This is Joy & Claire
We’re talking Kanye’s documentary, learning how to become a morning person, running, and Love It or Leave It!
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Underrated TV characters, Joy’s love for Selling Sunset and Married at First Sight, Claire is on her way to Mexico, Miles wins a karate tournament, Joy gives a Joe update, and Joy opens up about her previous job ending.
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Secret caves and valium naps. That’s all you need to know.
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This is Joy & Claire Episode 121: The Real Food Dietitians
Episode Date: April 7, 2022
Transcription Completed: April 30, 2022
Audio Length: 42:00 minutes
Joy: Hey guys, this is Joy.
Claire: And this is Claire.
Joy: Welcome back. Happy April. We’re here. It’s beautiful. I hope you’re having a beautiful day, a beautiful week. We have an awesome episode with The Real Food Dieticians. Welcome Jess and Stacie [00:00:43.24].
Claire: We are so excited to have you guys here. Jess is a registered dietician nutritionist living in Boulder, Colorado. Jess and I go way back to our CrossFit Roots buddy days. Also a lot of other hilarious moments in our lives like picking up a CSA from Jess’ porch during the height of the pandemic. I also remember running my sourdough starter out to your husband in the middle of a snowstorm. She lives with her husband and two daughters. She enjoys CrossFit, telemark skiing which we will have to talk about, mountain biking, camping out under the stars. She has an awesome adventure band as well. Stacie is a licensed registered dietician from rural southern Minnesota where she, her husband, and daughter reside with their two dogs. They are the co-founders of The Real Food Dieticians [00:01:29.09]. Stacie also loves all kinds of fitness and has a passion to inspire as many as she can to live a healthier and happier life, both in and out of the kitchen. We are so excited to have you guys here. We are so excited to chat about food, which is pretty much our favorite topic, and also to hear about your latest cookbook. Which I have cooked five recipes out of so far, and I really want to tell you about it. Actually we were originally supposed to have you guys on a couple weeks ago, right before your cookbook came out. I’m actually kind of glad that we got to have a little extra time because I got to dive into the cookbook and do a little homework. Welcome, Stacie and Jess.
Jess: Thanks, Claire. I still have your jar with the cute little lid from the sourdough starter.
Claire: Also, we want to mention that you guys have a third member of your Real Food Dietician team now who is not on the podcast, who is due with a baby minus one day ago, right?
Jess: Yeah, so Jessie Shaver [00:02:25.12] joined us in 2021 while we were in the height of writing the book. It’s been such a whirlwind that Stacie actually has two kids, she has a little boy, that we didn’t even update our bios after Jamison was born. That’s how crazy it’s been. But yes, Jessie joined us, and she is hopefully having a baby or will have had a baby by the time you listen to this.
Claire: I used to work with Jessie at my previous job [00:02:48.11].
Stacie: No way. That’s awesome.
Claire: There’s a lot of nepotism going on in this conversation.
Jess: We feel like Jessie knows everyone. She’s like, “Oh yeah, I know that person.”
Claire: You’re like, wow, I’m not surprised. So for those in our audience that are not familiar with you guys, tell us about how the Real Food Dietician team came to be.
Jess: Well Stacie and I met at a conference in New York City in 2014. We are both working in private practice. Stacie was also at the hospital. We met, and we did that whole, “Yeah, let’s keep in touch” accountability partners. Didn’t talk for about six months, and then one of us reached out to the other. I don’t remember who. And we were in this place where we were going to write a free eBook to put on our website to get people to sign up for our email list, and we decided to share the work. That turned into some really big projects like three 96-page real food reset books that we self-published over the course of eight months. We were going to do one for every season, and then we got to fall and were so burned out. Then we went to the conference that we had met at the next year. Stacie had an idea for a business where it was like an online meal plan delivery service, kind of like real plans or emails. She had that in the works, and then she asked me to be her partner. So I wrote her a check for like $400.
Stacie: It wasn’t a lot.
Jess: For half of the business. And I’ll let Stacie finish.
Stacie: Yeah, and the reason that I came up with this idea for a meal plan membership program was the clients we were both seeing, I felt like the most thing they were interested in was the meal plan. So we’re like, great, let’s just put a meal plan membership program together. We can split the work. So I had already started this when Jess came in and she wrote that $400, half of the money I had already spent for this business. Not a lot. We launched that program I think in summer 2015. Again, every month we would put out new meal plans, new recipes. There were different kinds of meal plans. Gluten free, paleo, whatever. I think we had four different options. We realized that for the number of members that we had, which wasn’t very many, the amount of work that we were putting into that program really wasn’t paying off. So we decided this wasn’t for us after three months. Jess, how did we say that?
Joy: Yeah, we just reversed everyone’s PayPal. “Sorry, it’s just not working for us. It’s not you, it’s us.”
Stacie: And the thing was, we just didn’t have the amount of recipes at the time. Now we have like 600 recipes on our blog. If that was something we tried to pursue again, it might be a different experience because we have a much larger community and platform to promote that, but nothing that we plan to add to in our future.
Jess: There are companies that are absolutely crushing it, so we don’t need to.
Stacie: So once we decided the meal plan membership program wasn’t for us, didn’t work out, we literally the next day started the blog. Jess was in Minnesota. She was planning a trip to Minnesota to work on the meal plan membership program. Instead we spent the entire two or three days creating a website, and that’s the blog. Obviously, it’s been updated and we’ve had someone come in and create our website. But in the beginning, we created it ourselves. Kind of just happened as a result of our first business “failing.”
Claire: That’s so funny. Like, “Um, here’s your money back. This isn’t actually going to work.”
Stacie: Yeah, exactly.
Claire: I kind of love that though.
Joy: I do too.
Claire: In the moment, you’re not married to this.
Joy: And also just knowing when it’s not working and it’s not working for the two of you as a business. You just have to pivot and move on. I think people probably appreciated the honesty.
Jess: And I think we were creating a business that we wanted to love. If we are creating our business, we are going to love it. That’s when we were like, this is not for us. We just don’t love it.
Claire: You guys really set out to say, this is going to be our full-time job, this is going to be our business.
Jess: With the blog? No. The blog was really just a place to house the recipes that we can then refer our clients to. It just took off. And 11 months later, we wrote ourselves our first paycheck, which is kind of unheard of in blogging. It was $126. But we were pretty proud of ourselves to have a paycheck at 11 months. We really did hustle though. We were blogging on our site, and we were guest blogging any opportunity that we had. We kind of fell in step with the Whole30, and that propelled us really quickly. They picked us up and were like, “You guys have great recipes.” We took over their Instagram feed. Yeah, we just grew from there. We never realized it would be our full-time jobs. I think by June 2015, I closed my private practice and worked on the blog full time. And then Stacie, I think it was October of 2015 or 2016.
Stacie: It took me a little bit to leave my job where I was working at a hospital. I really liked my job at the hospital. I really enjoyed it, so that was hard for me to choose to – I just didn’t know what to do. But obviously, when you grow something, you have a much stronger connection to it. I think it was 2017, Jess.
Jess: Was it? Okay.
Stacie: Because I went to contract, so very part time there.
Jess: Oh, that’s right.
Stacie: And then worked the blog.
Joy: I want to know a little about your personal philosophies of food because there is so much information out there. How are you similar and how do you differ? What do you both bring to the table?
Jess: We’re very similar. We both came to this having done a couple of Whole30’s ourself for health reasons. I have an autoimmune disease, and Stacie was doing it for some digestive issues. So we kind of fell into that Whole30, paleo, everything was gluten free, and those were the recipes we were writing. Of course, those were also the patients and clients that we were seeing. We’ve maintained that allergy-friendly bent since then. So all of our recipes are written to be gluten free. You can modify them to contain gluten, or you can modify them to be dairy-free or egg-free or nut-free. You have a lot of options. Our philosophy really is that we’re creating meals that anyone can enjoy, so we give lots of modifications, we test them with all different modifications. I mean, personally I don’t eat gluten free all of the time, but most of my meals don’t contain gluten. And when I have gluten, it’s sourdough or it’s a worthy splurgy or something I feel good eating and I’m really excited about. I’m not going to eat saltines because they’re not exciting. So our philosophy is that everyone has a place at our table because we create recipes that are very easy, simple, approachable, and can be modified for anyone. Anything to add Stacie?
Stacie: No, I think you got it.
Claire: What do you feel like has been the biggest difference between you guys? Does one of you really gravitate towards… I don’t know, taco recipes? Or when you sit down to start brainstorming, do you have any real preferences that show up? For example, Joy and I always joke – or not even joke – that Joy loves cereal and pancakes and carby snack foods. I’m over here like, give me a tin of sardines. Are there food preferences or food opinions that are really unique to each of you, or do you feel like you are similar in a lot of the things that you like?
Stacie: Definitely, we do have the recipes that we each gravitate towards. For me, of course, I take most of the egg recipes, because Jess has an egg allergy. And I really enjoy egg bakes and all the different egg dish. I really enjoy making different salads like chicken salads and veggie salads. I would also say baking the oatmeal bakes and all the different gluten-free baked goods. We also have Anna, our social media coordinator, who loves to bake, so she takes a lot of the baked goods as well. And then Jess, she likes – I’ll let you go, Jess.
Jess: Yeah, most of mine are like tacos, soups, grilling. I love vegetables too, but those are the things I gravitate towards. So Claire, I would be the one opting for canned fish.
Claire: Don’t knock it until you try it, guys.
Jess: So good. I had some yesterday on my salad and thought of you.
Claire: I love it. Jess, I didn’t realize you were allergic to eggs. Don’t you have like 40 chickens?
Jess: I have 32 chickens. But yes, I’m definitely allergic to eggs and it’s so unfair. Next time I come around in life, I’m going to eat all the eggs.
Claire: I’m putting that request in now for the next round. I would like to be able to eat eggs.
Jess: So unfair.
Claire: I want to dive into your cookbook. I know we want to focus a little bit more on your overall story. But when it came time to start the cookbook, I remember chatting with Jess in the parking lot of CrossFit Roots within a couple of weeks of you finding out that you were going to do this. You were like, “Well, we have this really great project.” You were being very sort of vague about it. You were like, “I have to go home and write all these recipes.” I always am so curious where you start when it comes to coming up with brand new recipes. Having read through the cookbook, I know a lot of them are based in things you ate growing up or in family recipes. But where do you start when it’s time to come up with something brand new. And sorry if people can hear Evie chatting in the background. I don’t know what she’s doing. If you can hear small voices, that’s what’s happening.
Jess: You know, a lot of it is we got to include 20 recipes from the blog that we know people love. So we put those in the book, and that was kind of the ode to the greatest hits. Get our book, you’re going to get 20 of your favorites right there. And then for the others, we took recipes that do really, really well, both on social media and the blog and we – if it was a sheet pan with a protein, a couple of vegetables, a certain kind of sauce or a marinade or a rub, we just iterated on that. We would change up the flavors, change up the protein, change up the vegetables, keep the preparation the same. Same thing with soups, stews, that kind of stuff. And then like you said, we brought in things that we ate growing up and modified them to have a slightly healthier bent to them, maybe being more allergy friendly. Sometimes I think there were some stretch meals, maybe things we don’t normally make but we were like, “Let’s take a swing at it” because people love this. One of them might have been the Thai coconut soup. We don’t have it on the blog. I don’t serve it every day at the house. But it’s something that I really enjoy when we dine out, so we went ahead and modified it and that’s how it ended up in the book. Would you agree, Stacie, that was the method to our madness?
Stacie: Yeah. I think with having blogging for five years, we know what our community loves. When we put out a recipe, we kind of know how it’s going to do. We really stuck to those recipes that we knew people were going to love and they will cook. Knowing our community so well helped us determine the recipes that we put in the book. Jess, I don’t feel like it was that hard to come up with 100+ recipes. Yeah, I think we just spit them out. We had a couple of phone calls to brainstorm. It was pretty easy to come up with that list.
Jess: I think it was harder testing 7-8 recipes a day than it was coming up with the recipes. We could come up with recipes all day long, but actually executing them was the tough part.
Stacie: And I was just getting through my first trimester of pregnancy, so I was just coming off feeling nauseous. It took a while for me to start testing recipes.
Claire: Were there any recipes that didn’t make it that you wish had made it into the book?
Jess: Probably. It all happened so fast. We signed the contract just before Christmas of 2020. Christmas Day 2020, we were on the phone coming up with recipes and testing recipes by the very next day. I honestly can’t remember. I’m sure there was many and some that just failed too that we were just like, no.
Claire: Right. There’s nothing that ended up on the cutting room floor that you are like, “If only we had gotten that muffin recipe in there.”
Jess: No. Did you have any, Stacie?
Stacie: No, I don’t think so. I do remember I had a bunch that I had tested but that didn’t make the book, so it was almost the opposite. But then we used them for the blog, so they were eventually shared somehow.
Claire: That’s right. It’s not like this is your only content opportunity. I want to talk to you guys about the sloppy Joe casserole [00:14:54.14] recipe. Because this is the most genius thing I’ve ever thought of. I’m going to give a little spoiler alert here, but it’s basically a sloppy Joe shepherds pie [00:15:05.01]. I can’t tell you how often my family eats shepherds pie [00:15:06.04]. We get a half cow every year. We have all this beef. And we’re always like, what the heck are we going to do with literally hundreds of pounds of ground beef. So I saw that recipe. We love sloppy Joe, we love shepherds pie. [00:15:18.03] It was one of those moments where you’re like, why didn’t I think of this? I’ve made it three or four times since then. I’ve only had the book for three weeks. So thank you. I just mostly want to say thank you for creating that recipe because it’s so genius. Who came up with that?
Jess: That was all Stacie.
Stacie: It was, but it was a combination of a couple of recipes on our blog. So we have this shepherd’s pie on our [00:15:39.23] blog that’s sweet potato topping, a meat base. So this recipe, and then we have the sloppy Joe recipe that is the recipe [00:15:46.18] Jess created on the blog. So it was really just combining the two, and then we went with traditional mashed potatoes on the top for the book. I’m in Minnesota. I would have named it sloppy Joe hot dish because I’m in Minnesota, but sloppy Joe casserole. It is really good. I tested that one several times, so thank you, thank you for enjoying that recipe.
Jess: It will forever be a hot dish in my mind too. I’m from Minnesota as well. Casserole just doesn’t roll off your lips like hot dish does.
Claire: I also caught that when you were like, “I love egg bakes.” No one else calls it an egg bake.
Jess: Just like a casserole, or what do you?
Claire: That food group just doesn’t really exist places outside of Minnesota. No one else is like, “Oh, you got leftovers? Just crack a bunch of eggs in there in a casserole dish and put it in the oven.” Maybe a quiche would come to mind.
Stacie: That sounds a little fancy.
Claire: You’ve got to make a crust. It’s very French. I went to a bachelorette party in Minnesota a couple weeks ago, and we had these leftovers from a crudité, and one of the [00:16:53.21] girls was like, “I’ll take that home and put it in an egg bake.” I was like, “What’s an egg bake?” [laughing]
Stacie: That is too funny.
Claire: I think it was a French onion dip, and she was like, “That would be good in an egg bake.” I’m like, “I don’t know what you are talking about.”
Jess: You just nailed my childhood. My mom was always like, “Oh, there’s leftovers? Add eggs.”
Claire: Is this now an egg bake?
Jess: And everybody asked for the recipe.
Claire: Just literally whatever you can find around the house. Just add eggs, put it in a casserole dish, problem solved. Except Jess who can’t eat eggs. Joy, I feel like I’m asking all the questions. Do you have anything you want to jump in with?
Joy: I want to know quickly what your influences were? I’m always really impressed by people who are really good at cooking and creating in the kitchen because I am not. So what was the basis for you to become what you became in the field that you went into.
Jess: I started to cook really young. My dad taught me to cook really, really young. It was never gourmet, but it was get it done. It was delicious, it was good, it was healthy, nourishing. I just kind of kept on with that. As I went to college, I got a little more adventurous with my cooking as I moved away from the Midwest and I worked in restaurants. Just always cooking. I suppose one time I did train for an ultramarathon, and I had to do it indoors because I lived in Alaska, and I watched The Food Network [00:18:15.26] for hours on end.
Joy: You trained for an ultra indoors on a treadmill?
