Welcome to the Parenting Roundabout podcast. I'm Terry Morrow and I'm Catherine Hileco.
Every Thursday, we're bringing you a library find, a pick from our archives,
and a parenting or pop culture tidbit or two. Let's start with Catherine's
library find of the week. Yes, this week I am bringing you a
beautiful hardcover children's book called Animlphabet. So it's an alphabet book with animals.
And I noticed it because of the art and also because the author is Julia
Donaldson, who wrote Room on the Broom and also The Gruffalo and the Gruffalo
Child, which we're all big favorites of ours when we were reading picture books
regularly, so my time. Yes, Yeah, this one, this particular
one came out in twenty eighteen. Room on the Room was well before that,
but but it just talked about before. It sounds familiar. Room on
the Broom. Yeah, I probably have. It's it's a good one.
It's a good one. It's I know I've talked about before how there's so
many rhyming books that are bad, and that is a good one. Yeah,
And it's a very different illustrator that that one's Room on the Room and
the Gruffalo or his name is Axel Shuffler. This one is an illustrator named
Sharon king Chai, I think, And it's sort of like cutouts and it's
just beautiful and it's a it's like a larger book as well, so it's
just a really pretty one. And you know, can never have enough alphabet
books or animal books. Right, it's sort of sort of like a jungle
scene. It looks like from me, that's right, Yeah, we are,
we gonna encounter elephants and lost. I wouldn't be surprised. Do not
be surprised by anything? Oh, I won't. Is there is there an
invisible monster in this book? Or don't think so? Vague side of smoke
and wreckage in the distance, right, I don't know. I do hear
a little bit of a thumping bass, which I don't know if you can
hear it too. We were recording on the fourth of July, and it's
possible that celebrations will begin even as we speak. That's right, But hopefully
no fireworks until tonight. I'm oh, my goodness, our dog has been
so incredibly freaked out by thunderstorms lately that fireworks are just going to completely do
her in the other day. She is off the top, but it's impressive.
She squeezed through the corner where the sofa and the love seat meet to
go under the side table. But the side table has a shelf on it,
so she crawled up on the shelf and just squeezed her body like a
cat into the smallest possible configuration to curl up on this shelf under a table
because she was so scared of the thunder, and then of course she couldn't
get out, but still it was like, how did you do that?
And then we'll get to the why. There are lots of place you could
go stand under the dining room table. Why would you squeeze yourself under a
table that has a shelf, Because it's the squeezing that helps, I guess,
so get selves with the stress, right, But man, she was
freaked out, but it was impressive. Even trying to yanker out of there,
is like I can't I can't understand how you did this, But wow,
you're right? Did She's like I'm not sure either, and I don't
know what to do now. Yeah, so no, no dogs terrified by
thunder in anim alphabet, I trust I don't believe the animals are all chill.
Yeah. Yes, so it's just a lovely, lovely looking banks.
You see. It has snakes and tigers, right, but I bet they're
cute. They're friendly, they're friendly. I mean the cover has an elephant
and a baby elephant, and it has a kangaroo and a flamingo and a
zebra. Nice. I should have loved to see what the what the X
is because that's always a challenge for these type of books. Yes, an
extra friendly something, all right, I think elected to check. Oh well,
say, I'll have to report back, yes, so tell us what
you are what you are up to right now? My random bit for this
week will be I think the last full length episode we had, I said,
do I need a substack? Maybe I need a substack. So for
my sixty fifth birthday, I gave myself a substack. I'm absolutely free,
but I committed myself to a substack, okay, and wrote the first The
first episode has dropped. The first what do we call this newsletter? It's
a post. The first post dropped last Thursday. The second will today.
Okay, it's it's called too old for Cool m HM. Reflections on popular
culture from the wrong side of the key demo, and I'm going to talk
about aging and popular culture and just whatever I feel like, including probably these
episodes of the podcast. I will probably add some extra thoughts because I always
forget things and then say afterwards and you know, whatever else is of interest.
