56: Happy New Year!

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Happy 2021! New Year’s Eve plans, Joy’s Graves’ disease updates, listener voice memos!

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Joy: Hey guys, this is Joy.

Claire: And this is Claire.

Joy: Joy and Claire. It’s 2021, happy New Year!

Claire: Welcome to 2021.

Joy: Welcome. We are so glad that our voices are in your ears for 2021. Hopefully it’s been good so far. It’s only the 4th when we’re recording this. Nothing terrible has happened yet. I know we’re all kind of holding our breath.

Claire: Oh my gosh, I know. I know. We’ve just got to wait and see. We’re a whole week into the year. How was your New Year? What did you do?

Joy: It was great. How was your New Year’s Eve? Because we did the same thing basically.

Claire: I know.

Joy: How did you like your drive-thru light situation? In case you missed last week’s [episode], Claire and I both went to this light show where you go through this drive-thru display –

Claire: Parking lot basically.

Joy: – of lights. And it’s really cute. And they have the lights orchestrated to a radio channel that’s playing Christmas music, so it’s really cute. I thought it was great. We drove in and no one was there. And the second we got in, tons of cars came behind us. We were like, oh my gosh, we just missed it. But it was so great. It was super cute. The lights were fun. You kind of drive through this dome of lights.

Claire: Yeah, like a tunnel?

Joy: Yeah, like a tunnel of lights. 

Claire: I have a feeling that they were probably the exact same set up. Except that – okay, we went to the one at Water World. And it was sort of unclear. So Water World has two entrances, a north one and an east one. And Google Maps just automatically takes you to the north one. Well the north entrance was a COVID testing site.

Joy: Oh no. [laughing]

Claire: So we got stuck in this – if you’ve been to a drive-thru COVID testing –

Joy: Oh yeah, we have them in our business.

Claire: It’s just a maze of cones and lines. 

Joy: You can’t get through, yeah.

Claire: So you can’t get through. We had to spend five minutes, or more than that, just navigating this COVID testing. And as we were pulling in, I was like, “Oh my gosh, this is so funny. It looks like a COVID testing site.” Then I was like, “This is a COVID testing site.” We went to the wrong side of the parking lot. Because it just looked like there were cars lining up, and the lights were right there. We couldn’t tell the lights were on the other side.

Joy: The question is how many people have done that.

Claire: Right, a thousand. Because when we got up to the front and got to the guy, we were like, “We’re sorry, we’re here for the lights.” The ten cars in front of us had done the same thing. He was like, “Alright, go over there, turn around.” It just wasn’t well marked.

Joy: You’re like, “This was not on the ticket.”

Claire: Right, this is not on the ticket.

Joy: A COVID test while you’re going into the light show.

Claire: Exactly. So we kind of got into the COVID testing line accidentally. But it was really fun. It was perfect. Brandon had Miles sit in his lap while he drove, because you know you’re driving like 3 miles an hour around this cone thing. And then Evie sat in the front with Maxine. I just did the mom thing where I sat in the back by myself. But it was cute. It was the perfect amount of commitment for a New Year’s Eve activity with two kids. You don’t even have to get out of the car. 

Joy: Yeah, it was great, I loved it. I thought it was a cute thing to do on New Year’s Eve. Yeah, it didn’t take that long. It’s not like you’re sitting forever. It’s not like it took very long to drive through it. At the end, we went and picked up some food and then we hung out with the dogs and watched a movie and called it a night. We went to bed early, but then we woke up at midnight because there were fireworks and JT does not like fireworks. So we actually were awake on New Year’s at midnight. We didn’t stay up, we just woke up at midnight. It was really cute.

Claire: We stayed up. We watched the new Wonder Woman.

Joy: Yeah, how’d you like it?

Claire: It was fine.

Joy: Is it what I said where you were kind of like, it was a lot of action, a lot of pretty people, but not life-changing?

Claire: Yeah, I liked the first one a lot better. I thought the plot was a lot more interesting. I thought the villain was a lot more interesting. This one was like, eh, it was fine. Not my favorite super hero movie.

Joy: What did you think about Kristen Wiig being a villain?

Claire: I mean, I love her. But I think the way the movie was marketed, they marketed it as if she was the bad guy. She really wasn’t. The other guy, the wish guy was the bad guy.