Jess: It was terrible. It was so cold and so icy, so I had to run on a treadmill for four hours.
Joy: No, absolutely not. No, no, no.
Jess: I would watch The Food Network. [00:18:30.26] I probably looked really disordered. Like here I’m watching Semi-Homemade with Sandra Lee [00:18:32.28], and I’m running. Nobody knew what I was doing. So yeah.
Joy: How did you do in the ultra?
Jess: I finished.
Joy: That’s just amazing. Is that, what? 50? 100?
Jess: It was 50 miles.
Joy: I mean, whatever. Anything over a marathon, even a marathon to me is a lot.
Claire: More than. 400 meter warm up, I’m like, eh, I’ve got to train for that.
Jess: Now I hate running.
Claire: You have earned the right to hate running if you trained for a 50 mile run on a treadmill.
Jess: I can’t really think of any one thing.
Joy: Sometimes I just feel like it’s in your bones. It’s what you do. It’s the hobby that you really love, and I think I’m just jealous for anyone who has that bone in their body. When you were training and evolving through that piece of exercise and food, were you really focused on the diets? Or were you always like, no, food should be nourishing? I feel like that’s also something that people get really tangly in. We can just eat to eat good food. Lately I’m just seeing so much on social about making sure you eat this food because it has a vitamin or whatever. You need protein, and you need this different type of vitamin. Make sure you eat this liver. Can we have a cookie? Every single meal doesn’t have to have a purpose.
Jess: No, I was definitely several times since I became a dietician, which is over 20 years now, been very diet-focused. Even to the point of getting to where diet was super restrictive and somewhat disordered, usually centered around physical performance or physical appearance. Now I’m not anywhere near there. So yeah, food is delicious, it’s wholesome, it’s nourishing, it’s meant to be shared. Which before it was like calorie counting, avoiding entire groups of food. Yeah, I feel like I’ve kind of run the gamut with dieting and now I’m in a place where food is food, and here we are. I’m still eating well, healthy, focusing on lots of fruits and veggies and stuff. But I’m not crazy, like I have to eat my liver today. How about you, Stacie?
Stacie: Yeah, similar journey as Jess. Definitely went through periods of more restrictive eating, calorie counting, all of that through the years. I think I’m at a good place right now. I think also I had my first baby three years ago. She’s a girl. And that has definitely made me like, I’m raising this girl and I want her to be healthy. I want her to have a relationship with food. It just made it much more important to me for me to be that good example for her.
Claire: You talked about this a little bit when you were talking about how you got started. But Jess, I know you have a background with managing [00:21:20.07] wick program. Stacie you talked about working in a hospital. One thing I love about nutrition influencers or recipe influencers, for lack of a better word, who are also dieticians and who have that clinical background is having that perspective of knowing the barriers that can come between people and eating healthy that have nothing to do with motivation or meal planning or meal prep. That there are really these systemic barriers that can keep people from having access to that type of choice or having the ability to make that type of food. Even just having the time and resources to cook your own food at home. How does that come into how you approach the blog? Or does it have a place in the process that you go through now that you’re on this side of it?
Jess: We take that into consideration a lot. I’ll let Stacie talk more about this, but especially knowing that not everyone can get the ingredients. We’re always really selective about which ingredients that we’re using. If you can’t get it fairly reasonably, easily, and locally, then it probably doesn’t need to be in one of our recipes. And we can find ways to create the same flavor or texture or mouth feel or whatever using something that is readily available. But then also speaking to barriers, sometimes we know as dieticians that people don’t always have access to abundant, healthy, safe, and nutritious foods. It’s teaching people how to do the best with what they do have. I feel like our recipes do a good job of that. They’re easy. They’re approachable. People can look at our recipes and say, “I can make that” and I have pretty much everything I need or can everything I need pretty easily to make that. And that we don’t preach only organic or only grass-fed. Of course we’re here to educate people that these are great options if you can afford them. But if you can’t, non-organic dairy, non-grass-fed meat is going to be healthy and nourishing, and it’s also an excellent choice. So we try to make everything very accessible.
Stacie: Like Jess said, it’s quite a drive for me to get to a big grocery store. So when we’re coming up with recipes and there’s an ingredient that I can’t get at my local grocery store that is still about 20 miles away, we try not to include it. I’m sure we have a few recipes that are a little more of a stretch, but for the most part I would say 95% of our recipes are recipes that I could go to my local grocery store, get the ingredients, and make. And also we always encourage using what you have on hand. Again, that comes down to when I am at home and I am cooking a recipe. Oh, I’m out of sweet potatoes or whatever. I’m not going to make a 40 mile roundtrip to the grocery store just to get sweet potatoes. I’m going to use something different. Maybe another starchy vegetable like a potato or a squash or something.
Jess: As we’re talking about this, I’m just thinking, we don’t preach. We don’t preach, like I said, organic or has to be grass-fed or anything like that. But being aware of how we develop recipes and what we use, we’re addressing that issue for so many people without calling it out.
Claire: Yeah, I thought of that as you guys were answering around, like, “I don’t feel like I have to take my liver today” or “I’m taking my X, Y, or Z” because I think that those types of rules can make it feel very inaccessible. And you know, it’s one thing to say, here is a meatloaf recipe where you could hide some organ meats if you wanted to. It’s very different from saying, every time you make this, make sure it has grass-fed liver in it. Well, where the heck am I going to get grass-fed liver? Let’s take a quick break and mention and talk about and let you guys know about our amazing sponsor who we love, Ned, our favorite CBD products, based out of Boulder. You know them. You love them.
Joy: If you don’t know them, you better get to know them so that you will love them as much as we do. This month, they are doing a new bundle. It’s called the Dream Set. You know that Claire and I talk all the time about the great sleep we get from the Ned products. Now, they have just bundled it all together for you. The new Dream Set includes their best-selling Sleep Blend and Mellow Magnesium, two products specifically developed to optimize your body for sleep and relaxation. It’s the ultimate combo to revolutionize your sleep. Claire, I think you have this combo down. Because you do Mellow at night right before you go to bed, and you do the CBD, right?
Claire: I do.
Joy: It’s a little routine. It’s really cute.
Claire: I have my little routine. I have my Sleepytime tea, and I have my Mellow, and I have my CBD. I’m starting to experiment with the timing and how far in advance I take it. I also again just want to make this plug. If you are ordering Mellow, maybe start with half a packet because magnesium is a natural laxative and the last thing you want is you’re almost falling asleep and all of the sudden you’ve got to poop. Just bringing that up now so that you’re not surprised if it happens. Doesn’t mean something is wrong. Just maybe ease yourself into the magnesium.
Joy: Ned’s new and improved Sleep Blend contains CBN, a powerful –
Claire: Cannabinoid.
Joy: Cannabinoid.
Claire: [singing] Cannabinoid.
Joy: I love when we say that word. It’s the best word. Cannabinoid that promotes sleep. 750 mg of USDA certified organic CBD. Yes, organic. The purest single source hemp flower extract and 20% more organic and wild crafted botanicals than the previous formulation. Our listeners, if you would like to conquer sleep, conquer it with Ned’s Dream Set. Joy and Claire [00:26:45.11] listeners get 15% off with code JOY. Go to helloned.com/JOY or enter code JOY at checkout. That’s helloned.com/JOY to get 15% off. Thank you, Ned, for sponsoring the show and offering our listens a natural remedy for some of life’s most common health issues.
Claire: [singing] Cannabinoid. I’m just going to do that now every time we do those ads.
Jess: You guys, I’m sitting here with all of my Ned products showing the camera.
Joy: I mean, way to show off.
Jess: This isn’t even half of them.
Claire: They’re so good, right? Have you met the guys?
Jess: Which one?
Claire: Have you met them in Boulder?
Jess: No, I haven’t.
Claire: Have you been to their spot?
Jess: No.
Claire: It’s off of Arapahoe, just north of that Oso [00:27:37.27], Arapahoe and 55th. Right there where the goal light used to [00:27:42.28] be. It’s there.
Jess: Cool. Now we need a field trip.
Joy: The Ned quarters.
Claire: They’re so cute. The Ned quarters. So I want to talk about a few other recipes that are in the book. First, I want to talk about the broccoli salad, which we also have made so many times. If you’re at home listening thinking, I don’t love raw broccoli. Why should I eat this? Let me tell you that I don’t love raw broccoli either, but I do really love this salad. So tell us a little bit about the inspiration for this. Jess, I messaged you about it a little bit. I know this is a favorite of your grandma’s?
Jess: Yeah, I think broccoli salad is kind of like the state salad for Minnesota. Stacie and I both have our own variation of it. Mine has sunflower seeds, which my cousins and I affectionately named wood ticks. So it became known as wood tick salad, which is so gross but kind of funny. And I think Stacie’s might have cheese in it. Yeah, it’s raw broccoli, which I don’t even like broccoli. And we mix it with mayonnaise or yogurt. It has bacon and red onions, so it’s sweet, savory, crunchy, creamy. It hits all the spots. Grapes, it has grapes. My grandma used raisins.
Claire: I like the grapes, the little burst of juiciness. Yeah, I don’t love raisins.
Jess: I just cannot get on board with raisins. The taste of sadness.
Claire: Tase of sadness. It’s the taste of disappointment.
Joy: Aw. I’m team raisin, it’s okay.
Claire: I like raisins in trail mix.
Jess: No.
Claire: Not into it. Stacie, did you have any dueling options about how this broccoli salad should go. I really am trying to create a conflict with you guys that I feel like is not there.
Jess: It was the salad that almost broke the business.
Stacie: No, I was totally on board with that salad. Definitely something that you would see at a Midwestern grill out or potluck. Jess hit is on a nail with that one. It’s great.
Claire: It was. I just instinctively added cheese to it. This feels like it needs cheese.
Stacie: Yeah, definitely. And it’s funny you mention the conflict, just trying to find something that we – we really don’t. We work so well together.
Claire: That’s so great. I am always just curious. I know some people, particularly if you’re from similar areas in the United States, you have really strongly-held beliefs about these traditional dishes, and sometimes those can clash. If you have an apple pie, do you pre-cook your apples or not pre-cook your applies? There’s these very strongly-held beliefs. I just didn’t know if any of those were brought into your recipes about broccoli salad.
Stacie: No, I think we both grew up in Minnesota. We were both indoctrinated in the cult of broccoli salad and potluck salads.
Claire: I was really good, really good. Highly recommend. The two other recipes that we have made are the meatloaf sheet pan recipe, which was really good. And I had an inspiration. Which you guys say to use ketchup or barbecue sauce. I’m going to make it again with Korean barbecue sauce and add a little bok choy on the sheet pan. Mix it up a little bit.
Jess: You are hired. We want to hire you. That’s how we develop recipes.
Claire: If that shows up on the blog in two months –
Stacie: We were talking about that recipe. So we have a barbecue version of that mini meatloaf, the sheet pan recipe, so that’s how that inspiration came for the book. But we were also just talking about, we could do exactly what you said. All different flavors for sheet pan mini meatloaf. So thank you for that idea.
Claire: It’s like mini meatloaf slash giant meatball is how I was thinking about it. And the other one that we have tried is the beef and broccoli, which I feel like that is such a standard. Because we eat so much ground beef – you guys are noticing a trend. All these are ground beef because in my life all I am doing is looking for new ways to eat ground beef. I just love having a fresh take on that because there is a million ways to do it. It is always fun to see how different people approach those basic dishes. I think that’s what’s so cool about your cookbook and what you guys are talking about of wanting to keep it approachable. There’s really nothing in there that you’re like – I mean, not nothing. The sloppy Joe recipe obviously [00:31:51.25] blew my mind. There’s nothing where you’re like, “I’ve never even heard of this before. What the heck is this?” It is just sort of a new way of thinking about a lot of classic home recipes.
Jess: Yeah, that’s exactly how we would describe what we do. We take comfort food recipes that everybody knows and loves and just make it slightly healthier. We add our own little twist and [00:32:09.14] spin to them.
Joy: And the photos are beautiful, by the way. Your Instagram page is really beautiful. Any time I see a photo pop up on the feed with you guys, it looks really good.
Jess: Thank you.
Joy: Which isn’t what I’m finding with a lot of food bloggers. It’s not always easy to make some foods look good. It could taste delicious, but some foods don’t look that great. You guys make it look really enticing. So I also want to know from your expertise, what are the common questions you get from people about nutrition? Just basic nutrition. What are the things you find yourself repeating a lot to people when it came to their health and feeding themselves?
Jess: You know, we don’t get a lot of these anymore. The people that have been with us for so long know that we’re not here to talk about any one diet. We don’t think that any one diet is the right diet. We are definitely not preachy. We’re just here to give you recipes that no matter how you eat you can make it work for you. So we don’t get a lot of questions. We get a lot of questions about protein powder. What’s your favorite protein powder? So we recently – actually Jessie did this article. There were two of them, and they were so great. We reviewed whey protein and plant-based proteins. Jessie wrote two blog posts that were all about the best whey proteins and the best plant-based proteins. Other than that, can you think of anything else, Stacie?
Stacie: That’s exactly what I was going to add. We do get that question a lot. Any time we are making a smoothie and add a scoop of protein, that’s a popular question. What protein powder do you recommend? Which is what sparked the idea of creating those review posts.
Claire: That’s so fun. We’ll have to link to that in the notes because we get that question all the time too. It’s like, it kind of depends on what you like and what you’re looking for and what your priorities are. I love that Jessie did that. And having known Jessie from her previous life as the food editor at the last place that I worked, that’s so her jam. I once had to spend three whole day sampling plant-based burgers for something that she was doing about plant-based burgers. Let me tell you, eating one bite at a time of 30 different types of plant-based burgers and being like, “This is my breakfast.” Everyone in the office was just… would not recommend it.
Stacie: We ended up with so much protein powder. Every day, we’re getting more protein samples in the mail. Like, Jessie, this is a lot of protein.
Jess: Stop having it sent to the house please.
Claire: I trust your methods, but I’m starting to feel a little worried.
Joy: Can you share what the consensus was? What was one of the best ones? Or whey versus plant protein, is there a best, better, worst?
Jess: I think for each person. There are people who love whey and do really well with whey. And then there’s people who really need or want a plant-based protein. So that’s why we split them up into two. And then we had different categories. There was the best for pregnancy and breast-feeding. The best for men, for women, for athletes. I’d have to look at the post honestly.
Stacie: We even had a category that was looking for a protein without any type of artificial sweetener, even stevia, monk fruit, anything like that. So we had a category for that. We had an overall. And what was great is Anna, who I mentioned earlier, social media coordinator, she can’t have dairy. So she tested all the plant-based protein powders. We obviously trusted her opinion there because that’s all she can have. Of course, we also tested those as well, but she definitely had a big say in the plant-based protein powders. For me, I personally prefer whey. That is just my go-to when it comes to protein powder.
Claire: I’m with Anna. I can’t do whey. It just will be all I’m doing the rest of the day is dealing with the consequences of that decision. I would rather just not build muscle. Sorry.
Jess: We probably have a plant-based protein that is perfect for you on the blog.
Claire: I’m going to have to go check it out.
Joy: We’ll link to that for sure.
Stacie: So there’s two separate posts. One is for plant-based, and the other is for whey protein. There’s seven in each category.
Jess: That’s kind of the only question. This isn’t a question, but when we do share what we eat, we call them A Dietician’s Day of Eats. [00:36:20.14] It’s not meant to be, if you eat this, you’re going to look like us or perform like us. It’s really like, this is an example of how we take an easy weekend meal prep and we put it together during the week or we grab three or four recipes that we make at dinner time, how we fill in the holes. So we’re always very careful to say this is not to say how you should eat. We don’t think it’s right or wrong. We just think that this is how we do it. People always want to know – it’s kind of like when they go to your house and they want to look in your medicine cabinet – people always want to know what we’re eating. I think that’s the second question.
Claire: Do people come in your house and look in your medicine cabinet?
Jess: I don’t have one, but – [laughing]
Claire: [laughing]
Jess: I think that’s a thing, right?
Joy: It’s totally a thing. Because when you’re a dietician, I think about that all the time. You must have this optimized knowledge of food. If you’re feeling bad, it’s almost like you can create a witch’s brew. You know what I mean? It feels like you have this insight into what we all have to do and we all have to “eat better” or take care of ourselves. I mean, it is tied to health. So whatever that looks like for you. But I think that intrigue of what your knowledge is around something that we all have to do every day and how we can feel better. Because we all want to feel better, and how do we do that? How do we do that as we age? How do we do it as an athlete?
