Hello, and welcome to the Parenting Roundabout podcast for the week of July.
First, I'm Terry Morrow, and I'm here with Catherine Hiletcho. Hello for
a weekly episode to talk about parenting in a roundabout way along with a little
pop culture. So this past week, how's your week going, Catherine,
It's going fine. I did have an incident yesterday where my internet, my
WiFi died and I did the whole like unplugged, plug in, blah blah
blah. I checked online if there was an outage. Uh huh, you
know no. And so after I had done those two things, I called
the company always had an experience. Well, you know, I have to
say the person was very nice. The customer service rep was very nice and
directed me to do the same you know, power cycling thing that I had
done. Yes, and I'll do it for you. So I did it.
Nothing happened. I'm like, there's no lights on this this box,
like it's completely dark, and the rep is like, yeah, let's I'll
get a technician out. I'm like okay, And but he said he gave
me an appointment like in an hour. I was like, oh, oh
wow, I can that's that's great. H so that the technician comes.
And they had said, you know, they might need to check outside and
inside, and so I said, do you want to start inside or outside?
And he said I'll start inside. And I had, you know,
like I put the dogs in the crate because they were barking their heads off.
And you know, the the room where the boxes is about as far
from the front door as possible. So I dragged this man all the way
through the house, up the stairs back to the office. Uh approaches the
box, pushes the on off switch. Oh no, I was like,
you are kidding me, Like the very pleasant person on the phone said,
they did not want to insult you by saying is it on? Is it
on? Nope? Not on. Luckily, this technician was super nice.
He was like, oh wow, that bait. That's the easiest thing I'll
do today. And you know, now you're not the first person. I
was like, oh my god, I am such a dupeist. So anyway,
that was my yesterday. This is why it people are the way they
are. We get so happy. Well, they asked me to plug it
and a plug it again. I already did that, and like I went
to a house the other day and the person hadn't even turned it on.
Yep. So yeah, well you haven't. We've all been there, baby,
Oh the worst feeling, oh I have. My Internet has been working
just fine, and I have been squandering it on constant surveillance of the Taylor
Swift situation. So you know, I've been a fan of Taylor since she
started. I've been a fan for her for a very long time. I
have only hooked into the madness of Taylor Swift Twitter recently, sort of curious
because she had a whole song telling people to shut up about her love life,
and so I'm like, what, what's this now? Also, i
mean, girlfriend, all your songs are your life. That's true. But
apparently there was a whole I don't know who's a petition, but there was
some big, big thing demanding that she break up with some guy that people
didn't like. And I think there's there's a point at which it goes beyond
obsession and fascination too, and here's what you should do that. I think
she felt people had crossed and and with great speed and determination. So anyway,
so I've been been spending a great, great deal of time. There's
a group called the Senior swiftiest sideline that I have joined more people who were
born in the previous century, so that we maybe don't get that sort of
thing quite so much. And it's just it's it's kind of fun, and
it's also kind of disturbing because it's it's super fun. Since she's been dating
Travis, it's been super fun to follow that to see here at the football
games. Oh, they kissed on the field, and there's a video of
them in a dance later, aren't they adorable? And it's like, I
disapprove of this, but show me another video. Ask you here they are
a coach show. Disapprove of the attention being paid. Not I dis relationship
itself. I love the relationship, and I really have a hard time resisting
fan observing of the relationship. And I do want to see the pictures and
I do want to watch the videos, and it is a gross invasion of
their privacy. But I mean, Travis goes to one of her concerts and
there's like cameras trained on him in the visitor's box, so, oh,
look he smiled at that. Oh he's singing, he's dancing. Isn't that
adorable? It's like, can you just just like the way they work.
The cameras were on her every time she went to a game exactly, and
you just said, these beautiful young people live their life after you show me
another ten pictures. So I yeah, you know, I'm an adult.
This is beneath me, but so cute. Look how cute it is.
So this past weekend, as we're recording, were the first few nights of
her concert in London, and Travis was there, and his brother and sister
in law were there, and certain celebrities were there, and it was just
a whole thing. And then he actually was on stage for one this little
baudeville dat thing of changing her costume from one number to another. He was
there and participate in that, and then it was on She put it on
Instagram. It was just like a whole wave of oh my gosh, oh
my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh on
Twitter. And that was fun but also amusing to me as we transition into
our the thing we're watching for this week was that Andrew Scott, who we
have recently seen as a psychopath in Ripley, was there in one of the
concerts in Living Color in a tank top jumping around and shake it off,
and I'm like, are there any heavy astrays in the VIP tag right themselves?
