Foundation Habits & Fall Thoughts

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Speaker 1: Hi. This is Laura Vandercamp. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist, and speaker. And this is Sarah Hart Hunger. 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. 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 sixty four. We're going to be talking about foundational habits and fall. So a couple of f words. My little guy just started my well, my next to little guy just started kindergarten today, So I'm going to sort of f is for foundation habits. Move. We're recording this in right after labor Day and we are Yeah, fall up here, not so much where you are, but that's okay, right, Sarah. No, So I designed this episode so I could live vicariously through your fall images and fall fund lists and all that good stuff. Yeah. So foundational habits, though as a concept, you because you suggested this episode and I like this idea. Where where did you get this from? I think the original concept came from Gretchen Rubin. I think she mentions that there are like some found I think this was in one of her actual like one of her earlier books, like The Happiness Project or The Happier at Home Project, where you know, there are certain habits that if you kind of don't do them, make it very hard to do anything else, like and if you do do them, you find that other things kind of fall into place better. And I do feel like since a lot of our routines and habits have been disrupted, some of us are figuring out what's truly essential and what's not. And also as some things have been harder to come by, like maybe alone time, you might realize new importance of some of them that you took for granted in the past. That's why I thought it'd be a fun conversation. Well, it's always interesting thinking about habits like that, because some things are so ingrained that you don't even think of them as habits. For instance, like I mean, I'm guessing you have relatively regular meal times. For instance, right do you eat breakfast? And lunch and dinner that are actual meals right pretty much pretty much, And that's that's a habit, Like not everybody eats that way, but it's so part of our lives that you know, there are meal times and then there are sort of not meal times that you know, I can't even imagine sort of the chaos my life would feel like if I didn't have meals, right, like if I was just sort of eating random stuff every two hours. So yeah, I mean that's I guess that is a foundational habit, but I hadn't put it on the list because it was not even something. You know, it's kind of funny, like you also realize how arbitrary are like even going beyond the actual times of meals, the things that people tend to eat at each meal where that's so cultural and you know, many Americans start their day with bagels or cereal or some carb heavy thing, which I do all the time. By the way, I'm not knocking that habit. You know, that's like totally it's manufactured, right, Like in many countries people just eat whatever, you know, like right, which get a bunch of Americans that are like, what is this? I I was in Eastern Europe with a group of young people at one point, like a big group of young people, and we were staying at, you know, a relatively low budget hotel, but it had breakfast. Have I told the story on the podcast? I'm trying to remember. I feel like I've told this story before, but maybe not on the podcast. And you know, they serve what they serve, which is like bread and cheese and meat, right, that's breakfast, and you know, maybe some mucily in a little yogurt or whatever. But they weren't going out of the way to make an American breakfast because that's not what the hotel was, right. It wasn't like a giant Weston in the middle of Paris that like recognizes that half the people there are Americans. So they weren't doing that. And the young people I was with were like they couldn't get it into their heads that this is what people eat. Like in their minds, it was just a bad hotel. Were They're like, this is so weird breakfast. They can't figure out what new breakfast. Oh, that's so funny. When I was like twenty two and I took a trip to Europe on a very low budget we stayed at like a bunch of hostels and stuff. That was one of my favorite parts was like having like the native like usually it is, you know, bread and butter, you know, sometimes a croissant or but yeah, sometimes in Scandinavia. And yeah, we didn't mean to make this episode about breakfast, but that's just so as a foundation, like you expect to eat breakfast food in the morning and if you don't get it, like you feel like what. So in that way, it is foundational or showering regularly, right, I mean, you know, I'm a little out of sorts on camping trips if I haven't in a while. Oh my goodness. Well showering, Yes, that's a good habit to have. All right, Well with that said Sarah, how about you go into your foundational habits once we've gotten past showering and eating breakfast. Showering is important. Although that one falls by the wayside sometimes, I would not say it's a