WEBVTT

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Welcome to the Parenting Roundabout podcast.
I'm Terry Morrow and I'm Catherine Hileco.

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Every Thursday, we're bringing you a
library find, a pick from our archives,

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and a parenting or pop culture tidbit
or two. Let's start with Catherine's

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library find of the week. Yes, this week I am bringing you a

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beautiful hardcover children's book called Animlphabet.
So it's an alphabet book with animals.

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And I noticed it because of the
art and also because the author is Julia

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Donaldson, who wrote Room on the
Broom and also The Gruffalo and the Gruffalo

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Child, which we're all big favorites
of ours when we were reading picture books

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regularly, so my time. Yes, Yeah, this one, this particular

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one came out in twenty eighteen.
Room on the Room was well before that,

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but but it just talked about before. It sounds familiar. Room on

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the Broom. Yeah, I probably
have. It's it's a good one.

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It's a good one. It's I
know I've talked about before how there's so

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many rhyming books that are bad,
and that is a good one. Yeah,

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And it's a very different illustrator that
that one's Room on the Room and

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the Gruffalo or his name is Axel
Shuffler. This one is an illustrator named

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Sharon king Chai, I think,
And it's sort of like cutouts and it's

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just beautiful and it's a it's like
a larger book as well, so it's

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just a really pretty one. And
you know, can never have enough alphabet

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books or animal books. Right,
it's sort of sort of like a jungle

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scene. It looks like from me, that's right, Yeah, we are,

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we gonna encounter elephants and lost.
I wouldn't be surprised. Do not

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be surprised by anything? Oh,
I won't. Is there is there an

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invisible monster in this book? Or
don't think so? Vague side of smoke

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and wreckage in the distance, right, I don't know. I do hear

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a little bit of a thumping bass, which I don't know if you can

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hear it too. We were recording
on the fourth of July, and it's

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possible that celebrations will begin even as
we speak. That's right, But hopefully

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no fireworks until tonight. I'm oh, my goodness, our dog has been

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so incredibly freaked out by thunderstorms lately
that fireworks are just going to completely do

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her in the other day. She
is off the top, but it's impressive.

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She squeezed through the corner where the
sofa and the love seat meet to

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go under the side table. But
the side table has a shelf on it,

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so she crawled up on the shelf
and just squeezed her body like a

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cat into the smallest possible configuration to
curl up on this shelf under a table

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because she was so scared of the
thunder, and then of course she couldn't

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get out, but still it was
like, how did you do that?

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And then we'll get to the why. There are lots of place you could

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go stand under the dining room table. Why would you squeeze yourself under a

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table that has a shelf, Because
it's the squeezing that helps, I guess,

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so get selves with the stress,
right, But man, she was

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freaked out, but it was impressive. Even trying to yanker out of there,

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is like I can't I can't understand
how you did this, But wow,

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you're right? Did She's like I'm
not sure either, and I don't

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know what to do now. Yeah, so no, no dogs terrified by

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thunder in anim alphabet, I trust
I don't believe the animals are all chill.

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Yeah. Yes, so it's just
a lovely, lovely looking banks.

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You see. It has snakes and
tigers, right, but I bet they're

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cute. They're friendly, they're friendly. I mean the cover has an elephant

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and a baby elephant, and it
has a kangaroo and a flamingo and a

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zebra. Nice. I should have
loved to see what the what the X

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is because that's always a challenge for
these type of books. Yes, an

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extra friendly something, all right,
I think elected to check. Oh well,

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say, I'll have to report back, yes, so tell us what

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you are what you are up to
right now? My random bit for this

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week will be I think the last
full length episode we had, I said,

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do I need a substack? Maybe
I need a substack. So for

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my sixty fifth birthday, I gave
myself a substack. I'm absolutely free,

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but I committed myself to a substack, okay, and wrote the first The

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first episode has dropped. The first
what do we call this newsletter? It's

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a post. The first post dropped
last Thursday. The second will today.

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Okay, it's it's called too old
for Cool m HM. Reflections on popular

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culture from the wrong side of the
key demo, and I'm going to talk

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about aging and popular culture and just
whatever I feel like, including probably these

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episodes of the podcast. I will
probably add some extra thoughts because I always

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forget things and then say afterwards and
you know, whatever else is of interest.

