Kimmery Martin. Ep 65

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Speaker 1: Hi. This is Laura Vanderkam. I'm a mother of four, an author, journalist, and speaker. And this is Sarah Hart Hunger. I'm a mother of three, practicing physicians 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 sixty five, which is first airing in late October. If the sound quality is a little worse on this, we apologize. Hopefully it isn't. We're using a different system this time. We had some issues with our normal zen Casters, a software we use to record, and we opened it up this morning it was just not there. So we're still sorting that out what exactly happened. But we use Skype this time, which Skype is a great tool as well. I use it all the time for doing interviews and talking with people, and so we're using the files from that and it never fails when we have a guest. We are so excited about interviewing, we wind up with these technical difficulties as we have Kimrie Martin, who is a novelist, the author of the book Queen of Hearts. She is an emergency emergency medicine physician as well a mom of three kids. So we're very much looking forward to that part of today's episode. But before we get to that, I so, you know, we've talked about it before in the Gretchen Ruben tendency realm. I am an upholder. So typically if I'm going to say, if I say I'm going to do something, it does get done. But you know, there's a lot of to dos in life, and I will say I tend to sometimes prioritize the urgent over the importance. And it was important to both Laura and I that we do as a survey that we talked about a month or two ago, but it just hasn't it hasn't come down to pipe, Well, I am going to turn this into an urgency by mentioning on today's podcast because I feel that by the time this, you know, the goal is that with this podcast, the survey will be available, so that will force us to have to put it together and make sure that it comes to fruition. So yeah, we're going to be asking you guys to contribute your thoughts about our podcast thus far and what you'd like and what you don't like, and recommendations, and you know, if you've always wanted to submit a question, this will be the time. I'm also wondering if I don't know how much it costs, but you know, some people have those like voicemail questions where people can talk. I'm going to look into figuring out if we could do that. I mean, actually it's easy as emailing us a sound clip. I don't know I people are going to take the time to do that, but you never know, because I think it would be kind of cool to hear some questions in the voice of our questioners. So anyway, that is that is coming up. Should we do a little teaser of some upcoming topic. Yeah, so we've got some upcoming episodes that were excited about. Well, we we don't have some of these books yet. We want to do talking about the topics that I know people have asked us about, things like single parenting, personal finance, hearing from some men, which we are completely open to doing we We've got a couple of fun things coming up on Oh Kids Sleep, We're going to be talking about actually that already came out. Sorry, we're recording at a different time. We're to be doing a episode on planners because we know that that was exciting. We've got one coming up on emotional labor, big topic in the world, taking one, I think, Yeah, we're going to be doing you know, talking about professional firms the process of making partner at those kind of places, and that's a that's a big one coming up. We're talking about combining parenthood with a serious illness, also a fascinating topic. So a lot of good stuff. Hopefully people will keep listening and sharing this podcast with their friends. Well, we are so excited to have kim Marie Martin with us on the show this week. This is Sarah. This was actually kind of my idea because I have recently read kim Marie's major hit of a novel, The Queen of Hearts, and I will tell you the backstory. I read it and I didn't look at all at her background and kim Marie, I was like, this person knows medicine. Like it was very clear this is not written by some somebody who wasn't in that world. But I just thought maybe someone had done a lot of research. And when I looked at the back, I was astounded to see that you are actually an emergency medicine physician and still practicing, or at least you were, And I was just fascinated about that journey. So, and I will tell you I loved your book. I devoured it in like forty eight hours or something ridiculous. So, yeah, we're really excited to have you on the show and talk about your career trajectory and how you make things work. I know you have three little children, and you know, whatever you have, whatever wisdom you have to impart on our listeners. I'm not sure I can offer wisdom, but I'm happy to chat with you guys. Thank you for having me. Yeah, so, why don't you tell us a little bit about your career background. I mean, what led you into madicine originally? Yeah, so I was kind of a late bloomer in college and really didn't know what I wanted to do. I've written a bunch of blog posts about publishing and writing and medicine, and I think in one of them I fessed up to originally being attracted to the practice of medicine when I read about it in a novel and there was this absolutely badass surgeon, a woman, and I thought, well, I could do that. And I was working on a senior thesis in college for my psychology major, where I was in a hospital interviewing families of children who had life threatening illnesses, and I wound up being kind of interested in the medical