A Medley of Best Advice

Episode artwork for Enthusiastic Encouragement and Dubious Advice Podcast for the Episode titled "A Medley of Best Advice”

Show Notes

This week we share a mélange, a medley, a menagerie, a veritable smorgasbord of some of our favorite advice. Some of it is great advice and some of the advice is a bit dubious and your mileage may vary!

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Sound editing by Jen Zink

Transcript

Patricia: Hey there, you rascals! Welcome to Enthusiastic Encouragement and Dubious Advice, the podcast for folks who would rather curl into the fetal position than lean in. I’m your host, Patricia Elzie-Tuttle. 

Nicole: And I’m not saying I’m secretly an Australian breakdancer, but I’m also not not saying that. I’m Nicole Elzie-Tuttle, and we’re recording this show on August 14th, 2024.

Patricia: Speaking of olympic events,

Both: [Laughing] 

Patricia: I want to make sure everyone knows that we need to keep the party going and keep cheering for people because the Paralympics in Paris start August 28th. 

Nicole: And I think this is really the first year that they are being broadcast in full, like Peacock is going to keep up the full coverage of all the events and everything as far as I understand it.

Patricia: Yeah, I don’t think it’s ever been that accessible 

Nicole: No 

Patricia: before, and so I’m actually really excited to 

Nicole: Yeah 

Patricia: get to see these athletes do their thing. 

Nicole: Yeah, it’s really cool. 

Patricia: I was thinking that, like, about the Olympics, I was just cheering for everyone, and it’s like, no, I just like cheering for people. It’s that enthusiastic encouragement.

And so I’m really excited. 

Nicole: I honestly, I don’t even know what events are happening yet in the Paralympics. I know there’s going to be like racing and diving and all of that. 

Patricia: I think there’s archery. 

Nicole: Yeah. 

Patricia: Yeah. 

Nicole: And standard field events. But I’m curious, like, what other fun events are gonna happen? 

Patricia: Yeah.

We’ll have to see. 

Nicole: Like, team sports and stuff? 

Patricia: Totally. 

Nicole: Yeah. 

Patricia: So, recently, we went out to my hometown, which is about 45 minutes east of where we live now. And there was some administrative stuff that I have been putting off since my mom died, and it’s actually something that is costing us a lot of money, and, you know, some people get left with generational wealth and some people get left with generational debt, and that’s just the reality, especially of the country we’re in. And I think I build things up in my mind, and so they get even harder, and I’m like, oh, we’re gonna go do this thing, and it is a simple matter of just changing ownership of a thing. 

And so we went and the people there were super helpful and kind and it wasn’t actually a problem, at least this first part anyway. We have to go back for like part two after they look at the paperwork, but I actually don’t think it’s going to be as huge a deal as I’ve built it up in my mind. 

Nicole: No, I think it was really easy.

I think I was less concerned about like the administrative and the paperwork. And more concerned about the emotional weight of the event, of just managing it. 

Patricia: Yeah, yeah. And it was like the weight was there, but I think I was worried about the, I don’t know, the paperwork that they were going to be mad at me and tell me that I’m, well, I’m out of luck because I waited so long 

Nicole: mmmm 

Patricia: or something like that.

So. 

Nicole: Yeah. That’s fair. 

Patricia: But I guess the lesson is even people who seem to have it all together, you know, I’m still doing that avoidance thing with certain stuff and it’s normal. 

Nicole: Yeah. 

Patricia: It’s normal. 

Nicole: It really is. 

Patricia: So many of us do it. And so don’t feel like you’re a bad person, especially if it’s something like grief, getting in the way of doing something, like give yourself some grace.

Nicole: Yeah. 

Are we gonna do a goals check in? It’s been a while. 

Patricia: It’s been a while. Yeah, I think when I told you we’re doing a goals check in, you were like, oh no. 

Nicole: Yeah. 

Patricia: Which could definitely be a reaction to that, like, maybe even taking it a step further. Some people hear me say, like, our annual, our yearly goals, our resolutions, whatever, and feel shame around that.