Joy: Yeah, the other guy was the bad guy, but she was kind of this quasi-villain.

Claire: She just kind of had this anti-hero journey, but it was just not – they had one really short fight scene.

Joy: Which was weird because it kind of came out of nowhere. Scott and I were both like, wait a minute, how did she get that costume on and then how did she all the sudden turn into this cat? 

Claire: Right, right, yeah. I mean, that part I was kind of like, okay, I thought that she was going to be a little more –

Joy: A little more prominent, yeah.

Claire: Of an evil master mind, rather than just sort of this kid who is made fun of in high school and grows up to want to be a Cheetah Girl.

Joy: Okay, so how was your Christmas? Did you get any good gifts?

Claire: Didn’t we already talk about Christmas on the last one?

Joy: No, we didn’t talk about gifts, did we?

Claire: Brandon got me a necklace from my favorite jeweler. Her name is Claire Spmmers Buck. She’s out of Austin, and I have like five necklaces from her. I love her stuff. She just is very cute and simplistic and a lot of metal work, but very simple. Minimalist, I would call it, but really pretty. So I got a cute necklace and some mugs. I always love a good mug.

Joy: Always love a good mug.

Claire: I really do. Like people being like, “Oh I got another scarf” or whatever. I really love mugs so much. And then, my big thing is that Brandon and Maxine redecorated and cleaned out our basement guest room. So now I have a home office. I’ve been working in my bedroom for the last ten months. And Maxine painted this really cute mural, and they did this whole thing. So it’s been nice. I’m sitting in here right now. It’s been nice because I have my own little space.

Joy: Nice background for all your calls.

Claire: I know. Honestly, I was thinking about this. Ever since Brandon and I moved in together, which was in 2011 I guess. Since before then, since I left college, I’ve never had my own – because even in the interim between when I lived with Brandon, I guess I had my own room one time. But I even lived in a shared room. I haven’t had my own room in a house at all. I haven’t had an office. Brandon and I have always shared a room. If we’ve had an extra room, it was always Brandon’s office because he was in school. I’ve never had, as an adult, my own space in a house. So this feels really cool to be like this is my space, my room, it’s decorated for me, and I can keep my stuff in here. I mean, obviously I have a bedroom, but I share it with Brandon, and our bedroom’s really pretty small. So it feels good to be like look at my cute little room.

Joy: I love it. I know, you’re like, “This is my room. Let me show you my toys.”

Claire: Exactly. I’m going to hang out here and play Mall Madness or something.

Joy: [laughing] I also want to say happy anniversary.

Claire: Oh yeah, today’s our 7th anniversary, January 4th.

Joy: I had to go down a little memory lane this morning because I was like, oh my gosh, I totally remember you being at Beth’s house and you trying on two wedding dresses. And you were like, “Which one should I wear?” I totally remember that. And I just remember driving to your wedding, and it was so snowy, and we had to drive so slow.

Claire: It was a blizzard.

Joy: Yeah, it was – when I say blizzard, it was a blizzard. We had to drive so slow to Boulder. Barely could park and get out without my high heels just – 

Claire: For me, it was this magical, beautiful snow globe. For everyone else, they were like, “I can’t believe you made me drive to Boulder in the middle of the biggest freaking blizzard of the year.”

Joy: When everyone got it, we were all like, “Oh my gosh, I can’t believe I made it.” Everyone was just so excited. And I remember your dress almost caught fire on the candles on the ground.

Claire: Yeah, uh huh. That was –

Joy: A then a hot chocolate bar.

Claire: Yes, instead of a wedding cake, we did a hot chocolate bar. Yeah, it was memorable. It feels like it was not that long ago, but also like it was a really, really, really long time ago. We got married on 1-4-14. The 7th anniversary is the copper and wool anniversary. But normally we don’t really do big anniversary gifts because we just had Christmas, so it feels a little redundant to be like, “And here’s an anniversary present.” I don’t think I got him anything last year. I definitely didn’t get him anything this year. But we are going to go this weekend and stay at the St Julien in Boulder, which is this really fancy hotel, and we’re just going to spend the night there this weekend and sit in our hotel room and eat sushi.