aspects, and so I doubled up on all the science courses and got kind of sweaked into medical school the last minute. Wow, So you did you end up taking a year off between college and med school or did you you ended up you actually were able to make it work and went straight through. Yeah. No, I'm a I'm a scholastic machine. When I wanted to be, I just worked really hard. I love it. And then how did you choose emergency medicine? And did you always know that you wanted to write? Like were you thinking? And I know there's actually I could think of at least one other author. Oh man, I'll have to remember that you probably know of him. He actually is also in North Carolinian and he was friends with somebody that I knew when we lived there, he's an er doctor. Anyway, did you think that that would be a good mix because the shift work would lend itself to kind of having other things to do or did that evolve more organically? Oh, totally organically. So the theme in my life is that I never seem to have a clue what I'm doing, and the same was true in medical school. I actually started in general surgery because I loved operating. I loved the technicalities of it and the intensity of it, and so I did an internship in general surgery and really did like it. But I decided to switch to emergency medicines. So that did require me to take a year off, during which time I moonlighted, and then I went back through the match and wound up at Vanderbilt for emergency medicine. And I love ER. I mean, I love the complexity of it and the randomness and the you know, the opportunity to just walk into a room and immediately make a difference in someone's life right there really appealed to me. That's awesome. I always feel like ER is so fun From a diagnostic perspective, I mean, you guys, you guys get the freshest cases because by the time they get to someone like me, I'm a pediatric endocrinologist, it's like, you know, yes, we're figuring out the details, but like, for example, I don't get to diagnose diabetes anymore. I kind of missed that. Not that I wish diabetes on anyone, but like, I never get to see that initial scene when someone comes in and doesn't know what's going on. So I think you guys are really lucky from that perspective. Are you continuing to work full time currently? I'm not working full time currently in the er. I actually haven't. I'm sort of lapsed. I haven't been in the er for probably the past two years, and partly that is because I could not manage to make it all work with writing full time and practicing medicine full time and having my family full time. So when I started the novel, I was working full time, and originally I had no idea whether I could write or not. I'd never written anything before. Once it became clear that the novel would be published, and especially once my publishers wanted a contract for more books, I decided to shift careers. And around that same time I had this really serendipitous, fortuitous thing happened, which was someone offered me a job. I live in Charlotte, North Carolina, which is a very financially oriented city where the downtown is pretty much all big banks, and so someone offered me a job in one of the big skyscrapers downtown where there's an allergy clinic and the financial people would come in to get their allergy shots without having to leave downtown, and they just wanted an er doctor on site in case anyone Anna relaxed. So I was getting paid to step in a little room and do nothing, and for the first time in my life, I was wearing real clothes to work. I felt like a grown up. I had my copy in my little brieface in my computer, so it was it was just such an awesome opportunity. I took it, and then that allowed me to to finish the novel and get it published. So you said you didn't amaze. Yeah, this is Laura. You didn't know that because you hadn't written anything. You said, like, what made you think, like, let me just start writing a novel then? Or did you eat then by doing you know, other other kinds of writing? First, no, I did everything beast backwards. I started writing the novel with no clue how to write a novel. But I think the reason that I did it was because I love books. I'm just the biggest book nerd. I love to read. I have always read at least three books a week, and authors of the people I admire, I just I love the concept that you can have a voice that's that's somewhat permanent, and you can, you know, debility to write down things and share them with the world really appealed to me. Mainly in my case, not out of any big altruistic thematic desire to make a statement, but more because I like to be entertained with books. But I read everything. I mean, I read fiction, non fiction, all genres. I read magazines and articles constantly, and once I started writing, I was immediately hooked. I just I knew I loved it. Well. I am totally impressed and inspired. And I mean, have you found that this is a common theme amongst physicians, because so I remember who the other author was. It was Paul Austin, who was actually also a North Carolina e air doctor. I think he worked near Durham or you know, one of those hospitals farther east and His was more of a memoir, but there aren't that many. But I feel like there's a lot with aspirations that I will, you know, admit that I am one of them. I don't have a fiction idea in me currently, but I still feel pulled to write. Now I've done that via a blog, which has not been, you know, part of my real career for the last fourteen years. But at the same time, you know, now I'm starting to wonder, and I know that there are probably others like me. If I could