Take The Waters

Quinn: [00:00:00] People catch me talking to myself and they don't realize it's like an iceberg. It's one 10th of the conversation. The rest of it's inside and it's crazy pants.

Welcome to Not Right Now, the podcast about parenting through all of this.

Claire: We'll be talking about slash crashing out over topics like

Quinn: Deciding whether you need to fight today for trans rights or for them to please just brush their teeth all the way.

Claire: Group chat drama during actual global drama.

Quinn: Climate anxiety and Mom, I'm bored, one second after you walk in the door from a field drip.

Claire: Book bans and stop reading under the covers. And do I have to read the New York Times just because we subscribe to it?

Quinn: It's not an advice show.

Claire: It's a you're not alone and you're also not crazy for screaming in the shower kind of show. I'm Claire Zulkey from Evil Witches.

Quinn: And I'm Quinn Emmett from Important, Not Important.

Claire:You can find details on anything we talk about in the show [00:01:00] notes or at our website not right now dot show.

Quinn: Dot show. And if you like what you hear today, please share it with a parent who needs it or who might laugh and tell their kids to be quiet. And then drop us a nice little five star review.

Claire: And reminder. You can send questions or feedback to questions at not right now dot show.

Welcome home, are you guys, all the laundry has been done, all the luggage has been put away?

Quinn: Maybe we've discussed this before. I am one of those crazy people. I mean, we pulled into the house at almost 1:00 AM so I guess technically Sunday morning, Saturday night, Sunday morning, and I immediately started emptying suitcases and doing laundry. I have to look around and be like, I'm done.

I didn't finish the laundry, but I started, suitcases were emptied. Now the children empty their own and they've gotta put it in their bin. They gotta bring me the bin, but my shit, Dana’s shit emptied, gone like it never happened. So I didn't go to bed till, you know, whatever, 330. But I got that stuff done.

Yeah, we're, we've been home [00:02:00] for three, four days. It's great. It's great. We're recovering.

Claire: Yeah, so, so tell me about the trip. Tell me, you sent me, I said pics or it didn't happen. You sent me one photo. Pretty meager. But yeah, I wanna know what you would do differently, what you would recommend and the Not Right Now of it too is I'm so curious to hear like how you hit the, you know, just the right medium of forcing the kids to appreciate what was happening, but also, you know, not nagging them and guilt tripping them constantly.

Quinn: As you know, I'm usually subtle about those kinds of things, so I took that right up to Alaska. It was great. Truly wouldn't change a thing. Here's the deal. Alaska, even before I got into this stupid career, Alaska's been top of my bucket list forever. And this, Alaska and the experience we did, blew it outta the water. It was amazing. So for listeners, we did essentially a week, [00:03:00] six days, six nights or so on a small boat. I mean, not like a fucking canoe, but not a cruise ship. Five crew, holds 12 passengers.

There were only 10, we were five of them, six days, six nights, basically in Glacier Bay National Park, Alaska. And, shout out by the way to our amazing crew. Our captain Jake, our the cook or chef, Sven, the naturalists Savannah and Monica and the engineer Jordan, they're all amazing, but also did 12 other jobs on top of all those things, they're amazing. The ship's called the Sea Wolf. Can't recommend it enough. A few other friends recommended it to us. It is a 1941 Minesweeper that's still alive. Still has the original engine, which they let me touch, which is surprising. It's fantastic and basically every day in a very low key way, which was great for us.

And I kind of checked ahead of time but it was great it came through. We were [00:04:00] offered the opportunity, encouraged or offered the opportunity depending on how we were feeling and what we were thinking of let's say in the morning shift, a very easy, I'm not even called a hike, like a walk for two to four hours through foliage and amazing ecosystems.

All of which were pretty different, which is crazy considering how small the actual area is. Or in the afternoon or vice versa, whatever, the same tempo of a kayak and that sometimes wasn't available because if we're in an area like the more northern parts of the bay there might be a decent amount of ice around.

And if the wind's blowing the wrong way, you can get trapped. Doesn't matter what kind of size boat you're in. So they would just be like, sorry, we're not doing the kayaks. But you could also opt outta that stuff, which was great for us if we needed to, but we really didn't. I think we didn't do one or two things.

The other five passengers were all amazing people. If you're listening, I love you. I miss you. An older [00:05:00] couple in their seventies, another couple about our age who didn't have kids, but very quickly adopted mine, which was fucking incredible. And a gentleman who mid seventies, done a lot of adventuring rafting, things like that from Texas, had recently lost his wife and ended up coming by himself.

So we all tried to adopt him which was great. It was amazing. My predominant thought was how grateful I am the entire time. And then the second one, I really wanna go back with my guy friends and do it again. No cell, no wifi the entire time.

Which was incredible. Our oldest with his first girlfriend did say that we had in the first 24 hours severed him from her. So we dealt with that. It got better as it went along. We talked about being able to feel multiple things at a time, Jesus Christ. But it was really great. The kids are the perfect age, you know, 12, 11 and 10.

The crew was amazing with them. The other passengers on the boat, the only places they were allowed to go by themselves, again, even at their age, and though they're really good swimmers, doesn't matter. Insurance, [00:06:00] liability, fucking 35 degree water was basically like the salon, like small little living room.

And the sort of little back deck where we ate or their room, which was perfect. It was like the basement of the boat. Three little bunks down below the little living room. Anywhere else they had to wear a life jacket and they had to have an adult, preferably their parent, take them places.

And the way to deal with that is to not take the places. And then they can't go. And it's amazing, including they can't get to your room, which is a real win. Even though we were like two feet away. We did try to escort them wherever they wanted to go. 'cause there, there was, I mean, just, it's not a big boat against a tiny little mine sweeper.

It was amazing. I mean, if I had done no activities and just rode on the boat and looked at fucking whales and foliage and trees and water, I would've called it a great trip.

Claire: You guys did sea whales?

Quinn: I bet we saw, again, not my opinion because it would be wrong, [00:07:00] the naturalist's opinion, probably between 10 and 20 unique whales, mostly humpbacks, though we saw from a distance, an orca or two, which means you gotta get the fuck outta there at this point. Hundreds of sea lions and sea otters and harbor seals and I mean, truly, the variety and volume of birds.

You don't see much fish unless you're actually on a kayak in a more shallow area because so much of it is glacier water which is pretty silty in the top layer, so you can't really see through it. So many fucking bears, these things. God damn. And you'd be hiking, you'd be like, well, that's fresh bear poop. Time to get in the kayak

Claire: I am out. No. Goodbye.

Quinn: I know I'm going on and on here.

Claire: No, I wanted to know.

Quinn: So, just, some quick context, which was really interesting 'cause it's about your latter question of like, how did I balance shit out? Again, I'll get this wrong. Glacier Bay National Park.

So Glacier Bay, again, Southeast Alaska. A very small part of Alaska, but really beautiful. So [00:08:00] when the first white colonist explorers like really showed up there in the 17, 18 hundreds, Glacier Bay was all, it was one entire glacier. Like there was nowhere to go. So that has now mostly retreated into a bunch of smaller glaciers that other, again, white explorers found over time that are each retreating on their own.

But what's so interesting if you do that math when you're looking at ecosystems and things like that, especially these relatively on, I'm not gonna say untouched, but not ruined places. Every forest you're looking at, every shoreline, all these things. Only a couple hundred years old. It's all like in geological and plant timescales, basically new, which is crazy.

Especially 'cause they're all so different. So you're wrestling with the fact that and for a lot of that time it's been a national park. Not, I mean, not a lot, but you know, a third of it, not a [00:09:00] lot of folks have been here, which is really wild and wonderful. It's a real snapshot. It's easy and correct and incorrect to say, well, indigenous people were there for a long time and they were, but also we don't know.

'cause there was a glacier covering it for so long, which is so crazy. And to so recently. So they've started to find some things. And some things are, they're able to carbon date, but this is a part of Alaska where they're actually, they don't have a ton of data on that stuff. It's really interesting, again, in this very small specific part.