Joy: That’s so great, that’s so great. I also want to know, people out there who have birthdays really close to Christmas how you handle it.  One of my best friends has a birthday on the 28th. And I always make sure to send her a birthday present completely separate from a Christmas present because I know it must suck to, “Oh, well, Christmas and birthday combined.”

Claire: Totally.

Joy: This is your Christmas and birthday present. You must always feel like everybody just combines your birthday together. I want to hear some sob stories from people. Or if you have a good, like, hey this is how I’ve always done it.

Claire: Or I feel like sometimes your family, like you did for your friend, I have friends who have kids whose birthdays are right around Christmas, and they go way out of their way to make this huge deal of their birthday. Probably more so than they would at another time of year. So maybe it kind of –

Joy: Works in their favor, yeah. So I want to give you guys a quick update because so many people have been really kind about being like, “This is really helpful.” So my purpose in sharing is not to be droning on and on about all the stuff going on with my health but more to help you guys if you’re going through something similar or if you’re just not sure what to do when you’re experiencing something like this. So recently I had – I can’t even remember the last time that I updated you guys. But I think I had seen my naturopath a couple of times and some of the blood work that came back from one of the many blood tests I’ve done was still high for my liver. They wanted to recheck my liver, and they were like, “Your liver’s still high.” But my liver has dropped – I’m going to really simplify it because there’s these two panels that they look at, but they both have dropped 100 points since the beginning of November. Which is huge. It’s still high. It’s still over the minimum, but they were like, “We just want to do an ultrasound because your liver is still not looking good.” So that’s when I went and got this ultrasound, and that came back and they were like,  “Well you have this” – they called it a “starry sky.” I don’t really know what that means other than, it’s supposedly inflammation of your liver. But your liver looks inflamed, and they call it a starry sky on the ultrasound. so I was like, “Oh great.” So that day I was so frustrated because they were like, “We’re going to order more blood tests.” I was about to hit the fan. I was like, you want me to do another blood test? I’ve done probably ten in the past month. My arms can’t take it anymore. I was like, oh my gosh. I just remember that day when she’s like – my primary care doctor is awesome. I love her. She’s super supportive. She knows me. She knows that I’m freaked out by all this. And she’s like, “I ran your ultrasound by one of the GI docs.” And I work for Kaiser, so I have Kaiser insurance and it’s all integrated. They can just email a GI doc the same day. They all work together. Which is great and it’s really beneficial because everything happens so fast. You don’t have to wait to schedule with the GI or schedule with the –

Claire: Right, you don’t have to wait for them to get your insurance approval through the scheduler and the whole thing.

Joy: Exactly. That’s the huge benefit of working for them and having this insurance. So she’s like, “I just ran it by one of our GI docs, and he said he highly recommends that you do not do naturopathic medicine and that you just go the western route.”

