Speaker 1: I've had many people ask me because I did a
podcast with Kevin and I called him the most interesting moran,
and I'm not sure that that's an accurate title. He
had many adventures and certainly did. Why are you making
that face continue? Well, because the morning think about it,
like you did something that I desperately wanted to do.
But I mean, mom and dad shit a mom shit
on it so fast. And when I went to live
with Joe and Kay and I had taken that year
off from Fisher and Peter and I drove out to
Denver to look at the University of Boulder, Colorado, and
I really wanted to go to school there. And I
had dreams because my friend Michael Murray had been killed
in a car accident, that I came back for the funeral.
And I dreamt that I came back for the funeral. Yeah,
I was out there when he died. I dreamt that
I came back, and in my dream, I said, all right,
I gotta get back to Utah. And Mom's like, oh, honey,
the summer's almost over, You're not going back. And I
woke up and like Cole sweats you know a lot.
And then when I said to her. Hey, listen, uncle
Joe saying, I should really go to University of Durngo
or should go out here? I should transfer?
Speaker 2: Do you know all the fest you know how to play?
Tickets are blah blah blah. Now you're five years younger
than me. But you went to the University of South Carolina.
Now there was a reason that that worked out for you.
But I almost wonder if in a way, it wasn't
one of the greatest things for.
Speaker 3: You, Oh, South Carolina, just to be that far away.
Speaker 1: I don't know that South Carolina may or may not
have been. I'm not sure that. But to have that
far away, really there was no night. Now people will
go home on the weekend.
Speaker 3: Didn't around and go home on the weekend. Couldn't get
mom to do your laundry exactly, I can't get mom
to do.
Speaker 1: Nothing there. No, But I was thinking about that, and
but you you had You've had these obstacles come up
along the way in your life, starting with lime, and
that was something that you know. Lime disease is not
real well researched, I don't think real well funded. I
just saw a thing on maybe it was CBS Sunday
Morning where a high school class found some way to
neutralize lime disease.
Speaker 3: Interesting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and they came in fourth or fifth in the
world competition, but many teams from Beijing had won. But
it was about lime. And I often thought of you
because you were in high school. You could hardly move right, Yeah,
like it got that bad, and you have been an athlete.
You were on the field hockey team and.
Speaker 3: Yep, newspaper all but yes, And I missed half of
my senior year of high school from because I got it.
It got a babysitting over the summer in.
Speaker 1: August, and they didn't know what it was.
Speaker 3: I started getting sick pretty quickly and they didn't really
know what it was. Yeah, and then I was pretty
much out of school until about January. I would go
when I could. They're very nice, let me just drive in,
show up when I could, leave when I wanted to.
Speaker 1: But it sucked.
Speaker 3: It was my senior year. I couldn't. I wanted to
retake the SATs and I couldn't. I was trying, you know,
applying to colleges, trying to figure where I wanted to go,
and I really couldn't visit any place because I could
hardly walk.
Speaker 1: What was their first choice in your mind.
Speaker 3: No, I think.
Speaker 1: I think at the time, we're sitting in my sister's
couch in our living room.
Speaker 3: Okay, in all honesty, and I'm not trying to piss
you off, mother, because I know you listen to this.
It was not about pissing her off. It was the
fact that you'll understand this. We grew up in a
very small town. Most of the people I was graduating
high school with I had known kindergarten, old nursery school.
I still thought of the girl who joined the class
ahead of us in fifth grade as the new kid.
So there just wasn't a lot of change, and things
were very fixed, and I always felt like, you know,
there's a lot of world out there, and maybe South
Carolina is the best way to go if you want
to broaden your perspective and your insights. However, I felt
like I needed to be in a place where I
couldn't turn around and go home easily and I had
to figure it out. And also at a place where
I wasn't going to turn around to see anybody that
I knew where that new man, So then I could
kind of maybe figure start sorting out what's me what's them?
What's you know? Where where do I fit in?
Speaker 1: Really really like insightful that you're saying. And yeah, like
I think for that age, I think that's really insightful.
Speaker 3: That was a big motivator for me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, more so going far away. Yeah, so where did
you say the top choice was or you didn't.
Speaker 3: I'm trying to remember. Everything was really truncated because of.
Speaker 1: Life lime, Lime, I just remember it screwed up. I
remember dad being so upset and getting you the schile
ali and they gave you extra time between classes, and
you know, I think I do think sometimes when somebody
who's so young in percent so healthy that you're not
believed right away. I don't know if that was.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, no, that definitely was the case. And I
think that's had an effect on how I, uh, I
have handled other medical things that have come up by
waiting to the last minute, to the last minute. Yeah,
but because we were trying to figure out what was
going on, I did have I think a positive line test,
but then some doctors felt like it wasn't I don't
know who knows. It was a long time ago, and
so I know our doctor, what's his name, Tessero, yeah.
Speaker 1: He wasn't.
Speaker 3: I never had him, but yet Okay, so his daughter headline.
He was very knowledgeable and he thought it was for
sure line. But you know, being a good physician and
trying to cover his basis, he did send us to
a rheumatologist, and the rheumatologists brought us into his office
and said that he thought I should go see a
psychologist because there was really no medical reason.
Speaker 1: Like this is what I'm talking about. Yeah, yeah, young presents,
Well there's got to be something wrong. And I think
they had a whole thing in Roy, New York a
couple of years ago. Well, all of a sudden, several
girls were presenting with ticks and they couldn't explain why
what ticks in terms of like, oh I don't expect
that line, My bad, But it was like ticks And
it's really convergence, is what they say. Well, convergence is
in your head. Well, no one wants to hear it's
in my head. They don't because that means I'm crazy.
But convergence isn't. It's where it's in your head in
a manifesting in your body. But that wasn't the case
with you.
Speaker 3: No, it wasn't he's saying, well, you know it's not
rheum rumatoid arthritis, thank god, Right, you really don't have
anything anything arthritic about your joints. There's really nothing wrong
with your joints, meaning that I still had range of motion,
even though they were painful to me. I still had
range of motion, which you don't have if you have arthritis.
So he called, he had us come in his office,
and he was saying that he thought the next step
would be to see a psychiatrist or psychologist. And I
at this point had been sick. I think it was
around November or December, and I'd been six in August.
And so I saw they had pictures.
Speaker 1: You didn't play any sports that fall? No, I didn't.
Speaker 3: I couldn't do anything. Yeah, I couldn't do it. I
was sleeping all the time. I was sleeping on a recliner.
I couldn't sleep plat in bed. I couldn't.
Speaker 1: And I know this sounds weird, but I didn't. I
wasn't home. I didn't live there at the time.
Speaker 3: Right, So I didn't see a lot of this, right, Yeah.
So I was sleeping downstairs in a recliner, DA's recliner. Yeah, yeah,
I had a cane and a schillally. Uh, there were
days I couldn't really walk at all. Yeah, and it
was my senior year. So I had been really big
in school plays. I had played field hockey, I was
in band, I was the editor of the school newspaper.
I wanted to take the SATs again. I couldn't do
any of this. I was sleeping all the time. I
was absolutely exhausted and hurt. I was in a lot
of pain, and we were just trying to get to
the bottom of what was going on.
Speaker 1: So psychologically that's so tough. Yeah, Like, and that's the
part that I don't know that anybody has ever thought of,
because I don't remember anybody saying and it was their
senior year.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was my senior and it was very isolating.
