Episode 15
Surviving Challenges with a Pinterest Mom By Your Side
Here's why we all need to marry a Pinterest mom!
This is your cue to send a bouquet of apology flowers to every postal worker you’ve ever rolled your eyes at.
In this week’s episode, I, Lauren Howard (aka L2, thanks for asking), spiral into the surprisingly convoluted topics of marriage, US mailing discounts and business-unit-only windows that might or might not be open.
Turns out, love isn’t always roses and chocolate.
If you’re one of those people who’s ever panicked because the 'simple' task on your list involves fifteen sub-tasks, or you’ve ever desperately wished someone would just handle it when executive function leaves you high and dry, then this episode is for you.
Thinking of skipping this one?
Don’t.
If you’ve ever felt steamrolled by a 'basic' task or exhausted by the endless loop of family birthdays, this is your safe space. If you’re looking for tactical life hacks, zero judgment, and a side of dead dad jokes, you’ll want to hit play and stay awhile.
Different is not broken, and you’re not alone in the chaos.
Subscribe/follow, listen, and prepare to eye those Four-for-$5 glitter globes at Five Below with brand new appreciation.
Loveyameanit.
Mentioned in this episode:
Wanna learn to write like me?
Here's how you can!
Transcript
So love is supposedly a many splendored thing and
Speaker:sometimes includes 7,000 post offices and many, many
Speaker:uncanceled stamps. All right, here we go. I'm going to pretend I'm
Speaker:pushing record, because that feels right. Okay, I'm pressing record.
Speaker:Boop. Hi, everybody. I'm Lauren Howard. I go
Speaker:by L2. Yes, you can call me L2. Everybody does. It's
Speaker:a long story. It's actually not that long a story, but we'll save it for
Speaker:another time. Welcome to Different, Not Broken, which
Speaker:is our podcast on exactly that. That there are a lot of people in
Speaker:this world walking around feeling broken, and the reality is you're just different,
Speaker:and that's fine.
Speaker:So, quick rundown of the rules. We talk about this every time. If you want
Speaker:to know more about them, pop back to our first episode. First, I'm
Speaker:going to curse a lot if bad language is a problem. Sorry.
Speaker:Second, I'm going to tell a lot of stories, even on things that don't sound
Speaker:like they have stories. Third, I'm going to tell a bunch of dead dad joke.
Speaker:It's just par for the course around here. And fourth, anything that
Speaker:comes out of your face is appropriate here, so you do not
Speaker:have to worry about filtering any part of you to
Speaker:join us in this space. So one of my least
Speaker:favorite things to do. I say that, but that's not actually true. I really like
Speaker:building lists and, like, really
Speaker:tactical, like, tangible, repeatable stuff. So,
Speaker:like, building lists of people to send marketing
Speaker:outreach to is like, it actually does really make me happy, though. I
Speaker:do have a limit to how much I can do. And I'm really good at
Speaker:it. Like, I'm excellent at it. The number of times in my career, people have
Speaker:been like, oh, my God, where did you get this list? This list doesn't exist.
Speaker:And I'm like, I made it. It's all publicly available information.
Speaker:I just copy and paste it a lot. And people are like, really? Do you
Speaker:do that? That's like a base skill that everybody has and just copy and
Speaker:paste. Probably the most effective method of building a
Speaker:referral base in medicine from other clinicians is
Speaker:it just still works. Clinicians read their mail, and especially if there's a service
Speaker:that they're always looking for, if you send them mail, they tend to read it,
Speaker:which is reliable. And so we've been working on some mailing
Speaker:campaigns, and I'm trying to do it the cheapest way
Speaker:possible for very obvious, very cheap reasons.