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But the young uns are doing a
lot of writing about their experiences,

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so I thought, you know,
old people need Certainly nobody ever hears from

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boomers. We're so quiet, you
know, we spread some words. So

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anyway, if you don't get enough
of me blabbering on this podcast, please

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do check my sub steck out.
We'll have the link in the show notes,

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but it's called too old for Cool
and can probably be searched. Thusly,

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I look forward. I just feel
like we've been talking about retirement and

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stuff like that that maybe I would
like to do less of the things I've

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been doing for money and more of
the stuff that I used to do for

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love, although I used to get
paid for that, which I now will

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not. But yeah, sure anybody's
gonna read my substackt for free, much

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less for cash. But we must
start. We must make use of the

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tools available to us to reach our
audience. No magazines are paying freelancers huge

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sums of money to write things.
So no, but I just used to

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write you know, short humor essays
used to be my thing, and I

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would like them to be my thing
again. So that is a thing I

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will be doing. Great, we'll
see where it goes. Well, I'm

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excited to read it with my excess
of time. That's right, I have.

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I have ideas for at least three
or four more, So hey,

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go read it quick. Perfect?
All right? And uh, what are

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we reaching into our podcast archives which
are extensive to talk about this week?

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I thought we could talk about an
episode from just two years ago. It's

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it was called Choosing your parents Battles. Oh my, because that is you

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know, it's a perennial and it's
also actually good advice. Yes, and

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it also continues into your children's adulthood. It sure does. It is still

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as relevant to us as it was
then, which is a lesson that my

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husband, even now that our children
are in our thirties, has still not

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learned. Yes, exactly, I
could say the same from over here.

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Yeah, it's this. We jumped
off of an article called ten ways this

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mom has stopped annoying her teens,
which so It wasn't specifically a like how

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to be a good parent, choose
your battles. It wasn't that kind of

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thing, but that's the path it
led us on because we felt that the

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things that she had stopped annoying her
teens about were things that she never should

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have started annoying her teens about if
she wanted to live a peaceful life.

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Also, yes, that is.
It's just it's just a classic for a

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reason, you know, Yeah,
yeah, it really is. And it's

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I mean, it's hard to know
because parents are people with feelings. Also,

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though we try to hide it that, there are just some things that

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get your goat and you may realize
this is not a worthy battle to fight,

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but it is for you because it's
just your thing, right and those

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those situations are hard. But if
it's not your thing and you're just doing

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it because you feel you're supposed to
do, or you feel kids should fall

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in line or whatever, you know, just just figure you have a limited

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number of things, you have a
limited number of wins. Yeah, do

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you want to waste it on this? Right? And most of the time

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the answer is no. Right now, we're having one of those disputes about

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lights being left on that I feel
mix. My husband sound like he grew

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up during the depression, Right,
Wasn't that something our parents did? Turn

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off that light? Turn off the
lights when you leave the room. I

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mean it's wasteful, but not that
wasteful. And I mean my daughter is

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down in her little apartment downstairs now
and she likes to keep the lights on,

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whether because she forgets to turn them
off, or because she's all alone

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in a place that doesn't get I
mean it's on the first floor, but

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it's got curtains on most of the
windows. It doesn't get that much natural

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light. Right, Maybe it just
makes her feel less alone to have lights

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on. I really don't care.
That's not something that I would. There's

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things that can get some LED's they
last forever. Yeah, I mean we

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do have a thing with there's like
a like a wall air conditioner down there.

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The rest of the house has central
air, but that apartment has a

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it would be a window air conditioner, but there's no window there, so

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it's like they cut a hole into
the y and she wants to run it

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a lot because she's like, for
the first time in her life, has

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has control of the climate control and
I'm thinking number one costs a lot of

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electricity and number two, at some
point it's going to run out of whatever

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it needs to make it cool,
and then we're going to have to figure

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out how to either fix it or
replace it. And I don't want to

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do that, So turn it off, right. But the lights, the

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lights, light bulbs, I know
how to change those. That's fine,

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just if it makes you feel more
comfortable. So he's always going down there

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for something. And because there's a
refrigerator down there that we share with her.

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It used to be our downstairs refrigerator
where we would put stuff, well

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it was waiting to use for use, and now it's her refrigerator also.

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But so he'll go into her apartment
from time to time and come out going,

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got all the lights on down there, The lights on down there.

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The lights are on in the bedroom
and the kitchen and the living room.

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Were all the lights on them,
like, because she wants to be able

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to see where she's going when she
goes from room to the next. Yeah.