But the young uns are doing a lot of writing about their experiences,
so I thought, you know, old people need Certainly nobody ever hears from
boomers. We're so quiet, you know, we spread some words. So
anyway, if you don't get enough of me blabbering on this podcast, please
do check my sub steck out. We'll have the link in the show notes,
but it's called too old for Cool and can probably be searched. Thusly,
I look forward. I just feel like we've been talking about retirement and
stuff like that that maybe I would like to do less of the things I've
been doing for money and more of the stuff that I used to do for
love, although I used to get paid for that, which I now will
not. But yeah, sure anybody's gonna read my substackt for free, much
less for cash. But we must start. We must make use of the
tools available to us to reach our audience. No magazines are paying freelancers huge
sums of money to write things. So no, but I just used to
write you know, short humor essays used to be my thing, and I
would like them to be my thing again. So that is a thing I
will be doing. Great, we'll see where it goes. Well, I'm
excited to read it with my excess of time. That's right, I have.
I have ideas for at least three or four more, So hey,
go read it quick. Perfect? All right? And uh, what are
we reaching into our podcast archives which are extensive to talk about this week?
I thought we could talk about an episode from just two years ago. It's
it was called Choosing your parents Battles. Oh my, because that is you
know, it's a perennial and it's also actually good advice. Yes, and
it also continues into your children's adulthood. It sure does. It is still
as relevant to us as it was then, which is a lesson that my
husband, even now that our children are in our thirties, has still not
learned. Yes, exactly, I could say the same from over here.
Yeah, it's this. We jumped off of an article called ten ways this
mom has stopped annoying her teens, which so It wasn't specifically a like how
to be a good parent, choose your battles. It wasn't that kind of
thing, but that's the path it led us on because we felt that the
things that she had stopped annoying her teens about were things that she never should
have started annoying her teens about if she wanted to live a peaceful life.
Also, yes, that is. It's just it's just a classic for a
reason, you know, Yeah, yeah, it really is. And it's
I mean, it's hard to know because parents are people with feelings. Also,
though we try to hide it that, there are just some things that
get your goat and you may realize this is not a worthy battle to fight,
but it is for you because it's just your thing, right and those
those situations are hard. But if it's not your thing and you're just doing
it because you feel you're supposed to do, or you feel kids should fall
in line or whatever, you know, just just figure you have a limited
number of things, you have a limited number of wins. Yeah, do
you want to waste it on this? Right? And most of the time
the answer is no. Right now, we're having one of those disputes about
lights being left on that I feel mix. My husband sound like he grew
up during the depression, Right, Wasn't that something our parents did? Turn
off that light? Turn off the lights when you leave the room. I
mean it's wasteful, but not that wasteful. And I mean my daughter is
down in her little apartment downstairs now and she likes to keep the lights on,
whether because she forgets to turn them off, or because she's all alone
in a place that doesn't get I mean it's on the first floor, but
it's got curtains on most of the windows. It doesn't get that much natural
light. Right, Maybe it just makes her feel less alone to have lights
on. I really don't care. That's not something that I would. There's
things that can get some LED's they last forever. Yeah, I mean we
do have a thing with there's like a like a wall air conditioner down there.
The rest of the house has central air, but that apartment has a
it would be a window air conditioner, but there's no window there, so
it's like they cut a hole into the y and she wants to run it
a lot because she's like, for the first time in her life, has
has control of the climate control and I'm thinking number one costs a lot of
electricity and number two, at some point it's going to run out of whatever
it needs to make it cool, and then we're going to have to figure
out how to either fix it or replace it. And I don't want to
do that, So turn it off, right. But the lights, the
lights, light bulbs, I know how to change those. That's fine,
just if it makes you feel more comfortable. So he's always going down there
for something. And because there's a refrigerator down there that we share with her.
It used to be our downstairs refrigerator where we would put stuff, well
it was waiting to use for use, and now it's her refrigerator also.