So where I had my core group of friends, they
were all doing their shit, being crazy, having a good
old time, enjoying their senior year. So when I did
get to come back, and it was kind of slow,
a slow ramp up, all the stuff had happened, new
friendships had formsween people I wasn't really friends with, and yeah,
so I was left out of a lot of stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but they did do had of silling shots right,
and then that worked? But when did that start?
Speaker 3: So I had I had been on massive doses of
antibiotics for the since Tesserero thought it was lime. He
just kept me on about two thousand milligrams of antibiotics
a day. Oh yeah, it was sefton and by accident.
And when those weren't working, he and we had this,
you know, rhomatologist who said it was in my head,
and the roomatologist right. So I left us right up.
But when we were in his office, he had some
pictures of his family up and I said to him,
is that a picture of your daughter? And he nodded,
and I said, she kind of looks like she's my age.
I said, I'm seventeen years old, I'm senior in high school.
I've had to give everything up. Why do you think
this is in my head? I was on field time,
he was the editor of newspaper. I had to lead
in the school play. I can't do any of this.
I'm missing my entire senior year. And you are telling
me I'm making this up. What would you do if
this were your daughter? And he kind of sighed like
he was like, And I told you frustration or some
I was like, I don't know what to do because
in my professional opinion, you don't have in my purview,
right in my domain of practice, you don't. You're not
presenting with anything arthritic, and you're not showing, you know,
a very strong positive test real line.
Speaker 1: So you would have like a seventeen you know where
you hear those kind of questions come out with a
seventeen year old on some teen drama where a forty
five year old wrote the script like you actually said
this to the guy, this is amazing.
Speaker 3: That said it to him and he kind of sighed
and he said, well, why don't you see why don't
you go to physical therapy then? And he he's like,
at least that would at least maybe they can help you,
they can help you whatever. I don't know. He didn't
know what to do right, and I broke down. I
was sobbing in this office and I was really pissed off.
I may have yelled at him too to have to
ask Marge. I was really pretty angry. Yeah, So but
we kept working with Tesserero. He was very convincent with Limes.
So around December he was saying he's like well there's one,
he said, it could be that, so I'm not to
get two of the weeds. But lime is like syphilis,
which they tested me for behind my back at seventeen
years old, is a corkscrew shape spier key, and so
it can burrow into tissue between your joints and things
like that and hide out. When it's not in your
blood stream anymore. You're not producing antibodies anymore. So when
you're taking antibiotics, they're killing off the pathogens that are
in your blood stream. You're not producing antibodies anymore, but
you can still have lime. This is what Testerro explained
to us. And so just taking oral antibiotics is sometimes
not enough to actually get to the bacteria. So he
was suggesting intravenous antibiotics, which were going to be unbelievably expensive,
and he said, there's one more thing we can try.
Let's do old fashioned penicillin shots and just see what happens.
It could be enough. So I think it was once
a week. I think, so it's either once a week
or once. I think it was once a week, because
I remember those bruises were fresh, right in the booty
pulled down, I'd get to pick. I had to pick
the spot on my check and it was.
Speaker 1: Pink.
Speaker 3: So the penicillin was really thick. So the needle was
really thick and you could hear it. Oh slash hurt,
and then you had a rub, oh, my lord, into
your butt and then I'd get these big bruises and
I would get They said, if it was working, I
would get a flare up of my symptoms. They'd get
worse and then they'd start to get better. And that happens.
I got really sick after the first two fever with
probably I don't know, okay, and then I was getting
better and they're like, okay as soon as we were working.
So we did that until I was several weeks symptom free.
I don't remember what the threshold was, but that was
a lot of antibiotics.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and which is terrible on your system and can
really your digestive system. You can be oh, yeah, you're
sneezing at you. I mean, after a while, stuff, I mean,
that's not fun. But it got better. I thought by spring, yeah,
you were better. And then you went to the University
of South Carolina. And I think a lot of that
had to do with the fact that you couldn't go
see other colleges. As you said with the lime disease.
What happened with lime wallin college?
Speaker 3: I would have flare ups every once in a while.
Worse than that, I got sick all the time. So
I got mono before I went to college. I was
really sick with mono the summer before I went to college.
Then when I was in college, my sophomore year, I
got extremely sick with strapped throat. They almost hospitalized me
because it was not responding to antibiotics.
Speaker 1: And it's part of that due to the fact that
you were on so many or is this how line
works too?
Speaker 3: That was the antibiotic resistance yea at that.
Speaker 1: Point your body. Yeah wow, oh man kay I didn't
know any of that, or if I did, I forgot it.
But I did that whoa, Oh, I thought she was
biting my crotch.
Speaker 3: I thought she will mess with her mom.
Speaker 1: I know. Uh So the rest of your life it's
been it'll you'll have flare ups and things, and you've
gone and there and but there's no how do I
say it? I think most of the doctors that deal
with lime are considered holistic and and aren't usually covered
by medical insurance or PPI or whatever.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it gets really tricky because, yeah, it's seems that
there are things that work. So I had a flare
up when I was living in Atlanta and I was
in grad school about fifteen. I was longer than that,
I know, twenty years ago, and it was very weird.
It was not like my first time with line I had.
I got like pain on only the right side of
my body, like extreme pain in every like my arm
all the way down to my fingers, my leg from
the hip to my toes. I could hardly walk. It
got worse and wor is worse, a lot of brain fog.
Couldn't think, would be talking, and it just felt like
the words were falling. I could not hold a thought
from beginning to end. The words it was like word salad. Yeah,
Like it was like every word was on a conveyor
belt and just falling off the edge of a click
if there was no cohesion. And I was teaching and
I didn't I was a grad students, so I did
not have good health insurance. I was taking public transportation.
I remember I lived upstairs, so it would take me
forever to get downstairs to get to the train, and
then the train was this long hallway, and I'd just
stand there and be like, it's all right, just just
just one stuff touched one. It doesn't matter how many
trains passed, just one and stuff. Because I couldn't really
take time. I couldn't take time off. I tried to
see a doctor there anyway. You were asked about no.
Speaker 1: I think this is amazing because what I would say
is so many people would have had lime to that
I've never known anybody to have lime. Oh and if
I did, they never talked about what the symptoms were
and stuff. So to know that you dealt with all that,
a lot of people would would hold them back. I think,
I really do. I think that in some way it
becomes something like I can't I don't know my lime,
and and who can mind me? If that's how you feel.
You didn't stop. I mean you didn't you.
Speaker 3: Would, But I think it was like for me, this
is why stop? My husband? Yeah, it's like, oh, well,
you'll muddle, You'll muddle through anything. Because I think there
was this thought of like, if I go to a
conventional doctor, they're going to test me for lime. I'm
not going to show up as positive. They're not going
to know what's wrong with me. They're not going to
be able to treat me. And this is going to
go nowhere except to the fact that I'm crazy. So
I know I'm not crazy. I'm just gonna take this off,
you know, I'm just going to figure things out on
my own. When I was in Atlanta, i did because
you were saying, so, then you do you know, you
find a doctor who is lime literate in quotes, right,
but some of them are snake oil pedlers. You have
to be so careful, and then how do you know?