So, yeah, we saw, I dunno, six to nine different glaciers now, all of which are in various stages of retreat. Of course again, the main ones started retreating well before the industrial age. Not long before, but well before, obviously we've advanced that quite a bit. Again, it's warming about four times as fast up there as it is almost anywhere else.

But I really [00:10:00] tried for me to not fucking ruin it. I tried to relate and commiserate with the naturalists and everyone who's just to again, like anyone who's a passenger was not cheap, but also the crew wants to be there. You don't do this job unless you wanna be there. You don't visit it because it's such a pain in the ass to get to and pay for it unless you want to be there.

So you don't wanna ruin it. But everyone already had a pretty good appreciation for what it was, why it was, and how it's changing. You know, the naturalist, one of them, Monica had, you know, she's been leading tours on that specific boat for 11 years, I think she said. And every time we visited a glacier she was not afraid to say, she wouldn't say look what climate change has done. She'd be like, when I started coming here's where it was and here's where it is now. And when you look at what it is now, which, if you'd never been to a glacier up close, it's unreal, man. It really, so much of it looks like, did you see Interstellar?

You should watch it. There's a planet that's just covered in ice and it looks like that. [00:11:00] And because the volume, it's crazy. You just don't run into this sort of thing very often and then you look and go, wait, that much is gone. Like, where the fuck does it go? And you go, oh, that's all this water that we're in that we're driving our boat in.

So I tried not to, but you know, I would as usual, like anything, when I buy the kids a bagel, I'm like, I hope you're grateful. So I took that same attitude to that.

Claire: So what did the kids do then, like for their downtime?

Quinn: Yeah, for totally. So Kindles but also again, at any given moment, you could be having a conversation with one-on-one, with someone or in this little group, which we all got to know each other very quickly. Or with the crew or some combination of that or just reading. And someone would be like, bear!

And literally, because it's the point of the boat, the captain just stops and you just sit in a place for an hour and a half and watch a bear do its thing with binoculars, right? Or a whale, which any of the sea life, not only are you not allowed to approach, to look for or get closer to, but you stay further away.

And they were very respectful of that. But that doesn't mean they can't [00:12:00] suddenly pop up near you and, you know, some of these animals because the area is so new and because they restricted so much. I think it's in the entire bay. I think they said two total cruise ships a day, which is not a lot. And then six boats our size.

We would maybe see one other boat, a day, you know, which is other humans. That's it. That's it. There's a few little camping sites, but pretty rare. So the point is like the, just the riding on the fucking boat was a huge part of the experience. And they would say, do you wanna go kayaking?

We're like, we're drinking coffee and it's like raining and there's whales. We're good. We're good.

Claire: That's awesome.

Quinn: So kids did that. And then I also got them and I'll put the link to this in the show notes, also, not cheap, but been on my list for a long time. iPods, like old classic wheel iPods right before the trip because I always yell at them for listening to music on their iPads.

'cause they eventually just do 400 other things and they love music and they fucking love these things, so.

Claire: I presume you got the iPods from like eBay or something like that, but I [00:13:00] would be, I feel like I would get them and be like, my new computer doesn't know how to get the music into the old iPod.

Quinn: It is a really good question. It's a guy in Europe. I researched it quite a bit. He does refurbished ones, brand new batteries, which last forever, but also brand new solid state hard drives. So instead of a thousand songs in your pocket, still one of the greatest ads of all time. I think I put 3000 songs on each of theirs, the same 3000 and it used up 1% of the space or something like that, you know.

And so basically it actually does work. If you have a Mac, hook up to the iTunes and the Mac will recognize it. And you can only drag over either music you've ripped from CDs or you actually purchased from iTunes. But it works very well.

Claire: Was there any seasickness from anyone?

Quinn: Oliver the first day for 20 minutes, and we brought a lot of non-drowsy Dramamine which is the cheat code. Truly, like little canisters, just keep him with you. Kids can take half of one, but now he's huge. He just takes a [00:14:00] whole one. And he was good.

Claire: We get the bands, 'cause James loves reading in the car, which is relatable, but it makes him sick. Did you watch Poop cruise? The Netflix? I'm not saying you should, but that made me think of you guys.

Quinn: No, I don't know what it is. I'm not interested because of the name. And that's, no, we were, I'm aware of it. I've had friends run into that sort of thing, if that's what you're talking about. No, we were very lucky.

Claire: It is not what I thought it was. Steve and I watched it. This will be for one of our future episodes and how you keep the romance alive. One of them for us was watching Poop Vruise. If you are like in a bad head space and wanna clear your mind and watch something pretty dumb, that's it.

And I presumed, based on the title that it was one of those like norovirus cruises, but I don't remember this story, but it was a ship, a carnival cruise that lost all of its power. 'cause they had a fire in the engine room. And so all the power was out and the power controls the toilets. There's a lot of things wrong with this doc, and I can go into it, but one of the things that bugged me, it was that they didn't talk to anyone who had a child younger than 12 years old. Again, there's a lot of weaknesses with this doc, but I was like, I can't believe no one talked about the people who had diaper babies. [00:15:00]

Quinn: What are you talking like? That's crazy. That’s our target audience.

Claire: Yeah. This cruise should have been four days long and it ended up being eight days long. And at one point to mollify the guests, they started giving away all the booze, which to me was one of the scariest parts, honestly more than anything else.

Quinn: Can I tell you something and you can put this in my advanced directive. If that happens, you can just kill me.

Claire: I've never been on a cruise and they were showing footage of it and I was like, this looks like my nightmare. Just 'cause it's so many people in an enclosed space. And that's really what gives me the heebie-jeebies.

Quinn: In climate change, we call the externalities, how many things you're exposed to at once and I'm not doing it. My kids are enough, it's bad enough. I would go down there in their little like bunker room and there's a little bathroom in there. Claire, you've never been more upset by how bad something smelled. I'm like, you've been here for 48 fucking hours. I'm like, what is your problem?

Claire: Well, and then my other question was, what did you guys eat? Like how did they feed you?

Quinn: Yeah. So there's a cook on board and basically fill out these forms ahead of time and basically say what you eat, [00:16:00] if there are any allergies or restrictions or not or I guess preferences. A lot of fish. Crab, which is great, ton of, but they also had a lot of good greens. There was a walk-in freezer below, so they keep things you know, relatively fresh.

Yeah again, between the cost and the time to get out there, need to stay at a hotel, or we stayed at a bed and breakfast on the way out there, again from the east coast. For us, coming from a smaller town, Virginia, it was four flights to get to the boat, four flights to get home, five people.

And then the boat itself, you know, it's a lot. It's not cheap, but best money I've ever spent. And I bought my kids.

Claire: Yeah, tell people who are listening about the packing and how well the kids stayed packing themselves up.

Quinn: So bad. It was, so the boat was like, here's the deal. We do the same trip every week to the same place. We provide this rigorously tested list of [00:17:00] clothing and gear you should bring and all the things you do not bring. And my kids upon, given each, of course, I made a list for each of them in three columns. Things you definitely have that we as a family have in our house, in our possession, things we do not have that we might need like actual rain pants. Like you might not have like rain pants, right? And then what has been packed, and as we've talked about, we've tried more and more to be like, it's your responsibility.

You didn't bring your lunch to school. Water bottle. Go fuck yourself. This was not the trip to do that. And thank God we caught it in time because when Dana and I went up there the night before of course, and said, okay, you guys said you packed. That's great. I think Henry had two socks. They asked you to bring eight pairs just for the boat.

I think Oliver had an odd number. Charlotte I think didn't have any underwear. No one had hats, for sun. I think Oliver brought a couple t-shirts for Alaska. It was catastrophic. Catastrophic. [00:18:00] And again, I was like, add nothing else that's not on this list and bring everything that's on this list.

No room for maneuvering on any side. And they said, I'm not gonna fucking do that.

Claire: Yeah. Yeah, hat math is like water bottle math, where you're like, how is my house full of disgusting baseball hats? And yet none of you can find one when you need one or find the one that you need.

Quinn: Especially not the one they need for their game. We fixed it. It was exactly what they needed. 'cause you get stuff dirty and wet. Like wrong week to stop sniffing glue. Don't give them the responsibility when it could actually fuck the whole thing up.