Nicole: Yeah. I don’t think my reaction was coming from a shame perspective. I think it was definitely a perspective of knowing that I have fallen off of my, or maybe I should say I’ve lost sight of some of my goals in the last couple of months, and so I haven’t been keeping up with them. Especially ones like letter writing and stuff that weren’t just a one and done.

Patricia: Right. And for me, I think, you know, we’re over halfway through the year, and looking at the goals I set up last December, it’s almost like a time capsule of who I was eight, nine months ago, and what was important to me then, and what has maybe shifted in these past eight months, and what is important to me now. Is there anything on that list that I want to pick back up? 

So, we have done some things. 

Nicole: We did. 

Patricia: We did do some things. 

Nicole: Yeah. 

Patricia: Which everyone knows we got our noses pierced. 

Nicole: Heck yeah. I’m very excited. It’s finally been about six months for mine, so I can finally get the studs swapped out for hoops. 

Patricia: OOooOOh! 

Nicole: I’m very, very excited for that.

Patricia: We have been using our shared planner. 

Nicole: It’s works really well. There was like a couple weeks where I just fell off adding my work schedule in there, so like the daily planner part, but even then still using it for a space for like our weekend to-do list type items and everything has steadily been maintained all year.

Patricia: Right, and I think it also kind of planning out, like we have that lengthy to do list, but also kind of planning out like, okay, what is getting done on Saturday? 

Nicole: Yeah. 

Patricia: And, you know, we pick up our CSA every other week. And so having that on the shared written calendar is actually really helpful in kind of getting ahold of what the weekend looks like. 

Nicole: It’s been really helpful for me to sit down and be like, okay, what does our Saturday look like? I don’t want to be sitting around expecting something to happen sometime late morning and not know, like, what is our plan? 

Patricia: Yeah. 

And the other thing that we have done is we’ve maintained this podcast. 

Nicole: We did. We’ve, we’re doing episode 21 today. 

Patricia: Ooh. 

Nicole: We’ve done 21 episodes. 

Patricia: Yeah, that’s pretty cool. 

Nicole: Good job us.

Patricia: For me as an individual, one of my things on my goals this year was to read more Octavia Butler. I haven’t read as much as I hoped, but I did read Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents, and I just need a lot of space after those. 

Nicole: Take a deep breath. 

Patricia: The other thing is that I wanted to make more videos online, and I’ve been starting to do that finally. I joined TikTok. I don’t know. I’ve actually kind of, I feel like I’m using it in a way that works for me, which is only checking in on the people I’m interested in, 

Nicole: mmhmm 

Patricia: putting videos out there, and then shutting the app. 

Nicole: Probably a healthy way to manage it. 

Patricia: Also, I’ve been wanting to be more deliberate about activism this year, and, you know, I’m definitely writing postcards to voters in swing states, and I was working on a project around book bans. And I also have some plans moving forward of a couple other things I’m going to be doing.

And the last thing is, I’ve been on and off with getting more movement into my days, but I actually have a family member who doesn’t live locally, but we’ve been texting each other every day for accountability, and that’s actually been really helpful. 

Nicole: That’s good. Yeah, I have definitely not been on my movement goal this year.

Things I have done, though, I’ve pressed a fair bit of flowers, almost all of them being ones that I grew, so that’s been going really well. I am still book tracking, I’m still tracking all the books I’ve read, that’s how I know if you heard, was it last episode, I think? Or the one before, where I mentioned I’d read, like, 50 books so far this year or something? It’s because I’ve stayed on top of my book tracking. 

And the one I am very proud of this year is I managed to get Patricia’s now, no longer super secret birthday gift together, which was a big project. And I’m so excited that I actually managed to put that together. So what are the things we want to try to pick back up?

Patricia: So when I was writing my notes for this script, I wrote pasta, but you,

Nicole: [Laughing] 

Patricia: you unbeknownst to you, I, I wrote that and you took us on a side quest the other day. 

Nicole: Yeah, you told me we needed to cut back the basil. 

Patricia: In our herb garden. 