So you've got the ones who've been they've lost their
their license to practice medicine. But it's you know, because
the people are calling them a heretic because they are
saying that this is real, it's not in somebody's head,
and then it can present this way and this is
a good way to treat it. And then there's other
people who are also saying that. But they're like charging
ten thousand dollars to shoot lasers in your veins. And
I'm not freaking kidding. There's a woman I went to
see and that was how she wanted to treat me.
She wanted to shoot. Maybe it works for people. I
don't know, but I was not paying ten thousand dollars
to have light light shot into my veins. Wow, okay,
but the people now the guy saw in Atlanta, did
people think he's a total quack? And he charged in
an arm and a leg. They had some homeopathic things.
One was Kat's claw, Peruvian Kat's claw, and one was
cemento I think it was called. And I took them
and I would get it's called a Herkzheimer effect. You
have a flare up, you get a little better, and
you take it, you know, and it was you tight
trade it up with these There were drops, a little
drops and they worked. So then I was like, okay, great,
I found some of works I found I know where
to get this. If this happens again, I will just
do this. I'm not seeing another doctor. I'm done. But
it did come back. I was on disability from my
job here.
Speaker 1: Wow. Yeah, I don't think. I here's the thing that
I find interesting. And I do wonder if this isn't
necessarily a bad thing at all that mom and Dad
were of. I don't know that they weren't not caring.
I think that there were a lot of times where
I feel like Dad was a little more tuned in
on certain things. But whatever, you understand what I'm saying.
Speaker 3: I have no idea what.
Speaker 1: All right, thank you, but I would say that that
there I wasn't caring. But it was also like there
was never it was never said, don't use this as
an excuse. It was just you just weren't going to
use it as an excuse, I think for all of us, right, yeah, yeah,
And but I mean this Jesus Christ, like, I don't
think I really until we're sitting here talking now knew
the gravity of this. Because I'm sitting here thinking this,
would you call lime disease one of the most impactful
things on your life to where you have been able
to almost handle a lot, maybe way more than most
people because you just muddle through. I don't know, Yeah,
I don't know.
Speaker 3: I honestly don't think about it that often. Sure, well,
you know when it's not when it's not flaring up.
You know, the kids are always like, oh, how are your
Are we calling limeboat lime bones? Because I can predict
weather change like storms are common because yeah, changes in pressure, yeah,
changes in pressure. And I feel much better in general
in high pressure. In fact, it's when I'm in high pressure,
like when we're out Maui or I'm out West or something.
When we were in Denver that I'm like, holy shit,
I could feel this good all the time. Like you
don't even realize how bad you feel most of the
time until you feel so freaking good.
Speaker 1: You lived in Denver for how long?
Speaker 3: Almost four years?
Speaker 1: Yeah, and no real problems while you were there, No, no,
no line.
Speaker 3: And in fact, I had another flare up here because
I think it says about six seven, eight years ago.
Its ever she's thirteen, yeah, and oh yeah, and I
was on disability. We went the conventional because you know,
health insurance they don't that. That was also where the
person I found that was Lime Literate, who was not
covered by insurance when shoot laser. So we tried the
conventional route. We were getting Ustafa was shocked. He was
absolutely shocked, as I was, like, I was so exhausted,
but I was like, I will take you on this
journey if this is what we're doing. He's like, it's okay, yeah, yeah,
We're gonna get to the bottom of this. Doctor one,
I don't know what's wrong with you. It's not lime disease.
Doctor two, Well go see infectious disease. There's nothing wrong
with you. It's not infectious disease. Doctor three, it's not
our thrt's ghoste neurology. Neurology wouldn't even touch me. Marches
in the office with me. The woman was across the room.
He goes, it's nothing wrong with your nerves. He was like,
you gotta be kidding me. I was like, no, honey,
I'm not kidding you. This is how it goes. Why
I didn't want to do this, like I just waste
a time and money. Wasted time and money, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: But then there were some of the non uh, I
guess we call them non conventional, the holistic doctors that
did work. But there were super.
Speaker 3: Expensive, super expensive, and there are some that are absolutely
doing wonderful, wonderful work. There is someone there's as an
Ahe Horowitz, doctor Horowitz, and I think he's based in
New York near There was so much line in the
Hudson Valley and he was doing a lot of work
up there, and he's written a lot of books, and
so I used a lot of his protocols again on
my own where I would order from the you know,
reputable not Amazon, but reputable places and follow their When
was the Couten protocol. But you're talking thousands of dollars
in supplements, thousands of dollars in supplements. And also you're like,
you know, I'm not a doctor.
Speaker 1: Has it gotten better as you've gotten older? Do you have?
I don't know.
Speaker 3: It's I haven't had a bad flare up in a while.
Sometimes I'll have a flare up. I can tell the
difference when it's it's really hard to describe, but there's
a difference. I can tell when it's temporary, and I
can tell when it's going to hang in for a while.
And it's something in my brain. I can feel the
difference of my thinking and really.
Speaker 1: So almost where they talked about with COVID, where you
get the foggy thinking and things. Yeah, and for someone
like you as a thinker, yeah, it's a because you
you go to the University of South Carolina. Did you
go overseas when you were there? Yeah?
Speaker 3: I did. I studied the University of Hull. You know
where that is halfway between Dolan Hell, That's where now
it was in northeast.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was when we used to make fun of you,
because I know I'm still making funny, but there was.
Speaker 3: H to visit the jackass.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I know, I do remember, but I don't
know you went to uh oh bunch just He used
to call the house and Kevin and I would listen
they were going back, like because you could pick up
the extension and here in and we would hear him,
I love you so much, okay. And then I think
there was a time you stayed an extra week where
like there were a spring break or something and you
flew down to see him, and then when you were
gone for an extra week, I think. I don't know.
All I remember is whenever one of you did something,
and it usually Kevin just they didn't care. But if
it was you, I would be like, oh, yes, thank god,
Oh what am I paying for us? He's com for
it all the week. He's rent and rave, and yet
at the same time, I don't think he cared tremendously
as long as you were safe. I think that he
was admired and maybe was a little envious that he
hadn't taken advantage of those kind of opportunities. I certainly didn't,
but I thought that was pretty cool. But still funny.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that was a rekindled love from a pen pal.
Speaker 1: What yes, wait, okay, so that was like it was
he an exchange student in Pine Plains.
Speaker 3: For like for like a week when I was in
tenth grade. We had pen pals. My pen pal was
a girl and Judy. She stayed with us for two weeks, and.
Speaker 1: He was I missed all this great shit. I didn't
live at home. I was gone because I was five
years older.
Speaker 3: This was when what was that song? Were ten inches
of Snow or something like that. I can't remember. I'm
getting vague memory. Anyway, So we hit it off, shall
we say, Yeah, in tenth grade, right with this budding romance,
and then we wrote love notes back and forth to
each other for the next five years, on and off,
on and off.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So, when I was studying in England, I let him know.
The next thing, I freaking know, he shows up on
my doorsteps.
Speaker 1: Shut up, shit, I'm not kidding.
Speaker 3: He was sending me a lot of mixtapes and he
was saying that he was going to come, but his
English was so so and I didn't realize how serious
he was until he was there. Wow.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Oh that's kind of fun. Though it was fun.
That's kind of fun fun. So we.
Speaker 3: We decided to take a train just for an adventure.
We're gonna go to another city. We're gonna go to Leeds.
