Speaker 1: Welcome to the Parenting Roundabout podcast. I'm Terry Morrow.
Speaker 2: And I'm Catherine Hileco.
Speaker 1: Every Thursday, we're bringing you a library find, a pick
Speaker 1: from our archives, and a parenting or pop culture tidbit
Speaker 1: or two. Let's start with Catherine's library find of the week.
Speaker 2: So one of the nice things about working at the
Speaker 2: library is, you know, I come across books all the
Speaker 2: time where I'm like, oh, I like this author, I
Speaker 2: should read this book. Or if I need something to read,
Speaker 2: you know, I can just go and look for what
Speaker 2: else that person may have written. So I came across
Speaker 2: a book called every Tom, Dick and Harry by Eleanor Lippman,
Speaker 2: and I was like, oh, yeah, I like Eleanor Littman.
Speaker 2: I should I'm going to read this. So I checked
Speaker 2: it out and I read it and it was charming
Speaker 2: and very fun. It was it was basically like a
Speaker 2: romance light. I mean, there was there was a story
Speaker 2: beyond just meet cute. There were other things going on,
Speaker 2: but it was it was a fun little adventure and
Speaker 2: I enjoyed it. And so then I went to her
Speaker 2: website and didn't recognize a single one of the other
Speaker 2: books that were listed there. It's like no, no, I mean,
Speaker 2: because I'm not great at remembering what I've read, but
Speaker 2: given a title and a plot summary, I usually can
Speaker 2: be like, oh yeah, I recognize this. No, nothing, absolutely none.
Speaker 2: So I don't know what happened there. I mean, I
Speaker 2: did I read something and I just slipped all the
Speaker 2: way out of my mind. I mean I really had
Speaker 2: it in my head that I liked this author. So
Speaker 2: how does unless you've read something by that birds.
Speaker 1: One would thing. It's just the name seems familiar to
Speaker 1: me too.
Speaker 2: If you go the dogs guys and see if you
Speaker 2: don't whinny, Yeah, do.
Speaker 1: You have a book you want to talk about? Whinnie Winnie?
Speaker 1: Do you have a random recommendation? She recommends that all
Speaker 1: motorcycles and trucks people just like.
Speaker 2: People outside the way maybe people people love talking inside
Speaker 2: the house.
Speaker 1: She would like us to wrap it.
Speaker 2: Up everything anyway, So if you go to the website,
Speaker 2: do you recognize anything?
Speaker 1: The name seems familiar to me, but I just search it.
Speaker 1: I don't see it in our archives anywhere. And the
Speaker 1: title news demeanor is both clever and infurious. But she's
Speaker 1: very very clever.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so wow.
Speaker 1: She has written a lot of books.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you'd think, man have I think I had
Speaker 2: heard of some of them, but.
Speaker 1: Read Oh then she found me that was a movie.
Speaker 1: They made that into a movie, But.
Speaker 2: I don't remember watching that movie either, So I don't know.
Speaker 1: She's doing quite well for herself without you, ket.
Speaker 2: I know, yeah, she doesn't need me to be recommending stuff.
Speaker 3: But anyway, I still enjoyed this book, even though I
Speaker 3: apparently have no previous contact with this author.
Speaker 2: It's the story of a.
Speaker 1: Maybe you went to school with her. Do you remember
Speaker 1: her like a name from college herself? No?
Speaker 2: I only I recognize her as an author. But it's
Speaker 2: the story of this youngish woman who's kind of drifting
Speaker 2: around and then her parents have an estate sale business
Speaker 2: and they decide that they're going to retire and they
Speaker 2: want her to take it over. And also they have
Speaker 2: this friend who's a retired teacher who his wife died,
Speaker 2: and his wife's daughters from a previous relationship have inherited
Speaker 2: the house where he lived, so he has nowhere to say,
Speaker 2: so he's going to rent a room in the house
Speaker 2: with this woman and they turn out.
Speaker 1: So this isn't written by Linda Holmes. It sounds like
Speaker 1: a Linda Holmes WoT it was.