Claire: I had on Witches, I started a thread about what are your kids bringing to camp for lunch? And a lot of them said, our kids are packing their own lunch. And I kind of come from the same place where I'm like, I could do that. But then their lunch would be five small bags of Fritos and nothing else. So, and I guess that's their problem, but also, you know, then I would have to be the one waiting for them to strain on the toilet to, you know, [00:19:00] register a meager poop.

Quinn: Screaming while they poop as a stranger walks in your house.

Claire: Yeah. Only always when the shower is running. Yeah. And then my last question, or well, famous last words, last question. So for the flights, were you just you can do screens, like whatever, or what was your getting through the flight situation?

Quinn: We made an agreement very quickly that you can use iPads, which again, they just only really give for Duolingo during the day. Normally, iPads on flights, not on layovers, and we had three layovers in the first day. Rest of the time you could just fucking read a book, Kindles, which I'll stock with whatever and iPods or talking to a human.

And they were pretty good about that. They're fucking idiots sometimes I'm like, if you put your brightness at 100%, it's gonna run out in an hour. And they go, that's not how it works. I go, okay. I said, but I'm not gonna charge it on this plane. I'm not taking all my shit out to do it. And 45 minutes into a flight to a full on like Donner party trip to Alaska, they're like, my iPad's outta batteries.

[00:20:00] And you're like, I don't know what the fuck to tell you. Sorry.

Claire: I’m just gonna start screaming until somebody fixes this.

Quinn: So, yeah, I mean we tried not to ruin it with look at how expensive this is. 'cause they were actually on really good behavior. We did more of that when we got home and they were mad about going to camp for a day. And we were like, are you fucking kidding me?

Claire: I was wondering if they like fell apart at the end. 'cause I do feel like my kids often are good through all the hard shit. And then it's at the very end when they all start, you know, falling apart and it's harmless, but you're all exhausted.

Quinn: You are all exhausted. It's nobody's fault. I mean, you're fucked up. You've been in like dry air all day from the planes and screens and all that shit. You're coming back, it's 99 degrees outside. Like it's awful. They were pretty good. It's a four hour time difference. Definitely fucked them up for the first few nights.

Claire: Yeah.

Quinn: Which then fucked us up.

Claire: I wanted to know about the ADHD, like how that all went in terms of the medicating, what was your guy's method with that? Or you're just like, let's let it roll and see how it goes.

Quinn: Did not do that. Medicine in the morning. Yeah, two different experiences. [00:21:00] One, when they're in a kayak and can't fucking go anywhere, it's what are they gonna do?

Claire: Right.

Quinn: Two, when they're walking in a forest where there's definitely been bears in the past 12 hours, you better make sure you've given that child their fucking medicine.

'cause there are definitely times where you're like, that dude's a hundred yards away at a stream, which is exactly what they told us not to do. His odds of dying right now without a bear in sight are 90%. So that's how that went.

Claire: Yeah. You guys are amazing parents to give your kids that experience and take me with you next time.

Quinn: Again, not cheap, not the most expensive, but not cheap, all included. Not the flights. But I find it very difficult to believe that anyone could experience that for even 24 or 36 hours and not leave with beyond appreciation a resolution to protect more places, but also to give more people access to those kinds of places in [00:22:00] a, you know, in a leave no trace kind of way. Let's talk about James' desire for the four free bobbleheads.

Claire: So last week or two weeks ago, we had a marathon day of events where we went to the Chicago White Sox game, which is an hour drive away. And we bought the tickets and we took my parents. So this is all, you know, very expensive to just do that. And we actually got them before the game started, but they were giving away Louis Aparico Bobbleheads, which were way more in demand than I thought they'd be. So they were all gone by the time we got there, but, which is fine. So we go to the game, come home, and then we go to see Weird Al perform at Ravinia, which is you guys have Wolf Trip, I know in DC that's like our version of that, an outdoor music place kind of thing. And, we hired a car to take us to Ravinia. 'cause I didn't wanna deal with schlepping our shit.

Quinn: Sorry, this is all one day?

Claire: Yeah. One day. Yeah. It actually all went pretty well aside from me. No, I did yell at James.

I lost my shit. Because he was trying to tell me, I accidentally closed the door in Paul's face and I was asking a woman what time the show [00:23:00] ended and he was interrupting me like mom, you closed the door in James's face. And I snapped at him and I said, I'm talking to her right now.

She's more important than you are right now. And then I don't dunno if you ever yell at your kids and then you hear like a small smattering of like giggles from adults who can hear you nearby. So that was the main thing that happened. Anyway, but the game was fun. We caught a rare White Sox winner. We saw Nancy Faust, who is the legendary organist to the team. She's the reason why you hear Kiss and Goodbye whenever they take a pitcher out of a baseball game. But yeah, some White Sox game coming up, I think they're giving away a selection of pitcher bobbleheads and James already has like probably 10 bobbleheads that he's gotten from other people or through us over time. And he said, I wanna go let's go to that. And it was just one of those things, I didn't have the energy, I had a, like a rough mental health day yesterday and I was like, I'm just gonna skip this lecture right now, but I wanna be like, dude, those are free to you.

But the tickets alone would cost $300, $400 and this is [00:24:00] for a bad team, you know, a bad unpopular team, not to mention the time going down there. And then you buy all the food and drinks, which is another probably couple hundred dollars. And so, yeah, that's all just that he thinks that that's how you acquire bobbleheads is by just, you know, the freedom that comes with that.

So I just, yeah, I didn't have it in me to yell at him about the waste of it all. But that's how he thinks things work.

Quinn: How does a parent explain that to them without yelling at them? I don't understand. 'cause once you've gotten to that point and it's about something like that, after a day like that, and we did have to have a couple of these conversations when we got back about, I understand you want to wait to go to camp until noon, but it starts at eight. Mom and Dad have jobs and we did birthday parties and New York and Alaska.

I'm gonna need you to remember what you have, not just what you don't have. But it was a version of yelling 'cause I didn't know any other way to get the point across.

Claire: Well, for the record, my family yelling is any sort of [00:25:00] tone or discussion that is negative. I found a new approach, which is to threaten them with a lecture. When I'm tired of hearing myself talk like that, and I'm tired of being the bitch, the constant bitch police, like the killjoy. There was something going on, like where they were asked, I forgot what, but I said, James, I'm queuing up a talk pretty soon coming up about having too much and not having enough.

And I was like, do you wanna hear it now or do you wanna hear it later?

Quinn: I'm fucking into this.

Claire: Alright. Well, yeah, it's a little like appetizer of this is on deck and we can either cue it up, go for it now, or you can hear what I have to say.

Quinn: Just a little taste, just a little preview. And give them the choice.

Claire: Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. 'cause like for instance, yesterday, I took Paul, our older one, went to this outdoor concert across the street and there's this plumber company that hires my husband was wondering how they are operating because they hire all of these young hotties to work for them at these concerts and do giveaways.

And they were giving pup cups, you know, things of whipped cream for the dogs. And then they had like goodie [00:26:00] bags for kids with who the fuck knows what in it. Definitely plastic water bottles. And Paul just grabbed it. He's so comfortable with it and I bought him a piece of pizza. I bought him a Pepsi. By the way, the open Pepsi is in the fridge right now, along with a Gatorade that's been in there for four weeks. And I said, what was in that gift bag? And he said, I don't know. He's like, I know I should probably just throw it away. And fortunately for him, was too tired to be like, actually what you should have done was just not fucking taken it.

But then we could, you know, roll the tape back and be like, well, he could've just not come with me.

Quinn: But that makes it your fault. Fuck that.

Claire: Yeah, exactly.

Quinn: Also, fuck them for giving out gift bags. God dammit. We did a whole fucking thing on this. There isn't completely unnecessary in a thousand different ways.

Claire: I know. And I feel bad for this young hottie who works there. 'cause he asked me last week, he's like have you gotten your sewer rotted lately?

Quinn: Excuse me.

Claire: I mean, he meant it in a, you know, a service way. Sorry, not in a I'll clean your pipes kind of way. But I took a lot of pleasure in being like, actually we did get our sewer rotted just [00:27:00] last week.

Quinn: Yeah, you did.