Nicole: In our herb garden. Because all the basil has wanted to do the last, like, two months is make flowers.

It’s not making good, big, sexy basil leaves or anything. It’s just, any time we cut it back a little bit, it just decides to make more flowers. So you told me go butcher the basil plants. 

Patricia: Yes. 

Nicole: And I did that. We have three of them. And as I was looking at all the stems full of leaves that I cut off, I thought, even though these are small leaves, I wonder if it’s enough to make pesto with.

So I brought them to you and you said yes. So I started plucking them. 

Patricia: That was my first mistake. I said yes. 

Nicole: You said yes, I can make pesto with that. And so I plucked all the leaves I could. And said, look, we can make pesto with this. And you said, yes. I said, great. We should make pasta. 

Patricia: Well, I said, we don’t have pasta to eat with this.

Nicole: Right. And I said, that’s okay. We can make it. 

Patricia: So multi hour side quest on Sunday where we made pasta from scratch and we made like way too much Pasta, like it made… 

Nicole: It wasn’t. 

It made enough for two nights. 

Patricia: It was a lot of pasta, but we hadn’t planned for that much, so all of a sudden we’re rolling pasta and we’re like, oh dang, so I like had to get out the pasta drying rack and like put it together.

It was, as we’ve used in a past episode, it was a bit of a goat rodeo, but it was delicious. And also it kind of helped break the seal on pasta making. I’m like, okay, we could do this. This is manageable. So the other thing I really, really want to learn how to do for the end of the year is crochet. There is a kind of one and done thing I want to do, which is we have old 401ks from our jobs from like six years ago that we never moved. I know, not responsible, but whatever. I really want to move those and I want to get back into snail mail. Are there any things on your, you know, list that you want to try to get back to before the end of the year? 

Nicole: Yeah, I really want to try to get back into taking pictures of things.

I think it’s a good side quest, I guess. I don’t know. I just, I like getting out and taking pictures, especially since we have the cameras and everything. And part of that is sharing them with people as well. Not just like social media posting, but actually printing them and sending them to people and using them as part of my next big thing, which is doing more snail mail.

Yes, I want to do more snail mail. The first, what, four or five months of the year I did great. I sent off so much snail mail. But in particular, I’ve had this idea of not just like, write a letter and send it, but making the letter kind of its own little, almost art experience. Incorporating, you know, some pictures I took and the pressed flowers and special stationery and kind of putting it all together into this fun mail experience. And so that’s something I would really like to try to get at least one thing like that out by the end of the year, but hopefully more. 

Patricia: Yeah, I think this is doable. 

Nicole: I think so. 

Patricia: Before we get into the meat of the show, I want to remind people, one, of our Patreon where we also have an ongoing accountability check in every week, and two, I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it except for the outro of this show, But I have a bookshop.org affiliate site and any books that we mention on the show, I actually put on their own shelf on the bookshop affiliate site. So you don’t even have to like dig around for them or work really hard to remember the books we’re talking about. And that link is always in our show notes and it is always on our website at eedapod.com. Right at the top there’s a Bookshop link and we get a little kickback if you buy any of the books we recommend. 

Nicole: And that little kickback helps to keep us ad free. 

Patricia: Ad free. 

Nicole: Other than us saying, go to our bookshop and buy some books. 

Patricia: That too. 

Music: [Transitional Music] 

Patricia: So, today, I thought we could just do kind of a grab bag of advice. Some of the tips and tricks and ways of thinking that we try to employ that have helped improve our lives or even just our days. And so we’re going to talk about some of that. 

Nicole: So is this things like shower candy? 

Patricia: Could be things like shower candy, but now that you mentioned shower candy, you’re going to have to tell everyone about shower candy.

Nicole: Okay, so shower candy is a thing that I have. Currently shower candy is strawberries and cream Cream Savers. They’re the hard candies. 

Patricia: Which, if you don’t think Cream Savers still exist, we got them off Amazon, but I am not sure that, like, I can’t guarantee that these cream savers off Amazon aren’t 20 years old.