Speaker 2: It did remind me of that. And so they turn
Speaker 2: out to actually be like, you know, he's very like
Speaker 2: fatherly towards her and she's daughterly toward him, like encouraging
Speaker 2: him to go out on dates. And uh so it's
Speaker 2: it's sweet, it's it's a nice Yeah, it's a nice story.
Speaker 2: And you know there they land an estate sale that's
Speaker 2: uncovers a lot stuff that went on in this little town.
Speaker 2: So so yeah, it's it's a fun read every time
Speaker 2: Dick and Harry by an author I apparently have never
Speaker 2: read before. Eleanor Littman.
Speaker 1: I don't know. She's written a lot of books. Maybe
Speaker 1: there's one that didn't make the listen.
Speaker 2: Maybe maybe that's what happened.
Speaker 1: She sounds like maybe there was a you know, Ellen
Speaker 1: Tipman that you read a book right, could be no
Speaker 1: more up woman. That's uh yeah, that that happens sometimes
Speaker 1: when you see an author's name. I've had that happen
Speaker 1: and you feel like I know that author, but I
Speaker 1: don't know how, and then you can't figure it out.
Speaker 1: But maybe you read a review or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and.
Speaker 1: So the list of things.
Speaker 2: You need tell us what you have found.
Speaker 1: Well. My name is Terry, and I am a planner addict,
Speaker 1: and I always feel that the one thing that will
Speaker 1: get me to get all my life and work together
Speaker 1: is the right planning tool.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: I have gone through a large number of them, and
Speaker 1: spoken on with great enthusiasm of some of them.
Speaker 2: Right here, I'm here on this very podcast.
Speaker 1: I still I'm still searching. I'm still out there. It's
Speaker 1: out the thing that can make me organized and productive
Speaker 1: and get my work done in my workday and then
Speaker 1: have the evening to myself that exists.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: It's not just that my personality doesn't work with that
Speaker 1: and that I will always be screwing up. No, No,
Speaker 1: it's finding the right tool, the right system, the right
Speaker 1: that cute little thing to put on my desk look
Speaker 1: like cute, that's what's going to do it, the right
Speaker 1: thing on my computer. It's just so, I it's ridiculous,
Speaker 1: and I know it's ridiculous, and I know that it's
Speaker 1: never gonna I'm never going to be an organized person.
Speaker 1: I just am not. But I still will pardon me,
Speaker 1: still believes so. I have been using artful agenda for
Speaker 1: quite a while, and it's good. I still have a
Speaker 1: subscription to Trello. I use that for some organizations and
Speaker 1: it's good. Recently I made the mistake of like clicking
Speaker 1: on an organizational tool on Facebook, and so now every
Speaker 1: day I have like sixty oral tools on Facebook yelling
Speaker 1: at me over here, dairy, look over here, this is
Speaker 1: the one quick hair, and then I do click there,
Speaker 1: and then there's the next day there's one hundred. Right.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I have been inundated lately with planners who
Speaker 1: are certain that they can get me in hand. They
Speaker 1: just know it. All I have to do is pay
Speaker 1: for this thing, and some of them are not cheap.
Speaker 1: I looked at this one. There's this one thing. Do
Speaker 1: you ever see this? Ugmunk is the name of the company,
Speaker 1: And it's just it's a wood box and a pile
Speaker 1: of index cards and you take one of the index
Speaker 1: cards and you put it up so you can see
Speaker 1: it during the day. It's like standing up and it
Speaker 1: has like things you're you're doing, things you're gonna do,
Speaker 1: things you've done, and you can color in the little
Speaker 1: circle next to it. One hundred dollars for that for
Speaker 1: the box, and like a six month supply of cards. Wow,
Speaker 1: So I'm just I keep looking at these things, and
Speaker 1: I keep wanting them, and I keep thinking, from the
Speaker 1: deepest part of my being, that's it, that's what will
Speaker 1: make me an organized individual. But I've been resisting. I've
Speaker 1: been resisting. I've been keep using my artful agenda, keep
Speaker 1: using my trillo. But the other day I was in
Speaker 1: Barnes and Noble, as I am every weekend, and I
Speaker 1: went looking at the date books and I found one
Speaker 1: with Snoopy on the car. Come on, it's Snoopy, It's Snoopy,
Speaker 1: Snoopy and Woodstock taking a nap on top of his doghouse,
Speaker 1: which is kind of where I am most of the time.