Jess: There are so many great dietician out there who are speaking to all of those things, so we never felt that we needed to be the ones speaking to certain diets or performance or pre- and post-workout and all that stuff. We see our job as putting out recipes that other professionals can use. We have a lot of dietician that follow us and they say, “Yeah, I share your recipes with my clients all of the time.” So I feel like that’s kind of our sweet spot. We don’t have to do the day-to-day, the talking about the diets. We are just creating tools for others to use.
Stacie: And when we get those questions, we happily refer them to the dietician we feel is an expert in whatever they are asking.
Claire: Who are some of the people you find yourselves referring out to most often?
Stacie: For any pregnancy-related question, Lilly Nichols. [00:38:29.19] She is amazing.
Jess: If people are coming about macros or performance, I always refer them to more holistic functional bend and then we send them off to dietician we know there. Or people who are just looking to eat healthy and not have a lot of food issues, we’ll often refer to Laura Ligos. She does a good job of looking at food as food and not necessarily food as a number or a function.
Claire: You guys know we love Laura.
Jess: Yes.
Claire: Now that your book is out in the world and now that you have a third person on your team and you guys are just continuing to grow and, I imagine, get more ideas and get more questions and more opportunities, what’s coming up next for you guys? Or what are you excited about?
Jess: I think we have a long list of things we don’t want to do.
Stacie: Yeah, the last year and a half has been a lot. We wrote a book. We had a new website created, just an update of a website. We had an SEO audit. It was just a lot that we had going on in the last year. I had a baby. Jess had some family personal things in her family that she was going through. We’re just ready to slow down and take a step back and chill out for a little bit.
Jess: Yeah, last week we were in Salt Lake City for the Traeger Summit [00:39:57.23], the Traeger Girls Summit. We left there just wanting to go home and be creative again and cook and grill all the things and just play with food and not take ourselves so darn seriously.
Claire: That’s fair. I mean, you know, it’s been just a light two years for everyone as we all know. So I feel like that’s on par with what we’re hearing from a lot of people. “You know what? I’m just ready to have a regular year.”
Stacie: For sure.
Claire: Well, where can our audience find you if they are not already following you?
Stacie: We are a blog, therealfooddieticians.com. And then all social medias @therealfooddieticians.
Jess: Except for Pinterest. I think we’re still The Real Food RD’s, like registered dietitians. But you can find all of those on our website. So if you go to the top, you can click the social button and get to where you need to be.
Claire: I really would love to know who else out there is still using Pinterest because I am still an avid, avid Pinterest user, and I feel like I am the only one. People are always like, “You’re still on – “ Of course I am, it’s the best.
Jess: My stepdad loves Pinterest.
Claire: Well, me and your stepdad should hang out because I love Pinterest. I’m on there all the time. Well thank you guys so much for being on the podcast. It’s been such a long time coming. I’m glad we were finally able to have you guys on here. Hopefully we’ll be able to do it again. And everybody, you can find us on Instagram @joyandclaire_. You can go to joyandclaire.com. Although, our website is currently under construction. Just bookmark it for future. It’s going to be exciting. We have some website updates coming. You can email us thisisjoyandclaire@gmail.com. We’d love to hear from you. We love your comments, your questions, your recommendations. Please send us a note. We will talk to you next Thursday, just like every Thursday since 2013. We are here for you. We will continue to be here. Thank you so much for being here. See you guys later.
Joy: See you later. Bye, guys.
Claire: Bye.
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Claire’s spring break, Joe the puppy is here, and worst date ever stories.
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This is Joy & Claire Episode 120: Spring Breaks, Bad Dates and Puppies!
Episode Date: March 31, 2022
Transcription Completed: May 6, 2022
Audio Length: 56:52 minutes
Joy: Hey guys, this is Joy.
Claire: And this is Claire.
Joy: Welcome back.
Claire: Hi, everybody.
Joy: Happy spring.
Claire: I know, it’s so nice out. I hope it’s nice where you are.
Joy: I hope so too. But I did just see Laura Ligos and our friend Tina in the state of New York that were not so hot. It was very cold there. East Coast, not so fun.
Claire: East Coast, not as much. Although I will say, I am actually realizing winter is my favorite season.
Joy: Really? I just did a [sound of surprise]
Claire: Yeah, she did.
Joy: I know you like winter. I know you like snow. But the frigid cold, really? The freezing, frigid cold?
Claire: It just doesn’t bother me. I don’t love it, but it doesn’t bother me. But what does bother me is being too hot.
Joy: Okay.
Claire: I don’t mind being cold really at all. I actually feel like it kind of wakes me up. And I feel like, woo, it’s cold out. I feel like I get overheated so quickly, and it’s not an experience I enjoy. I don’t mind being cold.
Joy: Oh.
Claire: I know. See. I feel the way about being too cold as people feel about being hot. To hot people, being hot is sort of like, “Yeah, but you’re hot. You’re in the sun. You’re warm.”
Joy: Getting vitamin D.
Claire: Yeah. And I’m like, “You’re cold and you’re all bundled up, and the wind is blowing.” False. I don’t actually love wind. But the thing about Colorado is it’s still sunny, even when it’s cold. That’s the key.
Joy: That’s true. I feel very lucky about Colorado in that sense. Especially my friends in Arizona, they think it just snows constantly in Colorado. Which at least where we live, it does not. It’s just really funny because they’re always like, “It’s just so cold there.” We get so much sunshine. It is oddly not that cold. We’re just talking about weather now. I was going to say, does it feel like a pain in the ass to have to carry so much extra stuff? Like clothing things.
Claire: Summer is not all that different. In the summertime, you have water bottle, sunscreen. Kids are more likely to get dirty in the summer, so you have to have extra clothes. I feel like in the winter you have your own stuff too. You have your jackets. It just sort of adds to the pile. No matter where you’re going or what season or what occasion, you have to bring a bunch of crap. If anything, in the winter they always have pockets in their jackets. They can help. I remember though, when I was in college, I worked in a flower shop as a lot of you know. There was this woman who moved from San Diego. Her husband was moving to Boulder. They moved to Boulder, and she got a job with us. I remember one of her first days, she was like, “What do you do with all of your stuff? Like if you go to a restaurant.” I was like, “I don’t understand the question.” She was like, “Where do you put your coat?” I was like, “What do you mean, ‘where do you put your coat?’” It had never occurred to me to not know what to do with all your stuff. I was like, “Well, you put your mittens in your pockets and hang your coat on the back of your chair.” She was like, “Well, doesn’t that get in the way?” I mean, not really. But if you really weren’t used to just having all that stuff with you all the time. If you were from San Diego and all you had was a purse, I’d be like, yeah, what do I do with this huge freaking jacket and these big gloves, this hat. You where your boots everywhere? Yeah, you kind of always look like you’re getting ready to go chop down a tree. This is the look. I don’t know what to tell you.
Joy: I shudder at what I used to wear when I moved to Colorado from Arizona. I just didn’t have an idea of warmth or things that you should wear. I used to run in the most random sweatpants, things that did not keep you warm, not moisture-wicking anything. I think I had a J.Crew big trench coat that was like ten sizes too big, so I’m sure the cold air just went right through it. I drove a rear-wheel drive pickup truck. Real-wheel drive. So front-wheel drive? No, nothing. So when it snowed, I would just spin in circles. Trying to put sandbags in the back doesn’t work.
Claire: I’m just shaking my head.
Joy: I think the first time that it snowed, and I had to drive somewhere – first of all, I don’t know how I survived driving in the snow. I had no real idea how to drive in the snow. I must have just gotten so lucky, and I didn’t really have to drive that far. But the first time it kind of froze – I’m so embarrassed to say this, but this was me in my 20’s. Arizona girl didn’t know about windshields freezing and needing the deicer.
Claire: I’m just profusely shaking my head through this whole story. Like, no, no, no.
Joy: I didn’t know anything. My dad is a mechanic. He knows this. They actually lived in Colorado. I’m sure this was just something he forgot because I do not blame my father whatsoever. He has taught me so much about cars. But just that one detail. I got in my car. I was like, oh, my windshield is frozen. I’m so embarrassed to say the rest because it gets worse. So I go inside. I get a pitcher of water to just pour on the windshield to try to deice it, and it just freezes again. [laughing] Yeah, I was that… yeah, exactly. Your face is exactly how I’m feeling.
Claire: My face is just like, wow.
Joy: Her face is that face you do when you’re like, what the actual?
Claire: My face is the face you do when your friend is like, “I texted my ex.”
Joy: Yeah. Really bad decisions face. And judging. Bad decisions, judging for sure.
Claire: I will say – so we live in a neighborhood with a lot of families who have immigrated from Mexico. They, as the group, are so committed to not buying snow scrapers. These are people who have lived here for decades. I still see them all – I hate to make generalizations, but we’re talking about four or five families on my block where only eight families live. Out there with like a kitchen broom scraping the snow off their cars. I’m like, guys, get a snow scraper. You have lived here for 25 years. They have the credit card trying to get the ice off the window. I’m like, you are a permanent resident of this area. Why are you doing this to yourself?
Joy: You should buy them all, and just leave it like Santa. Just leave it on their stoop.
Claire: On their snowy card. Just like, “from your concerned neighbor.” Worried about you out there with your kitchen brook that’s now covered in ice balls. But I do love spring also. I don’t love allergies, but whatever. That’s fine. We have medication.
Joy: Are you starting to feel allergies? Because last week I started to get sniffly. Are you?
Claire: A little bit. Yeah, a little bit. Especially because we’ve been working in the garden. Part of our gardening is we do hay bale gardening. If you are into gardening, I would highly recommend. It’s great for any plant that needs a lot of drainage. We’ve had really good luck with peppers. I think this year we might try some potatoes in there. There’s a whole science to it. First you prep it with a bunch of fertilizer. Then you soak it and you let is kind of start to decompose a little bit in the inside of the hay bale. Look it up. It’s really fun. We’ve had good success. And the cool thing is at the end of the year, you’re left with this really great hay bale that’s partially broken down and you can break it apart and use it to mulch your garden over the winter. We very much ascribe to the belief – and this is not a belief. This is science – that little bugs and little critters hibernate and use your organic material in your garden, like wheat piles, bugs will live in there all winter. And the fact that we all scrape up our leaves all winter is completely unnecessary. Your leaves will break down by the end of the winter.
Joy: That’s really good to know.
Claire: If anything –
Joy: We spend way too much time raking our leaves.
Claire: So much time. And if anything, leaving your leaves will insulate your lawn a little bit. In Colorado, we get away with things a little bit more than elsewhere because it’s very, very dry so we don’t have to worry about stuff molding. But even then, the leaves in your area are designed to break down based on the climate of your area. Just reconsider your beliefs around raking leaves, everybody.
Joy: This is like breaking news.
Claire: Breaking news, reconsider your raking beliefs. But so we have these hay bales. We have been breaking them down and spreading them out amongst our garden beds, and that’s really giving me a lot of allergies.
Joy: Got it. I just put in an order for Allergena that my naturopath gave me last year. If you haven’t tried it, look it up. It’s the best. They go by zones based on what you’re allergic to, and that stuff saved me. Because sometimes with Zyrtec and all the other things that make me so drowsy, and whatever the nasal spray – doesn’t work for me. It makes my nose so dry.
Claire: My big thing are my eyes. My eyes get really dry, so I use the eye drops. I’m getting Lasik in two weeks, you guys.
Joy: Oh my gosh, I forgot about that.
Claire: I’m excited. But I am suddenly worried about getting Lasik in the peak of allergy season because you’re not allowed to rub your eyes. So I’m just going to be like eye drops, eye drops, eye drops.
Joy: Eye drops, yeah.
Claire: So excited.
Joy: So how was your spring break?
Claire: It was so fun. We went to Steamboat, which if you guys aren’t familiar, it’s a ski town about 3.5 hours away from the Denver area. It’s one of the farther away resorts. It’s actually north from most of the resorts. In between where we live and Steamboat, it is actually not that far as the crow flies. But the thing between us is the entirety of Rocky Mountain National Park. So you have to just hop over a few major mountains. So you have to go real around, and it takes you about 3.5 hours. But it was so fun. The snow was fine. It wasn’t amazing, but they got enough snow throughout the week that it wasn’t too icy. We somehow hit this middle ground that is very elusive. If you ever travel with kids, you know what I’m about to describe. When you’re traveling, it’s really hard to hit this sweet spot of keeping your kids entertained without getting to the point where they are so tired by the end of the day that you just have a meltdown every single night. And somehow, we nailed it. They melted down when we got home, at the end end.
Joy: Like, home home?
Claire: Home home.
Joy: Like your house currently. Yes.
Claire: But they did so good. We were able to keep them occupied during the day. We did some skiing. We did this mountain alpine coaster thing which we finally one day just bought the unlimited pass. I literally rode that thing 15 times. It was just really fun. This was our first real trip as a family where both kids were old enough to participate, and that feels like a big milestone.
Joy: Yeah, for sure. Did you do private ski lessons too?
Claire: Yes, and then I did some private ski lessons with my friend Amanda.
Joy: That looked really fun.
Claire: It was so fun. One of the days, we actually paid a little extra to go early before anybody else. It’s called first tracks. Other people can do it too, but it’s not very many. So you’re up there with maybe 30 other people, whereas opposed to the rest of the day you’re up there with like 10,000 other people. Not 10,000. I mean, it could get up to 10.000. You just feel like the only person on the mountain. And in the cold morning and the snow is so quiet.
Joy: Oh, that’s the best.
Claire: And you’re just out there skiing. Nobody else is around. It’s this crunchy sound and the trees.
Joy: Oh my gosh, I love that. That’s so fun.
Claire: It was great.
Joy: Do you feel more confident about your skiing abilities?
Claire: Yeah, I actually really do. The thing that’s funny is that I’ve been skiing since I was three. We’ve talked about this. I’m not a very good skier. But the thing I loved about taking a lesson is I “know how to ski,” but it’s so great to have someone really give you something specific to focus on. I think when it comes to skiing – or I think you could apply this to a lot of other activities if you’ve ever just casually grown up doing something, whether it’s like running or I don’t know.
Joy: Right. Where you’ve never had a professional coach watching you and giving you tips from day one.
Claire: Totally. Like maybe you’ve always been a recreational lap swimmer, but you’ve never been on a swim team. Or maybe you’ve always been a recreational runner, but you’ve never had a running coach. Or a weightlifter or skier or whatever. Biker. The list goes on and on. So it’s so nice to have somebody – it’s not like ground-breaking information but just to have them say, hey listen, on this next run, I want you to only focus on this one thing. And then you do it, and you’re like, oh. As opposed to the flip side of being that person who has only ever done something casually and never had a coach evaluate you, where when you try to go up a skill level, what you’re doing is just muscling through it until it gets easier.
Joy: Yeah.
Claire: Without really knowing what you’re muscling through. And then the other thing that was great was that Miles got on skis. Evie got on skis. She put her ski boots on like it was no big deal, put her skis on like it was no big deal, got on the lift. She’d been on there forever. I mean, you have to hold her. She’s tiny. But she could have cared less. It took us almost three years to get Miles to put a pair of ski boots on. There was a period in Miles’ life when he went to this fancy Waldorf school where they had to wear snow pants to school every day because they were outside all day. I have lost years off my life trying to put snow pants on that kid. To the point where we actually involved an occupational therapist. We were like, what’s going on here? Came to find that Miles had some retained reflexes. We worked with an OT for about a year on an every-other-week basis and worked him through a lot of stuff. I’m sorry if you’re listening to this and are like, “Oh my gosh I need to learn more information about this.” I don’t really have a lot of good resources on this. And this OT that we found – and I also don’t want to be defeatist, like I can’t help you. But this OT that we found was really a unicorn in that I actually had found her because she ran a group tummy time class for infants in our area. It was when Evie was a baby, so I went to one with her, just kind of for something to do when Evie was tiny. And while I was there, I was talking about Miles, and I ended up setting up an appointment for Miles while I was working with her.
Joy: Oh, okay. So it was this very kismet.
