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This is Joy & Claire Episode 107: Hot Minutes
Episode Date: December 30, 2021
Transcription Completed: January 14, 2022
Audio Length: 49:30 minutes
Joy: Hey guys, this is Joy.
Claire: And this is Claire.
Joy: And this is Joy and Claire. Thanks for putting up with my voice last week, because that was really cute. I feel like everybody is sick though, so everybody has this.
Claire: I also just feel like everyone has COVID.
Joy: Everyone. I’m laughing, but I’m crying inside.
Claire: I’m laughing, but I’m crying.
Joy: I’m smiling, but I’m crying inside.
Claire: And I’m also kind of like, okay, if we’re all going to get COVID, at least we’re getting the least serious variant so far, I guess.
Joy: I guess.
Claire: Which technically speaking – I mean, this is a weird thing to say. But it’s in the virus’s best interest to be less serious. Because if you as a virus kill all your hosts, you’re not going to get very far. That’s why Ebola will never be a true pandemic because it’s too serious too quickly. There’s no time for it to spread.
Joy: Oh. Got it.
Claire: See what I mean? You as a carrier of the virus get too sick too quickly, and then you die. So there’s not time for you to spread.
Joy: Right.
Claire: Versus if you’re carrying COVID and you just have a sniffle for four weeks and you walk around and give it to everyone.
Joy: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Claire: Right. I’m not saying… just speaking from the virus’s point of view.
Joy: The virus has spoken. Roll out, I’m kind of sick of it.
Claire: But also, I think at this point we’ve realized that people are not going to get vaccinated. We can have as many feelings as we want about that.
Joy: I have a lot of feelings about it.
Claire: We can get as many vaccines as we want, and it won’t change other people’s unwillingness to view public health as important enough to do that.
Joy: Yeah, I just have to interject really quick. It’s so funny how things pop out at people where, man, you can’t say anything without making someone mad. But I think one time I did a Q&A on Instagram stories. Someone asked some question, basically said like, “thoughts about being around the unvaccinated.” I answered the question being like, well, there’s the vaccinated and then there’s the unvaccinated. We’re not trying to be mean.
Claire: It’s not like “the great unwashed.”
Joy: And so someone wrote and was like, “Ugh, the unvaccinated. We’re just these horrible people.” No, that’s not what we’re saying at all. I’m the vaccinated. You’re the – there’s no difference. You either are or you’re not. It’s not personal.
Claire: This is one option or the other. No offense.
Joy: You could just say “the vaccinated” and say the same thing about me. Man, we just really are quick to get real angry.
Claire: Right. “The unvaccinated.” Like, “You can’t call me the unvaccinated.” Okay, I don’t know what else to call you. Individuals who refrain from being vaccinated for COVID-19. Person-first language, Joy. Okay, not to make fun of person-first language because it’s important.
Joy: Okay. Okay.
Claire: So, I do feel like I know more people right now who in the last 2-4 days have tested positive for COVID than any other point almost combined in the pandemic. I’m lucky that personally I have not known that many people – it’s happened here and there to friends and their kids. It’s thankfully always been relatively mild cases. Crops up every couple of weeks. “Oh, did you hear so-and-so tested positive?” But right now, I feel like every single person is like, “tested positive,” “tested positive,” “tested positive.” I don’t know. At this point, and I know we’ve all been saying this the whole time, it’s a matter of time before you get it. But right now it feels like it’s knocking on the door. I took Evie this morning to get a PCR test because she’s a snot faucet. Which also, it’s December. Kids get sick, and that’s the hardest thing right now. When will we get back to the point… will we ever get back to a point where having a runny nose, you aren’t wondering, oh my gosh, am I going to kill my grandpa with this runny nose?
Joy: Right. Exactly.
Claire: And that’s what’s hard. The data is pretty clear that most people who get COVID will not become hospitalized. But it’s still a crappy thing to get. You still feel sick. Feeling sick is not fun. You can still feel sick for 2+ weeks. Long haul COVID sounds horrible. We don’t know the long-term effects of COVID. People are like, “Well, we don’t know the long-term effects of vaccines.” Well, we really don’t know long-term effects of COVID. We also don’t know long-term effects of cell phone usage, being in houses with Wi-Fi.
Joy: I could get hit by a bus tomorrow, that’s how I live my life. You know what, guys? Can we just calm down? We are not promised tomorrow.
