Writing a Debut Novel During A Pandemic (and More!) with Simone de Munoz

00:00:02
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 seventy eight, which was first airing in late December of twenty twenty. Our last episode of twenty twenty. Twenty twenty is going to be in the books soon, which I know many people are grateful for. Although you know, it's been in my case watching Henry grow up this year. It's been his first year of life with all this stuff happening, and so I wouldn't want to wush it away because I really enjoyed seeing that. You know, the kids learn and grow over that first year. Although weekends and evenings and such with babies are very challenging So, Sarah, how is how are weekends with holidays going for you with kids these days? Yeah, and in full disclosure, this question came from it kind of this intro inspiration came from Instagram or someone just wanted to hear how our weekend days with kids were going these days. So I thought that would be fun to talk about. And I wanted to know from Laura's perspective if her number of anchor events has changed it all since she had a baby, So we'll see what she says ours have changed recently. As I mentioned that Genevieve has stopped napping, So you know, we had this built in structure of like go out in the morning, rush home, get her to sleep, relax, take a nap while she takes a nap, and then get up and figure something else out. And now all of a sudden, it's like, oh, that structure doesn't have to have to constrain us anymore. Necessarily. I still would like to have some kind of afternoon quiet time, which I mentioned previously, so you know we're working on that, but you know, if we're both off, we try to do some kind of an outing most days. I know some people are able to just put her around the house. I think the ages of our kids were just not there yet. It's not very enjoyable to spend all day in the house. I mean, if the weather is terrible and we're forced to, then that it is what it is. But otherwise we are either going to a park, or we're trying to go hiking, or we are trying to check out the zoo or some other kind of like outdoor attraction since it is a nice season and because pandemic, So that's kind of our current structure. And then we either eat lunch on the go or eat lunch at home, although eating lunch and the go has gotten harder recently because again pandemic. But then when we get home we are a little bit more lazy. In the afternoons, some screens typically come on, and then we've still been doing a very regular rotation of takeout night on Saturday and Sunday. I typically that's like our family meal, where I cook something and it can get a little fancy. Last week Cameron requested crab again, so I cooked a bunch of dungeness crabs and we had the little things to open them and make corn and potatoes and beans and stuff and they it was. It was like a nice family dinner. That sounds really awesome. I wish my kids would have crab, but well Sam will eat lobster in crabs, so yes, he's that kid. The others don't know what they're missing. Well, with a baby who is crawling everywhere and pulling himself up on furniture and such, there is no puttering around on weekends. Or you know, here's the thing. There can be one person puttering around on the weekends, but that means that the other person then needs to be watching the baby, and if that is not mutually agreed upon, that can lead to resentment on one part or the other. So we really have to kind of trade it off and say like, okay, here's who's doing what at what time, so each of us can get our exercise in or any trips or other such things we need to do, figuring it out with the other kids activities. Henry is still taking two naps at this point, so we're always trying to figure out, okay, well, the morning nap, the afternoon nap. It's kind of hard to go anywhere. But then again, with the pandemic, we have not been doing that much anyway. So probably by the time things really start opening up for that possibility, he's going to be in the one nap stage, which will be fine because then we can go do a morning activity, come home, do the afternoon nap, and have that time that we know will be quiet because the older kids can generally do stuff. I mean, Alex is a bit hit or miss, although usually if we get him on the computer, he will watch it for hours, so we kind of think of it as camp YouTube. But the only problem is if the other kids decide they want the family computer, so we have to make sure that they do not want the family computer, like, please watch something on your phones, watch something on the iPad, go do something else, do not take the one computer that Alex wants. You know, kids do grow up. I had this great idea back in early twenty twenty, and I had hired basically a second part time nanny, partly to help with driving in the afternoons and then to do Saturdays, as you know, a full day of childcare, so that we could do the older kids' activities and not have, you know, the stress of having somebody home for the baby's naps or somebody having to watch the baby on the sidelines of games and things like that, and then, of course with the pandemic, we did not that was not able to continue that that particular person didn't actually want to keep coming whether