Careful, Taylor, I know you fortunately, I know she knows him.
But if he comes comes backstage afterwards claiming to be Travis, run run
right, Oh Travis, I just saw him. He just left. Oh
dear. So he was having himself a fine time, and God bless why
not? But we watched for this week the alternative Ripley. The original were
not not even the original Ripley. I now find out because there was a
book. Well it was based on a book, and there was also a
French movie of the book. Well are we going to watch that? I
think we are not. I think I have sufficient Ripley. Okay, I
might want to read the book though, because there's there's These two things were
so so much the same and yet so different that I'm kind of curious what
the source material had to say about it. Yeah, so we watched the
nineteen ninety nine Talented Mister Ripley movie with Matt Damon as Ripley and Jude Law
as Dicky, Gwyneth Paltrow as Marge, and Philip Seymour Hoffman as Freddy,
and then there's a few more characters that. Yes, see, it was
a whole cake Blenchette storyline which was not in the series. Even though the
series had to add a ton of stuff to go what was it eight hours,
right instead of two? They added a ton of stuff, but they
cut out poor was it Meredith? Meredith was her name? Yes, or
Meredith to the series, and this Peter and also Peter, yes, who
proved to be rather irrelevant. He was also but only very briefly born Drey.
Yeah, yes, that's true. And they changed they changed, you
know, some little some small details, and some big things. It changed
the name of the town where Dicky and Marge were. For whatever reason,
they added this whole see do we know which one changed it? Oh?
Yeah, which one it is? This one was first, and I don't
know if the miniseries changed it or if that was true to the book and
this was I don't yeah whatever. She's also in color, which was very
made it very different. And also, as we discussed with the first one,
the characters are much younger. Yes, and it's I thought that was
very clear, you know, I mean not just in the age of the
actors portraying them, but just the way the way that Tom was simultaneously like
kind of naive and dorky, yeah, but still also very creepy. Yes,
and you know, Marge was slightly more more open. You know,
she didn't cast her get suspicious of Tom until a little bit later, no
than she did in the TV show. And in the TV show we had
that whole thing at the end where she was kind of digging being part of
this lurid crime story was getting her some social currency and getting her book published,
whereas I don't margin the movie just sort of fell apart, right and
they and we never saw her again. Yeah, and they were in the
movie. Her book was you know, barely barely mentioned. Yes, there
was much more of everything. There was so much more backstory on Tom.
You know, Tom starting out as kind of a creepy con man and then
jumping on this as his next opportunity is different than I don't really, we
don't really know anything about Tom's backstory in the movie other than that, I
mean, his apartment was loud, but it wasn't necessarily squalid. He I
mean, his job brushing off old men's jackets in the bathroom not anybody's idea
of a good time but still not you know, criminal, ripping off old
ladies for their right and and he apparently has friends who gives him give him
a gig playing piano. So it's like him going from that to being such
a expert forger and voice imitator. And I mean, I knew it was
coming from the TV show, but it was like it kind of came up
of nowhere. You didn't really have a feeling that this kid was a creep
till that. And I don't know if you even there was just like a
throwaway line at the beginning of the movie where it's like voiceover Tom says,
I wish I never borrowed the jacket. Yeah, and that's kind of what
started it all in motions, right, So that was interesting, Yes,
you know, like did you really like because I feel like, yeah,
at the very end, he was a little bit sad, but also he
was he felt like he got away with a whole lot, right, Well,
I mean, I think he was sad about killing Peter, and I
think that Peter represented a life that he could have had if he hadn't had
all these lies piling up beforehand. But once he was there, he was
stuck he couldn't. I was a little worried for Meredith for a minute,
but then once her family was there, Right, that'd be a lot of
killing, right, Yes, he had to sacrifice Peter, but that was
a messy loose and he could have anticipated. Yes, I think he actually
kind of just told Peter. But it's like what happens after this? Right?
Just the way it ended was like, well but now what Yeah,
well the only person who knows that he's talking on that ship is dead,
but right, m Yeah, just seems like kind of messy. You jump
overboard, just swim to shore. I don't know, we know there's there's
fall what books? So I guess. But and what did you think about
changing from painting to music? Well, I don't think that he was as
obviously stupidly bad at the music as he was at the art. Mm hmm.