See what leads was like, find a hostel there when
we got there. Okay, so we take the train to Leeds.
We're calling around. We can't find any place to stay.
We're a phone booths. Right, it's nineteen ninety eight, I
think ninety seven ninety eight. We're in phoe Booths. It's winter,
it's freezing freaking cold, ripping pages out of the phone
book to try and like find place. Were calling over
the place, No one's we can't find a hostel. We
can't find we couldn't afford a hotel. Right, and then
we're like, all right, well, I don't know what we
should do. My freaking wallet's gone.
Speaker 1: On whoa you can get so many pickpockets.
Speaker 3: I didn't know what happened to My wallet was gone,
And I was like, I can't we go. I don't
even know what to do. I don't even know how
we're gonna get Like he had some money, but now
we're waiting in the train station all night long. So
we could get like two train tickets on the first
train back to Hall the next morning, and I don't
know what to do because everything like all my id,
all my everything, like you know, I'm an international student.
It's all in that freaking wallet. And yeah, we were
up all night in the train station because we couldn't
we weren't sure if we had enough money for two
train tickets, so we weren't spending any money, right, like
we were being like really careful. And I don't know,
I guess he didn't have a credit card. I don't know.
I don't know. I just remember that. So we're like freezing.
We get out of the train, we go back for
two Yeah, okay, back to Hall, and I think we
had to walk two miles from the train station back
to the.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: It's like really cracker early in the morning. And either
that night or the next day, I don't remember where
we got the phone call because they didn't have my number.
A woman found my wallet in the phone booth in
Leads and took it home with her and gave it
to her mom, and they were looking. They found out
I was a student that you saw that they saw
everything right that was in the National Studio It's.
Speaker 1: So weird because in nineteen ninety eight you had to
be a detective pretty much to find you.
Speaker 3: Right, And she found out where I was studying, and
I don't know who they called because they had a
we had a it was campus housing that it was
like a typical British row house with one phone, and
that phone number wasn't in my wallet. So yeah, she
did some detective work, got in touch with somebody at
the university who got in touch with.
Speaker 1: Me, and.
Speaker 3: She mailed my wallet back to me with all everything
in it, not a dime taken out of it. It
was crazy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that is crazy. And then French le go stay
around for a couple of days or.
Speaker 3: Did I think so? I'm trying to remember, and then yes,
I went for my spring break or February.
Speaker 1: That train story. Now when you look back, right in
the moment, panic scared. I don't know what I'm gonna do,
how I'm gonna get back to the United States. I
don't know how we could proof who I am. Almost
romantic in a way now.
Speaker 3: Of course my favorite movie was Before Sunrise, so right
to me, I was living out this little you know,
European romantic fantasy. So I did go. Oh, it was
over Easter. I went to see him over Easter. I
don't know it was maybe it was February. It was
two weeks. That's right, it was two weeks. He was
studying in Rome. Oh my god. I had the best time.
All his friends are artists, so they were taking me
all around Rome. They gave me all these works of art,
like I had all these paintings. People had made chalk drawings.
Everybody wanted to meet me whatever, because I was the right.
They were giving me the backs tour of all the
you know, different monuments and places, and we got to
go see this one at night. It was so much fun.
It was such a good time. He had family in Rome,
and I mean it was like hot goss. That this
American gross. So I'm invited to everybody's house for dead,
doing the shots and doing that, and they had all
the food. Nobody spoke any English, was just bananas. And
then of course he wanted to take me to his family.
They lived in Sicily, Monica, not close to Rome. So
we took a train overnight and then the train went
on a ferry.
Speaker 1: Wait, the train goes on.
Speaker 3: The ferry ferry and then you get off in Syracusa, Syracuse,
I think, and his family met us there and then
took us to his well. So we go to his
tat ancient, medieval, beautiful little stone. Well, you know, he
picks eleven off the tree, pulls out his pocket knife,
hands me a slice like he's sweet, Like you could
just eat it right off the tree, and we just
had the best best time. But like I think a
lot of it was like, I don't know, what the
hell anybody like looking back on the hell anybody like
a parents, What the hell were they thinking of me?
I don't know. There was a lot of yellig and screaming,
but I didn't know what they were saying.
Speaker 1: So, well, like, you have a daughter now she's thirteen,
When she gets to be that age, would you encourage
her to I'm not saying, to travel, Yeah, to travel,
open yourself up to opportunities.
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean they were on, well this will probably go
on a Tuesday that I'll drop this one. But they
they talked about all the trips you take as a
family and how I think that that's just amazing, how
much you've exposed them to the world. You didn't backpack
through Europe. Did you I did. I was.
Speaker 3: Jesus Philly, I gave you brother the idea.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So my friend Anka from Germany, who was we
were really good friends from Paul and yeah, I just
met up with her and when we were in Croatia,
which was great, head and seen her and I don't
even want to do that math a long time. Yeah.
We went all through uh, we went all through Germany,
we went up to Sweden, we went through you know, Netherlands.
I'm trying to remember. We met our friend Andreas. We
went through France. We spent like like three or four
weeks backpacking around.
Speaker 1: How cool? What? Yeah was that during the summer? Yeah,
I assume. And then you you you graduate from the
University of South Carolina. I do remember going down to that, uh,
and then you go to the University of Georgia. How
did that? I don't remember? What is this a bad question?
Speaker 3: I know not at all, But that's I graduated from
South Carolina. So when I came back, I was ahead
of the game. I didn't re leave a major. I
decided to declare philosophy as my major because of the
way that philosophy worked in England. The courses were a
lot longer, so they were worth more credits. So I
came back with a lot of credits and I could
have graduated early. I didn't. But I took a lot
of fun classes my last semester and then I was like,
uh shit, what do I do now?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 3: What do I do now? Yeah? There was a career center.
Had I ever stepped foot in the career center? Had
I thought one thought about what I was supposed to do,
like when you're done with college? Crazy?
Speaker 1: I don't know that it's crazy.
Speaker 3: I call it privilege, Yeah maybe, yeah, privilege for sure.
So I was waiting tables and I did not know
what I was gonna do. I really had no plan.
Speaker 1: No, never moved back home, no no, no.
Speaker 3: I had an apartment with a lot of roommates. And
I was waiting tables and I was looking around. I
was like, everybody's got a job, Like adults around you
have jobs, Like just figure out what they are. Let's
just see what the options are. And I was flying
home for Easter and I was like, maybe I give
a flight attendant. So I did that.
Speaker 1: You were a flight attendant for how long?
Speaker 3: Three years?
Speaker 1: And you based yourself out of Atlanta with Delta.
Speaker 3: Yes, I was in New York with Delta for a
little while and then I transferred to Atlanta. I was
in Atlanta and then nine to eleven happened, right, and
so I would have been furthered because I was pretty junior.
So I took a leave. They were offering you could
take a one year leave, keep your health benefits, keep
your flight benefits. So I waited tables.
Speaker 1: It was perfect.
Speaker 3: I went back to Delta for a while. They were
doing another round of furloughs. I was gonna be on
the furlough list this time. They were offering I think
one three in five year leaves, but no one no
keep your insurance right, just that you would be furloughed,
you'd be offered your job back. So I thought about
going to grad school. So I figured I'll do the
five years. That the way they can't touch me, you know,
if I'm in the middle of a program. And so
then I was like, what am I going to do? Study?