Claire: Right. It wasn’t like, oh, we decided to get Miles evaluated and blah, blah, blah. This unrelated experience led me to finding this great OT who then worked with Miles. We paid out of pocket. It was crazy expensive. But she worked with him through a bunch of retained reflexes and worked with him on his vestibular nervous system, which is the part of your nervous system that tells you where you are in space. And for kids, if that is dysregulated, it can cause a lot of sensory seeking. Sometimes it’s why kids won’t get off the swings or won’t get off the trampoline or won’t put a coat on. Because they want to feel that cold hair because those experiences help affirm where their body is in space and sometimes they just can’t really tell. So through that, we got to the point where we could put snow pants on him. So then watching Evie put her boots on and put her snow pants on and get on this lift was like, oh, this is why some of Miles’ peers are skiing double blacks. They didn’t just spend three years to get their ski boots on. And it’s just been so interesting. I’ve been thinking a lot about that comparison that we all do with everybody, that we all do with our kids and with other families and with other parents. And it’s so easy to do, particularly with young kids, where you look and see what are they skilled at. As a very active family, I always expected that our kids would just hop up on skis and always want to go hiking. The other thing is just this past weekend, Miles rode a two-wheeler bike for the first time. He is 6.5 practically, and he is 52 inches tall. So he’s a big kid. He could have, he has had the physicality to be on a two-wheeler bike probably for close to three years, and we just couldn’t’ get him to do it. And that balance was just too scary for him. It’s just been so interesting to have these two experiences back-to-back. He finally warmed up to skiing and then he finally wanted to get on a bike. Maybe they are related, but to have this reminder that our kids will really do their own thing in their own time. And sometimes the harder you push, the worse it makes it. And you really have to temper your expectations. It’s so easy to get into that comparison track and, oh, well, the other families must be doing something better because my kid can’t ride a two-wheeler or isn’t interested in going skiing or whatever.
Joy: Yeah, or they are excelling in one area.
Claire: Yeah.
Joy: And I wonder, there’s got to be so much pressure, even more so now with everything on social media of course, but especially with parenting. Or even just being pregnant. I talked to some pregnant friends that were like, I can’t even go – and you probably experienced this too. So much information that you kind of have to tune out and figure it out for yourself. Or not figure it out, but just not let other pressures or influencers be like “this is the best way.” How do you decide what you truly want when there is so much comparison? Or everybody being like, “I love pregnancy,” and you’re like, “I just really was sick.”
Claire: I hated being pregnant. I hated it. We’ve talked about this quite a lot, but as most of you know, my first pregnancy was great. My first postpartum experience was almost the last thing I ever did. Was horrible. Then my pregnancy with Evie was horrible. I was nauseous every day for ten straight months. And then postpartum with her was pretty easy. She’s just been a very different experience than having Miles. People will ask me sometimes, “What are your favorite baby books?” And I immediately, even before Miles was born, was like I am not going to read parenting books. If there is a specific issue that I’m seeking out guidance on, I will talk to professionals about that. Whether that be occupational therapists, educators, and yeah maybe other parents if there is a one-off like “I can’t get my kid to stop telling poop jokes. What did you do?” Or with potty training, “Did this work for you?” Those are close friends that I’ll reach out to. But I have never read a parenting book. I don’t think my parenting is worse off for it. If anything, If feel like it allows me to just go more with my instincts because I don’t have these other voices in my head. But yeah, it’s a lot. There’s a lot of people out there. What I want to get across is just that even for a family like us that’s very active. I consider us to be very involved in our kids’ lives. I consider us to be very communicative. We are very open and responsive to following our kids’ leads. It still looks really different than I thought it would. We still have these surprises all the time of having to take skills and milestones and life at our kid’s pace, instead of what we want them to do. Which is sometimes disheartening, but I agree with my body.
Joy: Right. Who are you? Well, I’m glad you had a good spring break. Did Evie jail break in your bed that you set up?
Claire: No. She was in a bunk bed on the bottom bunk, which I think really helped. She was against the wall. You know when you’re on the bottom bunk, the foot of the bed is also kind of contained? Because there is a ladder. Then we bought this little side rail from Amazon that made it look like a little hospital bed. So between the bunk bed at the foot of the bed, the bed against the wall, and then the side rail, and also the bunk bed being low, it made it feel so contained in there. It was actually really nice. I got in there with her a few times. It was cozy.
Joy: Bunk beds are super cozy. My brother and I slept in one when we were little. It always felt like a fort, a forever fort.
Claire: It totally feels like a forever fort, and the only reason I will never have one in my home is because I do not want to commit to making a bed in a bunk bed every week.
Joy: No. I don’t think our beds were ever made in those things. It’s impossible.
Claire: Changing the sheets is just horrible.
Joy: Impossible.
Claire: No, no. But yeah, so it worked out. It was better than I thought it would be.
Joy: Let’s take a quick break and talk about our sponsors, Ned, the makers of our favorite CBD products, their new and improved Sleep Blend. If you haven’t tried it yet, this is your last week – as of today, this is your last day to get the March birthday month special discount, which is 21% off your order. Claire and I have raved about this product. We love Ned. We love the quality. It is the best-selling Sleep Blend. It is new and improved, offering an even greater night sleep. Whether or not you like “hotel sleep,” whatever you need for sleeping. I have been taking it because we have a new puppy. I really need to get a good night’s sleep. Even though I wake up in the middle of the night, I go right back to bed. I sleep like a baby. The new Sleep Blend has 24% more sleep-inducing botanicals by weight than the previous version. And as always, all of Ned’s full-spectrum hemp oil is extracted from USDA certified organic hemp plants, grown by Jonathan, an independent farmer and his family in Paonia, Colorado. It’s Ned’s birthday month, like I said, so you can get their new and improved Sleep Blend a try. Our listeners get 21% off with code JOY for the month of March only. So that is ending today if you’re listening to this in real time. It’s their best offer of the year, and you can support the podcast. Visit helloned.com/JOY to get access. That’s helloned.com/JOY to get 21% off. Thank you, Ned, for sponsoring the show and offering our listeners a natural remedy for some of life’s most common health issues.
Claire: Alright, Joy, tell us about the puppy.
Joy: Man. So everybody knows… maybe, sort of? I think everybody knows at this point that we got a new puppy to raise for canine companions. His name is Joe. A few weeks ago, the puppy raising program contacted us and said, “Hey, we have a puppy for you.”
Claire: And let’s just once again remind everybody at home, Joy did not name Joe. They come with a name. We don’t know if Joe is named after anybody. But I did text the GIF of Kamala saying, “We did it, Joe.” And I’m just planning on texting that every so often for the next two years.
Joy: Which I really appreciate because that one really made me laugh. Whenever we’re on a walk now, I go, “We did it, Joe.” A few weeks ago, we got contacted by the puppy program department, and they said, “Hey, we have a puppy for you. Would you like to raise a boy?” And Scott and I were like, woah, we didn’t realize we were going to get one so soon. Back in November when Cadet turned into college, to advanced training, we got on the puppy raiser list right when we got back from turning her in, and they told us 6-9 months from then. Which is pretty accurate for the most part because they have such a long waitlist, they are like, there is just no way you are going to get one sooner. So apparently what happened is that a puppy raiser had to back out, and the puppy was slated to come to Colorado anyway. I don’t know how all the disbursing of the puppies work, but they had to keep this puppy in Colorado. So they are like, hmm, let’s try all of our Colorado puppy raisers. So they sent us an email, said, “Do you want one in a couple of weeks?” And we were like, holy crap. We weren’t prepared to have one this soon. We have a couple things coming up, but Scott and I were like, yeah, let’s just figure it out. In all honesty – I know this sounds silly. I would way rather potty train a dog when the weather is starting to get warmer as opposed to really, really cold weather. Because standing outside waiting for a dog to pee or poop in the cold. And with puppies, you have to be with them at all times, and you have to put them on leash so they get used to peeing and pooping on a leash. I was like, yeah, let’s do it now. The second we found out that we were able to get a puppy, I was so excited. Scott was like, “Let me sleep on it” because he’s had not a rough few months, but he’s just had some ups and downs with work in the past few months. He took some time off in March, and I’m like, look, if we get a dog during your time off, are you going to be okay? Because I don’t want you to be taking this time off, and this is a lot of work. So he’s like, “Yeah, let me sleep on it.” And then the next morning, he’s like, “What do you think?” And I really wanted it to be his decision. I know that if I was going to push for it, he would do whatever I wanted. And I did not want him to regret not having some time off during this month because he works so hard. So I was like, “This is all you. This is your decision this time.” I mean, it’s always been our decision, but you know what I mean. So he goes, “What do you think?” “Whatever you think.” He’s like, “I think we should do it.” I was like, “Yay!” So we got one sooner than we thought we would. His name is Joe, and he’s perfect. Let’s see, we found out the day before. We kind of had an idea – it’s funny, all these private Facebook groups that I mentioned before, everybody posts the puppies and the litters, and you try to find out which ones are coming to Colorado. It’s all very behind-the-scenes sleuthing that’s going on. But in the end, you never really know which one you’re going to get. So the day before we found out we’re getting Joe IV. The reason it’s the IV is they have other Joes in the CCI program, so they have to number them to keep track of which Joe is which. So we have Joe, and he’s so cute. He originally was supposed to arrive on the 18th. The flights changed, and they got a better flight, meaning it was just a shorter flight for these puppies. There was only two dogs. These beautiful, beautiful, amazing people who have private jets and are just independently wealthy were able to volunteer their time and their jet. Apparently, this family was just coming to Colorado anyway. And whatever ties they have to Canine Companions, they just allow these dogs to be on their private jet with them when they flew their family to Colorado. So we are at this tiny little airport. It kind of reminded me of when you and I went on Greg Glassman’s jet because we were like, “We want to fly like this all the time.” Like this family really flies like this all the time. I’m like, yes, this is the life. We go up to their private jet, and we’re like, “Do you have dogs on the plane?” We had the flight number, but we didn’t know for sure. We’re just walking up to this private jet on the tarmac. The sweet family comes off and they’re like, “Yes, we held them the whole time. They just slept on our chest.” I’m like, oh my gosh, these dogs had the best first start. They didn’t even have to ride in their kennel on the way. They just got the coziest, snuggliest ride on their way to Denver. Here I was all worried because I can’t think about little baby puppies in a kennel.
Claire: I mean, can you imagine being on that plane? If you know a puppy was on a crate on your plane, you wouldn’t just leave it in the crate.
Joy: Never in a million years.
Claire: Unless you have an anaphylactic allergy to puppies, which even still, I think I would risk it.
Joy: But they were so sweet. It was just the sweetest couple like, “Yeah, we held them the whole time, and they just slept on our chest the whole time.” I’m just like, this is so cute. So we took a bunch of pictures. I was just ecstatic. I could not stop smiling. It was just the cutest feeling when you meet your little puppy that you’re going to raise for the first time. So Scott and I have been in puppy haze for the past few days. But I think what I’m realizing is how much work Cadet was. Because Joe is real easy. Some of my puppy raiser friends, I’ve been texting with them. I’m like, “I know it’s only day three, and I don’t want to jinx it, but Joe is really easy.” I’m like, this is what was going on with Cadet. They’re like, “How come you never told us this? We would have helped you. We would have helped with this, this, this, and this.” I’m like, “I didn’t know!” She was the first puppy we raised. I didn’t know. And I’m not saying she was bad by any means. She was just very high maintenance for the first three months. She whined every night in her crate. She needed constant attention. Whereas Joe keeps to himself. He can settle in his little ex pen. He settles into his crate pretty quickly. If you put him in his crate, he’ll kind of whine for like five seconds, and then he’s like, “Oh, okay” and goes to sleep. It’s unbelievable, and I’m a little worried that he’s going to be a hellion as a teenager.
Claire: He’s going to wake up all of the sudden and be like, oh.
Joy: Totally. But he’s just so cute. He’s very snuggly. I think all puppies are cute, but Joe is just real quick. We really can’t get enough of him.
Claire: He looks so suedey.
Joy: He’s very suedey.
Claire: I want to rub my face on him.
Joy: He has the cutest little puppy belly. Yeah, and he’s very chill. He snores.
Claire: If you guys have not seen the reel on our Instagram of Joe snoring, just stop what you’re doing right now, pull over to the side of the road, and look it up.
Joy: That was the first night. He was just passed out. It was very cute. So we’ve been jokingly calling him Sleepy Joe, like how Trump used to call him Sleepy Joe. Anyway.
Claire: Love it. Joe Biden references will never end.
Joy: They will never end. Because Joe is sleepy and just very chill.
Claire: And he did it.
Joy: And he did it.
Claire: Aw. Oh, Joe.
Joy: So, we’ve been having a blast.
Claire: Love it.
Joy: So keep watching stories and reels because I’m trying not to spam too much puppy. I know people are like, “You can never do too much puppy.” I’m like, you kind of can though. There’s a limit, at least on stories. Here’s the thing. On stories, if I see someone has a hundred or whatever. You know the story thing, you can see how many stories are left to go.
Claire: Yeah, if it’s like, tick, tick, tick, tick…
Joy: I exit. I’m out. You’ve got my attention span for maybe ten tops. So when we do Q&A sometimes, I’m like, whatever, this is a wash. But some people want to see all that stuff. But rarely do I do that many. Who has that kind of time to spend sitting here watching my stories? I hope you don’t.
Claire: I don’t know, I spend a lot of time on Instagram.
Joy: I do too.
Claire: Speaking of which, in case you guys haven’t heard yet, Instagram now has the functionality to go into a chronological timeline. It does feel a little bit clunky. It defaults back to the feed that shows you just what Instagram wants you to see every time you open Instagram, but you can go to your feed, click the little Instagram logo. There’s a dropdown menu, and it will say “following” and “favorites.” You can add folks to your favorites to make sure that anyone you add to your favorites, they’ll always show you their posts in that stream. I haven’t done that yet. It seems like a lot of work. But you can also go to “following” and it will only show you accounts that you’re following, and it will show you their accounts in chronological order, the way God intended Instagram to be.
Joy: Praise the internet gods.
Claire: Praise the internet gods. Again, it redefaults back to the algorithm every time you reopen your account. And maybe it’s because we switch accounts back and forth. I switch accounts back and forth to my personal account and the podcast account multiple times per day. Maybe that’s why. But it just keeps switching back. But try it. It’s kind of amazing.
Joy: I’ve been really proud of our reels and our Instagram.
Claire: Me too.
Joy: I’ll save Joe reels – or not reels. You can always see reels. If you want to go back and look at them, you can look at our reels pretty easily in our little reels box. But highlights on our stories, if you go to “Dogs,” I’m going to be adding to that. There’s a lot of Cadet, but I’m trying to just pick the cutest ones so there’s not a million to sift through. If you have any specific questions, if you’re just interested – you may not be. I’m obviously interested – in just kind of knowing what it takes to train a service dog or if you just have specific questions about what I do to train and raise Joe, just drop a note in our DMs. Or there’s a post I did recently with Joe’s cute face. You can ask the question there. Because then I’ll try to focus on those questions so I’m giving you content that is helpful and/or interesting.
Claire: Alright. So we have a couple Q&A questions leftover from last week or two weeks ago when we did some Q&A. We are going to get to a few more right now. What do you think?
Joy: Oh my gosh, can I start with, what’s the worst date either of you have ever been on? Do you have one? Oh, wow.
Claire: I do. I have one.
Joy: Is this the boyfriend that… you’ve referenced one in the past where the boyfriend broke up… what was the boyfriend one?
Claire: Oh, I have been broken up with in an airport.
Joy: Yes! Yeah, that’s horrible.
Claire: That’s not this one. I’ve been broken up twice, once in an airport in New Zealand. I had traveled across the globe to visit my boyfriend who was studying abroad. He broke up with me on the drive back to the airport to drop me off to go back home. So I had to sit on an airplane for 14 hours having just gotten broken up with.
Joy: Can’t believe it.
Claire: And then, to top it all off, while I was there – first of all, Steve Irwin died while I was there.
Joy: Oh no.
Claire: It was like a national tragedy.
Joy: It was a national tragedy.
Claire: Literally. So I was in New Zealand when Steve Irwin died. And then number two, that was the same time frame where when I left – this was like prehistoric era on planes – you could still take –
Joy: The person to the gate.
Claire: No. Person at the gate hasn’t been since I was a child.