But it's easier to make dicky with the art, Dickie. Yes,
it's easier to make that joke with the art because you could just put up
something like a fourth grade or Drew. Right. But I guess I don't
know enough about jazz to know if you say an he couldn't, Perhaps I
am with mister greenleave on this, but that was interesting and uh talk and
again that's we don't know if it was a who changed it, you know,
right in the book. And now we've got to read the book.
Now we've got to read the book and talk about it. All the choices
that were made. Yeah, huh. It was interesting and a good movie.
Yeah, but many of the just a lot of it relied on dumb
luck for not to get caught. Yeah, I mean, it's still such
a he's right on that line of like kind of dumb and naive. But
also then you realize after the fact, like, oh, he had to
plan a lot of this, you know. Yeah, I mean he didn't
necessarily plan maybe to kill Dicky on the boat, but he figured out real
quick how to yeah, you know, come back from it. He still
had the same thing where he's sort of our point of view character and so
we were sympathizing with him and wanting to get away with stuff. But also,
and this was true in the in the TV show, also, the
people he kills are really unlikable. You can't feel too bad right for them.
It's like y'all kind of deserve this, you know, right, But
in this I feel even more so than in the in the TV show,
they were just unpleasant dudes. Yeah, the dicky philandering was not something in
the TV show. I don't think, No, I don't think that was
in there. Pregnant woman killed herself and him sort of looking at people every
place he went, looking at women every place he went. Right, So
he was definitely significantly more unlikable in this one. Mm hmm. But still,
you know, if you're gonna be a murderous psychopath, murder guys,
the audience really doesn't care. Although judelaw is very nice to look at.
You could have just left him a little longer there and with the shirt off,
that'd been okay, Yes, absolutely more Hoffman, I love you do,
but you can bash you his head end, but with with a with
a with another call something that's not a it's not a bust, it's just
a head. It's just a head. Yeah. I don't know what the
harder to clean than the ashtray, I would think, I know, Yeah,
yeah, this this had a lot less of the you know, process
of getting rid of the body, getting rid of the boat, getting cleaning
up the apartment, dragging the body down the stairs. Like we got a
lot less of that. Yeah, that's how they filled their extra right,
five and a half hours. Six, No, the land lady better.
We got lots and lots of shops. We didn't have. The only stairs
in this one were the stairs up to his apartment in New York, So
we didn't get the many, many, many Italian stairs, all right,
the elevator or the cat, the cat, There was no cat. It's
like there was no Cara. Much time to fill. What are we going
to do? Yeah, there's no Caravagio. There was an opera, which
made Tom cry, But that made sense that if the thing, one of
the things that Tom and Dicky shared was music, then right there needed to
be an opera, not yeah carava. Yeah, that's true because that was
and more reflections versus light and lighting and darkness. My theory about the stairs
in the miniseries or that somebody, the writer or the director spent some time
in Italy and had to go up so many stairs and said, that's what
Italy is like. There's stairs and everything. Still those dang stairs. I
handed the stairs mm hmm, everywhere stairs. Yes, that makes sense.
Well, I'm glad that we watched y. I'm glad we watched both.
Very interesting to compare them, and you know, very different central performances.
Yes, but yeah, partially just due to the one. There was so
much more time. So you feel like you got to know this guy better.
Or isn't this he had to do all his dastardly deeds real quick?
Yep, let's get on with it. Perhaps we should just sail on a
way from those dark doings into something a little lighter on Catherine's Library Find of
the Week, that's right. So sometimes at the library, I you know,
there's books that you just see over and over again, you know,
many times in a shift or whatever. Yeah, over the course of a
week you see this, the same books going in and out and now.