Claire: And for me, “We don’t know what the long-term effects are.” Do you have this much concern over the long-term effects of every choice you make that doesn’t impact other people? So anyways.
Joy: It’s a hard time to be alive. It’s truly unprecedented.
Claire: I’m feeling a lot of anxiety right now about COVID. I have not felt this way in a while. I feel like it’s been a hot minute… a pleasant hot minute… a cozy, warm hot minute since I –
Joy: Pleasant hot minute sounds like a really good movie.
Claire: That sounds either like a zombie land style comedy or definitely like a porn. A pleasant top minute. Since I was having daily worries about COVID. I haven’t logged on to check the case counter in a while. I definitely looked at it today.
Joy: Scott looks at it every single day. He reads the case count. He stays abreast of all the information. We decided to – I feel like every single person that I know, at least in my circle of friends, had to change their plans or something happened or someone got sick. We were going to go to Oklahoma City to see Scott’s family. I was still sick, and Scott’s family got sick. They got the cold. We all tested negative for COVID, but everyone was getting these colds. We’re like, why would we travel right now? So we just decided last minute. Luckily our tickets are refundable, whatever, whatever. At this point, I feel like any trip we plan, we’re like, just do refundable because plans are always changing and we have to be ready for that. We made the decision, A, we’re not going to put our immune systems through that because things are just crazy and we don’t want to get other people sick. I don’t want to put other people at risk. You just never know. I was talking to someone today in counseling, one of my clients. I was saying, collectively we’re all very tired of making decisions that normally would just be nothing. It’s kind of like that decision fatigue on steroids. Where normally you’re like, do I go on this trip, or do I not go on this trip? There’s all these moral dilemmas that are being thrown at us constantly. So if I decide to cancel my trip and my friend doesn’t cancel their trip, does that make me a better person? No. You have to make the decision that’s best for your family. But I think we’re starting to do the whole moral highness thing. Where it’s like, no one’s better than each other. We’re just trying to make it through the freaking day and not get COVID. At the end of the day, that’s what’s exhausting.
Claire: Not get it, and not give it to anyone. And just live our lives without feeling like we have to check the case counter. So I am really feeling stressed about that right now in a way that I haven’t felt in a while.
Joy: Are you just talking about you’re stressed about the pandemic?
Claire: Yeah. I’m starting to feel like, okay, in the summer we had this glimpse of life could come back, and then it got swept away by delta. And then it felt like, okay, well maybe now that kids can get vaccinated that will make a difference. And then comes omicron. Do you say “ah-micron” or “oh-micron.”
Joy: I say “ah-micron.” Because I was listening to The Daily, and I think they say “ah-micron.”
Claire: “Ah” like “ahh” –
Joy: Not “oh-micron,” “ah-micron.”
Claire: Okay, somebody who speaks Latin, please weigh in because I’ve heard it both ways. I started saying it “oh-micron” because there was a hot minute in college where I pledged a sorority. Literally, I didn’t even make it through the pledge class.
Joy: There’s a lot of hot minutes in this episode, I’m just going to say.
Claire: It’s a lot of hot minutes. Two so far. There was a brief period of my life [laughing]. And when we learned the Greek alphabet, my memory was of it being “oh-micron,” but I also feel like – anyway. So someone please weight in. Regardless, it was like, maybe now that the kids can get vaccinated, we’ll maybe turn a corner, and then here comes this new variant. And it just feels like, when are we going to get out of this loop? I think that there is still, and I think there has been, this assumption that people who agree with public health measures like vaccines and quarantining and all that, we are not frustrated or tired or questioning any of this. I am pro masks, pro social distancing, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But I am still sitting here being like, how the heck are we going to get out of this? When is the loop going to end? It feels like we’re just getting spun into another cycle, and I just want that to not… I want it to be over, and I don’t even know what over means.
Joy: I was thinking about that today.
Claire: I want my kids to be able to go do stuff and not worry about what’s going to happen when they get back. I want to be able to plan a trip and not have ten contingency plans.
Joy: Right, not think ahead, all these contingency plans.
Claire: To me, it being “over” is sort of what you were describing. I want to have to not just weight every single decision ten different directions before making it. I want to just be able to make a decision and move forward.