Claire: You know, and he asked me again, he’s like do you live in the neighborhood? And I, it's funny, everything sounds like a pick up.

Quinn: Wait, is it the same guy?

Claire: He’s like this young man, I know he looked like. But I was like, I talked to you last week and we did get our sewer rotted, but I was like, now I have to come up with a I'm gonna have to like, put a bunch of hair in the drain or something to have them come over because I feel bad.

Quinn: This is fantastic. I'm so excited about this storyline. So what did this, honestly what did this do to your mental health? Talk to me about that.

Claire: Which one? The bobbleheads or the free shit?

Quinn: You said what this looked like for you yesterday. You're only as happy as your least happy kid. Tell me like, what does that really mean for you, and how you deal or dealt with it and how you either took that out on them or just left.

Claire: Yeah, so I mean just yesterday was one of those days and you can never tell. You're like, did I just not get enough sleep? Maybe am I like a little bit sick? Paul was sick on Monday. He stayed home from camp, which made James furious because Paul got to do what James always wants to do, which is be on [00:28:00] screens all day long. And he, you know, wasn't just feeling blah, you know, just trying to get through it. And then kids come home from camp. James gets a little bit of screen time. We still knew this was coming. Like none of this was a surprise, but he had to get off to go to baseball, which he ostensibly loves. And he's just the world's biggest asshole, like I've been texting with another friend. Same thing about being treated like a maid or an annoying robot. Just like talking to you like shit. And we were texting about this last night where you're like, do other parents, do their kids just not talk to them this way? Or do I just have this really inconvenient amount of you know, low tolerance for being treated like shit. I don't know. But we immediately were like, we almost kept him home from baseball as a punishment, but we knew that would be like punishing ourselves. So Steve took him to the game and every once in a while it just gets in your head where you're like, at least for me, I don't wanna presume for the people, but you're like. My kid's a jerk because [00:29:00] we made him that way, or I'm not able to be sweet and happy enough to help him not be that way and or I'm too selfish to just take all his shit and I'm not parenting the way I should. And maybe I was never meant to be a parent. And why am I complaining anyway? 'cause I have everything and I shouldn't be that way. And I often, I just put myself to bed at eight o'clock or so. Steve and James were at the baseball game, Paul, after he brought home his garbage, his free garbage from the free concert, I gave him more screen time, which I know, didn't help anything. But he, at least he has the ability and truly, like not every person or every child has this ability to like, get off screens and not be a jerk like it is his superpower. And, yeah I put myself to bed and then what's kind of ironic is that everyone ends up convening in my bed, like to talk to me or tell me about the game or to goof with the dog. Well, you know, in the end it ends up being kind of nice where you're like, everyone redeemed themselves a little bit.

But [00:30:00] you know what didn't help, I guess the irony of it was that I found myself having one of those days where I was just too online and you end up refreshing the news or refreshing Reddit or refreshing your email looking for that dopamine hit and who knows what form that would take?

And you know, so I was like also mad at myself. I was like, I fall into the exact same trap that James does, and I'm no better than he is. And then it's just, I don't know. I don't know. If you get in those days, maybe you're better at ripping yourself away from it. Like, you know how, especially when you have three kids, so that's one more child who's able to drag you down into the abyss with them.

Quinn: I have a few questions. One, why do you let them come in your room and on your bed? You clearly like your kids more than me, I had this tweet a few years ago. It didn't get much play, but I thought it was great, which was, you know, that meme one does not just walk into Mordor Were you allowed to just walk into your fucking parents' room whenever you wanted, like without knocking, open the door, hang out, like just explore shit?

Claire: I definitely [00:31:00] dug through their stuff for sure.

Quinn: But while they were there?

Claire: No, when I was little, if I had a nightmare, if I felt sick, probably, you know, they would definitely, I was not asleep to be clear. I was in my bed reading.

Quinn: But even during the fucking day my kids come in, I'm like, what the fuck are you doing in here? What? They're like, I don't know. I just thought I'd open this book and move this glass of water and throw this shit on the ground. Get the fuck outta my room. I have one space in the entire, fuck.

Get the fuck out. You don't just walk into Mordor and they don't fucking care. So that's my first thing you should fix, is they gotta get out, invisible fence. I gave you a door knocker, you can put it on the door and it's permanent. It's always not right now. That's the secret. It's like Gremlins. It's always not right now.

The answer is yeah, of course. I make myself feel awful about all of it. It's hard, right? I can put up all these I was gonna use as my yes right now, this great app we might have talked about before called Freedom I've been using for 15 years. I'll put it on my phone and it makes it a real pain in the ass to actually sign into something that's [00:32:00] blocked, you have to restart your phone and all the shit.

It's helpful, the friction is good, but even then you find a way around and you find yourself scrolling and shit. Does it help, like again, kids packing their lunch, if you just put good food in the house, does it actually matter if they pack their lunch, you know, if you've programmed your Instagram feed to just be like, you know, people working out and food, is that much of a problem?

Not particularly, but it doesn't matter what it is, I will immediately do the, ugh, I should have been doing this. I should have been doing work. I should have been doing, lying in the kid's bed, while they won't stop fucking moving, trying to fall asleep. It's less like comparing myself to them about getting off screens and more just like immediately using any moment of, self care is probably not the word, you know, whatever it is, detaching from reality in any way.

I can make myself feel like shit about any of it. 'cause it is [00:33:00] hard to be on the, it's on the face of it objectively to come home from this job or from your job on your fucking computer all day to walk in another room and open a screen to look at the same shit, to relax is insane when you do the math on it.

Right? What do you're not, it's not different. It's just on a smaller screen and it's the same shit and your kids are in the other room and yeah, a lot of times they don't wanna fucking see each other. You don't wanna see them, they don't wanna see you. But I don't know, it seems crazy. So I guess I'm trying to do books more or read.

I think this is part of the reason I like to read the same books as my kids a lot of the time, at least for home stuff. So we have an excuse, like a vehicle to do leisure things together.

I'm also really trying, and I guess it's the same thing, like I try to give myself a leg to stand on in the arguments about screen time with them.

If I'm on it all the time, how the fuck am I allowed to yell at them? And I love to yell at them about it. [00:34:00] So I can't not do that. I don’t know, man. It sucks.

Claire: I'm in a weird place, like at least with Evil Witches and some of my other work, is that so much of my work involves being online, I feel like, and trying to see what people are talking about. And like I said, Evil Witches began as a Facebook group and I'm on it much less, which makes me feel weirdly guilty.

Like I turned my back on the thing that I started, but also I don't enjoy being on Facebook. And then on top of it, I was just listening to this podcast Celebrity Memoir Book Club, and they were going over this book, careless People by Sarah Wynn Williams. Do you know that book?

Quinn: Oh, I'm aware of it. No, I get it. I got it.

Claire: It's so upsetting. It's like you, I knew Mark Zuckerberg was not great. Like I wasn't, I never thought he was good, and then you're like, oh, he is so much worse than I thought he was and Facebook is so much more insidious than you and you know, it makes me wanna to like completely deactivate my account.

But then again, that community is still there and my pictures are still there. And sometimes you need it for journalistic purposes. I interviewed a Emily Gould who, [00:35:00] you know, an OG Gawker editor about this, and she had a good simile. She was reticent to use this simile, but I think it works about comparing it to having an eating disorder where you do need to be online slash to eat food.

And then it's so easy to use it in an unhealthy way. You know, like unlike, like alcohol, you can live without alcohol. You can conceivably cut it outta your life. I can't work if I'm not on the internet.

Quinn: And I'm not happy about that to be clear. Like I don't love that I have to make these trade offs, but that's where it is and it fucking sucks.

Claire: And then well you laugh asking about the kids coming to my bed and they're not welcome to come climb in my bed. And they don't like when lights out at bedtime. No one like Fortress of Solitude. But this is not witchy, but sometimes it's like kind of nice that they wanna come see me.

Especially with James, like we had such a bad day and I felt like a bad series of days where he came in and was much more neutral, positive, telling me about his game, you know? And then Paul is gonna be 13 soon and I'm achingly aware of not a lot of time left where [00:36:00] he'll actually wanna spend time.