Nicole: Yeah, I can’t promise that, but they still taste good. But they’re a nice hard candy, and I only have them when it’s time to go take a shower. So it’s just like an extra treat for shower time. I don’t eat them any other time. They’re just for that. 

Patricia: Do you eat them before you get in the shower? 

Nicole: No, during the shower.

Patricia: Ah. 

Nicole: Yeah, this, no, it’s shower candy. It’s candy you have while you shower. And it’s, I mean, it just adds a little, little something to the shower. 

Patricia: [Laughing] 

Nicole: But it’s shower candy. It definitely brightens the evening up, because I’m an evening shower person. 

Patricia: Well, and it’s also, you only eat that candy, like it’s a special candy that you only eat 

Nicole: yeah 

Patricia: at shower time.

You don’t eat it any other time, right? 

Nicole: No, it’s very rare that I’ll grab one for any other time. I’ve gotten you to try it once or twice. 

Patricia: I like shower candy. 

Nicole: Yeah. 

Patricia: Yeah. 

Nicole: So there you go. Something to help improve your mood and your life. Shower candy. 

Patricia: Shower candy, oh my gosh. 

The first thing that comes to mind is something for me. 

Nicole: The first thing? 

Patricia: Well, first thing for me. For me. That we were talking about the other day. Is just remembering that people are generally better than we think they are. The internet, especially for those of us in marginalized communities, the internet can make everyone else out there seem very scary and that there is hate flying around everywhere, can’t even leave the house.

And I think about what has been happening in the UK. And that people were showing up in support of the people of color in the UK and one of their chants were to, to the fascists, they were like, there are more of us than there are of you. And that is such an important thing to remember, especially as we’re getting this onslaught of hate from the internet.

Nicole: And I think that that’s really kind of one of the big things to remember in all of this is that really those who are just mean people tend to be, like, extra loud and really work to make their presence known, and they take up a lot of space, and this is especially on the internet, like, they take up so much space.

And it gives us an outsized perspective on how many, like, truly terrible people there are out there. Their numbers are actually very, very small. And like you said, the majority of people are better. 

Patricia: I think the majority of people are good. 

And a concrete example of that is when we think about book bans and the book bans that are happening. The vast majority of the book bans or books being reported or trying to be banned or whatever is actually a very small amount of people.

And I don’t want to give numbers here because I don’t have the numbers correct in my head, but it is really a majority is just a few people. And, regardless of political preferences or anything like that, the majority of people are actually against book bans. But if you’re looking at the internet, you wouldn’t believe that, right?

You can’t infer that from what you’re seeing on the internet. And that’s something I, I try to keep in mind. 

Nicole: Yeah, I also try to keep in mind that especially when it comes to online life, people often behave in ways they wouldn’t normally in person when they’re online. And this comes down to a couple of things. Like, perceived anonymity, right? You, people don’t know who you are, you’re out there and you’re just another screen name or whatever, but also really a perceived lack of consequences. People can say the most terrible things and just step away from it and never even have to see the people who are responding to that, trying to tell them how terrible the thing they said are.

There can be very minimal consequences online, and this, this creates an environment where people can behave in these ways more frequently than they would if they were face to face. And I think we’re gonna link to an article that kind of discusses this. Uh… 

Patricia: Yeah, I think you have some citations. 

Nicole: I have some citations, yeah.

The, the main article we’ll link to actually discusses ways that these kind of factors can be used to actually get people to behave in more positive ways than they normally would. But in the literature review section of that article, they go through a lot of sources showing the reasons behind people behaving poorly online.

Patricia: Yeah. 

Well, and I think there are always some people like me who it’s like, I’ll say it on the internet and I’ll say it to your face. But I think that’s true for most people is that they say and do things on the internet that they would not do in person to someone’s face. 

Nicole: I think for me, one of the things that I, I try to remember when thinking about people in this way is every now and then you come across these moments on like Instagram or TikTok, or even occasionally a newspaper article or something where someone did behave terribly online, and the person they were acting against doesn’t respond with the same energy, right?