Claire: Which, the western route is just kill your thyroid and take –

Joy: Let me back up real quick because I can’t remember if I told you guys this. When I met with an endocrinologist who was the one who interpreted my blood tests. Was that the first thing that I had? Oh no, no, no, no. My scan, when I scanned my thyroid. So she interpreted the thyroid scan and all my tests. And when I first met with her, she was like, “You’re not a candidate.” There’s three treatments you can have for hyperthyroidism. One is medication, one is iodine radiation, and one is to remove your thyroid. I’m not a candidate for medication or removal because my liver labs are not good and so the medication’s going to harm your liver. And the surgery, they’re like, no one’s going to put you under anesthesia with bad liver labs. So she’s like, “Really your only option is iodine radiation.” She really encouraged that, obviously. She said, ‘”I’ve never seen someone be helped by naturopathic medicine for Grave’s Disease.” And I just held my breath, and I’m like, “Okay.” I mean, I know they come from such a good place, I know it, and they want to give you all the information as possible. But the thought of zapping my thyroid and having to be on medication for the rest of my life is terrifying to me. So I told my primary care physician this, and she was like, “I totally get it. I totally understand.” And again, this is the doctor who’s known me since I’ve worked at Kaiser for 6.5 years. She knows me through this whole time. So this GI doc was looking at my labs and saying she should just go the western route, AKA zap your thyroid. I was like, absolutely not. I want to just put a caveat to that. I am obviously not against western medicine. I work for western medicine. But from my experience, not personal to any of these doctors, but my personal experience was like, okay, so you don’t even know me and you just looked at a lab – and I get that that’s what you’re trained to do is look at something and be like, “Wow, that’s not good, she needs to go western.” But to not even say, “Sure, let her try this for 6-8 months,” but instead to be like, “She needs to stop doing naturopathic medicine.” I know in my heart I’m going to keep doing naturopathic medicine because it’s working. But to hear from a doctor – I was upset. I know in my heart that I can get myself better, but to hear a medical professional just poo pooing your approach. I don’t think he even knows what I’m doing. And does he even know that my naturopath has a medical degree? She went to med school. I’m not seeing someone who’s rubbing crystals on me and burning sage. I’m going to a doctor, and you don’t understand the approach that she’s taking. How dare you just make a call that’s something I have to live with for the rest of my life. So that’s been kind of a roller coaster. Because truly any time I talk to one of these doctors, I just email everything to my naturopath and I’m like, “Just so you know, this is what they’re saying,” and she’s like, “That’s fine. This is just not in their paradigm. They don’t understand. I get that all the time. We’re going to stay the course.” They don’t see or want to talk to me about how my symptoms have improved. My appetite is up, I’m eating all the time, my sleep is way better, I don’t have the shakes anymore, my liver labs drop 100 points. Mind you, that has happened in 5-6 weeks. They’re not looking at that. They’re just like, “Nope.” 

Claire: And that’s the biggest thing you keep saying is like, “Listen, I’m not opposed to western medicine. I’m not anti-western medicine, but I’m anti – 

Joy: I’m just anti the killing of my thyroid.

Claire: Well, yeah. You’re just anti that being Plan A.

Joy: Yeah. I’m anti that being Plan A.

Claire: And that’s fine. It’s not life or death if you get this resolved in the next two or three days. 

Joy: Nope.

Claire: I think we talked about this last time a little bit, but the people that Brandon works with at his job – As you guys know, Brandon’s a nurse. He used to work on the telemetry. Now he works in the OR. And the hospital he works at is the only hospital in our town that really accepts Medicare and Medicaid, so he gets a lot of people who haven’t had the best access to healthcare and education throughout their lives. And say what you will about people and their own personal choices, but for the most part a lot of these people are dealing with lifelong access issues to the types of things that a lot of us take for granted. And so a lot of them are in really, really poor health. I talk to him a lot about the people he sees who they are really within a couple of days or a couple of weeks, if a couple of months at the most, of irreversible damage that is going to be life-threatening. And more than that, they are not necessarily in a position, whether that be with their lifestyle or financially or their living situation or their mental capacity, to take on lifestyle changes.

Joy: Right, right.

Claire: Those are the types of people that, yeah, let’s give that medication fix where they just have to take the pill for the rest of their lives. Let’s not burden them with these additional issues and additional expenses and things.

Joy: Yeah, exactly.

Claire: That is an important option for a lot, if not honestly most, people.

Joy: Most people, absolutely, absolutely.

Claire: And that’s not speaking down about those people.

Joy: No, no, no.

Claire: The average person that a doctor sees with your type of labs is the type of person who – not to overstate the severity of Joy’s labs, but after showing them to Brandon, Brandon was like, “Yeah, I’ve seen worse labs than this but with people who are in in-patient hospital care.” So the majority of people who have this type of condition are not, how do I put this? I feel like most of your practitioners have probably been surprised. Like, wait a minute, you’re so “healthy,” how are these your numbers?

Joy: Exactly, exactly.

Claire: But when you see people with numbers like that, a lot of the time there’s obviously other stuff going on here. These are not numbers that are indicative of a healthy lifestyle and therefore a lifestyle change or a lifestyle prescription, if you will, is probably not going to be effective for this person. Let’s give them the drugs because that is what’s going to be the best fit for them.

Joy: Sure.

Claire: To what you’re saying is like, if they knew you and could see your lifestyle and like, no, actually a lifestyle change and taking things a little bit slower and trying out a few other options is actually a good fit for this person. So let’s just give it a shot. You’re not going to collapse in 48 hours if action isn’t taken.