do something like you have done, maybe not quite on as large as scale, I don't. I don't think I'm going to make the kind of splash you did, which is really remarkable. But yeah, what advice would you give to others, either in medicine or maybe law or something else that might be interested in pursuing writing as kind of a side thing and maybe bringing some of the expertise from their work world the way you did. Oh, I have so many thoughts I might choke hold on. Well. First of all, there are a lot of doctors who write. I mean, I think that there are there's something inherent in the brains of people who are somewhat scientific that also makes them creative. I think you have to be you have to have some degree of creativity to be a scientist or a doctor of medicine. And so while there are not a huge number of physicians who have published fiction, there are a huge number of physicians who write. And I know this because I'm in a bunch of groups with them. I'm in one online Facebook group of just women doctors who are also mothers who also write, and there are one thousand of us. Wow. And as a matter of fact, I got a call out of the blue, I think last spring from a man who says that for many years his CMME company has sponsored a conference it was led by Tess S Garrettson and Michael Palmer for years called Fiction Writing for Physicians. And I'm actually teaching it this year or next year in Florida in January, and I think they have a pretty good sign up rate. Like there are there are many many physicians who want to tackle writing. And when it comes to writing fiction, you know, the absolutely ubiquitous advice that everyone gets is right what you know? Right, I mean, you hear that, write what you know. And for debut authors that's particularly important because at least In my case, I didn't know how to write, and so figuring out how to write and learning a whole new topic would have been overwhelming. But people are are people are drawn to the practice of medicine. They're drawn to stories about that. You know, it touches on all the big life or death, super intense, highly dramatic things that make for good fiction. I fully believe that I've been my husband and iety he's also and we've constructed many One of our favorite sort of joking things to do is construct ridiculous splotlines around things related to our work, like I have this whole like I treat some transgender patients, so I was like some like bizarre transgender love triangle that takes place in it. So okay, I'm glad I love that, But I'm actually bringing you know you you did do that? How do you from a patient? Obviously you can't share specific stories, but what if you're sort of inspired by how do you make sure that you know we're the line between violating privacy, which obviously we never ever want to do and ready about what you know? Have you ever struggled with that? Not terribly, although I did. I did include in my book a number of patient vignettes, some of which were loosely inspired by things I'd seen or thought i'd seen, or things i'd heard. And of course the rule is you just cannot use anything that's recognizably a specific person. I think if you want to be inspired by the multitude of ridiculous and tragic and impactful and funny things that you've seen, that's fine. You just can't. You can't make it be anything that anyone would know as a specific persons, the aspect of something without having any Okay, that's helpful. Actually, that's helpful because man, I got a lot of aspects and I did used to actually when I was much younger, share more, not specifics to patients, but more features. So I feel like I have this treasure trove to go through some day. No, that's that's great. Oh you do, you do? Your mind is full of that stuff, trust me. Yeah. So hem Mary, you know while you're managing that obviously you were starting your novel while you were working as a physician in the er, and you also have three young kids. Where did those come into the whole life trajectory of Henry? When did you wind up having them? Oh? Okay, so well. First of all, I'll say my kids were terrific fodder for the book. They always are like that. Yes, I mean, if you have kids, milk fuzzle suckers for everything they say and do, because it's funny. So I have three, they're currently fourteen, twelve, and eighth, and I guess, you know, like a lot of doctors, I kind of had mine on the late side. I think I was. I was thirty two when my oldest was born. Oh, now you know how old I am. I to say that while we're like poppies because I have the exact same age spacing and started at the exact same time. So I write now six four and nine months and I'm thirty eight years old, so like we're mirrors. Okay, keep going. Yeah, and you know what, that was a pretty good way to do it. My youngest is six years younger than my oldest and four years younger than my middle and that worked out really great because the big two were in school. Like it's the it's the baby toddler combo. That's so deadly. I think totally agree. I've said that that's so funny. Yes, and I like my spacing too. Yeah, it's being like, sorry, go ahead, Oh, I was just going to say. You know, in terms of work life balance, I think I am no role model, because that's the question I probably get more than any others. You know, how do you do it with the kids in the book and the working And the truth is I really do everything kind of crappy, and I forget stuff all the time, and I'm lucky enough to be able to hire help. I look at these other writers, most of whom are struggling financially because for some reason, the world does not financially reward