that was allowed or not, she was not comfortable doing so. So that was the end of that. And so we've just been on for weekends, and you know, I mean it probably it's something I will look into again as things scale back up, because you know, we haven't had as many places to go, but when we do again, I think we're gonna like we will have to have somebody home in the afternoon while the baby naps. Possibly, you know, as Jasper is fourteen, maybe that person could be him. So yeah, I haven't entirely thought that out, but we can are not exactly relaxing these days. Yeah, and solo weekends, I have to say, which I have a fair number of them. Approximately one third of the weekends I spend myself with the kids. I used to like really hate them, and I feel like they're getting slowly better. I just want to mention that. But I greatly look forward to the time when I can start like inviting people over casually again and not worry about viral transmission because I think that then I think it will just be great because I can just like have play dates and I don't know, I look forward to that. Excellent. All right, Well let's go to our interview. Hello, and I have Simone de Muno's here. I am so excited to have her on the show. She is working in a nonprofit sector and she is a Silicon Valley resident. We haven't had too many of those, so I'm very excited to have a California guest today. And she also has some exciting secrets to share about how to write a novel during a pandemic, as well as what it's like to raise kids with an O pair. So welcome, Simone. We're so excited to have you. Thank you so so much, Sarah, I'm really really excited to be on today. Awesome. Well, tell us a little bit about what you're currently doing for work, and how old your kids are, and maybe how long have you been listening to the podcast, because you're one of our listeners who wrote in was so excited to come on. Yeah, I don't remember exactly how long I've been listening to the podcast. To get into my background, I have a master's in public policy, and I work at a local nonprofit here in Silicon Valley, where I've been for four years. I actually started off running the diabetes program, so I thought that's something that you might be interested in. I know you have a passion for helping with that, and I'm currently an analyst and in my spare time I like to write. I'm coming out with my debut novel, man Flu in the spring, and I've been married for fourteen years and I have two boys, ages six and nine, and also a boy dog. So everyone is a boy, boy dog and two boys. That is fantastic. Actually, ore O pair is also a man, just pure testosterone in my house. Oh my goodness. Oh that's interesting. I feel like that's probably not as common, So I want to know a little bit more about that. Well, did you always plan on joining the nonprofit sector or had you had spent a stint in the corporate world as well. I was in the corporate world for a while. I worked in a variety of different positions. I actually did consulting for about six years. I took a couple of years off after my second child was born, and then I decided I wanted to go into something a little bit more meaningful, and that's when I looked for a position in the nonprofit world. And have you been at the same place ever since or is it more common to kind of go from from different place to different places. I've been in at the same agency for the past four years. So the first two years I was there, I was running the diabetes program, and then I actually created the role that I'm in now, which is the analyst role. I started helping people with data questions because I have that background and different systems, and also some writing for work communications for our development department, and I wrapped all of that up into a totally new job that I have. So yeah, I was able to create my own job. Oh that's so cool. You kind of like designed your own promotion in a way. Yes, Oh that's great. I feel like that kind of career crafting definitely has helped me enjoy things along the way. It's like you just tweak it, and you tweak it and it doesn't have to have been a road that was traveled by someone before. So that's really cool. Well where did you have your So you said you took a little bit of time off after at least one of your kids. Where did they kind of fit into your work and career journey. When I was working at the consulting firm, I had my first child and I went down to part time after having him, and it worked great. I worked nine to one most days, or for a while I did nine to two every day, and then I had Fridays off to take care of household tasks. And I'm a big believer in something you both have mentioned before, you and Laura, which is have that extra childcare if you can swing it, like to have extra childcare for getting life tasks done. And then so yeah, I was working part time when I was pregnant with my second child, and then after having two kids, I decided it was a bit much and I wanted to take a little time at home with both of them. So I was out of the workforce for a little over two years before starting my current job. And was it hard to get back in or was it relatively easy to find something you wanted to do? It took a while because I was really looking for the right