And one of those was remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt. And so
finally I was like, I'm going I need to read this one, like
I need to find out I had heard of it. It wasn't that I
discovered it at the library. I had heard about it, I had read
about it, But I because after seeing it so much at the library,
I decided to read it. And it's a first novel. It started as
an exercise in a writing class and it is. It has some chapters told
from the perspective of an octopus that lives in an aquarium in the Pacific Northwest,
kind of like a you know, b list aquarium, and the main
character is this older woman who cleans the aquarium at night, and she actually
ends up having a relationship with this octopus, not really like a friendship,
you know, where they glad yes, yeah, please, yeah, it's
not it's not the shape of water, so yeah. And it's just,
you know, it's not groundbreaking in terms of, you know, the writing
or even the story, but put it all together and it's just a lovely
little story about this this octopus and this woman who's grieving the loss of her
son many many years before, probably close to forty years he had he had
died, and and then there's other characters that figure in and her community whatever,
and it's just it's just a fun story. And you do learn about
the octopus, and you know, you you may have heard that octopuses are
very smart, and so you get that here, and it's it's just a
it was just a really delayful read. I enjoyed it nice. There was
a I think it was a documentary maybe or my octopus teacher. Yes,
and I think that they came out kind of around the same time, so
they helped each other out. I believe in these two properties they were not
related. But okay, but this appreciation time, mm hmmm hmm, all
right, yeah, still look creepy to me. If you if you get
bludgeoned by an ore and thrown into the water in a certain area, possibly
an octopus could help you out. That's right, good to know, Tom,
Could you steer over there Probably not a lot of octopuses in the lakes
in Italy, but okay, or what Yeah, they were in the ocean
right, just not far. Yeah, yeah, so I do. I
do recommend it nice remarkably bright creatures. Okay, So now that we have
we have gone through our our two pop culture items, because this is a
fairly recent book, okay, I mean it's not brand new, but or
are we Oh it's two years old? Okay, okay, So we will
take us in through the archives and see what we were talking about one year
ago, two years ago, and nine years ago this week. One year
ago, we were celebrating the arrival of Laila to your can, our little
puppy or she was supposedly one years old. One year old then, but
they she was found in a park, and nobody knows, you know,
where she came from, so it's a guess. My sister in law thinks
that she's much younger. I think, you know, it don't matter,
just love her where she is. But yeah, she came to us as
a fairly timid dog. And she's still to some degree a fairly timid dog.
But beautiful, such a beautiful girl. And she's definitely gotten a little
bigger and mostly is bonded to my daughter. And now that my daughter is
downstairs, the dog spends most of the time downstairs. There are times when
I would not realize we even had a dog if it were not for the
large quantities of dog hair all over the place. Even though she's not theres
there are still piles and piles of dog hair up upstairs, so it's like,
oh, yeah, oh yeah, we got a dog, right,
nice dog. So she comes up every now and then and says hello to
us. But the other night there was a the thing I see to be
on call for are thunderstorms. When there's a thunderstorm, she wants to be
by Grandma. She comes, she crawls under my desk, as she did
a few podcasts ago. And last night. Usually she sleeps on my daughter's
bed, but there was a lot of crashing thunder and she came upstairs and
she stood like I was, you know, she came right by my desk,
and then she went down for a little while, and then she came
up. I was sitting on the couch. She just lay she she can't
come up on the couch, but she like late right down next to where
I was on the couch with her body like plastered against the couch. At
one point she lay on her TV tray. She like wants to stick her
body under something. So she had a bad time in a thunderstorm at some
point in her very young, unprotected puppy life because she's just she was just
trembling the whole time, and I felt so sorry for her. But I
also really wanted to go to bed. I'll fall asleep on the couch her
baby, so I can stay by you, right, But so that is
kind of I don't like to see her that frightened, but it kind of
makes me feel good that she comes to me right right. You're needed.
Yes, Mom's asleep and I'm scared. Well, grandma, so I'm here
for you. Baby. It just made me feel so bad to feel how
much she was shaking. Yeah, so, but it was it was one
of those those thunderstorms where it's like there's lots of lots of mad rumbly thunder
and then all of a sudden there's a boom and everyone and the dog is
like, Okay, we're all dying. Let's got's all together in a circle
and say some prayers, shall we? Right? But anyway, she's had
a couple of fun visits with her cousin dog and uh, it's been a
good year. It seems like we've had her forever. So right in recently
went to the bed and had her check up and everything is good. And
I signed up for the version of pet insurance or that has so they got
me, mm hmm, it's probably not a bad idea, especially so today's
visit for this once a year checkup will be six hundred dollars And I'm like,
whoa, how much is the insurance thing? And they said, oh,
well, if you've an insurance, it's like eighty five dollars a month,
but today's visit will be this much less and I said, okay,
we got a good six or seven months before I catch up to what I
would have paid today. Let's just do it right, let me save money
today. I kept it just every time we go to the bed. It's
like it winds up being a huge amount for what did you do now?