foundation habit of mine, although most workdays I managed to get it in. The first one is sleep. If I do not get at least seven hours a night, then everything else is very difficult. So I would definitely consider that among one of my foundational habits, and I know some people it's more like eight. And I also know that people are listening to this with young babies and are like, ah, so people, certain people with young babies. I know it's so hard. I mean, I didn't get that sleep when I had the little ones, and I made everything else harder. So and I didn't get that sleep and I was in residency and it made everything else harder. So I don't think I take it for granted. I'm like, very grateful every time I sleep through the night, But yes, I would consider it a foundational habit. The second one is meditation. I don't like, it's not like I need to do this every single day, but when I have this fit into my life in some form, I find that everything else runs a little bit more smoothly. And I only spend about ten minutes doing it, and I still use an app for it, So I'm like, and I'm not really looking to deepen my practice or lengthen it. I'm just like happy with like that amount. So but I would say it's pretty foundational at this point. Planning so my daily kind of planning sessions, although I don't always do that on the weekends. But pretty much on every week day to sit down and think about how I'm going to spend the day and looking at my calendar and just spending that time to think through it. That is a foundational habit for me. Exercise, I know we both have that one in common. I feel best when I work out between five and six days a week, probably six ideal world, but I recognize sometimes it's five and that's okay. It doesn't have to be a long workout. I think when I was younger, I was trapped into the idea that it had to be like five mile run or didn't count or something like that. But now I'm happy if it's thirty minutes, even a twenty or twenty five minute like hi hit session can be plenty. And then other days I will work out for longer, so I find that it's worth for going some sleep. Maybe not below that seven hour minimum, but you know that between seven to eight kind of a thing I'd rather work out than get eight. And then I think the last two are sort of more like fun things that I really like to build into the day. One is music, which I don't know if I don't listen to music, It's not like my day is ruined, but I find it like an enhancer of my life, and I forget to use it. Like we have Spotify the premium so I can listen to any album, and when every time I turn it on, I'm like, oh, it's so much nicer at home with like this nice soundtrack, or you know, if I'm taking a walk and I'm listening to music, it's just such a nice feeling. So I feel like that's pretty foundational. And then reading, I if I'm not reading, something's wrong in life, So definitely foundational. Yeah, I've been having trouble with the reading lately. I don't know if it's just the colm of lacking the other foundational habits. It's totally the sleep. I mean, you can't I don't want to read anything. I don't want to read a book. I don't want to read. I don't. I just like I can't get into it. I don't have something I want to read, like, so it's just I'm scrolling around a lot, and I don't want to do that either. So I've you know, been consciously attempting to make my Instagram feed like pretty pictures of pretty things. If that's what I'm going to look at anyway, like I want to make it as much as possible, like you know, gorgeous interior design and beautiful flowers and things like that. But yeah, I haven't been able to get into any reading of late, so mine are as people might guess fairly similar to Sarah's. You know, we've discussed our lives on the podcast, how we how we sort of function, and what we need. But sleep is a foundational probit probably for everyone. And right now I'm just not enough and enough undisturbed sleep, and it is so hard. It is making everything worse. And you know, yeah, we're sleep training the baby, but it's not it's yeah, I don't know. There. I always get somewhat annoyed with this because there's some people for whom it works great and quickly, and then they're like evangelical about it. But then there are kids who are just stubborn and there, you know, you don't hear the testimonials from those people on the on the sleep training websites or whatever. I mean, I've been this is my fifth kid. It's not like I've never experienced with so of the five kids you've had five and a five study here, have they been different? They have. They have, So Sam and Ruth have always needed more sleep than the others and did more sleep, you know, Jasper, Alex and I, maybe Henry will say, have been less into sleep. And you can tell that you talk to families that their babies are just much more oriented towards sleep than some of my kids have been. And so, you know, it's just there are some particular issues you have to deal with. I mean, there are others that I don't with my kids, you know. So there you just you get what you get. You don't get