opportunity. I didn't just want to take any job. I wanted to do something meaningful, and taking that job running the diabetes program was just perfect because that was really where my interests were at that time, and so I had expected to maybe take off one year from work, but it was more than two years. So I don't think it was necessarily hard. It just took a while. Okay, And does your partner have like a fairly inflexible job, like similar to my situation or are you both able to well, I'm interested kind of how you decided to choose an open and whether that was a factor with things. That's kind of two different things. My partner is in the tech sector, so he is he has a very busy job. A lot of the day to day childcare falls to me. I mean, he's a super involved dad, especially on weekends when he has more time, but he sometimes has to work late and I can't necessarily rely on him to be there to cover certain times. So yeah, the O pair is really convenient for our situation. And this pair is the first one we've had. He's been with us for about two years. We got really lucky that when the pandemic hit, we had this childcare situation in place, which is really safe and works out perfectly for us and also helps the kids learn Spanish. We're now in the process of looking for our second O pair because there's a time limit to the program. I can get into a little bit about the O pair program if you want. Yeah, definitely. Actually it was funny. Josh and I were not planning on changing our situation, but that was one thing that came up. We're like, we could get a Spanish speaking O pair and maybe that would help me. I can back to be okay, But I wanted to know first before you tell us more about the old pair program, like what made you decide to go with O pair versus daycare versus nanny? And actually you said it was two different things. But obviously your husband's flexibility or lack thereof, is going to be depending on what your flexibility level is, one of the deciding factors, right, because if you have two very flexible workers, then things like daycare can often work because you know you both have a lot of flex but it sounds like he does not you have some. And so tell us about how you made that choice to go with an old pair and how old were your kids when you first started going that route. Our kids are six and nine right now, so you two years ago, they were three and six when we first got the pair. How do we decide. Well, we've had a number of different childcare situations. We had various nannies. We had some great nannies and then we also had some not so great nannies. I'm sure everyone can relate to that kind of nanny horror story. Yeah, let's not go there. But we wanted somebody really reliable and consistent, and we had the space in our home, which is part of the program. The O pair needs to have their own bedroom, and so that could be a factor for people deciding whether to join the program. They do need to have that space, but it's also very cost effective if you want flexibility or if you want a lot of hours of care. We didn't need that many hours of care, but we did like the flexibility. When we first got the OLP heir, he was mostly just helping out in the afternoons because the kids were in school or preschool. But now, with everything going on, he takes on more hours and that's fine. As part of the O pair program, was it harder to find a mail and was that something you were looking for. No, we weren't looking for a male specifically. We were looking for a qualified person. It was a situation where we were looking for someone kind of quickly because another child care situation had fallen through, and so I think other families may He didn't want a male, and we were able to get him for that reason more easily because it's it's a process where you have to pick the pair and they also have to pick you. It's a match. It's like residency or something like that. Yeah, that makes sense, and you were open to anything, and so by that you ended up with him. And was the Spanish something that you were seeking out. Yeah, we were looking for someone who spoke Spanish. That was really important to us. He's from Spain. And also, I mean we weren't necessarily looking for a male, but I think it's a benefit because we do have two boys, and I really like that they're seeing a male in a caregiver role. That's something that's been a nice benefit. Yeah, that's really cool. I didn't really think of that angle. That actually is really cool to show that can do anything. No matter what. You talked a little about kind of like the regulations. Just in case some of our listeners aren't familiar, do you want to talk about some of the rules about old pairs, Like I know they're not supposed to stay do like overnight childcare. And I know there's certain regulations about the different types of housework they are are not allowed to do. Yeah, I'm not an expert. I could talk a little bit about it. They can't work more than forty five hours in a week, that's the big one, and I believe it's ten hours per day. And they have to have one and a half days off in a row each week, and they have to have a full weekend off once a month. In terms of housework, they're able to do housework that relates to your children or something