But so he'll go into her apartment from time to time and come out going,
got all the lights on down there, The lights on down there.
The lights are on in the bedroom and the kitchen and the living room.
Were all the lights on them, like, because she wants to be able
to see where she's going when she goes from room to the next. Yeah.
So not not my battle, but clearly his still stuff, right,
I don't care. Yeah. So and she's thirty four, so we're still
we're still having we're having to battles moment. Oh, because there's stuff,
there's definitely stuff, not that stuff. Right, do you when your kids
are in college, do you have things that you think you should you should
pursue with them, and then you go nah, I mean, yeah,
one of us has a lot more interest in the grades than the so I'm
just like just past your classes. Yeah, get to the next level.
You know, we are paying for a degree. Please get us one.
How you get there, We don't really care exactly, I don't really don't
look it up, right, Yeah, Yeah, that's something you have no
control when they're out of the house. No, you're just throwing yourself against
a brick wall. Right, you've lost your guilt leverage, You've got lost
your punishment leverage. Is really not that much you can do, right,
But on the other hand, you don't want them to flunk out and then
your money is down the toilet with no return. Yes, you do have
a little bit of an interest. Yeah, he lit you have a deep
less interest. Exactly what is the bare minimum you can you can get?
Right? Still graduate? Yeah, you don't want any extra years? Yeah,
and and you know we're in the summer. Of course, we're back
to having one under the under the roof. So we're back, as you
know, as you're familiar with with yes, negotiating all of that. That
is the difficult a difficult period because it's a young person who has grown used
to independence and all of a sudden it's not I remember when I myself was
such a young person and I moved back into my parents' house and I lasted
about a year and then it was like no, no, no, I'm
getting myself an apartment, thanks so much, Mom and dad. And my
mom was like, but we have such a nice setup for you and you
don't have to pay rent. It's like, nope, I want to watch
what I want to watch on TV. I'm sorry, I know you.
There's going to be this show called Lost and you're not going to understand it.
So I mean my own place. Oh that was decades later, but
still, yeah, it was just that my dad and here's a battle thing.
My dad wanted me to come watch TV with them. I had a
TV in my room, but he wanted us all to watch TV together at
night. And I'm like, no, I'm making just barely enough toward rent.
Now I'm out of here, right, So yeah, you just once.
Once you get used to independence, you don't want to go back,
right, So good luck to you all. I'm sure this will be delightful.
It's actually been been pretty it's been okay, pretty okay, Yes,
for both you and your husband. Yeah. Are you doing better at the
letting it go? Yes, I mean not not. Nobody's perfect. Nobody's
perfect, as they say on parks. Has he moved the mult yet?
The malt is done? But it was it was by him, not by
him, it was. It was so first the first round was my son
and two or three of his friends for an afternoon. That made a small
debt. Then after like a few weeks of it sitting there, my one
neighbor's daughter came and took two trailers, two loads with a trailer, and
then my other neighbor came and took eleven wheelbarrows. Oh my gosh, and
it still wasn't done. So then we paid a guy and he was here
for nine hours. Oh my god. So that's how much there was.
Oh goodness. And now it's like a foot deep, you know, everywhere
it is, so it looks nice. Yeah, you didn't find any any
skeletons or remains in it not that I heard about. I don't know.
Good did you specify that? Now? Look, there may be some dead
I don't want to hear it itself. Yeah, that would have been the
portion that the paid helper was dealing with. So maybe he was just like
not even noticing. I don't know, the animal just burrowed in there and
died. Yeah that's it. Yeah, yes, so yeah, so that
that saga is over for now. Congratulations. I no longer have to pick
that particular fight. That's right. Why are you sitting here in the ar
condition house? Go out and shove us a mutch and shovel some mulch.
And with that we bid you ado go shovel some molt. Thank you for
listening. You can find all our episodes on spreaker, Apple Podcasts, Amazon
Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can find recaps, links
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lot of the things we've talked about over the years,