Joy: Oh, okay.
Claire: 9/11 was when I was in 8th grade.
Joy: I missed that.
Claire: No, you could still take more than 3 ounces of liquid with you. And then when I landed back at LAX, that rule, they were like, “You can’t have more than 3 ounces of liquid with you.” At the time, I was collecting snow globes, and I had this beautiful snow globe, and they were like, “You can’t take this with you.” And I just started sobbing hysterically. The security guard was like, “Oh my God.” I was like, “It’s not about the snow globe,” like snot ugly crying.
Joy: Did the guy?
Claire: No, he made me throw it away. Because it was like day one. He couldn’t let it slide.
Joy: Oh my gosh, yes. What did the boyfriend say was the reason why he wanted to break up?
Claire: Because he didn’t want a long-distance relationship.
Joy: Okay.
Claire: Whatever. And then another time, again, I got broken up with on the way back to the airport because of another boyfriend who didn’t want a long-distance relationship,
Joy: Okay.
Claire: Bad luck. And at that time, I went into the airport, was crying, called my mom. And I was sitting there on the phone with my mom crying, and a stranger came up and hugged me. She was like, “It sounds like you really need a hug.”
Joy: Aw, people like that are just angels on earth.
Claire: It was really sweet. I do remember that sweet lady for giving me a hug. She was like, “That guy sounds like a jerk.” Aw, thank you. No. Alas, those were not the worst dates because those don’t count as dates. The worst date I’ve ever been on, I went on a first date once in college with a guy who was my TA or something. So he was a grad student. I was an English major, and if anybody has ever met an English grad student – my apologies to all the English grad students out there, but they’re weirdos. You don’t get a master’s in English lit because you like to party. I feel like I’m allowed to say that.
Joy: I like to party.
Claire: These guys, I love, love, love to critically analyze books. But I understand that to be a personality flaw.
Joy: You’re like, “Don’t hate me for this.”
Claire: Don’t hate me for this all you English majors. I am one of you, and I understand that this does not make me cool. This guy, we go to the Dark Horse in Boulder, which if anyone has ever been there, it is this very dark bar. I don’t think there is a single window in there. They sell burgers and fries, and we got there to watch a Broncos playoff game. Listeners, never go on a first date to watch a playoff game. You are committing to minimum four hours on this date. By two minutes into the third quarter, I was like, I’ve got to get out of here. Because this guy very early in the date was like, “So tell me about the other classes that you’re taking.” Super normal question. So I tell him about this math class I was taking. I am not a math person. I took this math class called “Math for the Environment.” Which I don’t know how this professor got away with this, but it was literally this crazy hippie with all of these conspiracy theories. To this day, I don’t remember doing any math in that class. But the whole first week, all we did was watch Who Killed the Electric Car.
Joy: Oh my God.
Claire: How is that math? How, how, how, how? And then, he had an entire unit on how the CIA planned 9/11. So I brought that up.
Joy: That does not age well.
Claire: Boulder. This is real life at CU Boulder.
Joy: Oh my gosh, that makes so much sense. Yep, that’s Boulder.
Claire: This guy was buddies with the guy who got fired for making the comparison about 9/11 and the Holocaust.
Joy: Yes. Yes.
Claire: Remember when we used to compare about people making those comparisons, and now people can just get away with it any time they want. Anyway, that guy. So we started talking about my classes. And I’m like, “Yeah, I have this crazy professor who thinks the CIA planned 9/11.” And he’s like, “Well, they did.” Straight face, not joking. “The CIA did plan 9/11.” I was like, oh no.
Joy: You’re like, how can I drop this class immediately.
Claire: So here I am trapped in this dark bar with this guy –
Joy: Oh, the guy said that? Not your professor.
Claire: The professor said that, and it was weird. The guy I’m on a date with said that five minutes into a minimum four hour long required date. And then we get to half time and I’m starting to eye the exit, and he’s like, “So, did you drive here?” I was like, “Yeah. Did you drive here?” He’s like, “No, my friend dropped me off.” I was like, “Oh, okay.” “Because I got a DUI. Could you take me home?”
Joy: Oh my gosh.
Claire: So then I couldn’t leave early.
Joy: Oh no, you were his ride.
Claire: Now I have to drive him home. And then he did the awkward car hug. Everything about this date was just zero. Zero out of ten.
Joy: So bad. So bad. I don’t want to tell mine. I’ll tell it really quick. I… oh God, this makes me sound so stupid. I did this dating show on the radio in my 20’s. So I went on the radio –
Claire: How has this never come up before? You guys. We have known Joy for almost 10 years, and this is the first time we are hearing about this.
Joy: Yeah. I did a “Win a Date Wednesday.” So you would apply, and they would pick somebody to come on the show and then people would call in, and you would pick who you wanted to go on a date with. So I applied because I was young and sassy. If anybody knows the DJ’s Slacker and Steve in Colorado, they are my favorite. Do you know Slacker and Steve?
Claire: Yeah.
Joy: So I went on Slacker and Steve.
Claire: But it wouldn’t have been Slacker and Steve. It was like Greg and Bo.
Joy: It was Slacker and Bo.
Claire: Before Slacker and Bo, there was Greg and Bo in the 90’s. And then Slacker and Bo, and now it is Slacker and Steve.
Joy: Yeah. So Slacker and Bo, they were great and still are. And by the way, Scott and I, when we watch the 4 o’clock news, they do a Slacker and Steve cut to them in the studio, and it is always so cringy funny because they are such nerds. In the best way. Anyway, we love them so much. Whenever they come on, I’m like, “Slacker and Steve!” So Slacker and Bo, I went into their studio and went on a date with this guy. So this is where it all goes bad. A girl calls in and is like, “My best friend, he would be perfect for this girl.” Because I was telling everybody about myself. “I think he would really be great. He’s a doctor” and he’s this and he’s that. I’m like, alright, fine. So I think I picked him out of whomever called. And they’re like, yes, and we’ll pay for it. So you go to Cherry Creek Grill tonight at 7 o’clock. I meet him there. He shows up, and he could not have been less interested in me. He was nice, but you could tell that he was very uncomfortable with being there because his friend set him up to do this. He was very buttoned up, and I’m not. So I’m there with all my bright colors and my glitter looking like a unicorn, and he’s super buttoned up. I don’t know how else to describe him. Good looking guy.
Claire: Like the kind of guy who probably irons his jeans?
Joy: Yes. Yes, yes. And it was nice enough. It wasn’t a terrible date, but the whole time, I could be like, he wants to leave so bad. I could just tell that he was not into it. So I was fine. It wasn’t a great night, whatever. And the next day, Slacker and Steve call him on the air to ask how it went. And then I’m listening. I think I’m listening on the other line. So they’re like, “So what did you think? You want to go out again?” And he’s like, “No, she’s not my type.” And Slacker and Bo are like, “What? A really amazing, beautiful girl is not your type?” He got so mad at him. They were super sweet about it. Actually, the funny thing is, after this – I was gutted. Super embarrassed. I think this was kind of before text messaging was super big, so it wasn’t like the guy could just be like, “Hey, I’m going to throw you under the bus tomorrow.” I’m not sure he would do that anyway, but he was just like, “It was fine but not for me.” So I was super embarrassed. But after that, the producer of the show – what was his name? It doesn’t matter. He totally ghosted me. But he emailed me and was like, “Hey, that guy was a douche bag. If you ever want to go out, let me know.” And I was like, oh my gosh, cool. So I went out with the producer who was awesome, and we had a great time. But then he ghosted me and never called me back after one date. Yeah.
Claire: You could have been radio royalty this whole time.
Joy: I really could have with Slacker Bo and Slacker Steve.
Claire: Whatever that guy’s name is.
Joy: What was his name? Geronimo. That was his handle.
Claire: I was like, that’s not his real name, is it?
Joy: Not his real name. His real name is Mike. I think his name is Mike. But his handle was Geronimo. Yeah, he totally ghosted me. That, still to this day, I’m like [sigh] that was not a good date. It was so uncomfortable.
Claire: I am surprised that we both have such long stories for that answer.
Joy: I am too.
Claire: And how is it that we’ve never told them before?
Joy: Which just goes to show that after nine years of podcasting, there is still stuff to talk about. So if you’re going to start a podcast, if you’re worried about running out of things to say, you’re always going to get a question – okay, let’s turn the tables. What’s the first thing that you noticed about Brandon or Scott when you met. I know this about you because you met him when you were renting a boat or something, right?
Claire: Renting a boat.
Joy: And you were like, “That guy is really cute.”
Claire: He was really cute. I don’t know. I struck up a conversation. I actually didn’t want to strike up a conversation because we were running late and I hate running late. I was with my friend who was visiting. I was living in Moab. We friend was visiting from out of town, and we were renting from this shop where Brandon worked that rented out boats. He had a NOLS t-shirt on. Which if you guys don’t know what NOLS is, National Outdoor Leadership School. It’s like Outward Bound if you are more familiar with Outward Bound. I had done a NOLS trip the summer before. My friend Sarah knew that about me, so she struck up a conversation with Brandon. “Oh, have you done NOLS? So has Claire.” So that was kind of the first thing. I mean, I just noticed that he in general was so cute. But then he had this t-shirt on that we had something in common. I mean, pretty standard.
Joy: Yeah. I remember – I’m sure I’ve told some of this story. But the short version is Scott and I knew each other for years before we actually dated. We ran with the same group. We kind of knew the same friends. So whenever we would be at parties, I would see Scott. And after the fact, everyone would be like, “You should date Scott. He likes you.” And I would tell them, “Well, tell him to call me.” And he never called me. So the joke was that he did have my number, but he never called me. Mostly because he was either dating someone or I was dating someone, so whatever. But the party that we went to, we went to a friend’s engagement party. The thing that I will never forget. I remember driving to this party with my best friend. I was like, “You know, this guy Scott is going to be there.” I had been through so many bad relationships, or just those relationships where you’re like, I’m so tired of dating. I remember driving to this party being like, “Hey, if this guy Scott is there, I’m actually going to talk to him and get to know him better. Maybe I do need to get to know this guy.” That’s just kind of where my head was at. She’s like, “Yeah, I think you should.” So we get there. He’s there. This amazing couple friends of ours, we’re so happy for them. Everyone was there to just kind of party and celebrate with them, but no one brought them a gift. It wasn’t expected to have a gift. So here we begin, Scott’s gift giving. No one was expected to bring a gift, but I’ll never forget. Scott walks up to them. The groom is from Venezuela, so Scott had found a record of a Venezuelan artist to give to Miguel. He’s like, “This guy is really great,” and he gave Miguel and Lindsey this Venezuelan artist vinyl. I just remember thinking that is the most God damn thoughtful thing I have ever seen. I really like this guy. How thoughtful can you be? Then we started talking at the party. And one thing led to another, and the next thing you know we were scheduling our first date, and that was that. I just remember being so taken by his thoughtfulness.
Claire: Which is hilarious now because it’s almost too much of a good thing where you’re like, “Scott, stop buying stuff.”
Joy: Oh, for sure. The other day – here’s an example, a funny thing. I have a gift card from Nordstrom that I haven’t used yet from Christmas. I said it out loud, and the second I said it, I regretted it because I was like, he’s on the case. So I said, “I need a new pair of UGG’s” because the ones I have, I wear them all the time. They are so disgusting. They just get gross.
Claire: They just don’t age well.
Joy: They don’t. So I was like, “I just really need to get a new pair of UGG’s. I’m just waiting for them to go on sale. I’m looking at Nordstrom Rack.” He goes, “Alright,” and then I see him typing furiously. Next thing you know, I have a link and they were perfect, and I ended up buying them. Because I’m like, actually this is exactly what I’m looking for. But he is a dog with a bone. If you give him a task to do, he finds it.
Claire: You cannot utter a sentence.
Joy: Not even a sniff if I need something.
Claire: One time, I texted Scott because Brandon needed a suit for an interview that was going to be the next day. I was like, “Hey Scott. Where is your favorite place to buy suits? Brandon has a couple interviews coming up and he needs a new suit.” Within moments, I have multiple links. He’s like, “This is a sale coming up if he can wait a couple days, but make sure you go to the Park Meadows location because their sale is going to be higher.” I was like, I was expecting you to be like, “Oh, J.Crew Factory has some stuff,” not like, “Here Claire is my quarterly report on suits for tall guys.”
Joy: Unbelievably helpful in those scenarios. It’s really funny.
Claire: Unbelievably helpful.
Joy: He can’t not get involved for something to be found. He can’t help himself. That’s really funny. And that’s how oddly and funnily enough what drew me to him in the first place, and now we joke about it. Maybe we should do one more. When will Brandon and Scott come on the show? Never. Guys, they’re not funny like us. They’re funny in their own way, but they would just be… they would try too hard.
Claire: So hard. Brandon has been on the show.
Joy: That was first year.
Claire: Probably six or seven years ago at least at this point.
Joy: Yeah. We talked about men. Someone does want to know about your nose piercing removal.
Claire: Good question. Okay you guys, I got my septum pierced last summer in July. I took it out probably two or three weeks ago. Two reasons. The first reason is that I was over the whole aesthetic. I love it on so many other people, and I was getting tired of seeing it on my own face. Which whatever, that happens. The main reason though that I finally pulled the plug – no pun intended – is that the booger management was just getting out of control. I found myself constantly picking a slight bugger in the inner corner of my nostril. It was always there. And if I ever had to wear a mask, which was regularly, and it was cold out, I would get condensation on my nose ring. That was horrible. So it just got to the point where I always felt like I was messing with it, and I just didn’t want to feel like I was messing with my nose. So I took it out. I’ve had my nostril pierced. I’ve pierced and repierced it three or four times. So who is to say that I will never get my septum repierced? But it’s so interesting. If I push up on that part of my nose, I can feel where the hole was. It feels just a little bit different. It almost feels like –
Joy: Like scar tissue?
Claire: Yeah, a little scar tissuey. Which is odd because according to my piercer, your septum piercing never really fully heals again after you’ve had it for six months or so. But I did have to take my nose ring out for an MRI back in December, and I had to go back to the piercing place to get it put back in because I could not find the hole.
Joy: Oh my God. Did it hurt to actually get the piercing?
Claire: People always ask me these questions. They’re like, “Did your tattoos hurt? Did your piercings hurt?” A needle is going through your body.
Joy: It’s not pleasant.
Claire: It’s not pain-free.
Joy: Getting my ears pierced, compare it to that.
Claire: It hurts a little bit more than getting your ears pierced.
Joy: Because getting your ears pierced goes so fast where you’re just like [exclaims] and it’s over.
Claire: Right. I would say it was probably on par in terms of pain with like a blood draw that maybe is not your best.
Joy: I’ve been through many of those.
Claire: Where you are definitely noticing it the whole time. You’re not really enjoying it, but you’re not writhing away.
Joy: Okay, okay, okay. That helps. Side note. To all the nurses out there who do blood draws or Brandon, I have been through so many blood draws because of Graves’ Disease and because of the bone marrow stuff. Now I know that there’s people who are real good at it, and there’s people who are not great at it. I would like to know why some people can get my vein, and why some people take five tries and then they go get their nurse friend and they’re like, “Your veins are too hard.” I’m like, well the person yesterday had no problem finding this vein.
Claire: It’s totally different for every person.
Joy: They make me feel like I have bad veins. But then I’ll go to someone, and it’s like I don’t even feel it.
Claire: First of all, you might be dehydrated on the days where they can’t find your veins. That makes a huge, huge difference.
Joy: I try to drink water. Okay.
Claire: And then second of all, according to Brandon who hates getting his blood drawn and hates drawing other people’s blood –
Joy: Okay, he doesn’t like it.
Claire: Blood drawing is a very unique skill. And IV starting is a very unique skill. When you have to access someone’s vein in that way, it’s a very, very unique skill that certain nurses are really good at. And some of them, if you work in a certain field, you do it a lot more. And then there’s this whole other field of people who are phlebotomists and all they do is blood draws.
Joy: But here’s the thing. I really want nurses to weigh in on this because I really want to know. I don’t know anything about this. So if I go to Lab Corps, I assume that’s all they do all day long. And at Lab Corps, I’ve had some of my very interesting experiences getting blood drawn.
Claire: Not to say that being a phlebotomist is the same thing as being a waitress. But just because you wait tables all day long doesn’t mean you’re any good at it.