for the family. So they're able to make meals for the family as kind of you know, everyone takes turns making meals. They can do your children's laundry, but it's not something where you would have them cleaning your house. That makes sense. And then I guess I'd love to hear how it worked out during the pandemic. So you already had him in your home, and so was that just like the most wonderful kind of setup that you could have imagined. It's been such a relief, and I feel so bad for all my other friends who are going crazy trying to work and manage Zoom school and do house and just do everything that has to be done right now without childcare. I know my friends are having a really rough time, and for us it's just been so nice not having to worry about that. We've even managed to have date nights when the restaurant, the outdoor dining is open. We've had date nights. You know. It's like nobody can even imagine having a date night right now during the pandemic. No, it is hard to do, especially depending on you know, finding a trusted source of childcare and all that. Oh my gosh, well that put you in a beautiful position. So that takes me to my segue of how were you able to cobble together an entire novel during this time. I actually started writing the novel before the pandemic. It's a little scary I might have predicted this pandemic. Or maybe what I write comes true. That could be very scary. I'm to write book. Actually, I was telling a friend about my book and he said, okay, so for your next book, can you write about me winning the lottery? That is awesome, where you could write about an author who would whatever she writes comes true. Yeah, creepy exactly. So I'm a little scared. But no, I started writing in the summer of twenty nineteen, and then the pandemic unfolded. I had to kind of incorporate some of the things that were happening into the actual story. I'm sure you're interested in how I actually found the time to write the book. I am, although I want you to tell our listeners about the story itself as well, because it is that was pretty Obviously we're not going to have spoilers, but whatever you're comfortable sharing, we're going to take a very quick ad break and we're going to be right back, and then we're going to hear a little bit about this upcoming novel. All right, we are back, and whatever author Simone is ready to share, tell us about it. And then I also want to hear how you managed to get that done. Yeah, I'm excited to tell you about the now. So it's actually a post pandemic world. The book is called man Flu. I should start with that. The book is called man flu. And you might think that that's where your husband has a cold, he's in bed and you have the same cold, but you're up living your life, feeding the kids, running around. It's not actually about that. That kind of a funny situation, but this it's a thriller. So we're in a post pandemic world where ten years prior men have either been weakened or killed by this man flu virus and there's very few remaining healthy men left. The main character is a vaccine researcher who is seeking the vaccine for this virus, and of course she meets this handsome neighbor who's never yet had the virus, and things become personal as she continues to look for this vaccine. Oh my gosh, you actually had this prior to COVID nineteen. That is a little scary and amazing and also is going to put you in a very good position because everyone's going to be excited to read this thriller. So this is being released like widely in March. I believe, Yes, Wow, that is so exciting. We'll have to closer to when it comes out. We'll have we'll put like a little like link back so everybody can also see your interview again at that point, because I want to remind everybody, But can it be pre ordered? Not quite there yet, but I will let you know all the information when I haven't. Okay, awesome, because if it can be pre ordered, then I will encourage people to go check it out. I know I am interested, although I will admit that like I read Station eleven in an inopportune time and around January of this year, I just like, I really wish I hadn't read that, Like it was a beautiful piece of work, but I really wish I hadn't actually absorbed it. But that's what I had to watch all these pandemic related TV shows and read all this pandemic related stuff as I was writing the book, just to prepare. And yeah, I didn't want to be watching it or reading it either. Okay, so the second part of my question, tell me about this writing process because it had already been started prior, but that's when you actually ended up finishing it, which is quite a lot of work. And did you you were working with a publisher? I am, yeah, I love me kissing, I have a lot give us the story. Well, yeah, so I started writing writing the book. And I don't know if you're familiar with Nano Rimo. Yes, yeah, so Nano Ramo National Novel Writers a month. I know you've talked about maybe wanting to write a novel someday two. Well, that's where people set this goal of writing fifty thousand words in a month, which is a good chunk of a novel. And I saw that and I thought, well, that's a great idea, but there's no way with everything else going on in my life, I could write a novel in a month. But how