Joy: Right. Now, we are making decisions, but there’s 20 different decisions that are layered into it. Scott’s a huge sports fan. Watches football, watches basketball. So he’s following all these games, and he’s in a Fantasy Football league. He’s always talking to me about how all these players are dropping out every single week. Tons of them can’t play because they caught the virus. It’s just like, are we doing this again? Where sports are shutting down. And then I have tickets to see The Lion King at the Denver Performing Arts this coming weekend with my mom. Is that going to get cancelled? Because I’ve seen other shows getting cancelled because the cast is getting COVID. It’s like, alright, here we are again. But I do have to take a pause because I Googled it.
Google: “Ah-micron.”
Claire: “Ah-micron.”
Google: “Ah-micron.”
Claire: Thank you, Siri. Okay, well that’s what’s on the top of my mind right now.
Joy: It’s stressful. It’s just freaking stressful.
Claire: You guys didn’t take your trip. All of our Christmas festivities got cancelled because my nephew tested positive for COVID. Thankfully he’s doing fine. I will say, a lot of people I know who are testing positive are vaccinated and boosted. But my nephew was not fully, fully vaccinated. Like, he had gotten a second dose a couple of days before. And then his little sister who is not yet eligible to be vaccinated, they are the only two in their family who haven’t. Everyone else in the family who have been living with them and riding in cars with them haven’t gotten it. So clearly vaccines are still effective against it. It still just makes me feel like there’s no… I don’t know. There’s just no answer. Yeah, I took Evie to get tested today. We sat in the car for two hours in this endless car line. And while we were sitting there, the guy in the car behind me came up and tapped on my window and said, “Hey, your back tire is going flat.” I was like, oh my God. I can’t get out of this line. Even if I wanted to.
Joy: No. You’re like, I’m going to burn the rim down. I don’t care.
Claire: It wasn’t even like, “I sacrificed 90 minutes. I’m not leaving now.” It was like, where do I go?
Joy: Right. You can’t go anyway.
Claire: A driveway, basically, sized area behind a baseball field. There’s a train. I physically could have not gotten out of there, even if I wanted to. So I’m just sitting here thinking, I hope this leak is slow enough that I can sit here for probably another hour and then still make it home. Thankfully it did. I was able to drop my car off at the tire place on my way home. And then at one point – everyone there was so nice. The testing people came up and they’re like, “I’m so sorry. Did you know your tire is going flat?” I was like, “I know, and I just can’t do anything about it” and start crying. He’s like, “I’m so sorry. We’ll find you an air compressor. If you need something, we’ll call AAA.” He was so sweet. He’s like, “We’ll get you home, don’t worry.” I was like, “Okay.”
Joy: Those are the types of people that are angels on earth.
Claire: They are.
Joy: When you’re just like, I’ve had it, I don’t know what else to do.
Claire: And he is running around in his face shield dealing with all these people all day, and he was like, “Don’t worry. We’ll figure it out. We’ll call AAA if we need to.”
Joy: I also feel like when a woman cries especially, everyone is like, “We’re on it.”
Claire: And here I am with this two-year-old in the backseat who is clearly not having a good time either. My tire’s going flat, I’ve been sitting here all day.
Joy: Oh my gosh, that’s kind of an insult to injury situation.
Claire: It was one thousand percent an insult to injury. Especially because I felt like I went to get tested out of an incredible abundance of caution. Like I said, Evie could just have a runny nose and I wouldn’t think twice about it, but we were right there. Let me just do this real quick. And then “real quick” turned into an hour and a half. Anyway.
Joy: And I’m feeling for the people of New York where I’m looking at the lines for people to get tested is just insane. Running out of tests. That just feels, wow, we’re going through these waves. What I was thinking about recently is from the beginning of the pandemic – and I know a lot of the podcasts do a year in a review. And especially from the beginning of 2021 when we thought things were going to get better. And they haven’t really gotten that much better. But how at the beginning they did this podcast on The Daily where they revisited people who had to quit their jobs – or kind of left their jobs when the shutdown happened, and they decided not to return to their jobs because unemployment was paying more than they were making and they had these whole revelations about what they wanted to do with their lives. Because, hey, I was working really hard and not making a lot of money, and blah, blah, blah. So they kind of revisited some people that they interviewed initially right after the shutdown. And I just remember thinking the way that we talked about the pandemic when it first happened was, oh maybe in a few weeks this will be… I mean, but again, we’ve never been here before.