They instead bring kindness. They maybe ask like, are you okay? Do you need a hug? Like something seems to be going on with you that’s bigger than whatever is between us in this conversation here and it completely turns that interaction around and the person will be like, oh my gosh. Yeah. I’ve just been having like a really terrible couple of weeks. Like I’m really sorry. I didn’t even think that there was a real person on the other end of this. 

Patricia: Yeah, I remember seeing a video where there was a woman in a retail establishment being being being a Karen for lack of a better term and she was just yelling and screaming and one of the cashiers just looked at her and was like do you need a hug?

And the woman just burst into tears like just started crying 

Nicole: Yeah 

Patricia: didn’t even know what she was doing. And I also want to make it very clear that none of us are responsible for showing these folks compassion necessarily, if also if we’re feeling unsafe or if we’re feeling attacked or if we’re the victims of their hate.

But at the same time, it is, I mean, it comes back to, I still think people are better in person 

Nicole: yeah 

Patricia: often than they are online. 

Nicole: And I think a lot of people just don’t know how to handle the challenges they’re facing in their life. 

Patricia: Well, and I think, also when it comes to just being social, emotional intelligence, emotional regulation, these are a lot of things that a lot of people who are, call it even over 30 right now, have not learned.

Nicole: Yeah, and it’s not something that’s been regularly taught to people. 

Patricia: Another thing, another bit of advice, uh, or a thing that we’ve learned, especially with the pandemic, is the importance of new things. And I fully recognize this might be some dubious advice. Your mileage may vary with this one because new things could be really terrifying for some people, but for us, that novelty, those new things really keep us going. 

Nicole: And I want to be clear here, we are not talking about, like, novelty seeking as a behavioral issue. 

Patricia: Right, we’re not talking about, like, risky behaviors, we’re not talking about people who are maybe cheating on their partners or, or big risk taking dangerous things because they’re thrill seeking in an unhealthy manner.

We are talking about things like try a new bakery, like if you go to the same bakery all the time, try a new bakery, or take a different route to a place you usually go. I am an absolute sucker for taking the scenic route when we go places, or going to a different library branch, or trying a new recipe.

And we actually with the CSA, we’ve been trying some new things and I tried a cabbage, like a braised cabbage recipe with like pancetta and capers. And I think I liked the flavor. I didn’t like the texture, but I was happy we tried a new thing. 

Nicole: I still haven’t met a cabbage dish that I like, but this was probably the best cabbage I’ve had.

Patricia: That’s fair. Yeah. And you tried it. 

Nicole: I did try it. Of course I tried it, despite what four year old me would have ever thought. I definitely tried it. 

I want to add the importance of having something to look forward to. So, having new things to try, but also having a new thing to like, look forward to. And this isn’t just like, can’t wait for Friday, can’t wait for Saturday.

Like, it’s not just the weekend or your day off, but something a little more specific planned for that. Sometime in the future to look forward to. I know for us we still try to get this, even though we are still very cautious around COVID, and we’re finding the ways that we can balance these. For us, this often involves varying levels of the masks that we wear, but that does allow us to look forward to things like the theater.

Patricia: Yeah. Yeah. COVID makes this hard and capitalism makes this hard too. And I want to call that out that not only does it cost 60 bucks every time you leave the house, but also if you’re constantly working, it’s hard to, to make things to look forward to. 

Nicole: And this doesn’t have to be something that you spend money to go to like the theater or whatever.

Sometimes for us, it’s just planning like a morning trip to the beach to go walk at low tide. The only thing it costs there is, you know, the gas to get there in the money and the time, but it’s a fairly low cost adventure, but I will get really excited looking forward to that. If you try to plan that with me, like at the beginning of a week. That, I, that will definitely keep me going. 

It could be other things, though. This could be a friend date, just, just seeing a friend again. Or a phone call with a loved one. I do look forward to these when we do them and plan them out. And again, they’re really low cost things, but if there are people that you don’t see regularly. Like, plan a video call with them or something. 