Speaker 1: So I bought me that planner, and it's very cute,
Speaker 1: and I have rearranged my desk so I can have
Speaker 1: it here open next to me, with the thought that
Speaker 1: I could if I don't feel like going into one
Speaker 1: or two other computer things and typing something, I could
Speaker 1: just scrawl it down with my pant on this piece
Speaker 1: of paper. That could happen. I could put stickers on it.
Speaker 1: There's like lots of little peanut stickers, and I can
Speaker 1: have the whole week, my week's agenda open all the time.
Speaker 1: I don't have to click over it to it or anything.
Speaker 1: So this is it right?
Speaker 2: Well, I mean maybe the analog nature of it is
Speaker 2: valuable because then you're, yeah, you're not getting yourself distracted
Speaker 2: with online.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right, stuff that sounds good. And it was only
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety nine, It wasn't one hundred dollars, right, And
Speaker 1: there are peanuts? Did I mention? They're peanuts there? And
Speaker 1: you know I can always flip to the front and
Speaker 1: see Snoopy. This is like from the days of my
Speaker 1: youth or peanuts. I guess peanuts are still popular because
Speaker 1: I still make things with them. But when I was
Speaker 1: a kid, they were super popular and I was super
Speaker 1: into it, and there was a whole theological I think
Speaker 1: there's the Word according to Peanuts by Charles Schultz, like
Speaker 1: an actual book that was like applied theology to peanuts.
Speaker 1: And I was into that for a while, and so
Speaker 1: I've always had I know, still no many many many
Speaker 1: many years later, the lyrics to some of the songs
Speaker 1: from You're a Good Man chopping around, which I would
Speaker 1: perform spontaneously back at a certain time in my life,
Speaker 1: kny I do it's up time? Yes, it's up A
Speaker 1: time for the dog a lot, and she does not
Speaker 1: enjoy it anyway. So I have scratched both my peanuts
Speaker 1: Itch and my yeah another planner. That's what I need,
Speaker 1: Itch with this very nice Peanuts planner that I purchased
Speaker 1: in Barnes and Noble for a reasonable amount of money,
Speaker 1: especially since I now have the membership. So should you
Speaker 1: be needing that close your eyes hum as you walk
Speaker 1: past the many expensive things online. Go to Barnes and Noble.
Speaker 1: They have a ton of planners. Just pick one, anyone.
Speaker 1: It'll be reasonably priced and you'll be able to get
Speaker 1: out of there with something that'll tide you over six
Speaker 1: months or so.
Speaker 2: Yes, I mean, shouldn't they be on sale right now
Speaker 2: because it's.
Speaker 1: Yeah, probably? Well, this is what I love about planners.
Speaker 1: It's no date or no, it does have dates, but
Speaker 1: it's the academic planner. So it goes from July through
Speaker 1: next December. It's like a year and a half. I
Speaker 1: don't know why it's a year, because a year and
Speaker 1: a half is in an academic year, right, but it's
Speaker 1: just they got to next June and they thought we'll
Speaker 1: give them the rest of the year, so it started.
Speaker 1: I bought it for myself as a birthday present. It
Speaker 1: starts on my actual birth so it's just like it
Speaker 1: was made for me.
Speaker 2: That's right, How could you? How could you say?
Speaker 1: Now?
Speaker 2: Nah?
Speaker 1: And it's snoopy. Look at snoopy, look at snoopy and
Speaker 1: little woodstock there. You gotta love it now. I didn't
Speaker 1: realize that since it's an academic planner all the all
Speaker 1: the stickers are like for school things, fantastic vacation, right,
Speaker 1: but I'll find ways to use them. Yeah, so date
Speaker 1: books and finding modest ways to deal with your ridiculous obsession.