Joy: Exactly, yeah. And I think that’s the other thing that really made me feel good when I told my primary care physician. I said, “With all respect, I’m going to keep going with the naturopath. I so appreciate your help. I’ll keep in touch. We’re going to get labs retested in February, so I’ll talk to you in a couple months.” And she wrote me back and she was like, “Joy, I know you and I would tell you if I thought you were making the wrong choice.” Which I thought was so cool because, again, she knows me, she knows how determined I am and committed I am. When I talk to Dr. Cook, my naturopath, she was very clear in our first visit that if you are not committed to a lifestyle change, I can’t help you, I’m not going to take you as a patient. Naturopathic medicine is definitely the slower and harder way to go. Definitely the slower and harder way to go. Long term, I want to be able to look back in a year and be like, I am so glad I put in the time and the work instead of going the route of zapping my thyroid and in 10-15 years from now having horrible side effects from that. Who knows what could happen? I just don’t want to go that route. I know a lot of women out there have gone that route and maybe it’s worked for you. Like you said, Claire, I don’t want that to be my Plan A, and I’m so committed to not having it be my Plan A. So that’s the update. I think the hardest part for me right now is – that’s why I woke up on January 1st and I was like, you know what, I really want to focus this year on one day at a time because I cannot think about the future. I can’t think about, well what if in 8 months this doesn’t work. I just can’t do that to myself. Like we were talking about last episode, even if we think 2021’s going to be so much better than 2020, let us just believe this for today. And so that’s kind of where I’m at. Just for today. Objectively, I feel good. I’m been going to the gym –

Claire: I think it’s encouraging that your numbers are improving. And that’s the other thing, it’s not like the needle isn’t moving.

Joy: Right. Yeah, and my doctor was like – because my liver labs have really improved. My thyroid has stayed exactly the same. But she said, “Joy” – this is the naturopath. She said, “The liver is a very resilient organ, it will always respond first. The thyroid just takes a little bit more time to catch up.” She’s treating everything. I feel different, I feel better taking out the dairy and the fruit/sugar combo and all that, so I’m going to stay the course. Thank you guys so much for sending in your support and stories. I love hearing from you about anything that’s going on with you health-wise. I feel like knowing that there’s other people out there going through stuff is really encouraging, so please feel free to just email me and be like, “Hey, I’m going through the same thing.”

Claire: Or even just, I feel like everybody who’s emailed to say, “I have hypothyroidism” or Lyme or whatever the situation may be. We’ve gotten a lot of great DMs from people who are like, “Yeah, this is what they told me for my Crohn’s Disease, that I could only take this medication and have all these side effects, but I was able to manage it with a naturopath and under the supervision of my physician.” And I think about like, we talked about this a little bit recently. I kind of think about people, their reaction to my home birth where it was like they didn’t know what a true, modern home birth attended by midwives, what it really looks like. My in-laws, once I explained it to them they were on board. But at first when you heard “home birth,” it was like, “You’re going to give birth in a drum circle.” I was like, no, no, no, no. That’s not what that means. And so I think it’s just that perception of naturopaths and natural medicine.

Joy: And it’s not familiar to them, yeah. I feel like we’ve lost listeners – or a listener – who got so mad that you had a home birth. She was so offended that she stopped listening.

Claire: And spammed us for weeks.

Joy: And spammed us, yeah. I just feel like this is something that is such a personal choice, you really cannot judge someone else’s journey. I just encourage people who maybe disagree, you don’t need to agree.

Claire: You don’t need to agree. You absolutely do not need to agree. We are not asking even for you to agree.

Joy: I am not requesting feedback. Which, that’s something from, what’s her name? Melissa Hartwig. I guess she said that all the time on her Instagram page, and someone messaged me – it was starting, it wasn’t a lot. But I was just like, “My heart can’t handle this you guys.” I’m very sensitive to this stuff. Any shred of negativity sends me over the edge, I can’t take it. I just remember someone said, “Oh, you should be like Melissa Hartwig and be like, ‘I’m not requesting feedback.'” So that’s my tagline right now. Any time I talk about my health, not requesting feedback. Thank you, goodbye.

Claire: Let’s talk about BluBlox. It’s a new year.

Joy: New year, new you.