Right? But yeah, welcome to medicine. That's why you know, when
I get the explanation of benefits for how much my medical appointments went work before
insurance, I get the same feeling. So right, anyway, we have
now bit and our care club members. Yeah, that's the thing. So
we probably should have done that back when our dogs were the age Leila is,
yeah, it's far too late. Now. Well it sounds so good,
but and then you get to the point where saying, well this isn't
covered, Well that isn't covered, Well you have it, Well, yes,
no, but this is separate from that. But even so, it'll
be a while before it starts costing me more than just paying for the visit
what it costs. So maybe in that time we'll do And they have a
thing on the on their app that if you're a member, you can talk
to a bed anytime on your phone. Could be handy. My dog ate
this thing. Do I need to worry? I intend to use that a
lot. Yeah, she hasn't eaten in three days. Do I need to
worry? Probably? Yes, she threw up five times. Do I need
to worry? Sometimes she just decides not to eat. I guess you know
she was maybe she had that survival time where she didn't have a lot of
food, and so she's just let me just freak them out for a while.
But I just no, I decline the kibble. Thank you. She's
trying to save you a few dollars on dog food. Let me ask,
when you do serve your dog's kibble? Yes, okay, what do you
put on it to make it non teeth breaking? You put a liquid of
some sort on it? Right, No, we just give it to him.
I just give it to them like dry cereal. It's pretty small,
like we get the ones that are pretty small pieces. Well, I mean
there are times when we've put chicken broth on it. Yeah. See,
we put water on it because she declines to eat it when it is super
crunchy. I don't know if she has a tooth problem where it's just like
try harder, but we put water on it to soften it, and then
put some canned food on top, and then she will generally eat it,
sometimes not. My sister in law heats up chicken or vegetable broth to pour
over the kibble. That's all that we should do the same. And I'm
like, okay, we're not quite that extra. We're just it's like you
would eat something rotten out of the middle of the street, eat the damp
water. But I don't know if we're just being if we're just like bread
and watering her like monsters, or if we should be Well, you could
try the broth without heating it up. Yeah, this isn't a gross I
would I would rather have water than cold chicken broth out of a carton.
But then that's why you are not a dog a dog, that is true.
But but I think I still would be losing points by not heating it
up. I think it's a if you love your dog, this is what
you do, you heat up. Of course it would not be me.
It would be my daughter who is responsible for feeding. So maybe I should
just make her do that just for a giggle. But uh, anyway,
she's a good girl, well daughter also girls, yeah, well yeah,
and we've found that there are certain foods they like better than others. Yeah,
you know, so that could also be playing a role. Yeah,
that's true. If you switch your if we switch your food, sometimes she
just goes through a little period of throwing up. So yeah, thinking that
way, Yeah, it's it took us a little while to hit on.
And now I swear they're like the cheap kind, like just grocery store kibble.
We're not buying them fancy stuff from the pet store. Like, yeah,
we're still buying the fancy stuff from the pet store. We we'll get
to the grocery store stuff soon because it's pricey. Man, I know we
got two of them. I need the care club from the pet coats,
right, I bet they, I bet I bet they? Yes. But
anyway, happy first, you're with us, Leila. Yes, such a
sweetie. Such a gorgeous little dog, not so little anymore, but gorgeous,
still gorgeous and right if you look at her just the right angle,
you cannot see her eyes at all. It's like unless unless she's got insulted
so that that the white are showing. She just looks like a black hole
of dog. So what else were we talking? About let's see, well
we were we were talking about the work life seesaw and how and how you
know, when your kids are very little, there's a lot of you know,
juggling and balancing that goes on, and when they get older, you're
still you're still doing it. So, I mean, I I definitely find
even though you know, right now my son is home, you know,
he obviously he's been at school before earlier this year. But I feel a
little guilty, you know, working all the time, which I am,
but it's not like he's I mean, he's in his he's not He's not
going to be hanging out with me if he's if I wasn't working. So
yeah, well that's true. Yeah, I'm working pretty steadily. I don't
have to do that much anymore. For anything. There's no school stuff to
do, there's no homework to work on. There's occasionally I will pick my
son up at work, but mostly my daughter and husband do it. So
you know, I do still drive. I can still drive. It's fine.
But if somebody else wants to drive, I'm happy to let him.
M hm. So. And my daughter always generally always likes to have an
opportunity to drive her car, so right, she's so works out. So
yeah, so I'm I am able to keep the seesaw all the way on
one side for as long as I want. And since we had the rumory
arrangement, so now I'm in my son's old bedroom as my office instead of
the back of my bedroom, I'm sort of a little bit more in the
mix of things. If I have the door open, I see what you
can see what's going on, and hear what's going on and say hello and
goodbye to people and not have to, you know, leave my desk to
do things. So that's been nice. And I can also close my door
if it's too much hope. So I think the csaw is pretty much completely
tilted onto one end, but that makes it easier for me to get on,
you know, just a lock on. We'll just keep it down here.