So that's where I had landed on. I always wanted
to teach in China. Yeah, why, that's a good question.
I think it was more the travel, like I really
wanted to see.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was a big thing.
Speaker 3: A lot of people were teaching in China, so it
seemed like a way in. So I started volunteering with
Literacy Volunteers of Atlanta teaching English. So I had a
two team named Genevieve Genevieve from the DRC, and we
became really good friends and I really loved it, and
so I kept tutoring her all through grad school. Yeah, yeah,
she was great and.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So then I started the Masters in teesaw So teaching
English as a second language. I see. I was dating
mister not so Nice we call him at the time.
This was after Francesco, and he didn't like to travel
at all, and he was really not on board with
the teaching in China thing. So then I was like, oh,
I'll be a flight attendant and then I can travel.
So when I went back to grad school and we
broke up. When I got into the PhD program because
I was after my master's degree, I had a professor
I really loved and she was really encouraging me to
apply to the Oh my god, I don't think you've
ever heard this story. All right, so I'm dating mister
not so nice. He used to moved to Atlanta we
broke up when I was a flight attendant. We got
back to other we're now living together in Atlanta. We've
been together for about seven years.
Speaker 1: And he.
Speaker 3: She said, so, I'm meeting with this professor. She's like,
I really think you should apply to the PhD program.
It's a new program. This would be really good for you.
You should do this and hey, and I kind of
ignored her because I knew like this was not in
the works if I wanted to stay with mister nosience.
So one day this we're getting close to the application deadline,
and she calls me into her office and she shuts
the door and she goes. She was the nicest lady.
She was an older woman from Alabama. She talked like this.
Her name was Pat Merge. Wonderful, wonderful woman. I'd never
seen her raise her voice ever. And she looks at
me and she goes, have you applied, because I have
not seen your application, And I said eh. She looks
at me and she goes, slams her hand down on
the desk and goes, why I won't you do what
I asked you to do? And I was like, huh.
She goes, I know you think that dead beat boyfriend
of yours has something to offer you. What are you
gonna do? Move back to the middle of nowhere South Carolina.
She's like, that is no life for you.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 3: You go home and you get that application turned in,
I expect to see it. And I was like, are captain?
I was like, I don't whatever, So I did. I
turned the application in the day it was due. I
actually had to hand slide it under the fucking door
because I was after the office had closed and I
was way past the date to mail anything anywhere. And
I got into the program and he told me that
if I got in, it was over. He was in,
I'm bored for this. Did you care?
Speaker 1: I mean you do. We all do to a certain extent.
But I don't know.
Speaker 3: I mean I shouldn't have, right. But the funny thing
was the first person I told because I knew as
soon as I told him we were going to break up.
So I was all excited. So I call my best
friend Mary Helen, who is in the mall in Frederick's
of Hollywood, and she goes, she was from Mississippi, so
she had a stark Southern accent too, and she goes, oh,
my head got star I'll be right there were right there.
Where can we meet? She's like, let's listen for a
Drick Street, Drick don't go home, don't don't tell me,
don't tell them. So we met at Manuel's Tavern, which
is this little old bar, a little it was a
very democratic bar they anyway, no matter, old historical bar
in Atlanta. And she comes in, she goes, I don't
know what to get you, and she throws this a
little bag at me. She's like, I know they're not
your size. And I pull out this extra extra large
pair of fringe a fringe thong.
Speaker 1: Do you still have it?
Speaker 3: I warn't A graduation in Yeah. We had a good laugh.
And then I told him when we woke up and
I went and taught in China that summer.
Speaker 1: Okay, I don't I don't remember when mister sounds so nice.
I don't.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 1: And then from there you finish the PhD and then
you gotta go are you back to the same thing after? Like, well, yeah,
I mean I don't know.
Speaker 3: Oh, I think I will be perpetually in a state
of what am I gonna do? It comes with the ADHD,
I think. But no, So when I was toward the
end of my program. And this is boring story. There's
a lot of politics. I got caught in the middle
of a lot of stuff. I was getting a lot
of really shitty assistantships and things. And Mustafa, who's now
my husband, and I were dating. He is the reason
I got you know him, He's the reason I got
God getting all this, all the stories out of me.
So he's the reason that I was able to finish
my dissertation proposal. Like I had to write the proposal.
You have to defend I'd done the comprehensive exams. You
have to come up with a proposal, write that paper,
get it approved so that you can start your your
dissertation work. So that summer I was supposed to be
writing my proposal. We met in October, but that summer
before I had a wild summer, just wild, and I
was having a very hard time focusing on my work. Sure, yeah,
and then I met Mustafa, and I remember he lived
in Chantanooga and he was an attorney, he was an assistant,
he was no he was an ak a clerk for
a federal judge up in Chattanooga, and so he would
come down on the weekends and you know, I was like,
I have a lot of work to do, like me too,
and tons of stuff to do. Let's go to a
coffee shop. We'll just work. So we go to the
coffee shop and I'm being all cute, you know, get
my latte, I've got my computer around. I'm kind of
looking at him waiting the chit chat. I'm looking at
him and he's not making eye contact, and I'm looking
at him and I kind of like, you know, kick
him under the table, and he's like, it's right back
to work. He's just like line Us on the not
line us, like Schroder on the piano. Right. He has
been over that keyboard and I'm trying to, you know,
waste some time and flirt and all this. Nothing. I
got nothing. So I finally cracked the book open, started working,
got into it, and I had the full rough draft
of the proposal done by the time we left that
coffee shop.
Speaker 1: That's amazing, and you know, just we're here Christmas this year, Mustafa,
it was it's right. Uh oh, he like stuff just happens.
Is it like having a magic alpha around? He just
does everything. He really is amazing, And I I wouldn't
say that I had witnessed everything he was doing, because
you've had some surgeries and things that were holding you back,
the rotator cuff, and it's a lot to recover from.
And he it was like, but it was like nothing
for him.
Speaker 3: I know, yeah, I know, he is incredible.
Speaker 1: I it almost feels like it's magic in some way.
I don't know what that is, but I can see
where sure you think you're going to go and flirt
and play and he was. He wasn't happen.
Speaker 3: He honestly even after that. So he then got a
job out in Colorado as an assistant US attorney and
he said to me, you should come and I was like,
we're not. You know, we're dating felt serious. It felt
like I was going somewhere, but like you, I'm in
finishing my dissertation. I have a lot of obligations where also,
like do you just up and move across the country
like all our family was on the East Coast? Like
for a guy like and I have to admit there
was a little bit of the what does this look
like to other people in my head going on too.
But he was like, actually, he's like I think he's
always told me on it. He's like, I think you
got it. If you want to finish your you want
to finish your program. He's like, You've got to get
out of here because things were not going in my
favor within the department. So I decided toe he moved
in September. I finished out, I finished all of my
data collection, finished out my teaching, and in December, Marge
strove with me across country out to Colorado and I
was going to just We had this little apartment and
the apartment had like a fur hal closet with a
but it was supposed to be an office and just
had no windows in. It was basically a closet. And
I had a little ledg where he could have a
desk but perfect right, no distractions and just get your
stuff done. So that was my plan, Like I was
just going to focus on I had a ton of
work to do because I had just collected everything. It
was like a lot of sorting. It ouse oh so much,
so much work to do. So he was on a
case and he was gone for like a week, and
when he came back, I found a job at the
University of Denver. It's like I couldn't stand not working,
so I started teaching there. While I was finishing my
dissertation and then but he was right, like, it was
so much easier, was it really? No? Because then we
got married, and then we had a baby, and then
I thought I was going to be able to defend
before she was born, and I couldn't quite crank it out.