Claire: Same great sponsor. We love BluBlox, we love their glasses. blublox.com. The discount code is “JOY.” Get yourself some blue light blocking glasses. They have so many great frames. I love all their styles. They’ve also had some really good sales recently. Not saying to not use our discount code, but if you’re not ready to take the plunge right now, maybe at least go sign up for their newsletter and get on their mailing list because they had some really good deals over the holidays and they tend to have some good sales. So just keep an eye out. Hahaha, fish and pun. Get it? They have all different types of lenses. Lenses that are better for daytime, lenses that are better for night time. You can have prescription lenses put in. You can send in your own frames if you really just love your frames and don’t want new ones, if you can’t part with them. And as a reminder, they’re based in Australia, so you’re not going to get two-day shipping, but you really get what you pay for. We love this brand. We would not be referring you still to this Australian expensive blue light blocking glasses brand if we didn’t truly think that their product was amazing and we didn’t love the company.

Joy: They’re such good people.

Claire: They’re such good people. And as a reminder, when you purchase a pair of BluBlox glasses, they will donate a pair of glasses to someone in need through their non-profit partner. Go to blublox.com. The discount code is “JOY.” Thank you for supporting the sponsors who support our podcast.

Joy: And just a quick note, I’m on their website right now, and I am digging the Melissa computer classes. They’re so cute. There’s a lot of really cool styles on here. And I’m looking for a new pair of computer glasses myself. I’m digging the Galaxy computer glasses and the Melissa computer glasses. Just a hot tip from Joy. Joy’s Product Corner. So last week, we had a question for you to submit some voice memos, and the sound was great you guys. So what was the question, Claire?

Claire: Okay. So the question last week was very random and it was, what beauty tip or personal care tip have you subconsciously internalized that was from a magazine in the 90’s.

Joy: I have one. I’m laughing because I just remembered one.

Claire: That you maybe didn’t even realize that you were still holding onto. And now you’re thinking about it and you’re like, this can’t be right. We got some really great, hilarious answers.

Joy: Yeah.

Claire: Did you just think of one for yourself?

Joy: I just thought of one and it was the horse mane shampoo. Did you ever use that shampoo?

Claire: No, but I can see it in my mind’s eye.

Joy: It’s a white bottle with blue writing and it’s just like, this is horse mane shampoo. It’s going to make your hair so thick. You know, like, it’s shampoo.

Claire: Because we all want horse manes. Okay, the one I want to start with just cracked me up so much when I read it. It is from Rosy, and the subject line, which I love, “That’s why you don’t take dermatology advice from your uncle.” So this is an email – so funny. “When I was about 8 years old, I was in a grocery store and my lips felt really chapped. I wanted chap stick, and I’m sure I was whining about it. Finally my uncle picked up a tiny bit of iceberg lettuce, and said, ‘Here, press this against your lips’ as thought it was a perfect solution for chapped lips. My 8-year-old brain did not understand that he was just trying to get me to stop whining. Neither did my 9-year-old brain, 10-year-old brain, 11-year-old brain. It wasn’t until I was in my 20’s sitting in a restaurant pressing some garnish against my lips that I realized that this is bogus advice.” I thought that was hysterical because I can just see that. When I was a kid – this isn’t personal care advice, but my older brothers told me so many lies just to get me to stop whining that I didn’t think about. They told me that squirrel tails were poisonous because I wanted to touch a squirrel’s tail so bad. And they were like, “You can’t, they’re poisonous.” And I was like, “Oh yeah, that makes sense.” And finally when I was in high school, I was like, “Wait a minute.” 

Joy: [laughing] Oh, that’s so good, that’s so good. McKenna wrote in and said, “Random beauty hack. Hey Joy and Claire, love this question today. Reminded me of looking through all the old magazines, taking quizzes, and fighting over who got what cute poster of said cute boy with all my girlfriends.” Oh my God, Seventeen Magazine, for sure. I remember in junior high I had Balthazar Getty. If anybody knows who Balthazar Getty is, I’m going to be so happy. Because I think it was that movie… oh my gosh, it’s going to drive me nuts. Balthazar Getty, they had magazines with all your favorite heart throbs.

Claire: Oh my gosh, like Tiger Beat or whatever.