Steve is complaining about how Paul babbles so much lately and goes on these like weird tangents and non sequiturs and it bugs Steve to shit. And I'm like, Hey, at least he's talking to us.

Like I'll take it. But, after all of my bitching and moaning, and I was like, I'm gonna go in bed and read my book.

This book Martyr, really recommend, we ended up like bonding over some funny like Instagram Reels, like a dog that was holding a bunch of kibble in its mouth and spit it out. And then this Nathan Fielder clip where he was in a job interview and a 7-year-old was feeding him interview answers and Paul was crying, laughing and it was like, not to be cheesy, but like seeing him smile like smile with no reservations, with no self-consciousness is one of my like favorite little things. So the internet taketh and the internet giveth and yeah don't have it figured out.

Quinn: No, there's no way to figure it out. It is immense good. You know, our friends over at a wonderful organization called Our World in Data. They do exemplary work [00:37:00] could exist without the internet, would be much more difficult, and much more difficult for people to amplify their work.

You know, they did an incredible article about just how many folks in Africa are connected to banking now because of mobile phones, which is something that started 20 years ago way before we started really banking here, honestly. But that's the only way they're banked and it has changed lives.

It's incredible. Wouldn't exist without the data layer. Also Roblox, you know, or whatever, like 4chan. It's crazy. And look, Instagram, all that shit can be the same way. I will sometimes. I mean, people catch me talking to myself and they don't realize it's like an iceberg. It's one 10th of the conversation.

The rest of it's inside and it's crazy pants. And same thing I'll find our oldest is really into music and percussion and there's a couple amazing channels. People playing like, awesome and they're playing popular music and this and that. I'm like, I gotta share this with them. And I'm like, but I'm always telling 'em to get off and don't do this and this.

I'll spend half an hour doing that, not show him the video and then, you know, be mad I didn't go to bed on time. It's [00:38:00] not great.

Claire: Yeah. I also wonder, and it's so trendy that I'm embarrassed that I even think this sometimes, but I am one of those women of a certain age that I'm like, do I have undiagnosed ADHD? Certain things do add up or am I just, you know, a person living in this year? But I guess the good side of having a kid with ADHD is like, well, there's no point in me getting diagnosed. 'cause getting medicine is such a pain in the ass. I'm just gonna continue grinding it out with my bout of you know, intense productivity, you know, followed by like fallow periods of, and you know, where I'll go to be like, all I want is to do nothing. And then I'll have a day of doing nothing and after three hours of it I'm like, I hate this.

You know? And so I like, I have all these tabs open right now behind our conversation and I'm patting myself in the back that I'm talking to you and not reading about how Sophia Vegara and Tom Brady might be dating each other and how Queer Eye for the Straight Guy is gonna be canceled.

And this Lady from Love is Blind. Not Love is Blind, Love Island is getting canceled. See, I already know all this stuff. I don't even need to read about it. I'm just catching up. But anyway, [00:39:00] yeah, I don't know, I don't know what the answer is to this to date.

Quinn: Your open tabs? What are your other open tabs right now?

Claire: Oh, No They Didn't. Which is a very old fashioned live journal gossip site, but it still serves it up. And I read FOMA which is another gossip site that's on Reddit. Every day at lunch I open up my tabs. It's kind of curated. It's a lot of New York Magazine stuff. I read some RuPaul's Drag Race gossip, Reddit. And yeah it's a lot less than it used to be, but that's my downfall is I'll usually be like, Ooh, yay, time to catch up on my internet, and then I'll be done.

And then I'm like, well, let's start rolling the dice and seeing what's coming up, you know? And I always end up on conservative Reddit 'cause I wanna see what they're saying. And then that is usually because I have this really bad habit of being like, people can't be saying the worst thing possible, can they?

And then you're always like, yeah, they are. They still are. Like they have been every single day.

Quinn: Whether you're there or not.

Claire: The only reason I read it is when it gives me satisfaction when Trump pisses off his own people. [00:40:00] And that's like when I'm happy. But like for instance, they're all talking, not, they're all, excuse me, let me roll it back. There's a lot more posts about the liberals who are allegedly cheering these devastating, horrible, every parent's worst nightmare summer camp floods versus actually talking about how these deaths could have been prevented, you know? And like the weather forecasting that was rolled back.

But again, why do I need to know that? How does that make me better off? So I don't know. I wish I had more self-control, but I don't.

Quinn: I don't say this to brag. I say this 'cause I think it's actually crazier because I am the exception to the rule here. I cannot have open more than two tabs at a time, period. And at the end of the day, end of the session, they gotta go away.

My two tabs I have open right now, and this is gonna go on the journey of making myself feel like shit about this.

There are two New York Times cooking tabs. One is Chili Crisp and Honey Roasted Salmon which sounds amazing. And a cold [00:41:00] cucumber avocado salad. Also sounds amazing. They pair together, it's great. I open 'em and I go, that's gonna be amazing this weekend. And then my next thought is, you can't make that this, you're at a fucking swim meet the entire weekend. And then Sunday you have 72 chores you've pushed back 'cause you went to Alaska. And then the third one is, when was the last time you cooked anyway? Like genuinely, when was the last time you, like you fed your children something they required more than taking it outta the refrigerator.

And four was like, are they gonna remember that? What are they gonna say when people ask 'em like, did you guys cook? Did you have meals? Do they remember when I used to cook? That's how my two tabs go.

Claire: Yeah. No, I like that journey. It's very relatable. First of all, oh, that's every time I do ,what was I doing? I was, Paul heard me sighing heavily, which is one of my favorite hobbies. And it was just the you know, choose your own adventure of your household where you go down to the basement to get some apples from the fridge and then you see that the laundry needs to be changed over. But then also you could hang up the, you know, certain we clothes to air dry.

Quinn: That’s why I don’t work from home.

Claire: Yeah I need to do better at that. But yeah, it is the cooking thing. I food shame my kids, my friend [00:42:00] of Virginia Smith would not appreciate this, and they did what you're supposed to do. But I made dinner, I made the New York Times.

They had this, and you could eat this. It's a orzo, lemony orzo with garlic breadcrumbs and asparagus, and, you know, kids like all this stuff. And they ate a polite amount, which I should be celebrating. But then they immediately went to the Takis, the Trader Joe's Takis in the cupboard. And I was like, guys, you know, it takes a while to make a recipe plan, make a shopping list, go to the store, blah, blah, blah.

Fast forward to, you know, lecture. And I'm like, it's kind of fucking annoying when I make all this food. And you like, why don't you try eating till you're full of the food that I made for you, of the fresh food, you know?

Quinn: Yeah, I was gonna say, how do they respond to that one?

Claire: They're like, good point mother. Thanks. You know.

Quinn: You're always right. Yeah. I don't know. And then you go home and open other home, you go downstairs, wherever the fuck you are. I drive home, I pack up my laptop. Why am I here? I could laptop anywhere because [00:43:00] I get so much anxiety from being at home.

And I open other tabs and there are the same tabs from the night before that I didn't finish. And I try to do it once they're in bed, but a lot of it is once they're in bed. But I could also just be spending, like they want some alone time. They want to read. They've been a camp all day, shit like that, but they probably also want to hang with me.

And I've done a little, could I do more? Do I make myself feel worse? Do I have the tabs open? Then do I go up and then I look up and it's, you know, 10 30 or I'm eating another cookie.

Claire: So I woke up today and I was like, I'm gonna try to do better than I did yesterday. And so, first of all, I amazingly sent out my Evil Witches without doing my thing where I do you know, write one sentence and then have a treat by checking Instagram or whatever. I pretty much stayed focused and I sent it off. I haven't even looked at the comments yet, probably bad Substack behavior. I should be checking in and engaging with my readers, but whatever. Then 'cause I don't know about you. Like I still had this nine to five mentality that doesn't serve me at all. But I always still feel like I should get everything [00:44:00] important done early so that allegedly I can relax or do my hobbies or spend time with the kids when they get home from school or camp, even though they don't wanna see me.