long would it take to write a novel? And how could I think about that, analyze that and plan for it. So that's what I did, and I thought, well, if I write a thousand words a week, that's a novel in a year. You know, I'm not in a rush. I can do that. And that was the thought process I had in mind with the novel. Let's try to do it in a year. So it didn't the timing, you know, it didn't work out exactly like that, but it was nice to have a goal in mind in terms of my publisher. So after I'd been working on this novel for a while, I went to a writing conference right before the pandemic shut travel down. That was in February of twenty nineteen, and I twenty twenty, sorry, twenty twenty, Yes, time does not have meaning anymore. You're right. Yeah, February of twenty twenty, I went to a writing conference and I learned a ton about writing. I improved my writing and met people in the writing community, and that's where I met my publisher, so I started a relationship with her. She was really interested in the book. She kept saying, you know, tell me when you finished it. I really want to work with you on this. And I kept writing even as the pandemic picked up, and ultimately ended up working with her on it. That is so cool, but a great story. Well, I'm excited to actually see that it, you know, comes out and that you were able to just peck away at it like that one thousand words a week. I'm sure there was like a significant editing process that had to happen at the end, but you basically churned all the way through and then kind of went back and changed her polished things. Or did you just write it perfectly at first time? You know, there's definitely an editing process. And another interesting point too, is I'm guessing that some of your listeners are actually interested in maybe more details about writing a book. I don't know, people, sure you could certainly share. I have a feeling that are definitely more than a handful of people listening, including myself, who would love to hear what you have to share. So yes, go for that. So I did get stuck at some point, and I don't know if you know, there's kind of two camps of writing. One is plotters and one is pantss Okay, So I started off as a pantser, meaning I'm writing this by the seat of my pants, going to see where it goes as a creative outlet. And then I hit a wall because that's a really hard way to write a novel. And I found a book coach. So the book coach helped me come up with an outline, and I outlined on the fly while I was writing it, and that really helped me to be able to structure it and finish the writing. So yeah, that was a really important part of the writing process. And then in terms of editing, I've had to go and do some rounds of editing. I've had beta readers, so that's when you send it out for feedback, and then met us based on that, and I do have a professional editor who's doing the last final changes right now. Oh that's so cool. We had Kim Marie Martin on our podcast. She wrote the book The Queen of Hearts, which was a big debut novel. She's an emergency room position and she was like, I'm a full on PANS. So that's when I learned about those terms. She's a very successful PANS. But I could see how that would be really hard, especially if you're writing a thriller with all these movie parts or like it has to tie up neatly. But if I'm just kind of winging it, it's very hard to do. But that is that is so cool to hear that process. And what would you say, from start to finish? How long did this take you? Yeah, so starting in maybe July or August of twenty nineteen. Finishing up the edits now it should be wrapped up in early January, and then the marketing piece actually takes a lot of time. So I've already started marketing. I have an Instagram page that I've been building up, and so I expect the early part of twenty twenty one will be a lot of time spent marketing, a lot of podcast interviews hopefully. Awesome. Well, that's so cool and it's encouraging to know that you can go from from zero to sixty with a great idea for a novel in less than two years. That's that's that's really really cool. Do you think long term that that's going to be your main thing or do you think you're always going to be kind of a mixing it up, mixing it up kind of a person. Well, writing a novel was difficult, gonna lie and I started getting into it because I like that creative process. I like imagining a different kind of world, a world where women are in charge, which is maybe what we have now where we have the first female VP coming in. But that's really exciting to me. But I think the novel writing process is it's just long, you know. I like writing things that are shorter too. And over the summer I wrote about I wrote some essays about my experience working in a nonprofit during the pandemic, and that was so satisfying to be able to write those shorter pieces and just have them done in a couple of hours and have them out there. And so for now, I think after this novel, I might turn to some shorter type of writing just to get that quicker satisfaction. And I know you write a blog also, so you probably can relate to that, yes, but I feel like the vlog is so much easier than what i'd call real writing because it's like, generally, I'm just writing