Patricia: Yeah, it could also just having a movie coming out that you’re looking forward to. Or a new season of a show you like. Or even the next in a book series you like. And you stepped on my toes a little on this one with the theater, but Wicked is keeping me going right now. 

Nicole: It really is. Anytime we bring it up, your face lights up. I know you’re so excited for it. 

Speaking of next books in a series, though, I, is anybody else with me on this? Like, I don’t know how long we can all continue to hold on, waiting for Alecto the Ninth, for my, my Locked Tomb fans out there, with me. 

Patricia: You know what? People have been holding on for freaking Winds of Winter, for years. So I think, 

Nicole: Oh, I’m no longer holding on for that. I’m not even going to care when it comes out at this point. 

Patricia: Absolutely not. But I think that Locked Tomb fans have the capacity to wait at least as long. 

Nicole: Absolutely. Because we’re going to just keep rereading the three books that are out and developing more theories and becoming more and more unhinged as a fan base.

Patricia: [Laughing] 

Nicole: So I know this one’s going to be controversial. But it’s going to be the only exercise advice that we ever give. 

The best exercise is the one that you’re going to do. 

This isn’t going to solve your problem of not exercising, if the problem isn’t actually related to exercise. And is instead related to time, nutrition, money, ability, etc. If you have to work 60 hours a week and take care of multiple family members, finding the right exercise equipment might not be the issue. 

Patricia: Yeah, literally, like, capitalism might be the issue or, or many other things. And I think this bit of advice can definitely be expanded to things beyond exercise. Like the same flavor of this advice that I use is like the best planner, like every year around November, people start looking for the best planner.

The best planner is the one you’re going to use.

Nicole: [Gasp] 

Patricia: And I know this is going to be sacrilege, but I might even venture to say the best notebook is going to be the one that you’re going to use. 

Nicole: Wait, wait, wait. It’s not the one that is too fancy to write in? 

Patricia: I mean, I better buy it just in case it is. 

Nicole: Or like, is too cute, so now is not the time.

Patricia: Yeah, but it’s good to have on hand. 

Nicole: Okay. 

Another kind of related to this, and this one I’m a big fan of, the best food is the food that you’re going to eat. And this, this one’s really important for me as a person who has what I call safe foods. If I don’t know what I’m going to eat or if I’m too overwhelmed or too hungry, I know there’s like one or two things that I can definitely pull out and just eat almost at any time.

Patricia: Yeah. 

Again, revisiting one of our earlier episodes, like not every meal is going to be five stars and I eat a lot of cereal. 

Nicole: When I was a kid, I would have told you that Lucky Charms was a five star cereal. 

Patricia: Was it only the marshmallows of Lucky Charms, or did you eat the cat food part, too? 

Nicole: Oh, I totally ate the cat food part.

Patricia: Oh my god. [Gagging Sounds] 

Nicole: It was sugar coated cat food. 

Patricia: [Sounds of Concerned Disapproval] 

I even expand this, and I actually get this from KC Davis at Struggle Care. Kind of expand this flavor of advice to cleaning and organizing. And for me specifically, I kind of tried to let it expand to getting rid of books. Have a lot of books around here. And in my mind, I’m like, oh, I want to do giveaways. I want to do all these things. 

But in reality, I’m more likely to sell books to the used bookstore. And I think the best cleaning, the best organizing is what works for you and what you’re actually going to do. 

Nicole: Can we maybe make an appointment to sell some books? I feel like we’re starting to drown in books.

Patricia: It’s on the to do list. In my head. 

Nicole: I was gonna say, it’s not in the planner that we use. 

Patricia: No, it’s not in the planner, but the piles are separate already. 

Nicole: Oh, is that what those are? 

Patricia: Some of those.

Both: [Laughing] 

Patricia: I think this is going to be the last bit of advice for today. Like, we have, like, a bunch more advice. We’re gonna have to do more kind of advice potpourri episodes. 

Nicole: Uh, advice that is at various levels of dubiousness. 

Patricia: [Laughing] 

Do we have to come up with a dubiousness scale? Dubiosity 

Nicole: oooooh 

Patricia: scale? 

Nicole: What is the dubiosity scale?