Like I remember how annoying and stupid it was when my parents were like, how was school today? And you're like, fine. You know? And they're like, what do you mean? And you're like, shut up. That's, you know, that's me now. And they don't wanna see me and I'm mad at them for entering my space, but my brain doesn't wanna, Steve and I were most saying how ironic it is that you're like exhausted at 8:30, 8 o'clock when it's time for the kids to start going to bed.

But then weirdly enough, once they get into bed, you perk up because maybe your brain feels like you have quiet now, or I don't know what. So anyway, today I decided to like kind of do nice things for myself first and see what happens if I saved the work for later on. And also PS doesn't matter, none of the work I'm doing is that important, so I gotta get over myself.

Quinn: Yeah, no, nothing matters. That's the other part of it. Get over it. Who cares? Like not to diminish your work. I'm diminishing mine. We can talk about yours later. I don't know. Willow and I talk about this all the [00:45:00] time. In a given week, a hundred thousand people across the world interact with our stuff.

How many people like want to, you know, like how many people are like, ah, can't wait to, you know, throw shit against the wall and see if it'll stop the jet stream from fucking breaking. And you're like great. I haven't written an essay in like months. 'cause every day Willow goes, is this the week?

And I go, I don't wanna read anything. What the fuck would people wanna read? What's useful to people? I don't know. Not my shit.

Claire: No, it is I mean, part of it is the blessing and the curse of getting to do for a living, what you used to do for fun.

Quinn: Yeah. By the way, don't do that. Don't do that. Fucking nightmare.

Claire: Yeah I'm all dried up inside, you know? I watch a lot of RuPaul's Drag Race,

Quinn: Uhhuh, amazing.

Claire: I know I don't know much about being a drag queen, but it seems to me that a common philosophy about being a drag queen is that you have to have a certain amount of delusion to be a [00:46:00] drag queen.

You have to believe you're the most beautiful girl in the world and be into that. And you have to feel it that way as a writer or a newsletter person. You have to pretend, even if it's not true, that someone will be mad at you if you don't send something out. Or someone will be mad at me if I don't get them their Not Right Now patron only content, you know, if I don't get that set up now, they're like, where is it?

Quinn: Can I tell you something? The only time people have, again, so proud of this audience we've developed, people with enormous leverage around the world, bartenders. People just trying to change things for the better, help other people. The only time people have said Hey, where the fuck is my thing is with this podcast, it's people literally going like, Hey, it's Thursday.

Like I need my fix. And I'm like, sorry, I was busy trying to stop the hate bill from going, you know the well, the other hate, no, the other hate bill. And they're like, I don't care. I don't care about that. I just want the one.

Claire: Good. Well, that's good, but also now I feel bad too, so, but that's how I operate. If I don't, and Steve jokes that his family motto is, as long as [00:47:00] somebody feels bad, and that's I've taken that to heart. If you're not anxious about how someone feels about you, then you must be asleep or you must be dead, or you must have taken too many drugs.

Quinn: Are there too many drugs at this point?

Claire: I don't know, did you know I might be going to a Phish concert in two weeks? So I'll let you know.

Quinn: They're coming back here. They did this like legendary Hampton concert. How ever old we are, 40 fucking years ago. They're coming back. It's very exciting.

Claire: My high school friend Tracy, I introduced her to the band and she and her husband are like people who follow Phish and so I've gone to go with them and see them and it's a really special experience when you go and you do take the right substances, then you're with the right people.

But it is quite like a marathon, you know? And it's not like a Paul McCartney show where you're like, I know this one, this is a bop, this two minute song I've known for 40 years. Sometimes you're like, I've never heard this. This song is 22 minutes long. And so there's a part of me that's like, I know I would have a lot of fun if I went, but also part of me is like, God, there's nothing [00:48:00] I want more than to not go. So I guess we'll see.

Quinn: Can you go for half an hour?

Claire: It's at the United Center, which is like an hour drive, probably more. No, 90 minute drive minimum with traffic, you know? So I don't know.

Quinn: I don't have much in me anymore.

Claire: Anyway. Yeah. Oh, by the way, not really random.

Quinn: Please. That's what this episode is.

Claire: So Weird Al got rained out. We had outdoor seats, like a huge storm right on our heads. I've never seen this in a weather description before. Slow moving. So this like rain that was supposed to last 15 minutes ended up being like a really severe storm.

So most people kind of fled indoors and we ended up watching the concert on a tv, which was probably the boys could enjoy a lot more. 'cause otherwise you don't really have much of a view. He is performing Fat again, its entirety with a full fat suit and like face prosthetics.

And yeah, and Steve, who is like not sensitive about anything normally he was like this didn't age that great. This is, I don't know about this one. [00:49:00]

Quinn: Wow, I didn’t know that.

Claire: And doing that fat suit thing where sometimes people do where they put on the fat suit and they get like extra goofy, like I feel like Courtney Cox did that on Friends where you're like, oh, what's going on here?

So yeah, that was odd. It was a kind of an interesting choice.

Quinn: Is that like extra woke? You know, is he commenting on the commenting?

Claire: Well, I'll tell you this. I told a friend of mine who she self-identifies as fat, I told them about this and she said well allegedly he's saying it's like a body empowerment anthem now. But she was like, try telling that to someone like me who people would sing the song to you as a child. So to me, I'd say he does not have the right to, you know, claim that as any kind of thing for his own, but whatever Weird Al, you know, still love him. I know he means mostly well, but it was weird 'cause there were like definitely a lot of kids and people there who were like seemed to be neurodivergent, gender queer, like this was their safe space.

And I just was like thinking about what if there were like some fat folks there and they were like, this, didn't sit well with me and, but [00:50:00] whatever.

Quinn: How often a day do you think to yourself? I give up. I'm out.

Claire: In terms of what?

Quinn: Anything, everything, anything?

Claire: At least once a day. I think about quitting my job mainly. Quitting my Substack. That's a big one. Yeah. At least once a day. 'cause you can, because what does it matter? I think about, yeah I am reading a book right now where someone takes pills and you know, ends their life and not I think about that. But you know what I was thinking of you actually, I was making my bed today.

Quinn: Oh this is a phenomenal segue. Continue.

Claire: I was, I whispered sleep to myself, and I must do that like several times a week. And not only do I mean sleep, I mean like sleep forever. So that, yeah. So, you know, it's hard to quantify per day, but oh, certainly several times a week at least.

Quinn: Yeah, and I don't know if it's 'cause everything is a lot and, or I'm so tired or just like my threshold for like grit is so much lower than it used to be. Or is it because everything doesn't matter. I think it's all the combinations of it, [00:51:00] right?

Claire: Or we have too much and our brains are just you know, having a tantrum because I'm like, did they have time, like was depression a thing 200 years ago?

Quinn: Well, no, you didn't have anything. You lived till 30 if you're fucking lucky and well, not 30 years ago. Well, unless you had AIDs.

I mean, there's an economist that's popular online. Noah Smith, I think he's the one who wrote a post recently, was like, here's what it was actually like in 1776.

And you're like, no, I get it. It was fucking horrendous. And everyone's oh, the founding fathers were in the prime of their youth. They're 21. It's like, no, they had six years left. You know, that's it. And they have wooden teeth and all the gonorrhea. But I don't know, sometimes it sounds appealing.

Claire: If you ever read about, I dunno why you would know this, but this is kind of my thing. There is a Empress Elizabeth of Austria, and she was named Cece, and she was like known, I feel for being like the first depressed diva, she was just like known for being depressed, but also rich and gorgeous and you know, but you're like, well, what if, what about everyone who worked for Cece? Were they allowed to be [00:52:00] depressed as well?

Quinn: They have to like, try to keep her going or was this like her thing and you enabled it?

Claire: Yeah, I think all of it, you know, all of the above, you know. But the other thing though too is, sorry, where we going? Really far field, but you know, postpartum depression.

Quinn: From what?

Claire: From the task at hand. You know, postpartum depression wasn't like studied, I feel except for the last 50 years maybe most but yeah, just being a woman was depressing.

Quinn: First of all, no postpartum depression. If you made it through childbirth because you had another one because you didn't have a son, no pain medication. And then any hemorrhaging, which they were like, sorry. And then you know, aging as a woman, we're not talking about that.