about my life. So I have this blog where I'm like, well, I write and I feel like I can put a phrase together. Well, but I don't write, and when i'm ever, I have to force myself to write something specific, it becomes like ten times harder. So I even though I've written many, many, many, many, many, disgustingly many words, because my blog's been around for sixteen years and I'm like a prolific poster, I don't feel like a writer. So maybe someday I'm going to make it happen. You're kind of inspirational, so I love it great. Well, if you write a blog, then you're a writer. You know, you're allowed to call yourself a writer as long as you're putting words on there. Actually, I can talk about some of those essays I wrote. I think that might be interesting too, because it's sure I do with the nonprofit and how things have changed during this pandemic. So maybe people would want to hear about that. So tell everybody a little bit about those shorter pieces that you enjoyed writing and kind of what some of those hot topics were during the pandemic. Yeah, so a lot of them were related to the work I'm doing it at the nonprofit. During this pandemic, I met that I have a number cruncher role, but in the beginning of the pandemic, because so many of our volunteers are elderly and in at risk groups, I ended up helping out in the food pantry. So the first essay that I wrote was called World's Collide during COVID nineteen, and it was about seeing the people that came through the food pantry and the situations that they were in, and then my friends and me in the tech world, the conversations those people were having about the pandemic and how things were just on to totally different levels. And then how I actually saw some of the people from I called it World Day and World Day being the tech world actually come in for services during the pandemic and how it was everything was just so strange and having that experience. So that was the first piece, and it's actually coming out in a book about women's experiences during the pandemic. And then I started writing more just about other experiences at the food pantry about life. I expanded to all different topics body image, frontline workers and how they need to be getting more attention, and just I kind of use that as my emotional processing zone. That's fantastic. And you don't have formal journalism training. This just kind of grew out of really enjoying putting together these pieces and having interest in the topics as well as personal experience. Yeah, I have an economics degree for undergrad and then I have a master's in public policy, so I have no writing training. I just I enjoy reading. I've always been a big reader and that has helped me to develop a foundation for writing. That is fantastic. We'll have to send me links to a couple of your recent pieces and we can include those for in Laura's posts when she posted on this day that it comes out, Oh that's so cool. Well, you know you are on best of both worlds. So we are not going to be ending without a love of the week. And I haven't thought of one yet. Yours will been really long. I'm just kidding. I have a good one. I have a good one. As I mentioned, I'm a big reader, and we're big readers in my family. I'm still reading to both of my kids. Even my nine year old will read with me, which is really sweet. And so I have the perfect book recommendation. It's called Front Desk by Kelly Yang, and it's middle grade fiction. So middle grade fiction is targeted at eight to twelve year olds, but you can if you're reading it out loud, you can go a little bit younger. I'm reading it to my six year old now, and it's the story of an immigrant family from China, and the daughter of the family is the main character. She's ten years old and she's helping her her parents run this motel. And the book really gets into issues of immigration, racism, all kinds of things, but in a way that kids can understand. And also it's enjoyable for adults to read. And the author has written a number of other books too, which I'm excited to check out. Oh that is so cool. I love that. I think I might get that. I bet my older two I have a he's seven, but he'll wasn't almost anything. So I love the idea of reading it allowed as well. So Front Desk, thank you. My love of the week is going to be the fact that all three of my kids sleep in the same room now, and I know that's maybe a little weird, but it's actually really really convenient, and it's helped my toddler start sleeping well again. And like last night, I was putting them to bed and she at the very last moment, she was like, I need a story, and I was like, Annabell'll tell her a story, and then I'd left and it was just amazing. Not that I'm cold like that, but I had been in there for a solid forty minutes and I was ready to go to bed. So the fact that my eight year old can take over for me and then they're all happy to do that makes me very happy. And by the way, my almost seven year old had passed out listening to Harry Potter just prior. It was just the little one and the big one awake. So they're all in the same room and it's cozy, and I feel like it's like a Dickens novel or something, but I whatever works exactly. So that's my love of the week. My six year old was up at five am