise, it does in fact help with that. Like people will introduce me and then at some point people be like and get this, she has five children, and people always like, ooh, well that's weird, kind of awkward. So I mean, whatever, it's it's fine. I mean, but it does like, you know, people see it as like, oh, well, then yes, she must be managing a lot of things in her time, so maybe she knows something she can talk about. So for me, I don't think it's quite the same that thing. But I think kids can be a cost when people let them be that like, when people are into that narrative or let themselves, you know, decide that that's why they're not doing X, Y and Z. But there's probably ways to do X, Y and Z and have kids and you know, be a very involved parent. Sometimes it might look a little different from maybe whatever narrative you're telling yourself being an involved parent looks like. But I'm guessing it's mostly still possible. So you can simply decide not to have that narrative. It'd be like I'm going to write a lot of awesome books and I'm gonna have a lot of awesome kids, and there is no linear relationship between one and the other.

00:41:41
Speaker 2: Love it all, right, Well, let's go to our love of the week. We are going to both focus on feet today and mine are the power Stride tab socks from Lululemon. And I know there's a lot of like fancy running focused brands out there, but I feel like these are like the best socks and I don't just wear them running. I wear them like with everything. They just like what makes them awesome. They're like thin enough, they like don't squish your feet, Like I never have lines in my feet or my ankles after wearing them. And they're like low enough so they could be no show under certain So yeah, they're like I'm gonna buy like a million more, Okay, my best songs.

00:42:15
Speaker 1: And I should check those out. Well, I may convince Sarah to buy mine. My love of the week Athla Fit boots. So this is a t H L E F I T I kind of know how you say that Athla Fit whatever, But it's a brand that is sold on Amazon. They have a lot of shoes that are very reasonably priced and are quite comfortable. So I own a pair of wedge boots and wear them with my jeans, and I've been able to walk around a fair amount wearing them. And they have a tiny little bit of a wedge heel in them, so I'm a little bit taller while wearing them. But again, because they are inexpensive, I don't feel so precious about them, like, Oh, I've got these, you know, nice sweded leather boots that if they get wet, so I'm going to be so upset about So there's something to be said for that in terms of your everyday footwear.

00:43:08
Speaker 2: They look really comfortable and they're cute and I might have to order them, so.

00:43:11
Speaker 1: Exactly, exactly well, this has been best of both worlds. It's been an all mailbag episode coming at you with us in the same room here in a hotel in Boston. We will be back next week with more on making work and life fit together.

00:43:26
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram, and you can.

00:43:34
Speaker 1: 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.