upset. I think it's that you work within the framework you have. But like last night, so you knows, as you might imagine, I've been doing most of the middle of night wake ups because you know, he wants mommy in the middle of the night. So last night, the big idea is that I was going to go sleep in the basement and so Michael would be fully on for the baby wake ups, probably because he'd hear a few of them. So maybe we could just like convince him to get himself back to sleep if it was a mile you know, a short wake up or something. And so I went down and slept in the basement. But I managed to sleep from ten thirty to twelve thirty, at which point Michael and Henry are standing over me. Like he had been up for like half an hour already at that point, and so you know, Michael had like given up and so it was like coming to find me. But the honest with it this, I couldn't get him down either. I was, he was up for another hour. It was just not fun. So I feel like there's some genetic mysteries around sleep, especially you know, when I hear a story like, oh, two of my kids slept great and three of them really aren't into sleeping, like makes me think of some kind of like autosomal dominant variation. I don't know, they're not mutation, because different lengths of sleep need are not you know, pathologic, and that very interprise us. Because there are adults who need eight and a half hours of sleep or they're incredibly grumpy. There are also adults who need six and a half hours of sleep, and that is absolutely fun. And you know, I would say probably ninety five percent of people are within that range, like between six and a half and eight and a half. I mean, there's a couple who are short sleepers, and there are some people who for whatever reason need more, but you know most people are in there. But that's it's a huge range. Like if you think about day to day life, like needing six and a half versus eight and a half, Like how much you know different space is available for other things within that range. When you talk about a baby that's not sleeping well and someone kind of like gives you that you're doing it wrong angle, I can imagine, particularly when it's your fifth child, that it's like, oh, well, I don't know that. You know, they have a different experience, and I'm I'm not saying that there are some things that are good or bad. Like you know, we we are definitely have some good habits We've been working on with him. He's much better now about scrape, sleeping in his crib for naps. We've got that set up. We're very you know, focused on getting those naps at a certain time and I'm putting them to bed earlier, and just you know, dealing with like the fact that there are wake ups in the before he goes down for longer stretches, and you know, it's we have the structures in place. It's just some kids are way, way, way more stubborn about it than others. And I would be unhappy if somebody who's forcing me to you know, I need probably seven point three or four hours of sleep per night, and if somebody forced me to be in my bed for ten hours, like I would be kind of ticked off about it, Like, you know, I wouldn't want to do it. And why is that any different than a child, like you know, I don't know. Anyway, we hold a bit of a tangent here, but it's an important one because because of the reality of the way things are right now, it has prevented you, to some extent, from from doing that foundational habit. And it's because it is so I do need my sleep and I'm not getting uninterrupted sleep. I mean I get probably one stretch of sleep that's about three hours in the night, and then the others are shorter. So hopefully that will change, you know, That's all I can all I can say, hopefully that will get better. But because of that, that makes life a lot harder. I've you know, been realizing again with this COVID everyone in the house experience is that I need some solo time. Like every day, I'm you know, I'm an introvert. I know that I'm not shy, I'm not whatever else people think of introverts being. It's just that that's how I recharge is by having some quiet solo time. And so when I have like four people talking to me at once, or somebody's got the TV going in the background and somebody else is playing a song like it just it makes me go crazy, and so I need to have some time where I'm by myself. So that comes to then I have a list going here. I tend to combine the solo time with exercise, which I also feel like I need daily, and going outside. So if I have a day where I can get outside for a thirty minute run, it's going to be a better day than a day in which I do not get outside for my thirty minute run. And I have not been running every day. I did my running streak for like three years, and that hasn't been happening last few months, and I think I can tell. I think I can tell that I'm not happy. I mean, yes, it's parsally the sleep as well, which is just like depressing to not be able to sleep, but not having that regular every day running thing is not helping either, So maybe I'll get back to it. We'll see as the baby gets a little older, is