Claire: No.
Joy: No one that I know has been in a pandemic before. When has this happened? No.
Claire: Zero humans alive today.
Joy: Zero humans. Except for my father-in-law with polio.
Claire: Oh, right. Yes. I mean, I don’t want to spend this whole podcast talking about COVID. Because I am simultaneously sick of it and also can’t stop thinking about it. I think that’s also a global paradox.
Joy: I think everyone feels that way.
Claire: Totally.
Joy: And I think as long as we don’t – what I know to be true from our listeners. And I get it. Whenever we start to get angry and ranty, I know that people tend to tune out. And that’s fair. I think there’s enough of that going around. But I also just think we’re in it and we need to talk about it. So we have to be like, oh, well, our plans were cancelled, and that really sucks. And it just does. We’re tired. We’re tired of making decisions on top of decisions on top of decisions. When normally I could be like, yeah, let’s go to Hawaii in June. Now it’s like, I don’t know. I don’t know what the pandemic is going to look like. I don’t know if Hawaii is going to be open. Whatever. So I think it’s just in solidarity, we all feel you. And we’re still here. We’re still here.
Claire: And we’re still here. How was your Christmas?
Joy: It was, you know… ugh, I get kind of emotional about this. I love spending Christmas with Scott’s family. I really do. It just always reminds me of when Scott and I were first dating. I think we started dating Memorial Day of 2006. I went to Thanksgiving and Christmas I think that first year that we were dating, so we were fairly new. And I just remember loving the Christmas. Ever since then, I’ve been like, wow, I loved Christmas at his parent’s house. They go all out. They go all out with food. I may have told this story before, but I think it’s so cute. I think I was vegan before I started dating Scott, so they just didn’t know what to feed me. Whenever I went to Scott’s parents’ house, they would buy huge edible arrangements, which is just a big basket of fruit. That’s what they would buy for me. So it became this tradition every single year, Dan would buy me huge edible arrangements, and that’s what I would freaking eat the entire time I was at their house. It was really funny. I have a sweet spot in my heart for that, even though I’m not vegan anymore. It’s like farm country, and they’re all farmers. They’re like, we don’t know what to do with a vegan in our family. So that was really cute. I just have such a nostalgia for going home with Scott for the holidays that when we had to cancel our trip – and for good reason – it just made me really sad and lonely. We didn’t want to go to my parents’ house because we didn’t want to get them sick, just in case whatever I have is still lingering. So we spent it alone, and we ordered food from Linger which is great. Trying to support local businesses as much as possible. So that felt good, but it’s lonely when it’s just us two. It was really nice, and we try to keep busy, and we just hung out with the dogs and went to our neighbor’s house for a little bit, outside of course. But you know, it made me really appreciate – and we’ve had Christmases that we’ve spent just the two of us I think like once or twice out of the 13 years. So we’re always with some part of our family. But every time it happens where it’s just the two of us, while I appreciate my husband, it just feels kind of sad. It really made me miss my family. So we were on FaceTime with everybody. But it was nice.
Claire: You’re like, I like this guy, but I see him every day.
Joy: Yeah, exactly. I put some Legos together. I got some more Legos sets. It was great. You guys had to stay home too, yeah?