So I have a picture of me rocking her in
a cradle one week after she was born, with my
foot and my computer on my lap, finishing up a
few chapters of my dissertation. I think all in it
was almost three hundredth that h Where does the like?
Speaker 1: So when we were kids, you were the lead in
school musicals, musicals put on by people who were in Broadway. Uh. Certainly,
to whether or not someone yells at you to put
in the application, you got to have the confidence to
say I can handle this, or maybe you're like me
and you just kind of jump and see where it goes. No, okay,
and I U but the confidence there just seems to
be like, I don't know, you have no fear of stuff. No,
I don't mean it like that, but I feel like
there's something with As I look at a common thread
I would say between you, Kevin and I is there's
very little fear in failing.
Speaker 3: I was terrified failing. I was always terrified failing. And
it's funny that you brought up the school play thing
because I saw, you know, we saw Oliver whatever, and
it looked like so much fun. And so when I
was in eighth grade, I auditioned, or in seventh grade me,
I auditioned and got caught, And in eighth grade I
got a part in the chorus, and then in ninth
grade I was like the last person on the list.
And then when I was in tenth grade, I was
I had a chorus part in ninth grade. When I
was in tenth grade, they were doing once Upon a Mattress.
And I don't know because it wasn't like I was
walking around the house singing, and it's certainly not belt singing, right.
Speaker 1: I just had a.
Speaker 3: Feeling that I might be able to do it. I
didn't know, and you don't know how you sound to
other people. So I really had no confidence in my
ability to sing at all. I had really wasn't but.
Speaker 1: The confidence to go, I'm going to go out there
and give it a shot.
Speaker 3: I know what it was, Jansen Wu. So I had
a really good friend Jansen Wu in high school and
he was a genius choice still is a genius. Perfect pitch,
could play piano, could play anything. So he was really
kind of like there were the theater kids who always
got the leads and stuff, and he was like, we're
gonna show it to them. You can do this. And
so he invited me over to his house and he
started playing and he was coaching me, and he's like
and he's like, yeah, he's like, you got it, like
ladder from the diaphragm. Like he coached me through that
whole thing. And so I'd go to his house and
practice and practice my audition song, and I just wanted
to see what would happen if I really really like
gave it my all right. And they had a piano
player and I asked if he could play for me,
and they let him play. So he played my audition
song and I just did it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay. But I would say there's a confident. The
confidence is do you get cut, you come back. Each
year is a little bit more, a little bit more,
But that first year of getting cut was in the
end for you. Do you understand what I'm saying like this,
So when I say like, you're not afraid of failing.
You took the shot, you got cut, You went back.
You took the shot, you got the cut, you went back.
You believed you had a little bit of the ability,
but didn't know how it sounded. So you had a
friend who was endorsing you, who you fully felt. Well,
you said, perfect pitch. It's a rare thing. I think
the only person I've ever heard was Charlie Pooth. I'm
sure there's others that have it, but he has perfect pitch,
and there amazing right.
Speaker 3: So to have that.
Speaker 1: But I think, like, you know, going off to England,
going off to South Carolina when you after this awful
bout with lime disease, and then to me, I just
I go, wow, that's a that's, for lack of a
better term, because I don't have the vocabulary you do.
That's ballsy, you know, I mean, it really is. You
don't think so.
Speaker 3: I mean, I've never thought of it that way before.
A speaking ballsy, I think, I think, yeah, I think.
Speaker 1: About how most people by their own choice, and I don't.
I mean, how many times we hear mom say her
friend's kids were going into teaching and they were going
to be a teacher, much like and it was her
friends were teachers and their kids are going into teaching.
And I don't think there's anything wrong with that at all.
That's a noble thing. If you're going to take a
job that doesn't pay a whole lot and requires a
whole lot, I think that's pretty amazing. But I would say,
like none of us. I don't know. I feel like
maybe dad and mom too to a degree. I mean,
she's certainly was somebody who got a master's at a
time when women weren't, had a mother who was grew
up in that misogynistic even more so right thinking, I mean, honestly,
that's a woman's job. A women doesn't do it, go
their education is, and she pushed through all that. I
feel like there's you know, those things like there was
never you never were told you couldn't, and you were
you were never told you couldn't, and you were always
encouraged leaders.
Speaker 3: I would say yeah, to a degree, they were always
I remember thinking like, what are they going to think
when I tell them I went to college, Now I'm
going to be a flight attendant. They were excited they
got to fly, they got they used that free airfare
they went everywhere. They went every They went to Russia,
they went to Turkey, they went to South America, they
went everywhere.
Speaker 1: You were young, and it was okay, and it didn't matter.
By the way, you could make a long career out
of that if you wanted.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah you could. Yeah. But it was it was.
Parts of it were a really good time. I got
a drink named after me one time at a bar
and on Redondo Beach. They called it the Great Kate.
Speaker 1: Why.
Speaker 3: I was what's called a load factor on this trip
meeting that I was the fifth flight attendant. The other
four were flying together, but this particular leg out to
LA they needed because of the passenger list count was
so high they needed a fifth person, so called a
load factor. So they were all going home. It was
the end of their trip. I was laying over. It
had a really long layover for I don't remember. I
remember being long for layover twenty four hours, thirty hours,
something like that. And I got in in the morning.
We took a red eye, so I took a nap
and I went down. I was in Redondo Beach, so
I went down to the beach. There was a little
beach bar right there I parked my happy ass on
that stool and I drank all day and we had
I had the best time. People were coming verily this bar.
You earn points. I got a wardrobe because people were
giving me their points and buying me clothes. I got
a T shirt and a sweatshirt and a hat. They
named a drink after me. It was men and women.
It wasn't like it was just a good time.
Speaker 1: It was a good good time and I was that's amazing.
Speaker 3: I went back. It was all day too, because it
was because I had a day layover, so I just
drinking all day. I went, had dinner, went back to bed,
got on my flight in the morning.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no problem. Wow, you don't have There must be
something in the in the blood, because I think it's similar,
similar stories like that. But and now you run a
big program teaching English to high level learners. Writing the
curriculum for that correct wrong, and it's close enough. I
thought it was high level learners that we came to learn.
Speaker 3: The director of a scholarship program. So I'm not doing
the curriculum or the teaching, but I'm kind of in
charge of a couple of subcontractors.
Speaker 1: We have with this.
Speaker 3: Program that's funded by the Department of Defense, and then
I do other things too, because one job's not enough
in a nonprofit. So the making curriculum is like something
I do in house. So I'm building out online courses
to train teachers who teach adults.
Speaker 1: Do you like do you prefer the teaching?
Speaker 3: I think for me, I get bored very easily, and
I don't like a lot of administrative tasks and bullshit,
and so a lot of what I'm doing right now
is that there's a lot of liaising between groups of people,
keep and everybody happy, a lot of spreadsheets, a lot
of tracking, a lot of meetings, very very irritating. Creating
the courses is more fun to me because it's a
lot more creative. But I think, you know, it's always
annoying to me to have to spend the bulk of
my time doing things that I don't really enjoy when
there's just so many things.