Speaker:Postage in the US right now is just insane. Like, one letter is
Speaker:like 78 cents. And I promise there's a point here that is not about
Speaker:postage. Though I do have a lot to say about postage. By the way, just
Speaker:for the record, people talk a lot about how the problem with the post office
Speaker:is that it is not profitable. And that's the issue with
Speaker:the post office is that it's a poorly run business. The
Speaker:post office is not a business, it's a service. It was never supposed to be
Speaker:a business. It's a government entity that was supposed to provide a service to make
Speaker:it possible to get information from one side of the country to the other without
Speaker:having to get on a horse and take it there yourself. The
Speaker:funding issue with the post office actually has nothing to do with the services that
Speaker:they provide. It has everything to do with the fact that for some reason, not
Speaker:that long ago they were required to fully fund their pension
Speaker:fund up front and it basically bankrupted the
Speaker:entire industry. It's not how you run a pension fund, but for some reason there
Speaker:were completely different rules applied to their pension fund and it bankrupted the
Speaker:entire organization across the government. So anybody who
Speaker:has issues with the post office can bite me hard.
Speaker:There's nothing wrong with the post office. It's not my favorite place to go. But
Speaker:also the people there are mistreated. And also the people I talked to yesterday
Speaker:in trying to deal with this postal situation were lovely and delightful and
Speaker:really, really nice to me. And also I called and
Speaker:talked to somebody and she was also very lovely and delightful. So I'm just
Speaker:saying be nice to postal employees. They're under a lot
Speaker:of stress and it's not a business. And we should not expect it to
Speaker:operate like a business. It's not not supposed to run at a profit. It's supposed
Speaker:to be an entity that makes communication possible.
Speaker:Anyway, that is not what this is about. But because I said it's not what
Speaker:it's about, I realized that there was a part of it that I wanted to
Speaker:make it about anyway. In the US if you do some
Speaker:of the work for sending out mail, when you're
Speaker:sending out a lot of mail, which we're probably gonna do, they'll give you discounted
Speaker:postal rates and it's like half, it's $0.78 to, to send a letter right now,
Speaker:which is wild. And if you do it pre sorted, which there's
Speaker:a whole process for, you get a permit, whatever, it takes it down to like
Speaker:just about 40 cents, which is like a giant difference,
Speaker:especially when you're running on the margins that we Are. And there's actually a lot
Speaker:of really good information online, but it's not complete.
Speaker:Like, it's good information if you already know what you're doing, but if
Speaker:you're trying to cobble together how to do this process, it's not
Speaker:so great. And I knew all the right words, but I didn't know what order
Speaker:to use them in, basically was the problem I was running into. So
Speaker:I had asked my husband if he would go out with me to this place,
Speaker:because I just like having a
Speaker:bodyguard when I go to
Speaker:unmarked postal offices, I guess. And also, like, I'm not great
Speaker:with directions, and I like to be a passenger, princess,
Speaker:whatever. So he said we would go, but then we
Speaker:realized our daughter had an orthodontist appointment, and so he
Speaker:had to take her to that. And he called me on
Speaker:the way back and said, do you want me to take you to the post
Speaker:office this afternoon? And I was like, everything I see
Speaker:online does not make it clear that this place is actually open, because
Speaker:you have to go to a. Not any post office. It's a very specific post
Speaker:office that has a very specific room that you have to go to,
Speaker:unlike most postal systems. And if it's not this one,
Speaker:the closest one is, like, two hours away. And I live in a big
Speaker:city, so it's wild that there's only one. It was just, like, this
Speaker:really complicated situation. And everything I saw online said that the
Speaker:business unit was closed and that you couldn't even access it again. The
Speaker:closest one was, like, two hours beyond that. And I was just already
Speaker:overwhelmed with so much stuff. I just said to my husband, I was like, I
Speaker:can't even figure out if it's open, and I don't want to drive out there
Speaker:and find out that it's not. And so I don't know. I'll have to figure
Speaker:it out. I don't know, because I had questions, and I wasn't sure how to
Speaker:do certain things. And there's all these online options, but I didn't know which one
Speaker:was the right one. And we have a lot going on, so I just needed
Speaker:to focus on other stuff. So it was a couple hours later, and I figured
Speaker:maybe he took the girls out for lunch or something because he had been gone
Speaker:for a while. And then he calls me and he. Says, the one
Speaker:that you thought it was is correct. And I said,
Speaker:did you go there? And he goes, no. I went to two other post
Speaker:offices and asked. I was like, oh, that's a lot of driving.
Speaker:Like, our post Office. It's not like post offices are like right across the street
Speaker:from each other. Like, we live in an area that has been exploding
Speaker:for the last 15 years and we still don't have a post office. We have
Speaker:to drive like 25 minutes to get to the nearest one. He actually, like,
Speaker:did some traveling to go to two different post offices.