Speaker 1: My random rack for the day?
Speaker 2: Nice, love it?
Speaker 1: Jot down our next record? Yeah, so what do we
Speaker 1: have for the archive this week? This week we are
Speaker 1: what do we have from the archives?
Speaker 2: We are again going back to twenty twenty, which I
Speaker 2: feel like we've been revisiting a lot, even though that's the.
Speaker 1: Time not to talk about in twenty two, even though.
Speaker 2: That's the time we may not want to read this,
Speaker 2: But this is this is not a pandemic topic. It
Speaker 2: is The title was telling parenting like it is, and
Speaker 2: it was about whether you should be honest with other
Speaker 2: potential parents and current parents about the hard stuff. Because
Speaker 2: we have to you know, perpetuate the species, and we
Speaker 2: don't want to discourage.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I hear that a lot now with social media
Speaker 1: of people saying that all you people are saying hard
Speaker 1: things about parenting, you're going to make people not want
Speaker 1: to have kids. It'll be your fault. It's like, well,
Speaker 1: I mean people complain about their jobs. Does that necessarily
Speaker 1: mean nobody's gonna want to get a job. Maybe I
Speaker 1: don't know, but it's I don't know. I grew up
Speaker 1: reading Irma bomback and thinking she was hilarious and she
Speaker 1: was not saying cozy, flowery things about parenting, right, and
Speaker 1: it did not make me any less want to have kids.
Speaker 1: So I think there's a time honor tradition of you know,
Speaker 1: parents complaining that this current generation of parents should not
Speaker 1: be denied because somebody thinks it's On the other hand,
Speaker 1: you are opening yourself up to judgment.
Speaker 2: That is true. But also I think one of the
Speaker 2: things that we talked about in that episode was you're
Speaker 2: kind of doing a disservice to other people who are
Speaker 2: struggling if you're painting it as like, oh, everything's fine
Speaker 2: and great all the.
Speaker 1: Time, Well, you really can't win.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, that's that's a classic that we returned to
Speaker 2: again and.
Speaker 1: Again, because if you're too chirpy, then you're going to
Speaker 1: make people who are having a hard time feel that
Speaker 1: there's something wrong with them negative, then you're gonna make
Speaker 1: people feel like, oh, I do that right. And either way,
Speaker 1: you're not really telling the whole story, right. But you're
Speaker 1: I mean, you're the There's always the question too of
Speaker 1: where your story ends and where your kid's story begins.
Speaker 1: And are you being disloyal to your child by talking
Speaker 1: about them in less than positive ways? And yes you are,
Speaker 1: but at the same time, you need support.
Speaker 2: You're in the story too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And we're in such a performative era now that
Speaker 1: we're not talking about Hey, I told this story to
Speaker 1: the mom's group. You're saying, I put this story on Twitter. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it you know, that's maybe part of what makes
Speaker 1: a difference. But I probably talked about this the last
Speaker 1: time we discussed it, but I still think about it.
Speaker 1: When I we first adopted our kids, I was on Uh,
Speaker 1: this is what we did back then in the nineties.
Speaker 1: A list serve, an email list serve where you would
Speaker 1: talk to other people through email. A group of people
Speaker 1: and there was exactly this thing going on that the
Speaker 1: people who were legitimately having significant problems were being told,
Speaker 1: if you say negative things about Eastern European adoption, nobody's
Speaker 1: going to adopt those kids and that will be on
Speaker 1: your head, right. But if people were saying only positive things,
Speaker 1: that were like, you are leading people to believe that
Speaker 1: they're going to have this perfect, picture perfect thing and
Speaker 1: they're going to adopt a kid with a problem, and
Speaker 1: then they're not going to know what to do. So
Speaker 1: it's like you're too positive, you're too negative, you know what.