creativity in the manner that I wish that it would. So most writers are really struggling. And I try to outsource everything I can that isn't essential to be me, and I still struggle. One of the more creative things you outsource, though, that buys you time. Our listeners are always looking for stuff like that. Oh well, there's nothing creative at all about it. But I outsource cleaning because I think at that and a lot of times we just live in health. I'll be honest, there's a lot of times I just can't get it all done. I do. I mean, the other thing with three kids is I hire people to help drive us around to all the stuff. You know, we're always trying to get to soccer at the same time as gymnastics, at the same time as field hockey, as the same time as lacrosse, and at the same time that I have a meeting. And I try to do a lot of volunteering too, and so sort of cloning myself. I really do rely on other people, other mothers to help me or I hire someone. Yeah, and we're definitely big proponents of that, you know, on the podcast, and I like hoy say, you know, I don't you don't do everything crappy. You probably do the things that are not priorities for you, that is strongly, but you do many you know the important things very well. And that's you know, a great lesson. And you're right, it is unfortunate that not everyone can always outsource the way they want to, especially at the start of their careers. But it's you know, it's it's like a double edged sword because if you couldn't have outsource, then you might not have been able to accomplish what you accomplished. So it's always a difficult conundrum there sometimes. Yeah, And I think that's a good point to that writing I mean, obviously, it'd be great to start writing when you're young, and many people do it, but for me, I was too much. I was too much of an idiot to right when I was young, and bet I didn't get the experience that I needed for my first novel until i'd really live a lot longer. So I think starting when you're I'm sure is hell. I'm not going to refer to myself as middle aged because I don't like that, but I think starting when you're not super young is good. That's interesting. And again, you know, sometimes we get stuck in a groove, right You're doing one thing and there seems to be one logical path. But I think it's important for even those of us who are in careers where there is one traditional trajectory that can be successful, to remember that. You know, it's not necessarily the only trajectory, and you may go back to medicine sometime more fully, or you may not. I don't know if you have ideas or are you just trying not to make clients. I didn't really intend to leave, but my agent secured another two book contract for me after my first novel was published, and at that point I kind of had to make a decision either I wanted to make a serious go of writing, in which case it meant accepting this contract. Because it's my publishers is Pinguin Random House, They're the world's biggest publisher. It's not likely that I'm going to find a better opportunity than what I already have. But I could not commit to that time frame. You know, two more books, two more medical fiction books, and still work in the er. So I decided to put it on hold for a couple of years and see what happens with the novels, and then I would love to go back. I do really miss it. I loved my job. Yeah, So what does a day in the life look for you right now? Because obviously writing is sometimes one of those things that's difficult to do as a day job, in that it's somewhat nebulous in terms of, well, I have a book due in let's say eight months, but you know, eight months, what am I doing up till that point? So I'm curious how you structure your days now. Well, I start off with a big festival of dysfunction, which is getting all the children up and dressed and bed and out of the house. And none of us like that. But once that, once they are gone, then I really buckle down to work. And that means the summers are not very productive for me work wise, but I do try to do some form of exercise for half an hour in the morning, and you know, I inhale my coffee and then I go up to the computer and I start writing. But that being said, there is so much involved in publishing that is not sitting there writing. I was really astonished at how phenomenally time consuming it is. When my book came out first, all I did a lot of travel to promote the book. I did a slew of interviews, more than I can possibly remember, podcasts like this one, and radio interviews and television interviews and blogger interviews and newspapers and just so much written stuff. And there's also there's a huge element of self promotion in writing. You know, I wish it was that the publisher did everything, but they really expect the authors to do a lot of their own promotions. So you know, they gave me a forty page document or actually I guess my agent did a forty page document on social media and websites and you know, all that kind of thing, and all that takes a lot of time. My website takes a lot of time to maintain. And I also do a lot of other writing now. I write opinion articles, and I blogged for a year about the process of publishing and what the publishing industry is like, and you know, I write articles for websites, sometimes medical, sometimes on writing, and all that stuff takes a lot of time. So I can focus pretty intensely for a few hours, and then I need a break, and then I get back into it, and then the kids are home from school and my brain is fried, and I do nothing else. Do you set yourself like a word target per day or per week