Grandma won't have to climb anything or push things down. It's good.
Which is going to work? I like working. Working's fine. Yep.
One of these days I may have to consider retirement, but not yet,
not there yet, Nope. Yeah, I'm trying to cut back a little
bit because I you know, I have the two jobs and when I've first
applied for the for the library job, I thought it was going to be
fewer hours than it is. And also at that time I didn't have as
many hours going on with my other my freelance contract. And now for the
past two months it's been you know, the full well, the library hours
have never changed, it's always been the same time, but it's been the
maximum on the contract. And plus they're I was like, can you do
more? Can you do more? Like no? So I had agreed to
it for the month of May, and then when June came around, I
said, okay, I'm going back to where I was. And they're like,
oh, can you do it again for June? And I was like
okay, because you know you can't. Yeah, I feel like you really
can't say no. So then, you know, just this week I got
the like, okay, the new quarter is starting. How many hours are
you committed to and can you do more? Yeah? And so I said
no, I'm going back to where I was and that's where and they have
not replied, like it was like, please reply to this email with a
number of hours, and so I did, and I basically said I'm going
back to where I was, you know, in April, which is the
difference of five hours. By the way, it's not crazy. That's a
difference in your It makes a huge difference. I mean, that's one hour
per day, per work day, and it basically if I can't do it,
then that's a full day on the weekend. So that's kind of where
I've been a lot of the time. Yeah. I had a patch like
that a few years ago where it was like everybody was saying, can you
do more? And I'm like, sure, bore, I get on and
I'm like, how many hours are in a day? Let me see twenty
four times seven? Oh sure, Oh god, sleep, It'll be fine.
And then a lot of it is tapered off. A couple of clients
have just disappeared, and other ones have decided that they don't really care about
mistakes that much, so try less hard on your proofreading, right, you
know. So it's like, oh, I'm glad, you know. Work
life balance so good, except that means no money so good. We swing
the seas at a little bit. So anyway, so right now it's at
a fairly manageable amount. And I keep thinking do I want to take more
or do I want to just try to do some creative things. I mean,
I keep thinking, do I need a substack? Should I have a
substack? Maybe I should have a substack. Everybody else bal I'm sure people
would pay me for my thoughts. But it's just like, there's all these
creative options that I never have time to do, and maybe I should just
sort of semi retire from the other stuff and do fun stuff. Not that
writing is fun stuff. Who are we kidding? Writing is misery. Criticizing
other people's writing is fun stuff. That's my day job. Yeah, love
that, But slowly, but surely I'm going to have to retire because my
eyes will go and you know, I feel that day getting closer and closer.
You can only zume that she text out so so much. Thank god
I live in a time we have that option, a back lighted screen to
read off of, and letters that you can make larger. If I was
still having to work on paper, I would be retired already. So but
I kind of hate to think of it. It sounds boring to stop.
Also, you could be like my mom just turned eighty three, were still
working. I see myself that way, honestly, and as long as I'm
freelancing, I certainly could I do think, I do think, with some
jealousy of your library job, that sounds so nice to just like get out
of the house for a while and be with people and be doing something.
I mean, I spent many many years in school libraries helping out, so
I have some familiarity with the work. But our library hasn't been hiring for
anything that I would be qualified for. So the school district would be welcome
me back as a volunteer. But we do volunteers at our library too.
Yeah, yeah, oh h obviously you don't get paid. It would have
to be. It would have Yeah, I can find things to do all
by myself for no money. It would have been for many many years,
like for example, this podcast, Oh not nine years ago. Oh I
messed up our intro. It wasn't one year ago, two years ago,
and nine years ago. It was one year ago, four years ago,
and five years I guess I am not sixty nine, No, you you
are turning sixty five. And so when back when you turned sixty, we
did a whole we did a whole episode about the fake life deadlines of you
know, those round number birthdays and things like graduation and even retirement. Yes,
Yeah. My husband just turned seventy, and it was like, are
you going to retire? And he's like, eh, he doesn't hate his
job right now, so what the heck? He'll just keep going while and
you know, I'm trying to be a supportive wife and say that, you
know, you've been working since you were in high school. You should be
able to knock off if you want to. And then the voice in my
head is going, but the money is nice, and this way, I
don't have to sign up for the Medicare part B until you retire, you
know, do retire. And then also, are you really just going to
sit around and watch all TV all day? Is that your retirement? Is
that what it's going to be? Honey, I thank you so much.