the day. Yeah, but I don't want to wish twenty twenty a way because I mean, you know, it's a cute first year of a baby's life. Oh no, I just meant that maybe that would be the start of your new stream maybe, although you like starting on an arbitrary date, so it could be a totally arbitrary and maybe when he's a little bit older too, I don't know, you know, not breastfeeding anymore. We'll see. Planning. I plan on Fridays, just like you. You plan frequently. You you do a Friday planning session too, It's like your weekly review, right, Well, I do a work planning session on Friday, and then like a home slash life planning session on Monday mornings actually, which is typically the day I don't work out. Yes, oh okay, gotcha. So and it doesn't bother you that you go into Monday morning not knowing what is well I would have I will have already sorted through work stuffy, so that part is like, okay, I kind of know what's happening. Monday is also usually a patient day. For me, So it's very predictable. So it's not like I have a bunch of like unknowns or to do's to think about for Mondays. And I guess I do look ahead, like on Sundays briefly, like at my calendar upcoming, so I have a general idea, but I don't do like the nitty gritty like what do I want to get done this week? You know, really like time blocking out, like you know which work tests are more pressing and what home things need to get done during the week until Monday morning. I can't explain why, but like I struggle with getting into the mindset unless I'm in like a fresh mindset an early month and maybe I like the deadline. I don't know, I gotta get it done, No, I say, I like going into Monday knowing what Monday is all about, and so I play it on Friday. So I've kind of got that, and then it allows me to sort of rethink the weekend too, if I need to coordinate anything with that, you know, plan personal professional. I've decided I'm really just taking it week by week on the planning. Like my hat. My inclination is to go like three months out like oh, maybe there's a conflict in like six weeks I need to deal with, but that's just wasted effort at this point. We'll come to that when we get to that. And then finally, my last foundational habit at this point, which I've developed in the past five years, is time tracking. So I have tracked my time in half hour blocks for the past five years, and it is, you know, not so much about anything related to my time management anymore, because I just see how much that changes based on what's going on in life. It's more of a record of my life. It's a it's a journal that shows not just how I felt about stuff or what I chose to remember when I was writing it down, but everything. And so those memories are there, which is kind of cool. I can call them back up. So that's that's another foundational habit. So I think we need to take an ad break, so we'll be back talking about Fall in a few minutes. So we are back best of both worlds talking about foundational habits in the first part of this episode. But I think we were going to pivot to Fall. Yeah, well, this episode is airing right as the official beginning of Fall. Hits isn't it usually the twentieth or the twenty first of September? What is it the autumnal equinox? Autumnal journals Spring Autumnal. Yeah, I want to know if the maybe it's the equinox, but I know, I know there's like an official first day of the actual season. I've always found it laughable down here because it's like the same, Oh it's fall. Wow, it's ninety degrees in humid, like what nothing has happened. But I will say, like across the country, I guess we've been having very crazy weather patterns everywhere, and as we're recording this, there's like crazy fire sky in California, but there was also snow in Colorado. And my friend posted a picture of her two little girls starting school in Texas and she said they had worse sweater for the first start of school ever, which is also because school started about three weeks later than in normally does in Texas, so some people are getting getting some fall experience. Yes, the Colorado one was crazy. I don't know if your friends there have posted like screenshots of their weather apps, but it was it was like ninety degrees on Monday, and then it went down to thirty on Tuesday with snow. So no, and it's weird. There's like gardens that you can see where the snow like just made all the break green plants fall down Like it's not that's not the way it's normally goes. Normally everything gets brown and shrivels up and then it gets covered with snow. But maybe maybe Colorado was well no, but I mean around here, one of the worst tree damage storms we ever had was when we we had an ice storm in late October. Because the leaves were not off the trees yet normally we have an ice storm, all that's coming down is like the branches, and the branches are somewhat used to ice because this is you know, the Pennsylvania they deal with that. So there were all the leaves, the leaves were covered with ice and so the weight was just incredible. So trees were falling everywhere. So yes, anti