Speaker:He was like, but the one they confirmed, it's open. They called over there, it's
Speaker:open, so. We can go there. I said, oh, thank you so much,
Speaker:I really appreciate that. And then expected him to come home. And then I looked
Speaker:at the clock and I was like, it's 4 o', clock, they close at
Speaker:5. I think it's only 20 minutes away. I could probably get over there now
Speaker:and I have a little bit of time. Maybe I should just bounce over
Speaker:there. So I called him and I was like, do you think I should just
Speaker:run over there now? And he goes, I'm standing here with.
Speaker:The lady right now and I'm gonna put you on speaker and you can ask
Speaker:her all your questions. He was like, she's got all the boxes, she's got all
Speaker:the labels. You can just ask your questions. She'll give me the stuff, I'll bring
Speaker:it home. And I was like, you did. You went
Speaker:like, I didn't ask you to do okay. So he puts me on
Speaker:speaker. And I was like, hello, stranger person. And she was so
Speaker:nice. She was so super nice. And she was like, okay, so you're gonna go
Speaker:online. You're gonna use this. You're gonna have to print this out. You're going to
Speaker:need these things. If you already printed your labels, you might need to
Speaker:reprint them. If it's already on your envelopes, you're going to have to put the
Speaker:barcode on. Once you do this, then we can do these other
Speaker:things. She walked me through all of it. She was like, you need the pre
Speaker:canceled stamps. You can get them here. We don't carry them here.
Speaker:She gave him all the materials. She was so nice. Then she
Speaker:gave me her direct line and she was like, you can call. You can speak
Speaker:to me, you can speak to these two other people will walk you through any
Speaker:problems that you have. Or the other thing you can do is you can package
Speaker:it all up, bring it here, we can do a test run, make sure you
Speaker:did it all right? Because it's a little nerve wracking at first. It's not hard,
Speaker:but it can be a little confusing. And we'll do as many test runs with
Speaker:you as you want. And if you do it wrong, we just cancel them out
Speaker:and you don't pay until it goes into the ether anyway.
Speaker:And I was like, you're so nice. Can I buy you
Speaker:cough? You're so insanely nice.
Speaker:And so she said, okay, but the. Only thing I can't do, I'm gonna give
Speaker:him the packages, I'm gonna give him the boxes, but the only thing I can't
Speaker:do is the pre canceled mail or the pre canceled stamps. He's gonna have to
Speaker:go somewhere else to go grab those. And I was like, okay, we can get
Speaker:them tomorrow. And he goes, no, no, I'll go. Get them right now. It's not
Speaker:that far. And I was like, okay, but that's like the fourth post office
Speaker:of the day that you're going. That's a lot. That's so many post office
Speaker:offices. But he did, he left and he brought me home
Speaker:a package. Like, if you know me, you know,
Speaker:I like research.
Speaker:He took something gigantic
Speaker:and insurmountable off my brain. Without
Speaker:asking, without needing instruction, he just did
Speaker:it. He could just tell that this thing had overstimulated
Speaker:me and the sheer risk of
Speaker:failure was enough that I might not do it, but that it was really important
Speaker:that someone needed to figure it out. I think that's the most important part. Someone
Speaker:needed to figure it out. I was acting as if I needed
Speaker:to figure it out because of course you think these control
Speaker:issues are new. But he took the initiative
Speaker:to figure it out. And I was just thinking about it last night
Speaker:as I was going through my very happy stack of documents that tell me where
Speaker:I can get. Because he couldn't get the pre canceled stamps. But he also didn't
Speaker:realize that he got me a document on it. And now I know where to
Speaker:get the pre canceled stamps. And I was able to get it set up this
Speaker:morning so that I can order them, because that's apparently a thing that you have
Speaker:to do. But I was thinking about it
Speaker:last night, just the sheer amount of stress that was no longer on
Speaker:my brain, or even just the fact that I knew what the challenge was.