Speaker 1: Well, it's you know, we talked to with your children,
and I brought up the Halloween costumes and how absolutely
incredible they are. I mean, these are to me. I
don't know, Wasjia anything, but I would just think that
what do they say artists in the eye of the beholder.
This stuff looks like it could be costume design winning
for Broadway shows or movie sets or whatever. I asked
each of your kids, Zara and Elias, which was their
favorite costume they had, and they said, you, they come
to you with the idea and then you make it happen.
These things are outrageous. They're the coolest things I've ever
seen in costumes. And you love doing that.
Speaker 3: I do, I really do.
Speaker 1: It's like, but again, the confidence, like they're coming to
you with an idea.
Speaker 3: Confidence they told you. I break down every year and
say it's not gonna happen. Kids, It's never gonna happen.
I can't do it. I can't do it, and then
I collect myself and I do it.
Speaker 1: Well, see this is what I'm saying, Like, I think
you're allowed to have those moments of doubt because I think.
Speaker 3: Sometimes they come up with things that are just defy
the laws of physics and I just don't know how
I'm going to do it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, uh, Dad had was very creative like that,
and you know you and Dad were very similar. You
still SUPERI kid, even I are the same wavelength. It
was almost like it was almost like saying, tell me
I'm stupid about out telling me I'm stupid. That was what,
you know, but that's how he would say it. And
there were things about him like it's been a it's
been an interesting year, I think more so for you.
You know, we haven't talked about it, but in Iceland
you had an accident that that involved a snowmobile and
and you being heroic right with your kid on the.
Speaker 3: Back right talking about that one.
Speaker 1: I'm not asking, I certainly don't want to pry. I
just know that that was I mean, you've had a lot,
Like I would say, it's pretty heavy. When your dad
when when when apparentize uh, And we were all there
at the end. You and Kevin did more the lifting
with him and the you know at certain points, which
I always have appreciated greatly, but that enough is enough.
And then you know, you go on a trip because
that's what your family was planning to do. He had
already passed and the accident happit. I I but then
it's all these you're laid up with really significant injuries.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, I was I saved. I saved
my baby girl from the crushing weight of a snowmobile.
Wh inch of you asked her. She's like, well, it
didn't really hurt that much. But anyway, at the time,
sure we were. We were on a glacier. There's one
rule with the snowmobile. We're all in an inner line,
and that was lean into the turns. And it was
the least fun trip we had gone horseback riding, we've
done all other things. It's only like day two, but
we'd already been in hot springs and all sorts of things.
The glacier was one color from earth to sky. You
couldn't see ship.
Speaker 1: That's the snow blind stuff they talk about, right, And then.
Speaker 3: It was like missing because it was August, so it
was like icy rain. You couldn't keep your visor down
because it was just constantly covered. You couldn't see you
could it was foggy. You couldn't see two feet in
front of you. So you're trying to follow the snowmobiles
in front of you. Why why on a you know,
ten mile wide glacier you have to go around a
hairpin turn? I don't know, but they had a lot
of hairpin turns in there, maybe for funzies. And baby
Girl forgot which when you're supposed to lean, and the
whole time like I'm steering. My gosh, it's so hard
to stear it. And I'm leaning as hard as I
can into the turns. But when you have a counterweight,
it doesn't it doesn't help. So anyway we go and.
Speaker 1: You're supposed to turn on the you're supposed to lean.
It's just not intuitive, it's not right.
Speaker 3: And she had never been on a motorcycle or anything
like that, so.
Speaker 1: We've slipped.
Speaker 3: It was like slow motion. We like flipped over and
I figured we'd you know, I was gonna just lay
there and wait for the guides to come and pick
that thing up. She was really screaming. She was terrified.
I mean, the poor thing. She was absolutely terrified because
other snowmobiles are starting to whiz past us. So I
don't know if she thought they weren't gonna stop, and
so she well, the guides were there was one in
the front, one in the back, like their job to
keep you know, keep count, and we weren't far off
the trail. We were just kind of plopped right over
on the turn. We just were on the outside of
the turn, and they were going right around the Yeah,
gesture doing wildly.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: So she is screaming and I thought for sure her
leg was broken, and I'm like, I feel like absolutely
I I wasn't even thinking. I'm trying to pick up
the snowmobile because she's just screaming her head off and
I can't because I'm also pinned underneath it. My leg
is on hers. So the guides come over and they
start paying it up and she's like stop step step,
it hurts, hurts, it hurts. Next and so I thought,
you know that her leg was broken, So I was like,
I've got it. I've got it. Just I've got it.
Get her leg, get her leg, get her leg. So
I was holding it halfway up. They get her out,
and then they put the snowmobile up and they're helping her,
and I'm like just watching her and they, you know, like,
can you walk? And then they get her up and
she's walking and she's okay, and I freaking lose it.
I'm like I can't breathe now. I'm like hyperventilating. I
think I almost killed my kid. I'm like, if she
broke her leg, like we're we're we're forty five minutes
up a glacier. And we were at halfway like a
base camp before that, how are we going to get
her out to a hospital? Like obviously she was fine,
but now like it's all sure, So I'm freaking out.
And then uh, They're like she's fine, she's fine. Are
you okay? And I'm like, yeah, I'm fine, but like
and I, you know, I'm just I can't collect that.
They're like, she's okay, and then he looks at me
and he's like, you gotta get it together. So I'm
like trying to calm myself down and he's like, you
get to drive the rest of the way up.
Speaker 1: I know.
Speaker 3: So I got in the back that they ditched, my
ditched the snowmobile. I got on the back with one
of the guides. They zip us up to the top.
We meet up with Mustafa and Alas, who now are
like it was you. There're so many old people and babies,
we thought for sure it was one of them. Never
thought it would be you, guys. I was so humiliated
as pathetic little video and I was like we flipped
over and I hurt my thumb and then on the
way back down, my shoulders started hurting. And anyway, but
you went through the rest of the trip. Right my
hand blew up. It was all brother, I sent you
the picture and I was like, you see the other guy.
My hand was all right, well, and I couldn't there
was my shoulder of hurt a lot. I couldn't move
it in certain ways. So when we got to Croatia,
we went to Copenhagen for a few days and then
we went to Croatia. We were going to be there
for a week at least, yeah week. I stopped and
got X rays. But it was like, I don't want
to waste my vacation with doctors, right, So I get
the X rays. There's no broken bones. Was forty eight
years old at the time. Figure, it's soft tissue. It's
going to take its time to heal. So I go
through the rest of the trip, you know, just I
didn't scoo. I canceled scuba diving. There were things I
couldn't do, but generally I was okay. And then we
come back to life and it can start school, and
I'm busy, busy, busy at work, and you know, we've
got Dad's party we're working on and all that stuff.
And I it was like five weeks later we actually
moved off, I broke his hand, and in between times
and he could move his fingers, he's like, hey, I
think I'm going to get an X ray. And then
we found out it was broken, and I was like,
because he said I think I'm going to get it
X ray and I was like why, I'm like, you
can move your and then I was like, don't listen
to me, honey, you want to get an X ray,
Get it x ray like I've been walking around.