Joy: Yeah, that’s true.
Claire: Just because anybody does their job all day long, that doesn’t automatically mean that they’re good at it.
Joy: But then I’ll go to the lab at Kaiser to get my blood drawn, and they rock.
Claire: Miles has had his blood drawn, and I still remember that guy because it was so seamless.
Joy: Seamless.
Claire: And Miles was not even three at that point probably. So I think that there are just some people who have the touch. I also think that it’s something that a lot of people do a lot more often.
Joy: I guess my question is – it sounds ignorant, but I don’t know how hard it is. Should everyone be good at it, or how hard is it to do?
Claire: I actually think that that’s the key. For Brandon, he gets so in his head about it and he really worries about it.
Joy: Got it.
Claire: And he has a heavier hand.
Joy: Sure.
Claire: For some people, it doesn’t feel like a big deal. It doesn’t feel that hard. They’re like, “I don’t get it. Why is this so hard for you?” I think it’s just one of those skills. I agree with you. I’ve had blood draws where you barely even notice it. And then I’ve had other blood draws where I’m like, what are you doing? Something is wrong. And you come home with a huge bruise.
Joy: Yeah, a huge bruise.
Claire: I would say getting your septum pierced is on par with not the worst blood draw you’ve ever had, but a not-great one.
Joy: An uncomfortable one.
Claire: An uncomfortable blood draw. And then, it is uncomfortable to heal. Although it heals relatively quickly, about a month, you don’t realize how much you stretch out that part of your face. Move your lip around.
Joy: Yeah.
Claire: That skin in between your two nostrils gets moved around a lot. I didn’t really think about that, and then I got my septum pierced. That night we had nachos and I could open my mouth.
Joy: Oh, it hurt, yeah.
Claire: Imagine putting a giant nacho in your mouth without moving your upper lip.
Joy: You just have to do like a finger mustache to hold it in place.
Claire: Yeah, I should have done that. I didn’t do that. I just ate tiny little bites of nachos.
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Joy: Which is so sad because nachos are delicious.
Claire: Nachos are so good. But no, not if you have a new septum piercing.
Joy: Okay, can I end with like one minute of something really quick?
Claire: Yeah, Joy, I would like to remind you for the hundredth time, you may do whatever you want. This is your podcast.
Joy: Well I’m just looking at the time and I have to go attend to a puppy. But is there any opinion that you have so far about the Will Smith, Chris Rock thing. Here’s the thing, and I want people to weigh in. It just happened yesterday. We’re recording on Monday, the day after the Oscars. We’re going to release this on Thursday. I’m sure everything has changed by then. But Scott is convinced it was staged. Convinced.
Claire: I think if it was staged, it was a really stupid thing for Will Smith to agree to.
Joy: So dumb. Why would you stage something like that?
Claire: I don’t think it was staged. I think either way it was stupid. Whether it was staged or not, it was stupid.
Joy: I was just really disappointed in the Oscars this year.
Claire: I did not watch them, and I don’t feel like I’m missing anything.
Joy: It was so disappointing.
Claire: Even the outfits, none of them were like [gasp]. Yeah. I mean, I just feel like whether it was staged or not, it was a bad decision. It was toxic masculinity, and I hope that we are no longer talking about it by Thursday.
Joy: It was just so weird.
Claire: Move on. Let’s move on.
Joy: I have a lot to say about whether Chris Rock really knew about Jada Pinkett Smith’s alopecia, why would you make a joke like that? Will Smith, sure, maybe backstage have a little talk with him and say that was inappropriate. Scott is sending me all these articles and videos saying that it was fake and that they staged it. I’m like, you’re reading some really funny blogs. Please don’t go down the dark web.
Claire: You’re going to end up on Parler reading about Will Smith.
Joy: Don’t get on QAnon, please. Where is he going with this?
Claire: Right.
Joy: I’m done.
Claire: Alright guys, well thank you for joining us for another week. Don’t forget to check out our sponsor, Ned. That’s helloned.com/JOY or use discount code JOY. Today is your last day for the upgraded discount of 21% to celebrate Ned’s birthday month. March 31, the last day you can do it. So go order your Ned. Thank you for supporting the brands that support our podcast. Thank you for being here with us. You can follow us on Instagram @joyandclaire_. All the puppy content all the time. We’re not going to stop any time soon.
Joy: Yeah, not stopping.
Claire: You can go to our website joyandclaire.com. You can email us thisisjoyandclaire@gmail.com. Thank you, and we’ll talk to you next week. Bye.
Joy: Bye, everybody.
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This is Joy & Claire Episode 119: Like a Roomba
Episode Date: March 24, 2022
Transcription Completed: April 29, 2022
Audio Length: 49:47 minutes
Joy: Hey guys, this is Joy.
Claire: And this is Claire.
Joy: Welcome back to another episode of us talking to you.
Claire: I just did a little [sings a jingle]. That’s a thing. It’s called something. It’s not a perfect fifth. Perfect is CBS. NBC, tone, name.
Joy: Yeah, I think that’s [singsong voice] NBC.
Claire: It isn’t, but anyway.
Joy: The peacock.
Claire: It is.
Joy: Well, we’re recording this way earlier than we normally record our episodes. Just so you guys know, we normally record on Monday or Tuesday the week of the release of the episode. But we’re recording this one early because Claire is going on spring break.
Claire: Spring break, woo!
Joy: Party!
Claire: Just imagine me flashing you, except when I’m flashing you I’m wearing a base layer.
Joy: [laughing]
Claire: Because that’s where I’m going on spring break. I’m going skiing.
Joy: It just reminds me of MTV spring break days. That was the goal.
Claire: No, I’m thinking of Kitty from Arrested Development.
Joy: Oh, absolutely.
Claire: “There will absolutely be a margarita in my mouth!”
Joy: God, Judy Greer.
Claire: “Yes, there will.” She was such a good character.
Joy: Such a good character. “Saved by these, Michael.” [laughing] And if you don’t know what we’re talking about, I’m not going to explain it. You’re just going to have to watch it.
Claire: You’re just going to have to watch Arrested Development. Arrested Development is the only show that I felt like lived up to the hype after I got into it. I hate shows where people are like, “You’ve just got to get into it.” Arrested Development is the only show where I actually really stuck it out for the first couple of episodes and was like, oh, okay, I get it now.
Joy: God, it’s so good. So good. So spring break, party time. MTV spring break lives in my mind as the place that I wanted to go. But I wasn’t really cool enough. Actually, I wouldn’t say cool enough. Let me think how to say this PC. I wasn’t like…
Claire: I wasn’t like hot girl summer.
Joy: Yes, thank you. I don’t want to use the word slutty because whatever, slutty is fine.
Claire: I was not like hot girl summer.
Joy: I really wasn’t. I wasn’t that. There was a part of me that really wanted to be, and I just wasn’t. I would see all these girls on MTV spring break and all the fun they were all having. Anyway. So you’re going on spring break.
Claire: We’re going to Steamboat with my friend Amanda. I know I’ve talked about her on the podcast before. She’s my other podcast friend other than Heather. Hi, Heather, Hi, Amanda. And Heather is moving to Longmont. So all my podcast friends are living in Longmont now, which is great. Maybe one day we can have podcast meetup in Longmont. Actually, this really cute tiki restaurant just opened in Longmont.
Joy: Tiki?
Claire: Yeah. They built a big pirate ship, so when you go to the bar you walk into this big pirate ship.
Joy: Oh, that sounds fun.
Claire: Right. And it’s pretty good food. Like, they have poke bowls and stuff. It’s like island kind of, obviously. You can get yourself a piña colada in a pirate ship.
Joy: That sounds lovely.
Claire: So anyway. One day. Maybe one day we can all do that for the podcast. Anyway, the point of the story is we’re going to Steamboat with Amanda and her family. She has two kids also, her daughter is around Evie’s age, and her son is just a tiny bit older than Miles. So it actually is so perfect. We can hang out. And her husband used to be a ski patroller – like the parallels between our lives and our family members are very helpful.
Joy: It’s a little uncanny as well.
Claire: And she also likes to bake and eat soup. I’m not actually convinced that she likes to eat soup that much, but I do always feed her soup when she comes over.
Joy: [laughing]
Claire: She’s very gracious about it.
Joy: I do always feed her soup and she eats it, therefore –
Claire: It’s like, what’s that Parks and Rec line where it’s between Leslie and I can’t remember the other character. And the punchline is that she’s trying to explain to Leslie, “I don’t like Harry Potter. I was afraid to tell you when you made me watch all those movies.” And Leslie is like, “What are you talking about? You love Harry Potter. You’ve seen all the movies.”
Joy: It’s like, you made me watch them.
Claire: Right. What are you talking about? You love soup. I feed it to you every time you come over here. “You always feed me soup. I don’t even like it.” What are you talking about? So yeah, we’re going to go skiing and it should be really fun. We haven’t taken a trip like this… we went to Durango last year for a couple of days. Similar type of trip. My biggest insecurity about this trip, my worry is that Evie still sleeps in a crib at home. Which, she’s over 3 years old, the time is ripe for her to get out. But she isn’t climbing out of her crib. Why would I unleash my child at night willingly?
Joy: [laughing] It’s so true. And let me just say, side note, still to this day the funniest thing in the world is someone who posted something on the internet around, the scariest thing is waking up to a child standing next to you staring. The visual of that, you just don’t need – if you can avoid it, let’s keep her leashed.
Claire: Just keep them in there. And a lot of people do transfer their students around ages 2 and 3 because their kids are coming out. For some reason, Evie has just never gone down that path. Knock on wood. We moved Miles out of a crib so early. Like, way, way, way too early. He was barely even two.
Joy: I remember that.
Claire: Because – and if any parents are out there being like, “Claire, here are tips for getting your kid out of the crib.” Here are my tips. Don’t do it unless you have to. If your kid is climbing out, sorry. But what we did with Miles, he was in a Montessori and a Waldorf. Both Montessori and Waldorf use floor beds. They don’t put them in cribs for naps. So I thought, oh he sleeps in a floor bed at school. This shouldn’t be an issue. And when he was maybe right around 2 years old, he still was not potty trained at all – which is common. Two years is early for potty training. I give these annotations because I know it’s hard to know what age it is for kids to do things. Even if you have older kids, we forget. We had always had him in a pack and play because we had always lived in a tiny apartment with him. A pack and play is significantly smaller than a full-size crib. So we moved into our house and we kept him in the pack and play. One day during nap time, he pooped in his diaper and spread the poop all over the pack and play. And the sides of the pack and play are mesh. Just imagine that. I came into his room and immediately was like, well, this pack and play is trash now. Pack and plays are also only like $100. There was nothing on this earth that was going to get me scrubbing the poop out of the mesh of this pack and play. So I was like, it’s fine. He can just move into a floor bed. And then that resulted in close to a year of having to sit in his room with him while he fell asleep. Never again. I have some friends who have kids around Evie’s age that are still in cribs, and they’re like, “When are you transferring Evie to a bed? When did you transfer Miles?” I’m like, Evie will stay in a crib until high school if she’ll let me because of my trauma from baby Miles.
Joy: Because of that experience, yeah.
Claire: Anyway, so I’m worried about our trip because it doesn’t have a crib. She’s going to be in a queen bed, and we bought these –
Joy: Bumpers.
Claire: Yeah, like a hospital bed feeling. That’s my biggest worry is I’m not going to get any sleep because Evie is going to be knocking on the door all night.
Joy: Yeah, it’s going to be fun. You’re going to be having an unleashed toddler.
Claire: And she’s not the kind of kid that can sleep in your bed and just chill. If she’s in my bed, she’s sitting there poking me in the face like, “Hey mom. Hey.” I’m like, “It’s two in the morning!”
Joy: Well, good luck with that. So maybe not so much a relaxing spring break.
Claire: I am excited, yes. I mean, somebody said once, and I don’t know where this quote comes from, traveling with kids is not a vacation. It’s just a trip with kids.
Joy: Yep. A lot of managing. A lot of stuff to pack.
Claire: But I did buy like $300 of the primo snacks.
Joy: Oh, yeah. Because that is key for traveling with children.
Claire: Super key. We’re staying at this super nice Airbnb, which we got upgraded because our original Airbnb had a maintenance issues. So we got upgraded into this townhouse situation. It has a private sauna.
Joy: Oh my gosh.
Claire: I know.
Joy: That’s exciting.
Claire: When you guys listen to this, I will actually be back. We get back on Wednesday night. But I will have just spent, sometime at least, in a private sauna. Lounging.
Joy: I can’t wait to hear if it goes well.
Claire: My mind immediately went to, I should bring my starter because I bet I could really rise some bread in a sauna.
Joy: Oh my God. By the way, I’m just tickled – and I never use that word – about the response of people with the whole bread kneading thing from the last episode.
Claire: It really makes me feel so seen. Where people are like, this is a true Claire moment. It really is a true Claire moment. And it’s a true Joy and Claire moment.
Joy: Yes, exactly.
Claire: You knew what I was doing.
Joy: I was like, for sure she is kneading bread. What is she doing? She is multitasking. But not only that, when people reposted and said, “This is why I listen to this podcast,” I was like, yes, because no one ever in the history of podcasts, you’re never going to get this.
Claire: It’s true.
Joy: So thank you guys for supporting us.
Claire: For seeing our bread moment.
Joy: For seeing our bread moment and for seeing us for who we are. Yeah. You know when I was thinking about spring break, I was thinking about how much I miss scheduled breaks. You know, like back in the school day when you had scheduled breaks. And then in my mind went to let’s just take a moment and shout out to teachers. Just shout out to teachers. I wish you got like a month of spring break.
Claire: And like four times your salary.
Joy: Shout out to teachers, yes. Okay, quick update. I’m never going to say dates on this podcast ever again because they constantly move. So when we record this, the date could always change again. But we are supposed to be getting the puppy on the date this episode releases, on March 24. I hope that is still the case when this is released.
Claire: I can’t remember if we talked about this last week or not. But it’s a fluid process. It’s a lot of moving pieces.
Joy: It’s very Tetris. So with Canine Companions, yeah, there’s a lot of moving parts. There’s a lot of arranging. There’s a lot of flights to get planned for shipping puppies. So there’s a lot going on. I understand why these things happen, and we just have to be really flexible. But we thought it was going to be the 18th. And we’re so excited. Not only that. We don’t know which puppy we’re getting until like the day before. So that just adds to the excitement of, which one are we getting? I am in a bunch of private Facebook groups, probably five or six Facebook groups, that are just dedicated to CCI puppy raisers or people in Colorado who raise puppies or whatever. You name it, there’s a Facebook group for it. And man are we nuts. We go crazy. Does anybody know of which litters are born that are coming to Colorado? Like, you try to find out beforehand. It’s really cute how much sleuthing goes on behind the scenes.
Claire: I was about to say, do you guys have a theory?
Joy: Oh yeah. And then there’s breeder caretakers. So just a quick fun fact. All the breeder caretakers, the people who have the dogs that help raise the little babies –
Claire: Like before they’re weened?
Joy: Before they are weekend, yeah. They are called the breeder caretakers. They are specific people that volunteer for CCI. They all have to be in California. I think within a certain amount of miles from Santa Rosa, the regional office, even. It’s very specific. But they’ll be on Facebook posting all the litters that are born, and you are just oohing and ahhing over these little babies. And then the breeder caretakers will see someone post about, “Oh, I’m getting a puppy next week,” and they’ll be like, “Oh my gosh, it might be from my litter.” So then you’re looking at their litter, and it’s just really cute how crazy we all go. Now I get it. Being in the CCI community. When I was just working with JT, it’s such a different experience just being a graduate. And now that you’re a puppy raiser, I’m like, yeah, I get it. And I also get why Canine Companions – bless their heart, I love them so much. They do such a good job of making sure they kind of keep the puppy raisers at bay because some can get a little too over involved. Now I know why they make such a good boundary between people who graduate with a Canine Companions dog. They don’t put pressure on them to keep in touch with the puppy raiser. Now, one would think, “Why wouldn’t you want to keep in touch with the puppy raiser?” But there truly are just people who can’t maintain communication like that. Or there’s a million different reasons. So CCI does a really good job of making sure that puppy raiser know that when you give this dog back to us, you may not get a lot of communication about it. It’s really interesting how they have to balance all of that. I see a lot of behind the scenes now that I’m in all these private Facebook groups of puppy talk. And how people get so into the lineage of these dogs. Posting pictures of the parents of these puppies. It’s so cool. It’s really cute. So anyway, so that is the update on when we’re going to get this new puppy. You really want to be paying attention to social media today if that’s the case because we are going to be all puppy extravaganza.