Be good for you to get out and be with people. You got friends
at work. It's nice. Keep going. No, honestly, if you
wanted to, it would be fine. But yeah, this is is sixty
five for me, which is a big, a big fake life deadline because
it's you have to deal with Medicare. And boy is this a racket.
Since they had these Medicare advantage things. There is serious competition for your Medicare
dollar, and like for the past six months, I've been getting things in
the mail, call us, talk to us, come to this meeting.
We'll tell you all about our great plans. Lots of things, inviting me
to dinner at a local restaurant so that they can tell me about their plans.
Just it's like a feeding frenzy, and I think it's been pretty much
for the past six months. Yeah, with increasing urgency. So because there's
a window, right, I mean, you have to sign up for certain
things you have from I think it's from two months before your birthday to two
months after. And the big questionable thing is I believe Medicare B. The
A everybody gets you automatically get it, it's you just have to go sign
up for it. But the B you have to pay for. And now
they have this Medicare advantage. So maybe instead of getting it from the government,
you want to get it from one of these insurers. And they all
have their pluses and minuses, they have their how much it costs, all
this stuff, and it's like, I just do not have the bandwidth for
this at this moment. Please go away. I don't want to think about
this, but I have to think about it because the story that you usually
get is if you don't enroll in Medicare B when you first turn sixty five,
you're going to pay a penalty on it for the rest of your life.
It's going to be more expensive, and so it's like, well,
then you got to do it. In fact, when my husband did it
when he turned sixty five, because he you know, we were looking at
all this stuff, he says, I'm just going to buy I'm just gonna
get it. So we pay for that, and now it comes out of
his Social Security check. But my friend said she went to when she signed
up for medicare, they said, you're still working, why do you want
to pay for this? You have insurance through your employer. You don't need
to do this yet. So what it is, this is my public service
for old people like me. If you are getting insurance from your employer still
or from your spouse's employer in my case, you do not have to take
part B. You have until six months after that insurance ends to sign up
for it. So the thing to do is don't sign up for it now.
When it looks like you or your spouse are going to retire, then
put start the paperwork for it. And you will not pay a penalty.
So this is what it says on the Medicare Social Security site. It's what
the lady I finally called from one of the people hawking me for stuff to
clarify with her. Very nice person. Do you ever, sometimes she's a
salesperson, so that's probably why she was very nice, but didn't give that
vibe. Just so, somebody are the medical practice that we go to contracts
with a company to sell its patients Medicare plans that they will take. So
I got like twenty five letters saying call these people. What did you call
them? Hey, summit patient, why did you call them? Have you
called them yet? You should call them now? So finally I called just
so I could clarify that it didn't have to do anything with the part B
right now, nicest lady. We had a lovely chat and she agreed that
that was the case, and she gave me her phone number. When you
get round to do this, call me and then I'll sell you things.
And you know, we just had a lovely conversation. So that was the
best part of this whole thing. Is just meet and Mary, Hey,
Mary, I don't think it listening to a podcast. But you were a
delight to talk to. So probably when I call you back and you have
to actually sell me something, it will be all different. But right now
we just had a nice person to person talk. So anyway, sixty five
it's here. It will be passed by the time y'all are listening to this.
And yes, I do feel old, if that is your question.
I do. I do. Indeed, every part of me hurts. And
you know I was. I did all this still my blood pressure was too
high. So I did all these lifestyle things for my blood pressure, including
eating certain foods, and the blood pressure went down yay. And then I
went to another doctor's appointment, and it turns out my potassium is too high.
So I look at the high potassium foods. They are all the same
foods that lower your blood pressure. So what do I do? I can't
win. I can't freaking win, so wonderful anyway, I go to a
lot of doctor's appointments. This is what sixty five looks like, right.
I think I mentioned here before that I hadn't. I had an appointment to
get shots in my eyes, and then I went immediately upstairs to get my
teeth cleaned. That same day, I also went to the cardiologist in the
morning, So wow, a three appointment. You're efficient. I'm efficient.