Joy: Oh my gosh. And the posters were amazing.

Claire: And you only bought it for the poster, let’s be honest.

Joy: Totally. And when I was 8 years old, I had my house plastered with Madonna. Plastered. So Balthazar Getty was in Young Guns, which was the hottest of the hot movie with Kiefer Sutherland, Emilio Estevez, Lou Diamond Phillips. I remember me and my little girlfriends would be like, “Emilio Estevez is my boyfriend.” “Kiefer Sutherland is my boyfriend.” And I was like, “Okay fine, I’ll get Balthazar Getty,” and I didn’t even know who he was, but I just wanted a boyfriend. Oh my God, that’s so funny. Sorry, I just had to go on that tangent.

Claire: Back to the email.

Joy: Okay. “One that I still do to this day” – this is the email – “is that I brush my teeth both in the morning and night before I wash my face. Apparently this is supposed to prevent you from getting chin acne. I have no idea if it’s true, but don’t think I will break this habit any time soon. One that I do not nor have ever done but was in a lot of magazines still makes me cringe at the thought that there were young girls that did this and really hope karma caught up to whoever spread this. I remember reading that it was amazing for your skin acne, glow, aging, you name it to wash your face with your pee. Specifically your morning pee as it is the most pure. Also thought I would see if I could dig up an old article, but apparently this is still a thing.” And she sent an article.

Claire: Oh my goodness.

Joy: What? No. That can’t be right. Please no one do that if you have ever read that. 

Claire: If you have ever washed your face with pee, please report back and let us know how it went.

Joy: Is it really true though when you pee on a jelly fish sting that it helps? Because I just saw that from a Friends episode and I still think it’s funny.

Claire: I have no idea.

Joy: Someone who knows the truth, please let us know. Okay. 

Claire: I have heard that though.

Joy: Okay, this next one is a voicemail from Amelia.

Amelia [recording]: Hi Joy and Claire, this is Amy in Maine. I was just thinking of a weird skincare thing – skincare’s probably not the right word – thing that I do that I have no idea where I got. But basically whenever I get a pimple on my face or something, I put toothpaste on it. And specifically the original Crest with the red stripe on it that’s an opaque, light green color, mint green. That specific toothpaste, I use as pimple treatment. I don’t know why. I’ve done it for years, and I forget where I got it. I swear it works. I think. I feel like it does. That was a weird skincare thing, so I thought it was funny. Thanks for podcasting, love you guys.

Joy: That’s so funny. Toothpaste.

Claire: It dries it out or something.

Joy: Yeah, it totally dries it out, and I know exactly that toothpaste. It totally reminds me of the 90’s. It’s so great. That is a good one. I’m sure a lot of people do that one. Okay, this one is from Kari, and she said, “This is weird but seems to work.” And her voice memo is so great.

Kari [recording]: Hi Joy and Claire, my name is Kari and I’ve been a listener for about five years. The weird beauty tip I got I received when I was about 13 years old. My mom’s friend was a Mary Kay sales consultant, and my mom purchased skincare for my sister and I. We’re three years apart. My mom’s friend told us to always apply our face products in an upward motion to prevent wrinkles and to use eye cream from the outside in to prevent wrinkling around the eyes. I’ve done that ever since then. Now I’m 40, my sister is 37, and my brother’s 26. Last fall at my brother’s wedding, someone asked how much younger my sister and I were than him. So there must be a little bit of truth to it. Thanks and have a great day.”

Joy and Claire: [laughing]

Claire: Oh my gosh, I feel like everyone out there had a friend’s mom who sold Mary Kay who was the first person who ever showed you how to put on makeup.

J Oh totally. Mine was Avon though. We had an Avon lady in our neighborhood, and I love their mascara, it was so great. Avon was so fun. I loved going through the magazines and looking at all the makeup.

Claire: So great.

Joy: Well I think that’s all we have for the makeup tips. Did you have any funny ones, other ones that you thought of? I like the upward motion. I’ve totally thought about that, put moisturizer on upwards. That does not work for me.

Claire: I need to get better about just moisturizing in general. I hate the feeling of lotion. I never wear it, and I really need to because I’m getting wrinkles.