Claire: Yay. Oh my gosh, I’ve saved so many reels audios about puppies that I’m just going to make you send me consent videos of puppies and make all these soupy reels.
Joy: Great. Gosh, I can’t wait.
Claire: They’re the best.
Joy: I just can’t wait to snuggle the little baby.
Claire: This little baby belly.
Joy: Oh, I can’t stand it. I can’t stand it. And we’re talking to JT. We’re like, alright, we will protect you from the shark teeth biting your face. We’re preparing the cats. Although one of the cats is so mean, she doesn’t care. She loves it. She loves to bully the dogs.
Claire: She’s like, “Yes, bring me another subject into my kingdom.”
Joy: Exactly her personality. That’s one thousand percent her personality. She’s like, “Yes, one more person that I can be mean to.” So the other quick update that is always fluid and chaining, but I think we have a date set for April for the bone marrow donation. I’m not going to give the exact date, and I’m not going to bank on it, but that made me feel better because I was really bummed out when it got pushed again.
Claire: I know last time that it was pushed a lot of people asked us what happened, is the person okay? The reality is you have no idea. All you know is it’s a go or it’s not a go.
Joy: Right. Yeah. And last time – and this is really where you just kind of learn along the way – last time, I did ask my case worker, can you give me any information why? And I told her, I said, I guess it’s not my business, but there’s a part of me that was so defeated again after three, four rescheduling that I just need something. I need some type of reason. And then I got over it because it’s really not my business. I didn’t find out why. I think it’s just mostly how I have to figure out how to navigate it emotionally and how hard it is to put your feelings on the side because it’s not about you. It is about you, but it’s not about you. So that’s kind of the thing that I went through. But if all goes to plan, it will be in April. I’ll be posting more from the standpoint of how easy it is and, knock on wood, should be fairly painless and how important it is to get on the registry for people. You can follow Be the Match on Facebook and Instagram @bethematch. I saw this post yesterday of a little girl whose donor didn’t respond. They found a full match, but the donor didn’t respond. And just how important it is to have maybe multiple options for somebody because it’s very likely that a donor changed their mind or you just never know and how sad these parents were because they were really excited about having a full match donor, and then they haven’t heard from the donor. It just breaks your heart when you hear these stories. Just to kind of be aware of that and how you can get on the registry.
Claire: Okay, so we have some super fun Q&As for the rest of the episode. We asked you guys some random silly questions and you really delivered. But first, let’s take a quick minute and talk about our favorite sponsor Ned. We love Ned. You know about them. You love them. These are the CBD products that we absolutely love and use every single day. I lately have been getting more and more into the balance products, which are really formulated around hormone balance. I find that they help me to feel throughout my cycle and throughout the day even, just to take the edge off of some of those natural swings that happen. I think that the beauty of CBD products is they never make me feel overly medicated. It doesn’t fully dull the things that I am feeling, but it just takes the edge off of things and the more difficult aspects of being a human and really helps you manage through those moments and manage the ups and downs a little bit more because it can help you take the edge off. That’s the product I’ve been loving a lot lately.
Joy: You know, we had – this is a real-life review. We had a listener contact us because the Sleep Blend is new and improved, and they really want you to check that out. We had a listener message us and say, “I’ve had problems sleeping my entire life, and the Ned Sleep Blend is the answer for me. I’m sleeping so well.” I’m like, yes, that’s so exciting. It really does work. Give it a try. They have a money back guarantee. No questions asked. We love them. And if you have not yet checked out the episode with Ret Taylor, please do so. It’s a wonderful, wonderful episode. He is such a good human. And after the episode, you will just feel good because he is just a feel good person to listen to. And it’s Ned’s birthday month, so if you’d like to give their new and improved Sleep Blend a try, Joy and Claire listeners get 21% off with code JOY for the month of March only. It’s the best offer of the year. Now is the time to try it. Visit helloned.com/JOY to get 21% off. Thank you, Ned, for sponsoring the show and offering our listeners a natural remedy for some of life’s most common health issues.
Claire: Alright guys, we have some really fun questions, so let’s dive in. Here’s the first one. The strangest item in your fridge?
Joy: Probably a green powder from six years ago that I can’t force myself to throw away.
Claire: This is so on brand for you.
Joy: Because it was so expensive, but I didn’t end up using the whole thing. But I can’t let myself throw it away.
Claire: Mine is probably, I have a lot of really random condiments. At my last job when I was working in the natural products industry, we constantly were sampling these random, random condiments. So I have this chili crisp, but it’s a Mexican version of chili crisp. It’s really sort of smokey flavored. That’s really good. I feel like my pantry is really where my weird stuff is, so not a lot of weird stuff in my fridge. I do have a lot of chicken feet in my freezer though. Okay. What is your favorite toothpaste?
Joy: I feel like you just glossed over chicken feet. I was like, woah.
Claire: It’s for broth. I get frozen chicken feet from the store. They make great broth. They are high in collagen. And it makes you feel like a witch [cackling] stirring this big cauldron.
Joy: Your goal is to live in the –
Claire: Cottage witch. Cottage with.
Joy: Live in a cottage and make soup.
Claire: Like a mossy cottage with a big soup pot all the time and I’m just sort of like [cackling] all the way around all the time.
Joy: I think that’s a great goal for you.
Claire: Thanks.
Joy: Sorry, what was the question?
Claire: What’s your favorite toothpaste.
Joy: Well I sound so old, but my teeth are really sensitive you guys, so I have to use Sensodyne. And I love it because it works.
Claire: I go back and forth between, I do sometimes still use those little tablets. The bite tablets.
Joy: I never tried those. You were the Instagram influenced.
Claire: I know, I was influenced by a late-night ad. I think this was back when I was breastfeeding Evie. Which shout out to all the breastfeeding people out there because there is nothing like a 2am impulse buy when you are breastfeeding. I feel like this is an affliction that we all have to deal with.
Joy: I laughed so hard when you described it – I don’t know if you remember saying this, but it’s still stuck in my memory because it’s so funny – is you’re like, “I feel like these Instagram ads target new moms who just need their life a little bit better.”
Claire: Yeah, exactly. Just a little incremental ad.
Joy: Just a tiny bit better.
Claire: I also have this really expensive – You can’t see it. It’s right out of the frame of my Zoom – this really expensive lumbar pillow that I bought during that time. Super cute. Anyway. So I do like the Bite, which are these dry tablets. They look sort of like a breath mint, and then you chew them up. And as your saliva mixes with it become toothpastey. Or you get your toothbrush wet. The one thing I never got used to though. I think just after a lifetime of using commercial toothpaste, I really want that sharp, minty feeling, and you don’t really get that from those toothpaste tablets. I typically just use Crest or Colgate, very standard. Whatever is on sale at Target.
Joy: Now, do you have good teeth genes? I talked to my dentist about this recently because I had to go in for a checkup. Historically my family doesn’t have good luck with teeth, meaning we get cavities easily, my dad has had to have a lot of dental work done. I have to be really on top of it. I was using those little pickers, those hand-held disposable pickers. Which probably aren’t the best for the environment. But I was like, oh, it’s convenient for me. Because I wasn’t sitting there flossing every day. She was like, “Actually, don’t use those because you can’t get under the tooth. Flossing, you can really get into the gums and under the tooth.” So, I’m really sad about that. I really have to pay attention to my teeth hygiene or else I get cavities like crazy.
Claire: I think I am average amount of cavity pre-disposition. So my dad played hockey when he was a kid and in college. He had a lot of teeth knocked out, so he had a lot of bridges and crowns and stuff put in. My dad is in his mid-late-70’s at this point. I just watched him my whole life go through these months and months long with tens of thousands of dollars of dental work. Even though his comes from a place of dental injuries, it does motivate me to not ever want to do that. That was a lot of information about teeth.
Joy: It’s important.
Claire: A lot of people asked for more marriage hacks. I don’t really have any marriage hacks right now. I don’t have a go-to right now.
Joy: I don’t have a go-to. I feel like Scott has been doing one on me, so I guess I can flip the tables. He does this thing where if I’m in the middle of something or I’m busy, he will come into the house – let’s say he’s doing yard work outside and he wants my opinion on something he is doing. He will come into the house. He’s kind of like the Kool-Aid man where he will just barge in and he’ll be like, “I need you. Come look at this.” There is nothing more frustrating to me than when I’m in the middle of something and somebody tries to yank you away and be like, “Hey, I need you for a second.” I want to be like, “I am in the middle of something. Can you give me five minutes?” So he does that all the time. It’s a pet peeve of mine. The irony is if I were to do that with him, he would be really flustered and annoyed. But when he does it to me, he’s like, “It’s just like 30 seconds.” He will literally come in and he goes, “Okay, can you help me out for just like 30 seconds?” He does it in this way of very gently trying to present it, not like, “Hey, I need you. Come over here.” He’s like, “I just need like 30 seconds of your time.” I look at him in a huff. And he stops and he goes, “How was my presentation?” I’m like, okay, fine. So then he turns it into a joke meaning he knows that I hate when he yanks me. And I will say that. I’ll say, “Don’t yank me around. I don’t like being yanked.” He now knows not to yank me around and say, “I just need 30 seconds of your time.”
Claire: And try to soften the blow by being like, “How did I do?”
Joy: Yes. Or some of the times he’ll be like… because it’s just very aggressive if I’m in the middle of something, it drives me crazy. I’m like, ugh. It’s really probably not a great characteristic on my part, but whatever.
Claire: You know, you like what you like. I don’t really have a go-to right now, and I can’t think of anything Brandon is really hacking me with either. I will say for transparency to make anybody else out there maybe feel a little bit less worried. The reason we talk about marriage hacks and the reason we sometimes sort of gripe about our husbands is to try and normalize the day-to-day griping that happens in marriages.
Joy: So normal.
Claire: Yeah, it’s so normal, and it’s not talked about a lot. I think you can really, particularly with your marriage, get in this place of, I’m the only one who nitpicks. That must mean that my marriage is doomed. It’s always really helpful for me. We always talk about this group text we have with Joy and Jess. I’ll text them and be like, “Does your husband do X, Y, and Z?” And they’re always like, “Oh yeah, all the time.” Okay, it’s not just my uniquely failing marriage. This is a human thing. In the spirit of that, I will say Brandon and I have been in couple’s therapy now for maybe four months. I feel like actually at first it really made things worse. Because it makes you sit down and really dig up all the stuff that you typically just sort of bury or gloss over. I’m hoping that we’re going to come out of a period where I feel like it’s making things worse pretty soon. I think there is light at the end of the tunnel.
Joy: Right. It has to get back before it gets better.
Claire: Right. You really have to sit there and be like, wow, this is a pattern, and this has been going on for a long time, and that sucks. Or oh wow, I tend to just push past those moments. But if I really sit in them, they’re painful.
Joy: Yeah, relationships are hard. I was talking to someone recently who was like, “I’m not in a relationship, and I really want to be in one.” I get that feeling. I’ve been in that feeling. I just always say, relationships are so much work. They are not a cake walk. Sometimes being single is real appealing to think about. But at the end of the day, working through tough stuff really does bring you closer. It is hard work, and it is constantly fed on social media, like perfect relationships and blah blah blah, look at how happy we are. And I never feed into that crap. Nope, it’s not real. It is not real. Or especially celebrities. Oh my gosh, the way they glamorize –
Claire: Like, “I fall more in love with you every day.”
Joy: Oh my gosh.
Claire: I don’t fall more in love with anyone every day.
Joy: There’s no way that happens.
Claire: Maybe my dog.
Joy: And especially right now. I was watching the Ellen interview with Kim Kardashian recently when she was talking about Pete Davidson… just, whatever. He’s got like four tattoos of her, and she’s like, “It’s really cute.” And I just want to be like, no, you’re just in the honeymoon phase. Of course it’s really cute. And she just had that new relationship glow. Which is great, but it doesn’t last forever.
Claire: It’s like Tom Hanks jumping on Oprah’s couch.
Joy: Tom Cruise, you mean?
Claire: Tom Cruise. Tom Hanks? I’m sorry Tom Hanks. I apologize for every confusing you.
Joy: Please do not ever speak ill of him again. But yeah, it’s exactly like that. That is meant to be like that for six months to maybe eight months, but then it dies off. It’s meant to die off because then you have to develop different intimacies. But everyone always looks at that piece of like, oh my gosh, if we get out of that, I’m doomed, our relationship is doomed. I’ve never done cocaine or anything, but the first time you do a stimulant or some type of drug that makes you feel super good, you’re never going to get to that point again. You’re just never going to reach that level. I don’t know how I just compared that to cocaine, but whatever. Next question.
Claire: Do you think about the order that you eat things in a meal? Like, do you take one bite of this, one bite of that? Or do you just go for it?
Joy: Absolutely not, absolutely not. I love to mix food.
Claire: Yeah, you are a chaotic eater.
Joy: Chaotic?
Claire: Yeah, there is no rhyme or reason. Because I do a little bit. I don’t plan out, but the closer I get to the end of a meal, the more strategic I’m getting because I don’t want to finish all of one thing and still have a bunch of something left. I kind of want to finish all of my items at the same time.
Joy: Yeah, I guess if flavors are supposed to be going together, I definitely want some sauce left for that chicken. But I don’t go in with a plan. I just want the food in my body.
Claire: I just want to eat it. Let’s see here. If you had to bake a bread sculpture on Great British Bake Off, what would you make? I love this question.
Joy: I feel like we answered this on the show.
Claire: On On Your Marks, Get Set, Bake!
Joy: Yeah.
Claire: I think we have talked about our signature cakes and pies. I don’t know if we’ve ever talked about bread.
Joy: A bread sculptures? All I can think about is that amazing, was it a lion that he made?
Claire: Yeah, it was a lion.
Joy: It was so amazing.
Claire: It was so good. There’s so many options.
Joy: I’m thinking more realistic. Because in terms of my skill level and realistic, we’re not going down a good place.
Claire: I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. And I’ll parlay this into another question about my bear tattoo with a croissant. So you guys know I have this tattoo of a bear holding a croissant. I’ll post another picture about it in our Instagram stories the day this is released because we always think people miss it whenever I post it. It’s just a big bear holding a big croissant. It’s maybe six or seven inches, and it’s right on top of my thigh. But now that that little tattoo is there by himself, I feel like he needs more little friends holding food, so I’m going to get an otter, like a sea otter, that’s holding a bowl of soup. You know how otters hold things on their tummies. So I’m going to get an otter holding a bowl of soup.
Joy: So cute. That’s so cute.
Claire: But I think that would be my bread sculpture. It would be an otter holding a little mini bread boule.
Joy: Okay. That just gives me an idea of putting a sculpture of bread, like a big pool or something, to put soup in. Because I do love a bread bowl.
Claire: Who doesn’t love a bread bowl?
Joy: Oh man, it’s so good.
Claire: Wouldn’t this be so cute? You could do a bread swimming pool with a little diving board and then put little bread floats.
Joy: That’s so great.
Claire: I think I would win the signature challenge with that one.
Joy: Yeah.
Claire: Okay, if you could live in another country, which and why? We also got asked if you could live anywhere in the United States, where would you live and why? Domestic and abroad.
Joy: Well, I love France from when I lived there. I do love France. But I also love warmth, and I love Costa Rica. I feel like that would be such a good vibe because it’s warm and it’s chill and the people are so nice. So I’m going to go with what I know, places that I’ve been. I would choose the warmth first, so Costa Rica. And then anywhere to live, are you kidding me? Venice, Los Angeles, Malibu, any of the Pacific Coast Highway.
Claire: Hollywood adjacent.
Joy: Yes.
Claire: My half-brother’s mom – so a woman that my dad was married to before he was married to my mom. She’s been in my life my whole life because she is the mom of my half-brothers. She is moving to Costa Rica with her husband. They’ve been down there for a month over the winter, and they just decided to buy a house.
Joy: That’s so great. I have a couple friends who moved there for a stint in their lives. So beautiful.