Just group all those suckers together, right. If I could get them to
like do all the blood work at wants instead of like every two weeks I'm
getting a neil in my arm, that'd be great, but that doesn't seem
to work anyway. Growing older ladies and gentlemen, I recommend it better than
the alternatives. What they always say. Absolutely, and I am very fortunate
that I have only had mostly minor annoyances rather than something truly life threatening or
challenging. So right, it gives me thanks to wind About on a podcast.
Right, absolutely, do you have any fake like life deadlines looking you
in the face? Not really. I mean, my birthday is coming to
but it's not. It's not a zero or a five, so we can
just let it. Let it roll on by. I did have speaking of
feeling ancient at work the other day that the movie The Breakfast Club came up.
Yes, and multiple, like four or five of my coworkers we're like,
oh, yeah, we watched that in school. No as like a
sociology. I was like, what are you serious? And one of them's
like, I swear she's only like ten years younger than me. I was
like, or maybe fifteen, okay, fifteen, yeah, but I was
like, wait, this this was an assignment. They watched it in school
the breakfast club. Are you serious? Oh oh my god, this is
disturbing. Disrespectful is what it is, Yes, exactness. I was not
happy. So, oh, my deadline, it's sobering, it really is.
Well, well, I think you should take us out and explain.
Yes, we have the milestone that's going on here. Now that we've talked
about where we've been, let's talk about where we're going. We're coming up
on about a year, speaking of deadlines, from when Nicole abandoned us to
ourselves and changed. Yes, she retired from our podcast. We did not
have much of a retirement plan, so she's still doing stuff but not able
to just sit home, watch much movies and eat pond bonds on our retirement
plan. But anyway, we've been doing this weekly round up once a week
since then. And the quandary that we had when Nicole left was should we
just do our round two entertainment episodes with Catherine and I have been doing or
should we keep doing parenting stuff, and it's like, well, you know,
it will be fun to just do the entertainment stuff. But we do
have kind of parenting in the name of our podcast, and we've been doing
this for a ridiculous amount of time. We don't really want to start over
with a new title. We have, you know, four or five porn
bots from Twitter following us faithfully, so we don't really want to upset our
listeners. But on the other hand, as we've gone through this year,
I find that I have less and less to say about parenting and more and
more streaming stuff that I haven't seen that I want to or that I want
to go back and watch again. So we're going to try to do a
really ridiculous hybrid here and we'll see how y'all link like it. We are
going to go to three three times a week. On Tuesday, we will
discuss an old entertainment product, in this case, we're going to start with
Lost, and then on Wednesday we're going to do a new entertainment product.
In this case, we're going to talk about a Gentleman in Moscow, which
we believe is on paramount plus with Showtime whatever permutation of vou may have available
to you. And then on Thursday we will do a little round about round
up with Catherine's library fine of the week and something that I'll find to talk
about, and maybe one item from our archives. And the way we're going
to keep it parenting is that as we discuss these entertainment products, we're going
to try to pull some parenting insights out of them, put a little parenting
spin on it, to have fun with it, and we hope you will
have fun with it also. That will start next week. So on for
Tuesday's episode, we're going to watch the first episode of Lost on Netflix.
Catherine has never seen it. I watched the whole series and liked it,
even the ending I liked. I've seen one episode because we've watched I dater
watched the Constant Yeah, which was more of a standalone episode than most Lost
episodes. It could be followed without knowing the whole thing, but oh,
oh my gosh, is there a whole thing to know? So I don't
know how long we will go with Lost. We're going to commit to watching
the first dozen episodes and then if Catherine is in, we'll finish the season
and we'll take it little by little from there. And then so for next
Tuesday, we will watch episode one Bucky Year Seatbelts, And on Wednesday we
will watch the first episode of A Gentleman in Moscow. And on Thursday we
will have our first of these roundups. So please stick with us, please
help us find our way through this awkward transition, and we hope you will
enjoy it and be entertained by it. And that is it for this last,
big, fat long weekly episode of Parenting Roundabout, at least for the
next little while, until we get bored of this new format and go back
to something else. You can find all our episodes. That's on Spreaker,
Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can
find recaps, links and an opportunity to comment on our website at parentingroundabout dot
com. You can also talk to us on our Facebook page, on Instagram
or on Twitter, where you'll find us at roundabout Chat. And please visit
our Amazon shop at Amazon slash Shop slash Mamitude, where you can find links
to a lot of the things we've talked about over the years. We'll see
you back here next Tuesday. Goodbye Catherine, Bye Terry, Goodbye everybody,