as you're as you're working through these these novels. No, I don't. And that relates to kind of the peculiarity of the writing process, which is almost all writers divide themselves into two categories. That you're either a plotter where you outline and you know ahead of time what you're going to write, or you're a pants, seat of your pants person and you have no clue what you're going to write. And that is me, and so I wind up writing a huge amount of stuff that gets cut or that needs to be revised or that sends me off in a totally different direction. And and so it's not for me, it's not so much about word count as it is making some kind of coherent progress in the you know, Giant Disaster that's my current manuscript. Because we're like, if you've sat there for some amount of time and you've put a bunch of stuff on the page to work on later, then that's been a successful day, not like, oh, I did chapter you know, one segment B or something like that. Yeah, And sometimes I just spend all day going back and rewriting what I've already written as I get a more clear sense of where I'm going. Well, I mean, that's so it's so interesting to hear that, because, I mean, your book felt incredibly cohesive, and your characters were very I don't know, they were very real and very consistent throughout. So despite what you're saying, you obviously did a great job kind of pulling it all together, because I wouldn't get necessarily I took a lot of revision. I was gonna say, I think I read somewhere that you had like two hundred thousand words that you cut down to one hundred thousand or something like that. I mean that may have been an exaggeration, but it was that roughly what happened with Queint of Hearts. Yeah, I probably went through dozens of drafts, and then when I signed with the publisher, they actually, as a condition of them acquiring the book, they actually requested me to rewrite pretty much the entire second half of the book with a different plot line. So that changed almost everything in the book. And then I tend to be Yeah, I'm a word nerd. I like I like complex sentence structure and interesting vocabulary, and so my poor editor had to cut down a lot. That's so fascinating though, that the plot was different when when it was acquired. Yeah, we allowed to know. Am I allowed to know the alternate plot line? Because if anybody's read the book, I'm sure they are dying to know. Yeah, I keep thinking, I'm what I might do is someday publish some of the excised chapters on my website. But the original plot, First of all, Emma was not quite she really got thrown under the bus in the second draft. Yes, and the original version, my original original VERSI and had Zadie's husband as a point of view character. He was a much bigger, more pivotal character. There was an incident that happened in his past before he and Zadie were married that kind of drove the plot line, and that was a major thing that got cut out. Zadie's family in Kentucky had bigger parts, you know, and all that completely went by the wayside in the original version. Things that happened to Emma and the Ore did not happen, and that I don't want to say too much in Somebodyska, but yeah, my publisher really wanted me to write some medical things that were so hard to write. Like I just was cringing the entire time I was doing those image chapters because I you know, I empathized so deeply with her when the you know, the bad thing happened in the hospital. Also, her husband was the best character. I mean that one of the best. I loved him. Oh yeah, I loved him too. Yeah, he was one of my fas. I really really regretted that he is not real for real. Well, it's just interesting to hear, because I know we have this idea of books being what they are and emerge from I don't know, like divine cast down and then carved on stone or something like that. But it's very much an organic process and it's always about, well, we have this idea, but it has to be marketable to do. And part of the marketing is, you know that there needs to be a strong central character and sometimes it needs to be specifically aimed at a demographic and so if there's too much from a character and another demographic, that character needs to go. And yeah, the business of publishing is itself very fascinating. So somehow much you guys both do that is not the writing part, because you're right from an outsider, we just think, oh, you know, like you sit it there, You sit there and you write and then you like forward it someone and you edit it and that's it. But you know, now I've learned there's so much other stuff. Yeah, we're just getting the world to care about your book, which is very was saying like her forty page document on social media. Oh yeah, it's difficult. How do you feel about that stuff, Tomma? Was it hard to be like, you know, my book is awesome, you should read it, when when that's not obviously what you were traded in your life to do. Oh yeah, I got really sick of myself around the time that the book was published, because I mean, I've really always lived in this little cave of obscurity and I've never had any kind of spotlight shined on to me. And while on the one hand, I was extremely grateful that anyone cared about the book, on the other hand, I was like, I am boring myself to death, Like I don't want to hear another word about myself. I'm sick of talking about myself. It's hard to be self promoted all the time, especially for women. We are not inherently predisposed toward that a lot of the time, and I don't know, it did feel odd. But on the other and I'm kind of a social person and I loved meeting