Speaker:Now before that morning, the challenge was, am I even
Speaker:gonna be able to figure this out? Is there anybody to help me? Is
Speaker:there anybody I can call? Is this place even open? Do I have to
Speaker:actually put pants on and go find out if this place is open? What's gonna
Speaker:happen if I put pants on and the thing is not open? In the light
Speaker:of all of the other 10,000 really difficult things that are going on, how
Speaker:Hard am I gonna take it if I can't get my
Speaker:cheap postage that I so rightfully deserve for somebody to
Speaker:just show up. I know he's my husband, but still, this
Speaker:still shocked me. To just take care of it, to just
Speaker:know, like this is out of her wheelhouse right now, this is not
Speaker:something that she is capable of right now. I'm going to go take care of
Speaker:this and to come back with not only all of the answers, but all of
Speaker:the tools that I needed to do it. It was just this like beautiful
Speaker:picture of, I guess, what love looks like. When you've been married as long
Speaker:as we have. We're coming up on like 15 years
Speaker:married and together a lot longer than that. And
Speaker:it is really, really easy to forget that
Speaker:there was a reason that you married this person to begin with. And
Speaker:I obviously love my husband dearly and he
Speaker:is very good to me. I'm also very good to him. But he does stuff
Speaker:like this all the time where if there is a solution that is
Speaker:escaping me that I can't just reach out and grab and
Speaker:it's something that he can figure out, he'll just go figure it out. But it
Speaker:was like 20 years ago, it would have been date
Speaker:nights and flowers and shiny things and
Speaker:almost 20 years in, it's stacks of paperwork
Speaker:that make me very happy that I can take notes on and highlight and
Speaker:bins from the post office and just something off of
Speaker:my giant never ending to do list that is percolating in
Speaker:my brain and causing me so much stress. And for
Speaker:somebody else, that might be their nightmare for somebody to just show up and handle
Speaker:something like that. But he knew that this
Speaker:particular thing was sidelining me in a way that maybe it shouldn't have. Other
Speaker:people who are more likely to leave the house
Speaker:all willy nilly, you people who just like go outside all the time
Speaker:would have just been like, oh, let's just go see if the place is open.
Speaker:My brain could not process that. And so him being a,
Speaker:let's just go see that the place was open. Took a car full of our
Speaker:kids. It's two, but it feels like a lot to go to
Speaker:7,000 different post offices to get
Speaker:this done for me so that I could focus on the 7,000 other
Speaker:things that we have going on. And it felt like kind of the
Speaker:greatest display of love and understanding that I
Speaker:think I've felt in a long time. And now I have postal bins and
Speaker:labels and if you know me, you know I love a good label. I now
Speaker:can put Barcodes on everything, which also feels very
Speaker:legitimate. And I could also become a
Speaker:commercial postal center if I wanted to because I have a permit now.
Speaker:And maybe that's the future. Maybe we'll get out of this healthcare thing
Speaker:and we'll start mailing shit. But at a minimum,
Speaker:if you get a letter from me, no, it cost me about 40 cents as
Speaker:opposed to the 78 cents that it should have because I sorted
Speaker:it myself into separate bins with
Speaker:labels
Speaker:for this week's small talk again. Remember, this is something we do every week. My
Speaker:husband and I have been married a long, long time and there is rarely anything
Speaker:about him that surprises me anymore. In fact, I can very much predict,
Speaker:like, he'll walk into my office and literally before he can open his mouth, I'm
Speaker:like, you're not dying. Because it means he's found some new ailment.
Speaker:He'll be like, I don't know, I think I have armpit cancer. And I'm like,
Speaker:you don't have armpit cancer. But like, there's a way that he
Speaker:walks into my office that I can hear in his gait that he's a about
Speaker:to tell me that he has a new man cold, and it's going to kill
Speaker:him. We took the kids for my oldest birthday to
Speaker:stay at a hotel nearby. And the kids were swimming and
Speaker:they're finally good enough swimmers that we can kind of let them
Speaker:be a little more willy nilly. And so they were going. There was this big
Speaker:water slide. They were going up and down. They loved it. He was like being
Speaker:dad at the bottom of the slide. He had like his hat on. And
Speaker:he was the lifeguard for a long time before I met him. I decided to
Speaker:go in the hot tub. And he was still in the pool, like catching the
Speaker:children as they came down the slide. And I looked at him and he just
Speaker:like looked like a lifeguard. And I was like, I find this kind of
Speaker:attractive. I don't know what's happening here. What is happening that
Speaker:I find my husband attractive? This is weird. I might need
Speaker:an adult. What is happening? So that was
Speaker:interesting and fun. But then our youngest, our kids birthdays are 19 days
Speaker:apart, which in the middle of the recent chaos has been just a
Speaker:blast. And they have. I don't know that they've gotten the best version of mom
Speaker:for their birthdays, but we'll fix that next year, I guess.