Patricia: [A sound that means “I don’t know”] 

Anyway, last bit of advice. And this one I’m sharing comes to me from the book Wallet Activism, which is a phenomenal book. I love this book. And it is this. The most environmentally friendly thing you can do is to use what you have. 

Nicole: Ugh. 

Patricia: I know. I know. Shopping is fun. 

Nicole: Shopping is fun, but also, like, I get really bored with the clothes I have.

Patricia: Mm hmm. 

Nicole: Even though they still fit, and they’re in good repair. 

Patricia: Yeah, it’s hard, and, you know, I, I support accessories. 

Both: [Laughing] 

Patricia: But I’ve also had people tell me like, oh, I’m going to replace all my plastic cooking utensils with wood or metal, or I’m going to replace all my plastic food containers with glass ones because it’s more environmentally friendly.

But if you’re actually throwing those plastic containers that you’ve already purchased that are still usable, if you’re throwing those away, then the increased consumption is actually not more environmentally friendly. Like, using what you have, if you already own the things, keep using it. 

Nicole: Yeah, this is another area I struggle with in particular is the kitchen, because we definitely have a hodgepodge of all the kitchen things, from cooking ware to plates to mugs to all the Tupperwares and everything.

And as much as I would love to just like, stuff it all in the bin and start over with, like, nice, matching, like, Le Creuset stuff or something. Like, there’s nothing wrong with the stuff we have. 

Patricia: No, and, you know, I grew up, my mom and I lived with her parents, with my grandparents, and they had lived through the Great Depression, and I grew up in a household where we would wash ziplocks and we would just use things into the ground.

I just, and I still. I don’t wash Ziplocs, which I really should start, but I do try to use things into the ground. Like, we don’t get new phones unless our phones are literally not working anymore. 

Nicole: Your truck’s like 20 something years old. Absolutely. 

Runs great. 

Patricia: It does. 

Nicole: Yeah. Along these lines though, repair.

Repair is something that I have been finding to give new life to things like my favorite boots. I’ve gotten, I don’t know how many new seasons I’ve gotten out of them just by having them resoled instead of throwing these ones out and buying a new pair. 

Patricia: Yeah, and I think that also depends on the quality of items, like if you can afford To buy things that can be repaired, like environmentalism is still very like ableist and classist in a lot of ways. And I get that. And sometimes like you need boots and you need to get them from Target. Right. And those aren’t necessarily boots that can be repaired. 

But being able to repair what we have. We learned how to re grease our KitchenAid stand mixer. 

Nicole: Yeah, we should probably do that again soon. 

Patricia: We should probably do that again soon.

But yeah, just being able to like clean up and repair what we have. And again, using what you have is the most environmentally friendly thing you can do. 

Nicole: I’m, I am gonna leave the washing the ziploc bags to you though. 

Patricia: That’s fine. 

Nicole: I can’t stand doing that. 

Both: [Laughing] 

Patricia: But also along these lines, I think there shouldn’t be shame in regifting things too.

Nicole: Absolutely not. There is, I don’t think there’s any shame in regifting. Especially if the person you’re giving the item to is going to love it more than you, 

Patricia: yeah 

Nicole: right? And this is something I still kind of struggle with because of emotional attachment to objects. 

Patricia: Mm hmm 

Nicole: But like, I may have an emotional attachment, but it’s not actually bringing me joy. I’m not loving it. If I know someone else is gonna love it, like, I want to give it that life and let someone else get more life out of that thing. Need to practice that more. 

Patricia: Yeah, well, eh were coming up on the holidays eventually, so. 

Nicole: Yeah. 

Patricia: [Chukle] So, I think we’re gonna leave, like, these other multiple little bits of advice we have for a future show.

Nicole: Will it be episode 42? 

Hopefully before then. 

Patricia: Who knows. 

Nicole: We’ll see how people like this one. 

Patricia: Yeah. 

Nicole: If you really like this grab bag episode. Let us know. 

Patricia: Yeah, actually, you know what? Leave us a five star review and put in the review, like, let us know that you liked this episode specifically. 