this morning. Not your love of the week. No, oh my gosh, well, thank you, thank you for being on Simone de Munos. I'm so excited to read Man Flu. Even though it's going to haunt me, I'm still gonna read it anyway because it sounds awesome. I'm going to haunt you. It's fun. Actually it's I think it's great escapist literature, and it doesn't focus so much on this scary stuff. It's more about the relationships between the characters. There's it's sexy, it's fun, it's god suspense. It won't keep you up at night. It's not scary. Okay, awesome, even better. Well, thank you so much, and again you'll will put links to everything in our notes. Is there anywhere else they can find you in terms of your Instagram? Yes, so my website, my Facebook, and my Instagram are all under my pen name, Simone de Muno's and so the last name is de m u n o Z. Perfect. Thank you so much. Well that was great. Now we're back with our question and answer segment. How we are doing things like planning vacations for twenty twenty one. And it's funny because I had this whole set of like podcasts that was recommending people plan all their twenty twenty five occasions ahead of time. Like I remember this for the end of twenty nineteen. I'm like, look at your kids, you know, calendar is look at you know, get put in for your vacation days. And of course anyone who did that was gonna be winding up canceling probably a ton of stuff, more than they would have had to cancel if they had just done it the normal planning way. So I'm not sure that we will be doing a planning of the entire twenty twenty one. But how about you, Sarah, are you are you sort of playing it by ear as things go along? Yes, I have to laugh because I was absolutely that person. And I even had to like cancel a December trip that I had booked in January, Like who does that? We do? So that was a shame and we got half the money back, so that's better than none anyway. So yeah, we're not going to like book anything necessarily. I'll have things in mind that like it's kind of like, well if things if we feel comfortable flying, because we have not felt comfortable flying yet as a family. And actually the school has a rule about like having to quarantine if you fly anywhere, so that kind of makes it difficult as well, which is fine. So I don't feel like I can make you know specific plans about flying. I think will go somewhere in the summer of twenty twenty one. Whether that's driving or flying is unknown. I would love to see my niece, either like the whole family or just with Anamel, because I think Annabel would love that, and I would love to do that with her, like for a long weekend or something. But again that depends on flying. And then, as I mentioned in the last episode, I am very much hoping that if things are getting better by the winter, could be our first family ski trip, which is something we've kind of talked about for a while anyway, And I'm just putting my energy into thinking about things for twenty twenty two and beyond, assuming we don't get like a new pandemic or a new something. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. We moved our twenty twenty ski trip Christmas SKII trip to twenty twenty one, so I guess that's on the calendar for that. We're hoping to go to a national park in the end of summer. We'll figure out exactly what that is. You know, I have a different feeling about flying. I actually feel like flying is fairly safe. I know that that's not necessarily reflected in school policies, and you need to follow your school policy, but with people wearing masks, like the filtration system on the plane seems fairly good. I don't think that there have been outbreaks traced to totally agree. And if I could be comfortable that Genevie would actually keep a mask on, I would feel better. But I don't think she would for the duration of a flight yet. Yeah. No, I mean, we took some trips this year and you know, they felt fine as people were being safe and we were being safe. But I know everyone has different comfort levels with that. I guess you know, we're probably not going to plan anything major for spring break. We haven't yet, and we may sort of play that by ear and see what is open. I would definitely love to go do something. We were supposed to go to the US Virgin Islands this year and obviously did not do that. I mean not only just because we you know, didn't want to do it in the middle of the pandemic in the spring, but the hotel was closed, the flights got canceled anyway, like we couldn't have even made it down there, So there was that. So, you know, depending on how things open up, we may try to do some sort of beachy trip in the spring. Definitely go to the beach this summer. That's something that we did this summer for instance, and it was you know, pretty easy to stay away from other people and stay in our own house and that worked just fine. So yeah, we'll probably do something similar this year. And hey, big hopes for you know, twenty twenty two being like a major travel year, we'll get all that pent up demand and unfortunately everyone will and then flight prices will go through the roof, but oh well, the market at work, all right, Well, this has been best of both worlds. We'll 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.