Speaker 1: But that that was the mental in our house, right,
if the ship right, because I mean with the three boys,
if it wasn't for their mom, they would have been
bones that probably grew back a little crooked, because that
was just the way it was. You jumped off shit,
you did dumb stuff and then right right.
Speaker 3: So once his was broken, I thought, I'm not getting better,
Like I'm not. I'm not. I got better to like
a certain extent, and I'm not getting better. And I
had this weird lump of my thumb. So of course
you can't go to one doctor for a thumb and
a shoulder, and of course one's on the left and
ones on the right. And after all of a sudden
done I had ruptured a ligament in my thumb and
it had like like a rubber band snapping. The one
piece had herniated under the muscle, and then I had
a full thingness rotator, cuffed tear, and a bicep thing.
Speaker 1: So yeah, fire all recovering from that in the middle
of the holidays, and we come down and get drunk
last night and stay extra day. Oh it's fun. But
I uh, yeah, I really think that sometimes when I
when I think about you, I go, boy, that that
you're you're tough. You're tough. I know you don't maybe
you don't see it unless.
Speaker 3: To be honest with you, I don't know if it's tough.
I think I just I don't know what it is.
I don't have a good connection.
Speaker 1: You've been called you were crazy when with lime. I mean,
I really think they were trying to tell you had convergence,
which would be that it'll manifest in your body, but
it's all in your head. We're not saying that the
symptoms aren't real.
Speaker 3: But I mean I think about like I had not
to get into all my medical elements, but I mean
I had thyroid storm, which doesn't happen because people when
they start having those kinds of symptoms. They get it
checked out before it becomes a crisis.
Speaker 1: You don't complain either.
Speaker 3: Well, I did try to have it checked out. I
thought it was strapped through. We had little kids and
you know, and I just was, you know, it's okay.
I just you just keep going until I was really
almost dead.
Speaker 1: That's that's true.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And then like I had a lias on my
bed because I didn't think the baby had dropped yet,
like I was, but I do wonder.
Speaker 1: I was like, yeah, but I maybe you have a
different I don't want to say higher pain toms. Obviously
you recognize the pain, but maybe it's just in your mind.
It's not that serious.
Speaker 3: It could be worse, right, Oh, if this were like
really close and I are really about to give birth,
this would be worse. I've had a baby before it
hurt a lot. This hurts a lot, but like it
can't be that close.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Then two minutes later, there.
Speaker 1: He is, uh. Yeah. I think though, when you go
back and go, boy, what a what a confidence you had.
And I know you're gonna probably disagree, but that's the
thing that I've I've pulled out of our conversation that
I don't know that.
Speaker 3: I was aware off.
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously right to make the costumes and things,
but even more so to to say to a doctor
at seventeen, is that your daughter and drawn analogy that
would really connect emotionally with someone, because a lot of
times I would always say, like, especially with business, there's
business and there's emotion. We like the people we work with,
we feel bad we do this. Business is cold. It's
about it's about profits and losses. So that's what it is.
It's money. Doctors are about making sense of what it is,
and if it isn't something that makes sense, then it's
it's not anything. And to have that I find that, like, gosh,
that's really like insightful and a confidence to say to
the doctor in a way that will connect that's not
I mean, that's why I said to you. It's almost
as though it came out of nine oh two one
Ohero and a forty five year old grizzled writer wrote
the line it really does. I don't know any seventeen
year olds that said that.
Speaker 3: But I was pretty fed up at that point because
we are seventeen. Yeah. Yeah, we had been to a
lot of doctors at that point before were that, and
I wasn't hearing that exactly, but it just was like,
you know, I'm sick and I'm actively trying to get better,
and I don't want to be sick, you know, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I just think that that that confidence and then
to just go to South Carolina not come back and
I don't well, okay, but I mean my thing too,
is that But is she really because you raised an
independent woman to go and have the confidence to do
these things at a time we're still women were not
paid as well, maybe respected as much. Whatever. Uh maybe
the case today that you had that, I guess I
never really looked at it from that perspective. And I
even remember as a as a little kid. I mean,
you'd give it right back. By One of my favorite
stories was the one Dad told about taking your door off,
was that you were in college though, right, I.
Speaker 3: Don't know, I was in high school. I think I
was in I think I was in high school. Yeah,
I wasn't in college because I was still Uh no,
I was in high school. I actually remember the bri
I was doing, so I was definitely in high school.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you said, I clean this room where I'm taking
your door off, right, right?
Speaker 3: Right. I am so sickcau hearing your mother in nagamy.
You got to clean your room. She's give me a
rasher shit. She won't stop. You're not a cleaning room.
And now I'm like, what was wrong with me? Clean
your goddamn room? You pig like, come on, but that's
not what I did. I said, I'm not cleaning my room.
And if you don't clean the room, I'm taking your
door of your hinges. And I said, fine, you're taking
my door off the hinges. For every hour you have
it off, I'm removing an article of clothing. Because how
old were you? Probably well I obviously I didn't have lime,
so I think I was sixteen.
Speaker 1: Holy shit, But do you see that what I'm saying
the confidence, This isn't even like, this isn't like a
fuck I guess it is, but it's not a fuck
you you know verbal thing. This is a strategic, thought
out plan that I'm going to do this, and you
are going to put the door back. And he folded.
Speaker 3: He folded, He folded because I yes, I did. I
sat on my bed, took my shirt off. He walked
by Sophy my bra I said, you win, you kinda
know when you loose. I got Yeah, sometimes you just
kind of know when you loose. Put the doorway back.
Speaker 1: I know, I'm sure not, but I just go. That
is so like it's brilliant. It really is in a way, diabi,
that's a little diabolical, but I appreciate it. I think
that that's pretty clever. And certainly your kids are delight.
And uh, I think growing up we all got along fairly. Well.
I don't remember if I was too big a dick.
Speaker 3: I'd like to think so, right, Yeah, uh no, we did.
I think for the most part we got along. We
had our fights ally cat stitches, yeah.
Speaker 1: I do, But that was I would send Chuck in
to get you, beautiful hold me down. Yeah, he waw me.
I've told you that. I couldn't remember how I went.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 1: I held you down and he would come over and
scratch you. He had these sharp baby claws. He was
still little chucky doll. That's so funny. Well, thank you
for a h I love this conversation. Yes, I figured
it was. It was, and I think insightful to who
you are and what made you and the confidence and
the creativity and the just a mind of that wants
to do a lot of things, which I think is great.
You know, I was even saying to your your kids,
I'm like, you don't have to do one thing. You
can do many, yeah, and do them well. But I
I it's it's great. I love thank you for allowing
us to come for Christmas and letting Jackson crash and
do all that. You have been a big champion of
his for a very very long time. And I think
he uh is it's a very special ta I know that,
and so.
Speaker 3: He'll always I don't care that he's ten feet tall.
He's my first little baby. He's my first little my godson,
my firstborn.
Speaker 1: He always uh yeah, and he's a he loves his
aunt Kate. And every time he sees her, he's so
big and he gives you a huggy practically swallows you up,
you know. Little Yes, I always say to him, buddy,
you fit in my forearm. He was seven pounds in
something else's it's not the bigger baby, yeah, little chicken. Yeah.
All right, well, Kate, thank you for your your time,
your insight, the conversation and your kids were great and
for a wonderful, wonderful Christmas. Ah fun it has been
a lot of fun for my sister Kate. Bill Moran
will see you tomorrow.