Speaker:My youngest wanted a garden party.
Speaker:I don't know where she got this idea. I said, what do you mean you
Speaker:want a garden Party. She was like, I want a garden party. What is wrong
Speaker:with you, Mom? And I did not have the time or bandwidth to dedicate
Speaker:any thought to it whatsoever. As far as I was concerned, we were going to
Speaker:show up in flowery dresses and have a plastic tea set, and that was going
Speaker:to be the garden party. So he had told me he was working
Speaker:on something. He basically made it clear that he had it handled. He was going
Speaker:to take care of it. Okay, fine. My youngest told me two days
Speaker:before her birthday that she wanted a special dress to wear.
Speaker:And usually I get her, like, a shirt with
Speaker:her age on it and, like, a tutu because she loves
Speaker:tutus. She said, mom, I want a dress. And
Speaker:I was like, I wasn't understanding. And our nanny said, I think she's
Speaker:trying to tell you that she doesn't want another tutu. She wants,
Speaker:like, an actual dress. And so I'm like, oh,
Speaker:shit, I have two days to figure this out. So I said to her, I
Speaker:was like, I don't know that I'm going to be able to do this in
Speaker:time. This is a very short timeline. And it didn't occur to me to actually
Speaker:go to a store. I was like, I don't know how I'm going to order
Speaker:one in time. Did you know they have these places where you
Speaker:can go buy things in person? This is new to me.
Speaker:Whenever I was younger, when I wanted a cute dress, I would go to
Speaker:Dillard's. And I was like, do they even have
Speaker:Dillard's anymore? They do. There is a mall that is not that
Speaker:far from our house. Like, 20, 25 minutes away that is,
Speaker:like, desolate. Like, it's empty. And so if I'm gonna
Speaker:go to a mall, I'm gonna go to that mall. But I also didn't know
Speaker:if the Dillard's had anything in it. I thought it would just be
Speaker:like a wasted husk of a Dillard's. Cause, like, literally the
Speaker:mall is empty. Empty. The stores that are in there, there's
Speaker:like a theater, there's like a gym. There's like a
Speaker:paint your pottery place. Like, there's not a lot of retail left in there. They're
Speaker:trying to survive. Basically, I said to her, I said, do you want to go
Speaker:shop for a dress? You and I can go and just have a special day.
Speaker:And so, of course she wanted to go. She tried on dresses for the first
Speaker:time for her seventh birthday. She had never been in a fitting room before
Speaker:because that shows you how often we leave the house and she did find a
Speaker:dress that she loved. And it was not the sparkly,
Speaker:frilly, tulle y dress that I thought she was going to pick. She picked it.
Speaker:I had nothing to do with it. This very understated floral dress that, like, fit
Speaker:her like a glove. And it looked amazing. And it was so cute. And it
Speaker:looked like it belonged to a garden party. And I was like, great. Awesome. She
Speaker:got a dress. She was very happy with it. And then she kept walking around
Speaker:going, okay, well, well, I would also like this. And I was like, no. And
Speaker:she was like, but it's my birthday. And I was like, that doesn't mean you
Speaker:just get everything. And she was like, what do you mean? It's my birthday.