What does appeal to me though is this idea of she's taken to the waters. Like she's off to some like a lake somewhere. Yeah. Like you see, the sanitariums are great. No one talks to you. You're sitting like an Adirondack chair. Oh my god.

Claire: Take the waters, you know?

Quinn: Take the waters. That's, oh my God. [00:53:00] Send me away.

Claire: Well it's like how I discovered amazingly, like magically when we were in Mexico City, how happy I was and I was like, all I have to do is not work and eat whatever I want and only discover things and have money to spend. And you know, and my biggest problem is, you know, how many souvenirs do I buy? So how can we replicate that?

But I did go today, there's a guy who owns a, maybe I told you about this. He owns a place called Sauna Club and he has a little portable sauna. And so today I went there and I jumped in the lake several times and I never regret jumping in Lake Michigan. So like, that definitely helped me out. I need to like touch grass but the water version.

Quinn: Is the guy who has Sauna Club and it's a portable sauna the same guy who talks to you at concerts and ask if your sewer's been rotted recently? Aha. I'm pulling it all together here.

Claire: Yeah, no, it's really nice. It's very, you know, middle age where you're like, oh, I looked outside and I wasn't on my phone and, you know, start the day off. Right. And I don't even do the science about cold plunges.

Quinn: Nobody cares. I don't fucking care. [00:54:00] I don't care. It just like I'm doing something.

Claire: Can't you tell how uninflamed I am by the, you know, by my facial expressions? Yeah. Anyway, so today hopefully I'll be less mad at the kids. I was thinking about like on a wild hair. I was like, maybe I'll go get some ice cream. And then I was thinking like, of course I was like, why are all your like, rewards food related?

Like, why can't you give them some kind of reward that doesn't involve buying them something? And, you know, anyway, I'll just think about that later and we'll see about the ice cream.

I mentioned going on the conservative Reddit. When I'm sad, another place I go to sometimes is regretful parents. And what makes me laugh is I'll go in there 'cause I will sincerely sometimes think was I truly not meant to be a mother?

That's like when I'm in a bad mood like that. And what's really funny to me, it's not funny. Their feelings are really real, but there's people on there who's like, I hate my son. Like he really fucked up my life and I wasn't meant to do this. And the kid is four weeks old and I don't know why this I like, I'm like, talk to me when you've been doing this for 10 years and then [00:55:00] you like gotten to know the kid and really get to realize how much you don't like him.

Quinn: You think you don't like him now?

Claire: Right, exactly. I also go to for some reason the rich Reddit, because I like to see what rich people are talking about and how they self-identify, and so I can be mad at them and like this feeling of I hate you, but I'm jealous of you. You know, all that kind of stuff. Do you have anything like that where you seem like you probably have too much self-control, but are there places that you go when you're feeling dark or weak that you check out that kind of feed that impulse?

Quinn: You know, a couple years after I got into all this, and again, it's a choice I can undo at any given moment. It is an enormous privilege to choose to do it and to conduct it from the perspective and many bootstraps that I have. But a couple years into choosing to do this, I remember Dana came home and in our old LA house, you'd walk in the front door, like into the living room and I was under a blanket on the couch into the living room and she basically was [00:56:00] like, either you figure out how to deal with this better or you don't fucking do it.

That's where we are. And my version of that has been like. I mean, you know, there's the chaotic good of something like Black Mirror. You're like, oh, this is, you know, this is not gonna turn to 4chan. It's just like a forecast of our future. But it's, you know, again it's still mainstream media.

I couldn't even do that. I couldn't do, I can't do stressful, can't do anxiety, can't watch The Bear, can't like all this stuff. I'm just like, I'm out. Every time, what's the animal show I watch? All Things Great and Small. Anytime the stakes are more than like, will this dog lose five pounds or gain five pounds?

I'm like, Dana, I can't do it. No. Somebody cries on the baking show. I'm like, what is, this is not what I signed up for. So the answer is no, I really don't. But what is my fucking version? Like again, I almost think what I'm doing is just as unhealthy, which is literally avoiding everything like, you know, which is not great.

But at the same time, I'm like, [00:57:00] according to who? Who tells me I need to, again, choose to expose myself to much more existential things every day. I'm good, you know?

Claire: No, you're more noble than I am.

Quinn: It's not nobility,

Claire: I've always had like a bad habit of wanting to know what the worst things people are saying or doing is, and I don't know why that is, or just to make myself mad and I'm not sure like what the point of that is. Maybe make myself feel superior.

Like I just, I asked you if you've been watching that show Your Friends and Neighbors, this John Ham show and it takes place in you know, an enclave of New York and it's all these rich assholes and he loses his job and he starts stealing from them. But it's kind of subtle where you forget because he is the protagonist that he's a bad guy. But I crave that it is more heavy handed. 'cause I wanna hate these people more. I wanna enjoy hating them more. Like why are you giving them so much nuance? And you know, and the answer should just be, I stopped watching the show, but I was like, oh, I gotta see this through.

Quinn: One, he's so attractive. Like you just gotta watch it. It doesn't matter. He's so attractive. Two I can't [00:58:00] do and you know, Dana thinks this is posturing, which is fair, but I can't do the rich people. I can't do Succession. Partly because it's like the extreme wealth and also the yelling, people are like, it's Shakespeare.

I'm like, I'm good. Like our friend Lorene directed a couple apparently amazing episodes. She's incredible. Lorene directed Hustlers, which should have won 12 Academy Awards. Like I can't do it. The only version of that I can do is Arrested Development and it is the same show, except it's not the same show.

And one, it's just total comfort food. You know, but also those guys, Jason and Will had on Mitch Hurwitz, the guy who created Arrested Development on their Smartless podcast pretty early, a few years ago. And there was one point in the podcast they were talking about could we make this today? Could this get made today?

And the answer is no, of course not. Right. But also, you know, Will had a really interesting point. 'cause he was like, it's interesting because no one's cheering for those people. Like the show is very clearly not cheering for [00:59:00] those people. It is just shining a light on them and their absurdities.

There is no version of them being like, yeah, Gob should win this time. He's a horrible person. You know, their version of showing sympathy for characters when he's like, when Hello Darkness My Old Friend starts playing over it. And you're like, but he did. He got, this is, he did this to himself. You know, they're greedy, awful people. I don't want it to be justified in any way. And anyways, I don't know. Yeah, I've just cut it all out. I can't do it.

Claire: My comfort food for hating rich people and is and again, we are, what is defining rich, I guess, you know.

Quinn: Oh, sure. No we fucking checked that box.

Claire: Yeah, exactly. But I will watch Below Deck because it gives me comfort to realize not everyone is an asshole and unfortunately, like the best, the most compelling groups are full of like assholes or drunks.

But so many people come on and they're like poo-pooing the smaller boats or I wonder what the poor people are doing today. And you realize they all have the same cookie cutter experience and they're all eating the same frozen food and they're all like, sleeping on the same bed that someone had just cum in, you know, the [01:00:00] night before.

And I find that very satisfying and pleasing in a weird way that they think they're the shit and you're like, you are, you know, just on a conveyor belt. And I like that makes me feel superior.

Quinn: No, for sure the schadenfreude of it is great for sure. Yeah, I mean, it's like how we're in this era and people have written about it and talked about it, but it's really fundamentally true. Well, a couple things are true. They'll say we have the worst billionaires of all time.

Right? Which on a lot of levels is true insofar as like the number of people they can affect through their microphone or their actions. The number of people they choose to not affect positively. How they have built most of their wealth directly or indirectly on raping the ecosystems.

Right? Versus again, this is the other hand, the billionaires of old all fucked up people. And I'm sure if they were online we would have much different [01:01:00] fucking attitudes of them. But they also made museums and national parks and all this shit and all that stuff. Because I don't know, they felt bad or someone told them to or maybe they wanted to, I don't fucking know.

Or they were less distracted.

Claire: Tax breaks.

Quinn: Yeah, but guess what? I don't fucking care.

Claire: I know. I was just saying, I don't know if you saw that Trump referred to Anderson Cooper as like Allison you know, some homophobic way of, cam handed way. And I was thinking, I was like, I bet he hates Anderson Cooper 'cause his family comes from actual money and like even, they have a university like compare Vanderbilt to Trump University.