seasonal stuff and it doesn't work well. But you grew up around here, right, we really did, and I do. I do. I miss fall. And I also went to college in like the most beautiful fall landscape that you could have, we had these. I went to Williams in Western Massachusetts and it was just this like Rainbow Mountain scene. It was like so idyllic. I mean, we dreaded December because the winter was terrible, maybe even November. I don't know. I got cold real quick and I don't really like cold. Ether's so really like for me to complain about the heat down here is ridiculous, But I do miss that feeling of fall, and I just wonder how this year is going to be different, because down here, even if you don't feel like fall, you can pretend it's fall by having gatherings that typically happen in the fall. And I just don't know if that's we're having your pumpkin spiced latte? Are you? Are you a pumpkin spice person? You know what. I love the concept of it, and like I think two or three years ago, I bought my very last one because I bought it. I'm like, this is discussing like I think. I mean, I drink my coffee black and I do like cappuccinos and lattes, but I don't typically put any sugar in it. So for me, it was just like, no, I have heard really good things about the cold brew Pumpkin beverage that Starbucks offers, but I have never tried. Well, I think it's sort of a slightly creamy, slightly sweet, you know, cold drink then or whatever, but less sweet than like i've been, less so sweet than the PSL. Yeah, so it's interesting. I'm I'm not a PSL person either, but I like Chai tea and so I've had like Chai lattes and thought those were reasonably good. And as far as I know, it's a fairly similar spice concept. Right, it's like slightly peppery gingery with a you know, cinnamoni. I'm getting it wrong, but you know what I mean. It's that, yeah, fall Delicio, and we do like to make pumpkin pancakestone here that kind of reflects that that flavor. So what do you put in them that makes you put pure in them? Or yeah, they do have pumpkin pure. We actually tend to use the same recipe. It's from Run Fast, Eat Slow that came out three or four years ago, and the recipe calls for tef as the green, but I've never been able to find teft, so we just use who wheat flour spice. What even is that? It's actually like it's like a tiny seed that could use one year. I'm going to source it because I'm sure they're delicious, made with the actual kind. Yeah, I'm sure Amazon or anywhere else would have it or some fancy grain story if I wanted to go that deep. But no, it has like well I think it has like cinnamon, nutmeg, maybe some cardamum, ginger, maybe clothes. A lot of those mixtures have like a little tiny bit of clothes, which add that I don't know, it's like a fall taste. It. Oh, they're so good, They're super good, So we'll definitely do that. That's a way we can have fall without having to actually have any fall weather because it doesn't get cold till November or not cold even, but like nice. They get to like say, like there's a chance it might start getting cooler in November. Usually before then, I mean, we might see like a tapering off of the thunderstorm frequency, which I guess is cool in October maybe maybe, but you don't really notice any noticeable like and people don't grasp the like the low down here is like eighty like it just we don't have that, like no, and the highs are not one hundred the highs are like ninety. It's just it's sort of a very one note experience outside. Well, there's there's something to be said for seasons. I love the seasonal aspect of this area. You know, September is this kind of cool month in the sense like you start warm, but you can tell that things are changing, Like the light is more slanted because the sun is not as high in the sky. You the vines turn quickly, so there's this flake, this this color profile that's a little bit deeper with the overgrown greens of the summer with this touch of yellow or red and the overgrown vines. So it's it's got this great model nature to the color outside. And you know, always like the kids going back to school get the school supplies, and we had to do it a little differently this year. We wound up ordering everything online and the Big Three did virtual. But Alex went to his first day of school live, you know, in person, so I was able to take the picture of him, and you know, you just every September it just has this feeling of time passing, this sense of because because the previous Septembers you can sort of remember, like oh yeah, starting new things, then, and it's it's a very it's a milestone stone month. And so I think back to past Septembers and what those are like, and I always remember that first touch of cool air, like when I moved to New York in September, early September of two thousand and two and in the course of the year met Michael, fell madly in love whatever. So I remember September of two thousand and three like this, you know, just the feeling like this city was this pull of possibility as that you know, Chill came in and I'm with this man that I'm like deeply in love