Speaker:I get what I want. And I was like, no, that's not how. I don't
Speaker:know. I don't know who you think I am, but that is not how this
Speaker:works. Not at all. We wandered around a little bit, and then I took her
Speaker:to Five Below. I'd never been to Five Below before. I walked
Speaker:into Five Below. I immediately texted my husband to say I made a
Speaker:mistake. I took our child to Five Below
Speaker:because holy crap. And I was like, apparently this is where all
Speaker:of my dopamine was. Because this place
Speaker:is like an impulse by Hellscape. I just,
Speaker:like, kept grabbing shit. I got a desk vacuum plugs into
Speaker:usb. I can vacuum my desk. It doesn't. I mean, it's filled with glitter because
Speaker:I spilled glitter on my desk the other day. But I didn't need that. But
Speaker:it was $5 and it made me feel good. And so I think I'm gonna
Speaker:go to Five Below and get some more stupid shit. She also ran
Speaker:around the whole time going, this is the best place I've ever been.
Speaker:She made me buy her a disco ball for her garden party.
Speaker:We brought it all home. But while we were out,
Speaker:my husband had been setting up this party for the next
Speaker:day. And when we drove up to the house, glad the neighbors weren't
Speaker:looking, as if they were, the police would have been called. He literally came outside
Speaker:and, like, put a bag over her head and was like, close your eyes, you're
Speaker:not allowed to see. And he, like, ran upstairs with her.
Speaker:He did take the bag off. She's fine. But just so that she wouldn't see
Speaker:anything. And so I walk in, and this man has
Speaker:turned our dining room into a full
Speaker:garden. There were curtains on the outside.
Speaker:Like, our dining room is open to our living room. He
Speaker:hung a curtain rod, hung curtains on the inside. There were
Speaker:curtains on the wall. They were sheer and he put twinkle lights
Speaker:behind them. There was garland all over
Speaker:the tops of it. He put butterflies into the
Speaker:curtains. He stuck little bees everywhere. There was this
Speaker:beautiful tea set. I have no idea where he got it. I think it might
Speaker:have been his mother's. I don't know. He got little tiny
Speaker:tea sandwiches and all of these, like,
Speaker:jams and scones and all of these little
Speaker:foods that you eat at tea parties and garden
Speaker:parties. He got the girls gloves, these like,
Speaker:lace gloves so that they could be fancy. And they
Speaker:had like, I guess, headbands and fascinators and whatever.
Speaker:The bow that I got her that matched her dress was immediate trash.
Speaker:When she saw the fascinator, she was like, I need that
Speaker:headband on my head right immediately. And I was like, oh, well, I will just
Speaker:go fuck myself. That's fine. Without help. He just, like
Speaker:turned himself into a Pinterest mom for a minute and
Speaker:magically turned our whole dining
Speaker:room into this beautiful area
Speaker:that is so pretty that it's still up. It's been over a week and I
Speaker:would not let him take it down because it's that pretty. And
Speaker:just because this kid said she wanted a garden party, he got her a bee
Speaker:cake. And he bought all of these,
Speaker:like, tiered dessert stands that he, like, filled
Speaker:with snacks. He bought a charcuterie
Speaker:board or a charcuterie tray. I don't even think he knows how to say charcuterie.
Speaker:And it was beautiful. And, like, my mom came over, his mom came over. And
Speaker:everybody just keeps walking around going like, this is just beautiful. Like, it's not like,
Speaker:I have an ugly, trashy house. Like, our house is pretty nice. Regardless,
Speaker:that room itself has, like, mirrored detail walls like, that we paid a lot of
Speaker:money for. And this is better. So, yeah, he's just
Speaker:been knocking it out of the park lately. And I bet if I was a
Speaker:full time kept fan, I also could knock it out of the park as such
Speaker:occasionally. But I'm not. Which I had to get that in there because
Speaker:I just had to. So happy birthday to both of
Speaker:my children. But also my husband is a Pinterest
Speaker:mom. Thanks for being here, guys. Have a good day. Love you. Mean it.
Speaker:Listen, there's this like, little whiteboard container thing. It's got a little,
Speaker:like a whiteboard you can draw on. I'm also realizing that my children
Speaker:have already damaged it and it's broken now. Awesome. But, like, I've
Speaker:seen it on Amazon for like two years and every time I go to buy
Speaker:it, I'm like, I'm not spending 30 bucks on that. Well, it was $5 five
Speaker:below. And so I bought it. Now it's also already broken, and my children have
Speaker:destroyed it. So, like, every time I'm a little sad, I'm like, I should go
Speaker:to five below below, below, below.