But yeah I think that too, the Bezos wedding. That was, I think part of it was like, I think why I made it made everyone mad that it was like all of these people like where's your shame? Like someone should have felt some shame there and not been there. And that's what's so infuriating.

Quinn: There is again, like we totally qualify as all those things. Try to give it back as much as we can. I built a whole business on it, but it's still, [01:02:00] is it ever enough? No, of course not. At the same time, boy, there's a lot of, just while we like, have firmly based our business on the fact that they're real bad guys and you should identify them by name and destroy them.

There's also just a lot of not good guys. And again. Other hand, amazing people we work with, they're great. There's so many amazing people. There's a lot of just like people who are like, I'm not gonna be a good guy. And also, fuck those people. You know? Just do something with your time and if you have anything extra like Jesus Christ.

Claire: Yeah. So we'll see what our kids turn out to be like. Which one of those they will be.

Quinn: Felons.

Claire: Could I circle back to something from the top of the call tell me about Oliver's girlfriend and how long this has been going on for, and what kind of conversations you guys have had, if any?

Quinn: It's a really good question. She's very sweet. I don't know, it started in the fall, I guess. So it's, you know, been a little stretch. First one. They're very sweet to each other. I make them talk on the landline as much as I can. You know, they're wrapped up in each other. They're going to the same school for now, but won't be in high school.

So [01:03:00] see how that goes. It's sweet. She's a sweetheart. You know, we have conversations like if you, you know, it's a little like a horse. Don't look it in the eyes. If I ask him questions face to face directly I think I told you how, like he just yelled at Dana once because she would just ask some direct questions.

He's like, what the fuck? And she was very harmed by it. I was like, you can't approach an animal like that. Like you can't do it. And so my version of it is right or wrong. And again, like I take the baseball perspective, like if I'm going one for three, I'm getting in the Hall of Fame here. At least in my standards, I will, he'll hang out in the basement, listen to music in the evening, do nothing else, playing with Legos, whatever.

But mostly just listening to music. And I will just kind of quietly go down and be like, Hey, what's going on? I'll just lie on the floor until he starts talking and again, one for three. He actually starts talking and one for three of that, that something comes up about it. Because to him, like I'm a carcass.

Like he's like, any knowledge you have is Encino Man frozen in time. Like it's [01:04:00] not, no, nothing is valuable. But I did try to make, again, it's like the most basic thing and you can read all these parenting and adolescent books and teen books and how hooking up now is so totally different than dating and all this kind of stuff.

But I just try to base the conversations if there are any in, I was very straightforward. I will just listen or I will respond. Or, and I know you want this the least, offer some practical, I don't wanna say like advice, guidance, whatever. I was like, I know that's rare and you gotta ask for it. I was like, but the goal is to buy more of these, so I will try to do that. I said, but you gotta tell me. Because I'm an idiot who tries to fix everything. That's what guys do. And I check that box for sure too. It goes fine, but it does bring things up, you know, this and that. He’ll be like, is this a nice bracelet she might want?

Claire: Oh, that's so cute. Okay. Thought experiment.

My friend, her son is 12, so same age as Oliver. Right. He is going into seventh grade and they go [01:05:00] to Martha's Vineyard for a month every summer with her family. And he has some gal pal over there and she said, what should I do if they ask about a co-ed sleepover? She was like, I trust them completely, but something doesn't feel right. And I just, knee-jerk said no, because if you start this now, you can't ever roll it back.

Quinn: There’s so much you can't put back in the box.

Claire: And also, would you let his little sister do that as well. And if she wouldn't do it, no, but I'm also Catholic and I'm prudish.

Quinn: Yeah, we know that. No, except for the sewer guy. I have a fairly nuanced perspective on that and I think I've talked about it a little bit and we've tried to actually, it's applicable to like media as well, where we've tried to step back from demonizing everything and saying this is inappropriate.

And saying not appropriate for you yet for most things. There's obviously some things that are like no, right? That's before we get to porn and all that stuff, but, you know, R-rated movies or books or whatever it might be, and I said, here's the deal man. And again, my dad, moron, [01:06:00] but tried to do a version of this in a much more caveman way.

But you're gonna do dumb shit. You're gonna try shit, you're gonna drink, you're gonna smoke, you're gonna hook up, you're gonna play loud music, whatever the things are. I really don't want you driving around at night, like I know you will, but I'd love to minimize it. And if I'm capable of doing that in any way, I wanna start thinking about that now.

I know you're gonna do all those stationary things. You have great friends and I actually really like most of their parents and I trust them. A lot of military parents, things like that, that are just wonderful and grounded and more strict than I am. But we have a little more room for you to do that kind of thing, whatever, inside and outside.

And so I just basically said, Hey listen, I know this seems like idealistic to you, but what can I do thinking about it now to make this the coolest, like evergreen, coolest place for you and your friends to want to hang out so that you don't feel like you need to go somewhere else and you don't feel like you need to be on phones.

Like again, like watching [01:07:00] porn, whatever it is when they're 16. And he was honest. He was like, we fucking love ping pong. He was like, let's bring up the game table from DnD. He's like, if we can just truly have a snack fridge and a drink fridge and like actually play, not Wii, Switch like whenever we want, instead of like my, you know, arcane rules.

He's like, that'd be great. I was like, I'll do all that. And part of what we're doing in this attic room, and this is coming all the way back to your question, is we're putting in these little builtin bunks up there in this teen hangout room. 'cause we all had friends day over.

They slide in the basement, everyone has crashes. People go, and by the way, a lot of the time, that's great. We don't have a lot of Uber around us, so it's easy to be like, well, your friend could take an Uber home instead of drunk driving him or someone else drunk driving. We don't really have that. It's 15 minutes to get to somebody else's neighborhood and people are gonna spend the night, they're gonna have shit like that.

Would I consciously let at this age a co-ed sleepover? Absolutely not. Like seven years ago when they were six. Great. Have a [01:08:00] great time. Throw seven kids in the room. There's a window though. Where no, there's a window where you wanna say no when they're like 16, 17. They're gonna do it, how do I set that up in like the safest, however you want to use that word way possible. Does that make sense? That's clear to anyone else too, which is I'm not encouraging it, but I don't want you driving somebody home at three in the morning tired and or drunk or whatever, or doing this or I don't know, man.

So it's complicated. It's nuanced, but the answer to 12-year-old coed sleepover, no, that's a no. Does any of that make sense?

Claire: Yeah. No, totally. I just thought it was an interesting thought experiment for myself. 'cause I just was like my fast response is no. And why would I, where do I go to? But also, it's easier for me to say, 'cause Paul doesn't have girlfriends yet. We'll see about this upcoming year or not

Quinn: I don't think it's like that, by the way. There's a lot of handholding and that is extreme at this point, so I don't think there's anything questionable. [01:09:00] Six months, 12 months, like you said. Seventh grade, eighth grade. No.

Claire: Well a lot of, it's not even like being worried they're gonna, you know, touch each other's privates. It's more just like. You're not done cooking yet. I don't know. You know what, let me not even speculate 'cause it truly hasn't come up. And you know, I think my friend is pleased that her son has a female friend and I know that, I can imagine that feeling and like wanting to facilitate that and not wanting to shut that down. Yeah, anyway, I don't want, I don't wanna speculate 'cause who knows if that ever, if that comes up, who the kid will be by then and with what the other person would be like. So I don't know. And also let us point out that too, that this is a very heteronormative conversation as well. So, you know, we're ignoring like a huge swath of other permutations.

Quinn: We are with those specific examples, but I think just in general, like again, any of my kids could end up being anything, love it all, support it all. Maybe even better if they're queer more, you know, honestly. But I just want to set up not, again, not like a safe space, but you get the idea [01:10:00] like it is fully considered and we're trying to do it outside too.

Here's a little space, not in the woods, but like away from us, but we can see you. It's five Adirondack chairs. Go smoke your weed when you're 16. Okay, but you're here. Gimme the car keys. So I don't know. I don't know. None of it matters.