with, and you know, so I have that sort of memory of the city and fall with that, and you know, it's just I love September. But then I love October two because the colors are amazing. Just I'm so there's there's this quote from Ellen Montgomery, right, and I'm so glad to live in a world that has Octobers. And it's just this gratuitous beauty in this area that like, why, in the course of the world coming to be are there bright red leaves for three weeks in the fall? I don't know, it's so cool, but it's so nice that there are I wanted to share that. Josh and I also had our very first date in September of two thousand and two, so that's kind of amazing. But I was going to also say that we were going to go on a leaf trip this year, which we canceled because it would have involved like multiple flights, and I just we're not ready for multiple flights yet. So that's sad. Maybe next year it was gonna be awesome. Well, I don't know, you can there's nowhere you can drive to that has great leaves. No, we are planning to do some trips later in the short flight that you might feel more comfortable with. I don't know, like you're going to are at some point right, Like, I mean, that's the short flight. I think we're I think we're going to drive. Actually, she's gonna we're gonna meet at one of our favorite places, Amelia Island, and it's about the same distance drive for both of us. So got that'd be fun. That'd be great. Yeah, but the leaves, the leaves next year, There should be leaves next year. This one. There's full thing about fall. It always comes to be fall again. Yeah, so we have a couple of things on my fall fun list. I always publish a fall fun list on the blog, and when I do apple picking, I've got that scheduled. It'll probably have happened by the time this errs, because it turns out that the apples I like are more of a September harvest than an October harvest. So if you're thinking of apples as like fall fast October, the ones I want are already gone. So I've learned this through hard experience that September is when it needs to happen. You will be doing some leaf peeping, hiking, you know, hopefully biking. I'm trying to figure out how we can do that. Yeah, so I'm looking forward to fall, even if we don't have some of the same stuff that we usually do. No, no Eagles games, they've no. I was signed up to do a November marathon not happening, so but I'm still going to do a ten mile run that is on the calendar. May have happened by the time this happens, but I think, you know, do a couple it'll be great. Yeah, definitely, there's no reason not to do a faux long run or faux race. Even if we wanted to. Halloween is what I'm wondering about. You know, we're gonna be about a month from Halloween when the stairs I don't know. People have talked about setting up tables so that you're not really going into people's houses, and I think that might be a good Yeah, I see that, you know what. I I think there's totally a way it can be done with like no problem whatsoever. Like, yeah, you have candy set out on a table and people can just grab a piece of candy or whatever, so they're not touched, not even to which now that we're knowing, it's not even really passed through touching stuff anyway. I just worry that they're going to cancel stuff for no reason other than the same silliness that's leading to cancel other things. You know. Yeah, people, there's like a lot of people by canceling Halloween. You know. Well, here's the funny thing. People are like, well, why not instead of doing trick or treating, we all meet up together for an hour. I'm like, no, that's worse, that's worse, worse. No, we're having kids walking around outside picking candy up off a table, like wearing their costumes having fun. It's like, no, no problem whatsoever. But I worry that places where I would be like, oh no, we want to show we're serious. Let's just cancel more things for kids. That's that's what it is. That's anyway. I don't I think Halloween will have them. I think the out the outdoor aspect should be protective. I joked that I'm going to just dress my kids as doctors and they can wear full ppe and then their costume is done. And I'm just kidding exactly exactly. Doctors and nurses with mess, yeah, they should be fine. I think, you know, as if Genevieve is going to keep a face shield on. The really really good about their masks. I gotta say I have been impressed. I've been completely I fingers crossed. This doesn't change. But I assumed that Alex would be the kid who is ripping it off left and right, and he has not been. He has worn it diligently every time he needed to and is am amazing. Like, you know, so we talk, we open talking about sleep like it's some things you you get, you know, the bumm deal. I seem to be getting some of the bum deal on sleep. With little kids, and certainly I did with Alex, but then there are other things that you get lucky on like that that's not an issue, like you know, because if it is, it would have been ten times as hard to do anything right. So no, that's so true. But we have Cameron's been pretty good. I don't know if he's one