people online like that part has been really cool. I feel like I had this big network of you know, book nerd friends all over the globe. Now, I started this campaign on Instagram to have people take pictures of my book cover because it's so pretty and I literally have all seven continents now and dozens and dozens of countries and you and photograph your book. Yeah, so that happened. There's an er doctor on Murders Station that one of my friends knew and asked if they would take the picture, which was just awesome, like so nice that that is amazing. Well, I would say, you know, there's that fine line of self promotion where someone starts to feel over the top, and Kim, Marie and Laura, neither of you have ever come close to that line. I follow you both on Instagram, so you can both two your horns more and they'll be fine. Son'll worry about it. This is awesome. Yeah, Sarah, do you have any more questions for for hem Mary? No. I am super inspired and I am excited to see what she comes out with next. I will pre order it whatever it is. Whatever it is, and what kind of timeline are we looking at? Himriy, When do you think the next novel will be out? So, if all can swill, it'll be early twenty twenty for the next one, and then early twenty twenty one for the one following that. Brilliant Well, everyone market on your calendars now. The one wonderful thing about our listeners is that we are planners. There's probably people who have their twenty twenty calendar already so they can put it down. Yeah, and so the next one I'll just tell you quickly. Oh yeah, the main character of the next book is a minor character from The Queen of Hearts, one of the med school friends named Georgia, and she's a urologist in Charleston. Oh I remember that. Okay, that's very exciting. Oh good, So you can somehow you can somehow bring back Emma's husband in somehow. Oh I haven't yet, but that's a great idea. I haven't had enough of. So okay, all right, So we are going to invite you to partake in our love of the Week segment, which we do every week on our podcast, and just a reminder, can be anything. Can we music, a book, a podcast, a item of food, or like some general concept anything, And I will go first. Actually, Laura, I'm going to switch my loves a week because I realized, why not include my medical author book on this episode rather than my other episode. I just finished a tool Wan Days Being Mortal, so kind of not the same as The Queen of Arts, but I thought it was a great read. I actually we started a book club for our residents and that was the assigned book and I had until Friday to read it and it went actually very quickly. It's not a terribly long book, and it's all about kind of the end of life and how we do how we do it wrong in some ways, and how we might make it better. That's a great one. Yeah, well mine is not like that at all. We're recording this and falling up here in the north. You know, things start getting chilly in the morning. And when we renovated our bathroom last spring, we decided to put in heated floors and love that the most luxurious thing ever to get up and walk onto a nice, toasty bathroom floor, although it took quite a bit of work because you know, obviously they had to replace the whole floor, which they were going to do anyway. But then there's a timer so that it goes that you know when you're waking up in the morning that it will be warm when you wake up. But for a while the timer wasn't working, and so it was losing like eight minutes a day, which for the first two days doesn't matter so much, but by like day five, you're forty minutes off when you wanted your floor to be hot. So we obviously had to get that get that switched. But it's been great, so That's that's my love of the week. All right, Kim Marie, how about you? Okay? I know I was supposed to have thought about this, and I'm gonna have this true to form. Okay. I got to the first is that I am getting a book in the mail today that I'm excited about. Is Michael Lewis's new book is out. Do you guys know who he is? I have not read him. Oh, he's fantastic. He writes a lot of narrative nonfiction and I'm sure you've heard of some of it The blind Side and My Boy. He started off writing a lot of financial nonfiction, but he writes on a lot of different topics and he's just an incredibly gifted writer. So I'm excited about that. His new book is called The Fifth Risk. And then my other thing I'm excited about is my husband and I are planning a trip with the kids to New Orleans for New Year's Eve and we're friends. My husband's a sports medicine guy, and we're friends with the doctor for the Saints, and we're big Panthers fans since we live in Charlotte and the Saints are playing the Panthers, and we're going to go to the game and run around on the field and show our kids the city. And it just sounds so much fun. I can't wait. Does sound fun? Great exciting upcoming adventure? Well cool? Well, thank you so much Kimrie for joining us. We really appreciate it. Well, thank you, thank you. I'm really honored that you asked me. Oh, our listeners are going to love it. Thank you again. Our Q and A for this episode is somewhat timely because it is about to begin that lovely wintry season filled with viruses, it's not and all that good stuff. So one of our listeners sent this question via Instagram. How do you keep your kids healthy during the winter, and if not, how do you manage sick days? Now, we did I dress some of this before, but I have I guess a little more to add. Do you want to go first? Yeah? Well, I mean, we hope to keep kids healthy during the winter, but it's sort of