Speaker 1: It was just fights all the time between the people
Speaker 1: who feel like you have to be positive, whether it's
Speaker 1: positive or not, and you have to tell it like
Speaker 1: it is even if it's bad, right, and I've.
Speaker 2: And the people who were like, I need support, so
Speaker 2: I'm telling it like it is, you.
Speaker 1: Know, yeah, exactly. I mean I really benefited from reading
Speaker 1: some of the Some of the forthright and honest stuff
Speaker 1: was very useful. What wasn't useful was the how dare
Speaker 1: you be forthright and honest and you're sugarcoating it? It's
Speaker 1: really one hundred times worse than that. Why are you
Speaker 1: telling people it's like that there's a middle road that's
Speaker 1: useful but not resoundingly negative, and then there's either side
Speaker 1: yelling at each other over you, and it's hard to know.
Speaker 1: It's a spectrum, and it's hard to find where exactly
Speaker 1: you pass from helpful to unhelpful. And I think that's
Speaker 1: true just of typical parenting too. You know, it's if
Speaker 1: you're struggling with your kid, you don't want to read
Speaker 1: people saying everything is perfect and if it's not perfect,
Speaker 1: it's your fault. But you also don't want to people
Speaker 1: read people saying it's terrible. It's horrible and it's never
Speaker 1: going to get any better. You want, Yeah, this is tough.
Speaker 1: Right now, here's something I tried. Maybe this would work
Speaker 1: for you. If if not, here's some books that I
Speaker 1: found useful. If not, yeah, just have yourself a good cry.
Speaker 1: You know, that's helpful. But the two ends are not, right.
Speaker 1: That's mostly what.
Speaker 2: We get because it's the internet.
Speaker 1: Yes, because it's the Internet, and because people enjoy screaming,
Speaker 1: and because people react most fervently to those, you know,
Speaker 1: so they get the most hits. But you know what,
Speaker 1: just a calm hey, yeah that sucks. Here's what I
Speaker 1: did for that. You know, the person who reads it
Speaker 1: needs it, reads it and moves on, and nobody else
Speaker 1: pays attention to it, which is why our wonderful podcast
Speaker 1: is just languished.
Speaker 4: Nobody wants to hear people being reasonable. We're just gonna
Speaker 4: watch TV now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I do think you have to. You have to
Speaker 1: tell it like it is. But with.
Speaker 2: Well, if you're telling it like it is, but you're
Speaker 2: acknowledging like it's different for everyone. Our our standard mantra
Speaker 2: that we write that we are disclaimer slash mantra that
Speaker 2: we bring to most topics. You know, this is this
Speaker 2: is my experience, it's you know, this is how I
Speaker 2: dealt with it, like you were saying, this is how
Speaker 2: I dealt with it. But obviously your child is different.
Speaker 1: So yeah, anything that you can accompany with some some
Speaker 1: usable intel is helpful. Just complaining with no particular complaining
Speaker 1: to complain is less so, but there's not always.
Speaker 2: But there's also like a need for venting.
Speaker 1: Yes, that is true, that is true. We should there
Speaker 1: should be a safe space to vent and.
Speaker 2: Uh, but probably that space is not online.
Speaker 1: No, yeah, because you don't. The problem is online you
Speaker 1: don't always get the kind of reaction you are wanting.
Speaker 1: Maybe some people are real sympathetic and give you what
Speaker 1: you're looking for, and some people are going to tell
Speaker 1: you you're horrible from one end and some people are
Speaker 1: gonna tell you you're horrible from the other end of
Speaker 1: the spectrum. So friends, friends are good. Yeah, people still
Speaker 1: have friends you real like, go and have a cup
Speaker 1: of coffee with and talk to that's what that's what
Speaker 1: you need for that stuff. That's you vent to your friend.
Speaker 1: Maybe you go to, you know, a coffee shop and
Speaker 1: vent to a friend. And then you wonder if people
Speaker 1: around you are listening to you and judging you. But
Speaker 1: maybe so, maybe you vent with a friend, like in your.