Nicole: Yeah, or go tell us on Patreon.

Patricia: Yeah. 

So I don’t really have a takeaway, but, you know, talking about Patreon, I also think there’s a lot we can learn from the people who listen to this show, and so I’m probably at some point for paid patrons going to start a monthly advice sharing thread. So also let us know if that’s something you’d be interested in.

Do you have a takeaway? 

Nicole: Try shower candy. It might bring you more joy than you think it will.

Music: [Transitional Music] 

Patricia: Speaking of joy. Nicole, what is filling your cup? 

Nicole: Okay, what is filling my cup this week is one of my besties crocheted a little monster plushie and sent it to me in the mail. And it was a fantastic surprise to get this like, kind of stuffed package situation. I was like, what is in this? Because it was, it wasn’t a box.

It was like a, a soft pack envelope. I was like, what the heck is going and I open it up and there’s this like little one eyed monster that like came, I want to say crawling out of this envelope, but like, they have been bringing me so much joy. They hang out with me on the couch all the time. Just, like, as I’m working on, you know, this episode or anything else.

Just really makes me smile and has definitely filled up my cup. 

What about you, Patricia? What has, what has been filling your cup? 

Patricia: I know this is going to sound really basic, but in season tomatoes are really bringing me a lot of joy right now. Yeah, I’ve just been getting expensive tomatoes from the farmer’s market and eating them with mozzarella and balsamic and olive oil, and that’s been really lovely.

Nicole: But these aren’t like your standard, pale, large, just like 

Patricia: Grocery store tomatoes. 

Nicole: Grocery store tomatoes. No. 

Patricia: They’re not hothouse tomatoes. 

Nicole: These have, like, some colors in them. They’re not, like, perfectly round. 

Patricia: No, they’re like heirloom tomatoes. 

Nicole: Yeah. 

Patricia: But they’ve been bringing me so much joy, and I’m just trying to get my fill before they’re not in season anymore.

Nicole: I am, I am not a tomatophile, but these look like really good tomatoes. 

Patricia: And the other thing filling my cup is I was at a work retreat and we were actually at one of my coworker’s houses out on his back patio, and I actually, in the moment, it scared the heck out of me because I heard this sound. And what it actually was, was a hummingbird thought I was a flower because of my bright purple hair, and it was trying to eat my head.

But I think, you know, I had just gotten my hair dyed two days before, and so I texted the person who does my hair, and I was like, good job. You, you fooled a hummingbird. 

Nicole: I, I would like to clarify, in the hummingbird’s defense. It was not trying to eat your head. It was trying to gently lick the pollen off your head.

Patricia: Baby, that doesn’t make it any better. 

Nicole: Yeah. 

Patricia: No. No. 

Nicole: Just a little, a little tiny hummingbird tongue. 

Patricia: No. Stop it. Stop it. Nope. Stop it. 

Nicole: [Silly sound meant to be that of a hummingbird tongue] 

Patricia: Anyway, that’s our show for today. We’d like to thank our awesome audio editor, Jen Zink. You can find her at loopdilou.com. We’ll leave a link to that in our show notes. 

Nicole: You can find the full show notes and transcript at eedapod.com, that’s E E D A P O D dot com. There you can also find a link to our Patreon, our bookshop link, and a link to the ongoing Enthusiastic Encouragement and Dubious Advice newsletter. You can also find us on Instagram and bluesky at eedapod, and email us at eedapod at gmail.com. 

Patricia: We are nothing if not consistent.

Nicole: We would also appreciate it SO MUCH if you would subscribe and rate us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts that allow ratings. Doing this really helps other people find us. 

Patricia: We would also appreciate anyone who can subscribe to us on Patreon. Support is going to help us keep this show going, especially without ads.

You can find us at patreon.com/eedapod. In the meantime, we hope you find ways to be kind to yourself, drink some water, and read a book. We’ll be talking to you soon.

Nicole: I don’t recommend reading a book in the shower. I think that’s a step too far. 

Patricia: Sounds like a challenge.