hundred percent at school, but he's supposed to be. The problem is Genevieve, Like she's just in that area where she theoretically should be wearing it, but she also likes to pull it off, and she's not even three yet, so it's a little hard to enforce things all. I mean, I don't believe that there's any evidence that you're going to keep two year old's mask for you that. I mean, we're up to, you know, twenty three months versus like twenty eight months, like ooh, something's different there. Yes, the physiology is theology of very different changes. Completely. I know, I feel like our would have probably been a more realistic number because a four year old can typically follow direction. None of this is being set by people worth thinking parents. Oh man, all right, well well transit to the week. Yes, Oh yeah, well, I'm worried that I talked about this Love of the Week before, did I do you think somen is going through? And like, well, I no, no, Sarah, you said that before. I've listened to all one hundred and sixty four episodes and you were not. I know this is the pen one. I'm not worried about this one. No, Well, you know what, I have listened to podcasts before where I've heard the host repeat themselves and I'm like, oh, but then then sometimes they realize it and it's kind of funny. So anyway, podcast hosts are people too. My love of the week is I love it. We have matching ones, the pentel energel Klena made in Japan zero point five millimeters, and I wonder if it's the exact same thing that you have just the job. What does clena even mean like what? I don't know, Like clean. I think it means a clean like not smudgy, which it really is. It's very glidy. I think it would still smudge on my beloved home one paper because everything does, but like in my bullet journal and I'll just regular copy paper. Oh it's like, I mean, I don't think I've ever had a gel pen like yeah, mine mine is the Pentel Energel liquid gel needle tip zero point seven millimeter tip. I I bought these at Target last year. I've been using them and then I I just ordered some more because they disappear from my desk in the sort of lack of boundaries that seems to happen in this house. But yeah, that's pretty similar to my. I'm sure we're holding ours up to the camera, but mine's pretty It's pretty okay, fine, Yours is prettier. Mine is not a fancy Japanese pen. I just bought it at Target. They're probably the same inside I have I have my. I mean they're both called Pentel Energel, so probably similar. It does write really well. I liked it. I like writing with it, you know, on my notebooks, on my notes, whatever I'm in my journal. I like to have a good pen for some I feel like it's going to cause me to have great ideas and great thoughts, and so I buy the good pens thinking that's going to happen. I also buy cute little notebooks thinking that I'm going to fill them with great thoughts. And my supply of cute little notebooks vastly outstrips my supply of great thoughts at the moment. So I'm not sure what to do about that. If you write anything down on a regular basis and you do not have a pen that you love, I encourage you to order some pens because life is too short to have crappy pens and it is really a joyous experience to write with a pen that feels good. There you go, All right, Well this has been best of both worlds. We've wait, what about our Q and A? Oh? I have one? Oh I might have forgotten a Q and A. So I'm just going along with the scripts. I'm like, wait, well, well sorry, Oh well, we've already gone thirty minutes anyway. So yeah, so we have discussed habits and fall and great pens and please that's your questions. We do have some more, so I'm not running low on them, but I did forget to include one in today's script. Oh, I know what I want to do? Can I mention one more thing about fall? Probably by this point, the Fall Extravaganza episode of the Girls next Door podcast has probably aired, and it is one of my favorite fall traditions. They've done it every year. It's a very conversational, like friend podcast, hosted by two women with young kids. One of them just had a baby this year. But they do this amazing thing where they they buy each other fall scented candles and then they make the other one create a name for it, and it has to be in the realm of like pumpkin spice latte. But like it has been, they do it for it. Okay, they do it on air and it's just like it's lovely. So probably by now you can download it and they're there. It's called the Girls Next year a spicy warm plaid. That's one of their yes. Sometimes like Lumberjack comes in there and like yeah, yeah, the names they come up with their pond'l advertise on Instagram. That was called Friday night Football. I'm like trying too hard, Like what is the smell of Friday night football? Cut grass, sweaty man? Just yeah, maybe some seven layer den layer here, that's a candle. I want to seke a candle this smell here? All right? Well on that node. This has been best of both worlds and we will be back next week with more on making work and life fit 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