Joy: You’re just acclimated to Colorado. When I first moved here, I thought Arizona was dry – no, no, no, no, you don’t know dry. You do not know dry until you’ve been in Colorado. It’s so dry here. 

Claire: I know. I mean, I don’t know because I’ve never lived anywhere else. But no, those are all my beauty tips.

Joy: Pod tips.

Claire: The question for next week – this is another random one. But we need to know, and I really hope we get some good ones here. Please tell us about your 15 minutes of fame. I can’t wait to hear these answers. 

Joy: Just let it rip.

Claire: Your moment in the spotlight. Let it rip. Try to keep it short. Keep the audio quality good. Keep it a little bit short, write it down if you need to, practice it a little bit, rehearse it a little bit. But guys, I can’t wait to hear about the time you got pulled on stage at a Guns N’ Roses concert. I don’t care what it is, I need to know what is your 15 minutes of fame. How did it happen?

Joy: Or maybe it’s your partner. 

Claire: Or maybe it’s your partner. You or your best friend or your partner or whatever that had this unbelievable 15 minutes of fame. If you were on the news and you got interviewed because somebody broke into your dorm room or something, I don’t know. I want to know what it is. I’m trying to think of what mine is. I’ll have to think of it for next week.

Joy: Oh, that’s great. 

Claire: I mean, I feel like this podcast is my 15 minutes of fame.

Joy and Claire: [laughing]

Joy: Do you want to tell anyone else about all the Insta stories questions that you’re doing?

Claire: I’ve just been asking a lot of questions on stories about social media and how you guys consume Joy & Claire. We are really trying in 2021 to get maybe not completely off social media. Originally our plan was we want to be off social media. The more I’m learning about it, the more I’m like okay maybe there is a time and place for a little bit of social media.

Joy: For sure.

Claire: But we really want to find better ways to more intentionally connect with you guys.

Joy: Yeah, like an integrated approach.

Claire: We both want to intentionally connect. Because I feel like, you know, scrolling is good and fine, but you don’t most likely go onto Instagram to be like, “Oh let me see what Joy and Claire are up to.” You just sort of instantly see our stuff.

Joy: You kind of passively see us, yeah.

Claire: Which is fine. Brain breaks are important. That’s what social media is really for. But we want to find other places where we can connect with you guys in a true way that’s like a two-way connection and not just us putting up random stuff on the internet and on social media. Because we do have some great interactions that happen on Instagram, but for the most part it’s just howling into the void. So we are considering a Patreon. We’re considering revamping our newsletter. We’re considering revamping our website and having more of a blog component. Any or all of those things. If you follow somebody or do something or have a podcast or anything –

Joy: That you really love and are engaged.

Claire: – that you love and feel connected with through something like that. You know, we have this Facebook group that we talk about sometimes. It kind of ebbs and flows in its activity lately. 

Joy: Probably just because we don’t have a purpose for it. We just defaulted from one of the health challenges we did way back in the day, and we just kept it.

Claire: Yeah, right. And it’s like, if somebody has a question they go in there and ask it, but it hasn’t been super active for the past year or so. So if you have any great ideas or you have something else out there that you love that’s another community that you feel like might work for this community, we would love to hear your advice. Because of course we have ideas, but we want to know what you guys want. And it’s not worth it for us to just do what we want. 

Joy: Right, what do you love?

Claire: The point here is for it to be for you guys.

Joy: Yes.

Claire: If you have any ideas, please let us know.

Joy: I just love the girl who DM’d us and was like, “I will give you my life savings for you guys to go through the entire British Bakeoff series.”

Claire: That was our plan already, so…

Joy: [laughing] “I’ll give you my life savings,” I laughed so hard. I was like, “Wow, I’m so glad you liked it.”

Claire: I accept. 

Joy: I mean, I accept. Just kidding, that is so funny.

Claire: Kidding, not kidding. Alright. So thank you guys for spending another week with us. Don’t forget to support BluBlox, blublox.com. The discount code is “JOY.” Send us your voice memos, send us your recommendations. You know, just drop us a line, say hi. 

Joy: Yeah, say hello.

Claire: Welcome to 2021. We’re so glad you’re here, and we will talk to you next week.

Joy: Happy New Year! 

Claire: Bye.

Joy: Bye.