Claire: It seems like such a chill place.
Joy: So chill. Remember that? They were always like “pura vida.”
Claire: Yeah, no worries. Like, just, here, have a coconut. I just want to live somewhere where you’re walking down the road and you’re like, huh, a sloth?
Joy: You know what I loved the most? I don’t know if you remember this. But when we were driving around, everyone honks at each other. Do you remember this? And I was like, why are they honking? They’re just saying hi. So honking in Costa Rica isn’t, “Get out of the way.” Honking in Costa Rica is like, “Hey, what’s up, what’s up?” So everyone honks, and it’s so great, and I love it. We need to be more like Costa Rica.
Claire: I think if I could live anywhere abroad, current global issues notwithstanding, I have always been really curious about living in Germany. It seems like a cool place to live. I would definitely move to Iceland. And also, I would definitely move to Ireland or Scotland, although all of those places that I mentioned – my fatal flaw is I don’t know if I could actually survive somewhere with less than 350 days of pure sunlight, which is pretty much nowhere in the world other than Colorado.
Joy: Yeah. Yeah. I feel very lucky.
Claire: I know. It’s the best. I don’t know. I will definitely say, as I’ve gotten older, I feel more drawn to the days that aren’t sunny, verses than just enduring them. So I think I’d be okay. And then anywhere in the United States, Encinitas is my number one goal to live in. I love Encinitas. It’s so cute. I love it. Or I could see myself in the Pacific Northwest. Although there’s so many wildfires up there these days.
Joy: Yeah.
Claire: Weirdest food combo that you love?
Joy: I don’t know if I have one. Is peanut and bananas weird?
Claire: No, not really.
Joy: I love peanut butter and bananas.
Claire: I do too. Let’s see, I have a lot. But I don’t see them as being weird, so I’m not really sure.
Joy: I used to love as a kid – this is the only one I can think of. I did not like jelly as a kid. I love jelly now, but for some reason as a kid, I was like, no peanut butter and jelly. So my mom would make me peanut butter and butter sandwiches, and that was delicious.
Claire: Wow, that does sound pretty good.
Joy: It’s so creamy.
Claire: So creamy.
Joy: So soothing.
Claire: And probably the Jiff peanut butter too.
Joy: Totally. So everything was just cream together, just peanut butter and butter.
Claire: Maybe I should start doing that for Miles. It sounds like a calorie bomb.
Joy: So great. Yes, yes.
Claire: Weirdest food combo that I love. I’m just thinking of all the tinned fish that I love. I feel like I’ve talked about things on the podcast and you’ve been like, “What?” And now I can’t think of any. I love adding sauerkraut to things. I love adding mustard to things. Oh, oh. This to me is so good, but everyone freaks out when I say it. Honey on avocado toast.
Joy: That’s a little weird.
Claire: It’s so good, you have to try it.
Joy: So honey on avocado toast?
Claire: So avocado toast, honey, and then flaky sea salt. It’s so good. And in reality, avocado doesn’t have that strong of a flavor.
Joy: Yeah, that’s true.
Claire: So when you add the honey on top, it just sort of gives the creaminess –
Joy: It’s kind of how they make a lot of puddings with avocado and cocoa powder.
Claire: Avocado takes sweetness really well. Highly recommend. If you are an avocado toast person, drizzle some honey on there, a little bit of sea salt. Chef’s kiss. Um, what do you consider to be the most perfect weather?
Joy: I think of Hawaii where you’re in that beautiful breeze and the weather is probably 85 degrees. So it’s hot but not too hot, and you have ocean breeze to cool you off just a little bit. Perfection.
Claire: That’s a good one. We don’t get a lot of rain here in Colorado, but my favorite is when it rains overnight, the next morning when the sun is out, the air is cold, and stuff is damp, but the air is really still and the sun is shining. You can just smell everything. That’s my favorite.
Joy: Yeah, I love it. And it’s kind of still. That’s beautiful.
Claire: If you could have one superpower, what would it be?
Joy: Fly or be invisible. I feel like we’ve answered this one before. Yeah.
Claire: I would either want to speak every language or have the power to heal. Although I feel like that would be kind of intense.
Joy: Kind of intense, the power to heal.
Claire: Biggest pet peeve. So many. One pet peeve that makes me crazy that I’m dealing with a lot right now. We’re refinancing our house, and my lender ends all his emails with ellipses. So he’s like, “Let me know what you think…” It’s like, “I’ve attached these documents…” Just say it! It makes me crazy.
Joy: That reminds me of a pet peeve that used to happen at my old job where I had this person that would always message me. For example, “Are you here?!” Would do question mark, punctuation mark together. I’ve done that before. Like in text, yesterday I did it. I asked Jess, “How was Hamilton? Excited?” So I wanted to express “?!” Like I was excited in the text question. But it felt aggressive. “Are you here?!”
Claire: Yeah. As opposed to like, “How was Hamilton?”
Joy: Yeah. Question mark, exclamation mark. Any time you’re combining or doing multiple punctuation, such as two or three question marks, two or three exclamation points. Unless you’re doing it with people who know your humor and voice, stop it. Stop it. Can’t.
Claire: I agree.
Joy: Stop it.
Claire: I wish there was something between a period and an exclamation point, though. That was like, I want you to know this is more than the casual end of a statement, but also, I am [higher pitched, excited voice] not quite ready to elevate it to this level.
Joy: And they do that all the time with women in communication with emails where we have a hard time with the period versus the exclamation point. We’re trying to make sure we sound really happy.
Claire: I want you to know that I’m upbeat.
Joy: I think we got to let go of that.
Claire: I just go for the smiley face. If you could have lunch with any fictional character, who would it be? And where would you go?
Joy: Fictional character?
Claire: I mean, I think that could be a character on a TV show played by a real person.
Joy: Okay, alright. I’m immediately in the cast of Sex and the City. I am their best friend, and I am at one of the coffee shops that they all go to to eat. One thousand percent.
Claire: I love how you just immediately went into the role play. “I am their best friend.” I mean, my first instinct is someone from the Harry Potter universe. I feel like that’s got to be Liz Lemon and we go somewhere with some ham. [singing] Somebody get me some ham.
Joy: Liz Lemon is probably one of the best fictional characters ever.
Claire: Absolutely. If your hair could be any color, what would it be?
Joy: As I have pink hair right now.
Claire: Your hair is pink, yeah. Okay, I’m going to use this time to talk about my idea about wigs. So I have dark, auburn, almost brown at this point in my life hair. When I was a kid, it was little orphan Annie red, and it’s just gotten darker throughout my life, which is common. But I’ve always wanted to try out like platinum blonde hair. I know, however, that it will take me months and months and months and, realistically, thousands of dollars to get my hair to that point. And then, what do you do? Then you have to spend months and months and months and thousands of dollars going back the other direction.
Joy: It’s so much maintenance.
Claire: I don’t love my hair super short. That’s not a great option for me. So I feel like what I might do is buy myself a nice high quality super blonde wig and wear it whenever I want to be blonde. There are a lot of people who use wigs as an accessory, and I am trying to challenge my assumption that that’s not an option for me. I’m just trying to think of what I mean by this. I’ve had this thought recently of, why haven’t I felt like this is accessible to me as an option, that If I were to put on a wig and wear it to work that it would be weird. It’s not something that we see a lot. And I know that this is completely different for people other that white women. I think that wigs for Black women are used really as an accessory and used in a different way. But for white women, we think you have to have hair loss in order to have a wig. I have started to go, I don’t want to appropriate –
Joy: But also, you’re also thinking too – there is a lot of thought around if you’re wearing a wig, there is either hair loss or there is something health-wise going on with you. There’s other outside factors and opinions that come along with that. And because it’s just for a reason of you wanting to try out a different hair color, you’re trying to make sure that you’re not doing it for –
Claire: That I’m not trivializing something that is really profound for other people.
Joy: Trivializing is a good word, yeah.
Claire: But at the same time, I’m like – and if I want to go out, and also there’s a lot of cheap wigs out there. Even if I wanted to spend a thousand dollars on a high-quality wig, that would still probably be half as much as I would spend actually getting my hair to be blonde and actually maintaining that and bringing it back the other direction. So this is just something that I’m noodling on. If you are someone out there who accessorizes with a wildly different hair colored wig, I would love to hear from you. Because I feel like I can pull it off. Of all the people, I also feel like though, of all the people in my life, if I were to show up at work with blonde hair and everyone would be like, “Did you dye your hair?” And I was like, “No, it’s a wig,” I could say that more than a lot of people.
Joy: Go downtown to that Denver wig store. Try some on. You know what I mean? Maybe see how it feels too. But yeah, I’d love to hear from people, too, that have done that.
Claire: So the answer to me is surfer, platinum blonde.
Joy: Right. Because you don’t want to dye and it’s a lot of work.
Claire: It’s a lot of work to dye your hair that color. And I don’t know that I could get there. My hair doesn’t lift to blonde that easily. It lifts to yellow.
Joy: Oh then, yeah.
Claire: Right. Okay, favorite coffee order?
Joy: Simple. I do love a latte. I don’t really like anything fancier than that.
Claire: I like a latte, and I also like cortados.
Joy: You do love a cortado.
Claire: Okay, we’ll do a few more.
Joy: Okay.
Claire: What kind of topping did Claire put on her pumpkin pie? Whipped cream. Homemade whipped cream. Heavy whipping cream that I whipped myself. So good. That’s one of my main motivators in eating pumpkin pie is to eat just so much whipped cream. What would JT and River’s perfect days look like?
Joy: JT’s perfect day? Oh my gosh. We’ve had some really good days with him where we get up, we go for a walk. He likes to sniff things. It’s a sunny day, so he likes to roll in the grass.
Claire: He’s such a putzer. He’s just a putz.
Joy: He loves to roll in the grass when it’s sunny, so Scott and I will always joke, “Oh my gosh, JT, it’s prime rolling in the grass weather.” He loves to roll in the grass. I would say he also loves to play with friends, maybe have a doggy date with the neighbors or a neighborhood dog. Doggy date and give him a good bully stick because he loves bully sticks. Oh, and snuggling. And laying on the bed. So we don’t sleep with him in the bed, just because he is so big and we’d have no room to sleep. But in the mornings when we are just sitting in the bed reading or whatever, he gets to lay on the bed with us, so we get some bedtime. And he loves to cuddle at night, so then we would sit on the floor and cuddle with him at night.
Claire: Aw, JT.
Joy: He’s sitting right next to me right now snoring. I was laughing earlier because he was making his bed, and I love when he digs in his bed. Does River do that?
Claire: Not really. River is too much of a monster. River’s perfect day would be just unlimited amounts of destruction. She would love to take your house and just chew it into pieces. She is actually getting a lot better about it. She doesn’t seek out destruction quite as much anymore.
Joy: Didn’t she chew on your couch?
Claire: She ate the couch? She ripped the couch. She ate a cushion off the couch.
Joy: [laughing] I know it’s not funny.
Claire: We had to get a new couch. We had this couch where the cushions were sewed into the couch, like it was all one piece, because it was like a futon kind of thing where you could lower the back. It didn’t look like a futon. It looked like a couch, but it was all one piece. And she ripped one of the cushions. Thankfully it was a cheap ass couch anyway. I didn’t hate it. It was fine. But it was a cheap couch anyway. All that to say, she loves to destroy. A long walk. She loves playing with other dogs. She’s only one. She would get in it with some other dogs big time, and she would just play all day long. Like, when we send her to doggy day care, she just goes berserk the whole day.
Joy: You get to watch on cameras? I love that.
Claire: You know what, I don’t know if my doggy day care has a camera. I haven’t ever looked into it, which is shocking, I know.
Joy: I would like people to tell me what you’ve seen on your doggy day care cameras. It’s just the cutest thing, how much fun your dogs are having.
Claire: This gal Betsy that I work with, she has this hysterical brown dog. It’s about the size of a lab. It’s really scruffy, like it’s one of those dogs that looks like it has a beard.
Joy: I love that.
Claire: His name is Waylen, and he’s so dorky. He’s allergic to grass. He’s one of those types of dogs.
Joy: Oh, buddy.
Claire: Aw, Waylen. And she’s always looking at him at doggy day care. She’s like, “All the dogs are playing, and Waylen is in the corner.” Every time she’s like, “Come look at my dog be antisocial.”
Joy: I want to ask one more question from JK because he asked this last time and we forgot to answer it. Or maybe it was an Instagram question. But for The Amazing Race, us two versus the husbands, who wins and why?
Claire: Oh, no question, we obviously win.
Joy: I mean, JK, really?
Claire: Here’s the thing. Joy and I have this dynamic. We are very opposite in a lot of ways, but we really complement each other.
Joy: We are a well-oiled machine.
Claire: We are a well-oiled machine. Brandon and Scott, if I let them hear this, they will disagree with us, but they are opposite in ways that do not complement each other.
Joy: Right. Right. Right. They would just repel oil and water.
Claire: Scott would immediately get so annoyed with Brandon, and then Brandon would immediately think he was in trouble and start to feel bad. And then Scott would feel bad that Brandon felt bad.
Joy: Brandon would internalize it and shut down, and nothing would get done.
Claire: And nothing would get done. But then Brandon would want to play it cool and act like nothing is wrong, and then Scott would be confused.
Joy: Scott would want to start planning and fixing things, and it would just not go well.
Claire: No, not at all. The thing about both Scott and Brandon is they are both the types of people – I’m trying to choose my word every carefully right now. They are both the types of people who need a little bit of direction, lest they focus on the wrong part of the problem.
Joy: Right. Right.
Claire: So they are really good at solving problems and very helpful and motivated, but they both have a hard time prioritizing.
Joy: You know, like a Roomba?
Claire: It just bumps against the wall and turns like three degrees and bumps.
Joy: It’s so helpful, but it just starts going in one direction and then it hits a wall.
Claire: That’s a good analogy. We mean this in love.
Joy: So much love. They know this by now. I hope they do. For example, when we were doing our photo shoot last weekend, I was picking out a bunch of clothes. Claire and I do these little mini photo shoots you’ve seen us doing with all the reels. And Scott walked into the closet as I was putting a bunch of clothes together. We’ve been doing this often, so it’s not like I need to furiously grab very intentional outfits. I don’t have a lot of pressure on myself to pick the right thing, so I’m grabbing a bunch of things. I know it’s going to work, and I know we’re going to do this again. If we were doing a once-a-year photoshoot, I would have to be very intentional about these outfits. And Scott walks in and he’s like, “Is this a spring shoot? Do you need spring colors?” No. No, no, no. I just looked at him and said, “Do not get involved.” Because he wanted to help and he wanted to pick out outfits for me. And then he goes, “Okay, well if you’d like some direction or feedback, just let me know.” And I could tell his feelings were hurt. But I was in a hurry. If I was to stop and engage him and be a part of the process, it would be another 45 minutes. I’ve got to go in 5 minutes. I’m done, we’re good, I’ve picked it. He was like, “Okay.” I could tell he was a little sad about that. It’s funny.
Claire: Or like Brandon is the type of person who will – I mean, I see these TikToks or reels all the time about this. And this would be me and Brandon where I’m like, “Hey, we have guests coming over in an hour. Can you help me clean?” And Brandon goes out back to reorganize the shed.
Joy: Oh my gosh, that’s exactly what he does. [laughing]
Claire: I meant like, maybe unload the dishwasher. So that’s what I mean by you give them –
Joy: Roomba.
Claire: Yeah, uh huh. You’re not not doing what I asked you.
Joy: You just need to point the Roomba towards the kitchen. That’s really what I need.
Claire: So this is why Joy and I would win The Amazing Race.
Joy: There you go, JK. It was a long, windy answer.
Claire: Okay, we have way more questions. We barely got through half of them. And a lot of folks keep asking the same questions that we never get to.
Joy: We will ask. We will get to them.
Claire: In a future episode. Thank you, guys, so much for joining us. Don’t forget to support Ned, helloned.com/JOY or use discount code JOY. Get 21% off your order for the month of March in celebration of Ned’s birthday. Thank you for supporting the brands that support our podcast. You can find us on Instagram @joyandclaire_. You can go to our website at joyandclaire.com. You can email us, thisisjoyandclaire@gmail.com. Thank you for being here, and we’ll talk to you next week.
Joy: Bye, guys.
Claire: Bye.
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