Speaker 2: House, go to a coffee shop in a different town
Speaker 2: where you don't know anybody.
Speaker 1: I have wondered that over the years, are people around
Speaker 1: me listening to me? I don't think I listened to
Speaker 1: people who are having conversations at Barnes and Noble.
Speaker 2: But oh I listened to people at the library if
Speaker 2: I'm like shelving or whatever.
Speaker 1: Yes, they'tos be talking in the library.
Speaker 2: Oh they can talk, that's really Oh yeah, especially in
Speaker 2: the kids area.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, all right, so you've heard any good conversations
Speaker 1: that you want us to jump in and say, I'm
Speaker 1: a parenting No.
Speaker 2: I just leaned back the other day. I was I
Speaker 2: was working down there, and I was just listening to
Speaker 2: this person, Like this conversation was so one sided, Like
Speaker 2: I just felt so bad for the receiver of this
Speaker 2: just like download of information, like and it was very
Speaker 2: much like, well, this is how I did it, and
Speaker 2: this is the best way, and it was just not ending.
Speaker 2: I think she was a grandma too, like it just
Speaker 2: oh yeah, I was like feeling just so bad for
Speaker 2: the other person, like this person is a know at
Speaker 2: all who does not know when to stop and yikes.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, we talked earlier about my obsession with
Speaker 1: planning materials and whatever, and I've been thinking from a
Speaker 1: parenting point of view, a product that is needed is
Speaker 1: like either a notebook or just a pad of paper
Speaker 1: or something where you could take a piece of parenting advice,
Speaker 1: whether it's in a book, whether it's from your mother
Speaker 1: in law, whether it's from somebody online. You write down
Speaker 1: that piece of parenting advice, and then you figure out
Speaker 1: how you can make this work for you, So parts
Speaker 1: that don't apply to me, you write that in a
Speaker 1: column parts, that will never work for me. You write
Speaker 1: that in a column parts, I could maybe try. You
Speaker 1: write that in a column parts, I could How could
Speaker 1: I tweak this so that it would work for me?
Speaker 1: How can I make a change? So you have that
Speaker 1: beside you. When you're reading a parenting book and every
Speaker 1: time something good or stupid comes in, you write it
Speaker 1: and you say, okay, well this is dumb. But how
Speaker 1: a baud if I did it this, you can still
Speaker 1: learn from things that are wrong. How about if I
Speaker 1: did the exact opposite, how would that I'm right? So
Speaker 1: maybe we need that not only for parenting books, but
Speaker 1: just for random social interactions. You can go home, you
Speaker 1: can open up your parenting planner and you could write,
Speaker 1: somebody told me I have to do this, but I
Speaker 1: think I should do this instead, And that's what I'm
Speaker 1: going to learn from this interaction. You always learned something,
Speaker 1: even it's I never even he no right, But even
Speaker 1: in general, I find that even the heck knows you
Speaker 1: can learn something from Yeah. Either would I would tweak
Speaker 1: it this way or I would do exactly the opposite?
Speaker 1: Or what is it about this that people thinks works?
Speaker 1: And is there a better way to do it. You know,
Speaker 1: you can adapt things to your particular situation, and so
Speaker 1: just then write that down, and you know, we learned
Speaker 1: from We learned from all different places, even from things
Speaker 1: that infuriat us.
Speaker 2: Amen, feel like we should leave it that right.
Speaker 1: You're seething after listening to our podcast. See you're welcome,
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening. You can find all our episodes
Speaker 1: on spreaker, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or wherever you get
Speaker 1: your podcasts. You can find recaps, links, and an opportunity
Speaker 1: to comment on our website at parentingroundabout dot com.
Speaker 2: You can also talk to us on our Facebook page,
Speaker 2: on Instagram or on Twitter, where you'll find us at
Speaker 2: roundabout Chat. And please visit our Amazon shop at Amazon
Speaker 2: dot com, slash shop slash mamitude. But you can find
Speaker 2: links to a lot of the things we've talked about
Speaker 2: over the years.