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So not not my battle, but
clearly his still stuff, right,

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I don't care. Yeah. So
and she's thirty four, so we're still

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we're still having we're having to battles
moment. Oh, because there's stuff,

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there's definitely stuff, not that stuff. Right, do you when your kids

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are in college, do you have
things that you think you should you should

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pursue with them, and then you
go nah, I mean, yeah,

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one of us has a lot more
interest in the grades than the so I'm

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just like just past your classes.
Yeah, get to the next level.

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You know, we are paying for
a degree. Please get us one.

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How you get there, We don't
really care exactly, I don't really don't

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look it up, right, Yeah, Yeah, that's something you have no

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control when they're out of the house. No, you're just throwing yourself against

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a brick wall. Right, you've
lost your guilt leverage, You've got lost

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your punishment leverage. Is really not
that much you can do, right,

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But on the other hand, you
don't want them to flunk out and then

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your money is down the toilet with
no return. Yes, you do have

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a little bit of an interest.
Yeah, he lit you have a deep

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less interest. Exactly what is the
bare minimum you can you can get?

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Right? Still graduate? Yeah,
you don't want any extra years? Yeah,

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and and you know we're in the
summer. Of course, we're back

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to having one under the under the
roof. So we're back, as you

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know, as you're familiar with with
yes, negotiating all of that. That

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is the difficult a difficult period because
it's a young person who has grown used

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to independence and all of a sudden
it's not I remember when I myself was

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such a young person and I moved
back into my parents' house and I lasted

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about a year and then it was
like no, no, no, I'm

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getting myself an apartment, thanks so
much, Mom and dad. And my

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mom was like, but we have
such a nice setup for you and you

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don't have to pay rent. It's
like, nope, I want to watch

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what I want to watch on TV. I'm sorry, I know you.

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There's going to be this show called
Lost and you're not going to understand it.

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So I mean my own place.
Oh that was decades later, but

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still, yeah, it was just
that my dad and here's a battle thing.

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My dad wanted me to come watch
TV with them. I had a

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TV in my room, but he
wanted us all to watch TV together at

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night. And I'm like, no, I'm making just barely enough toward rent.

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Now I'm out of here, right, So yeah, you just once.

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Once you get used to independence,
you don't want to go back,

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right, So good luck to you
all. I'm sure this will be delightful.

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It's actually been been pretty it's been
okay, pretty okay, Yes,

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for both you and your husband.
Yeah. Are you doing better at the

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letting it go? Yes, I
mean not not. Nobody's perfect. Nobody's

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perfect, as they say on parks. Has he moved the mult yet?

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The malt is done? But it
was it was by him, not by

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him, it was. It was
so first the first round was my son

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and two or three of his friends
for an afternoon. That made a small

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debt. Then after like a few
weeks of it sitting there, my one

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neighbor's daughter came and took two trailers, two loads with a trailer, and

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then my other neighbor came and took
eleven wheelbarrows. Oh my gosh, and

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it still wasn't done. So then
we paid a guy and he was here

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for nine hours. Oh my god. So that's how much there was.

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Oh goodness. And now it's like
a foot deep, you know, everywhere

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it is, so it looks nice. Yeah, you didn't find any any

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skeletons or remains in it not that
I heard about. I don't know.

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Good did you specify that? Now? Look, there may be some dead

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I don't want to hear it itself. Yeah, that would have been the

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portion that the paid helper was dealing
with. So maybe he was just like

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not even noticing. I don't know, the animal just burrowed in there and

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died. Yeah that's it. Yeah, yes, so yeah, so that

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that saga is over for now.
Congratulations. I no longer have to pick

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that particular fight. That's right.
Why are you sitting here in the ar

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condition house? Go out and shove
us a mutch and shovel some mulch.

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And with that we bid you ado
go shovel some molt. Thank you for

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listening. You can find all our
episodes on spreaker, Apple Podcasts, Amazon

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Music, or wherever you get your
podcasts. You can find recaps, links

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00:17:19.119 --> 00:17:23.599
and an opportunity to comment on our
website at parentingroundabout dot com. You can

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also talk to us on our Facebook
page, on Instagram or on Twitter,

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where you'll find us at roundabout Chat. And please visit our Amazon shop at

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Amazon dot com slash Shop slash mamitude. But you can find links to a

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lot of the things we've talked about
over the years,