inevitable that they won't. This is the reality of kids and winter. And even if they somehow managed to stay healthy the entire winter, you might have snow days or other such things along those lines. So consider this your public service announcement to think about your backup plans, what are you going to do when stuff goes wrong this winter? Because it's you know, anyone can manage time that goes perfectly. It's it's the people who managed to stay productive and keep life moving along when things don't go as planned who are the real time masters. And in terms of keeping kids healthy, I'm a big fan of hand sanitizer. I mean we keep it everywhere. Like kids have little bags of hands bottles of hand sanitizer on their backpack so they can use it, you know at any point. I'm not sure they always do, but you know, definitely with my little boys, I'm always you know, did you wash your hands after going to the bathroom? Is they seem less hardware to do that? So lots of lots of that. But honestly, I mean one of the reasons we wound up hiring a nanny for the first time many years ago, our oldest child went to daycare and the first winter, I think there's like five weeks of illness that he could not go to daycare, and so that's really hard to observe. It's hard to for me to absorb it as a self employed individual, I can't even imagine if I was, you know, working for a company, how I do that? So to think about that right, Like, you know, obviously having a caregiver in your home is good, that makes sense if you have young kids. I think what people definitely get tripped up on is when their kids are in school, because then their their childcare solution probably doesn't go for the whole day and isn't instantly available for the whole day. You might have an afternoon sitter or something like that. So then the question is, well, what do you do when the kids are homesick? So if one party, if you've got two parents, has an option to occasionally work from home or if that is something that you can negotiate for, that is a real lifesaver, if you know. I would say, if it always winds up being the same person, then the party who does go into the office needs to work out a way for the other person to have some backup time, whether that's that they cover the evenings, the other person comes home from work early to a party who's been tip caring for the sick kid, get some time to do whatever, covering the weekends, et cetera. But that's something that you definitely want to think about as well. Yeah, depending on where you live, there are emergency babysitting services that can be incredibly helpful in this situation. And I have now actually had the pleasure of using one. It's actually in multiple cities, so I mean, you know, I can't your mileage may vary. But if the one I use was called the Babysitting Company, and I believe it's in Miami, New York, maybe Philadelphia and California anyway, where you can call with thirty to sixteen minutes notice and say like, I need emergency care giving, and that includes they will up charge you for a sick child, but they'll do it and they'll send someone to your house. And yes, it can be expensive for that day, but you know, if it's that versus hiring someone, it's certainly going to be the cheaper option. I guess unless you spend your kids spends five weeks out of daycare, Laura, then yeah, it might be a watch. Yeah, well, you can also have a backup person yourself too, I mean, because I think some people might be you know, I would assume it's the same. It's like hiring at hotels that are like they screen these people. They work with these people. These are you know, sitters that they've been you know, been sending out on jobs for years and and so they know them and you know you can rely on that. But if you're concerned about that, I mean, obviously you can have a backup option. You just need to figure out how you're going to make that work. Where maybe it's a neighbor who's willing, you know, wants to earn some extra money, or an extended family member or you know, if you do have a portfolio of sitters as we call it, and you have some people who do occasionally have some last minutes availability, I mean, you can just test the group and see if you know, somebody responds. Whoever responds first gets the gig if they're up for it. But but yeah, figure out, you know, what can go wrong and what you can do. Something like a college student can be really helpful because you know, they sometimes update and if you have a group and if you're if you're paying enough, you could probably get someone interesting. Yeah. Yeah, I mean i'd say obviously this is you know, if a kid is really really sick and you know you need the parent dealing with them and dealing with the doctor, visits and things like that. That's sort of a separate issue. We're more talking about like the kid you know has diary or something you can't go to daycare or is kind of fever, and it's yeah, yeah, that it's not a serious fever, but it's such that you can't go to school, but not such that they need parents around them twenty four to seven tending, you know, for that. So that could happen to you, and figure out what to do with serious illnesses as well, but that's sort of more something you know that you would be taking a sick day and dealing with. So all right, well, this has been Best of Both Worlds Episode sixty five. We've been talking with novelist kem Marie Martin about her life, her background to being a physician transitioning into novelist, and we'll be back next week with more on making work in life fits 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.