Claire: Yeah. So my brother normally hosts Christmas Eve. And then someone from his wife’s family who also lives in Boulder will host something on Christmas Day evening. So we had just planned completely on being with them, and that obviously didn’t work out. So on Christmas Eve, we went over to my mom’s house, which we don’t… like, my mom lives a mile away. We see her a lot. So we don’t always do holidays with her on the day. And that’s been kind of the way it’s been for a long time because there are more siblings and cousins on my dad’s side than on my mom’s side. My parents obviously are divorced. We will kind of just catch up with my mom later. We went over there actually on Christmas Eve, which was nice and super low key. We were over there for a couple hours. We made a short rib pot pie with cheddar crust that was really good. Came home and went to bed. And then on Christmas morning, I’ve had this dream probably since the Christmas before I got pregnant with Miles. Brandon and I went to Breckenridge first thing Christmas morning and it was empty. It is never empty, let alone during a holiday. But on Christmas morning, people who come up for skiing, who take ski vacations, everyone wants to have a lazy morning. You wake up, do presents, you do your traditions. And not that many people just get up and immediately go skiing on Christmas morning. I have been waiting for my kids to be old enough for us to start doing that as a family. My dream is that we will get up, get directly in the car, have a breakfast burrito in the car, ski for a few hours, and go home and start Christmas at noon and do presents. So we didn’t quite do it like that exactly. We had a little bit of time at home. We opened a couple of little presents. We did our stockings and one or two presents and breakfast, and then got in the car. We went to our local hill called Eldora, which is like an hour away. I didn’t even put my ski boots on. Brandon took Miles on the bunny hill twice, and that was it. This was not as picturesque as it sounds. In order to even get in the car, I had to tell Miles – because Brandon had taken Miles skiing earlier in the week. He was climbing on a pile of snow in the parking lot, fell, hit his head, and got a concussion. Was literally disoriented, didn’t know where he was, didn’t know what had happened. A true concussion. Came home, was nauseous, and then ever since then has been kind of weepy. He’s definitely recovering from an actual head injury. But since the injury wasn’t from when he was skiing. He skis with a helmet obviously. And obviously right now, Brandon holds onto him the whole time. His risks during the skiing activity are quite low. We wanted to get him back out there because he starts ski lessons next week and we didn’t want him to think, “I’m going to go and get hurt.”
Joy: Yeah, like build up his confidence again.
Claire: Right, right. We wanted to build up his confidence again. But he was nervous. So I was like, “Listen. We are going to get in the car and drive up there. And if we get there and you don’t want to ski, we will turn around and come home.” So we get there and we parked and he was like, “I want to go home.” “Okay. Let’s just get out and go in the lodge and have a hot chocolate.”
Joy: Look at the snow and then…
Claire: Exactly. One step at a time. “We’re already here. Let’s just go and get some hot chocolate.” So we go and we spend like 45 minutes in the lodge. Which we haven’t even gone skiing yet. Have some hot chocolate.
Joy: And at this point, is it still pretty empty?
Claire: Yeah, at this point it is pretty empty. So we did finally get him onto skis for two runs. Evie was doing the toddler thing where she was screaming because her hands were cold, but she wouldn’t put on her gloves.
Joy: Totally.
Claire: Which is such a two-year-old thing. “Put your gloves on.” “No! My hands are cold!” I don’t know what to tell you. I have this piece of clothing that is specifically made to solve this problem, but no. The only thing that she wants less than warm hands is to warm up her hands. So yeah, and then we came home. Miles went up the magic carpet and came down the bunny hill twice, and we came home. It was so nice. I will say, I really want to give Brandon a lot of credit because he finally took my gifting advice, and he gave me all things that I wanted.
Joy: That’s amazing.
Claire: I am so proud of him. I got a new bread knife. I got a new water bottle that I’d really been wanting. He gave me a bike helmet. He gave me a piece of Aura Bora.
Joy: Perfect.
Claire: Stuff that I really like. Yeah, exactly. A candle that he knew I liked. He has been collecting it for months. Every time I mention something like, “Oh, that’s such a cool thing,” he would buy it.
Joy: That’s so great.
Claire: And I was like, see, wasn’t it nice to surprise me – even though these are specific things that I asked for, I was still surprised that you had thought about them. But you’re not surprising me with how novel the item is. You are surprising me with your thoughtfulness for remembering the exact thing that I wanted.
Joy: Exactly.
Claire: There’s a different take on the element of surprise that I think is more meaningful and more satisfying for me because it’s obviously what I want. So really happy about that. So it was really fun, and yay Brandon for finally –
Joy: Finally not going rogue and just staying in the lane. Listening to what you want.
Claire: Yeah. It shows some personal growth on Brandon’s behalf because I think he always used to think, well if I’m spending all this effort getting it for you, why wouldn’t you like it? And it’s not that I don’t appreciate the effort, but no matter how much effort you put into something, if it’s not something that I want, then I’m not probably going to end up wearing or using it.
Joy: Exactly. Yeah.
Claire: So he changed his approach, and it was very successful. So yay, Brandon.
Joy: Yay. Yay, gift giving.
Claire: And then coming up next, New Year’s.
Joy: Here we are.
Claire: Here we are, Joy. Finally we can talk about New Year’s resolutions. You’ve been bursting since like Halloween to talk about it.
Joy: But can I ask a really quick question? Okay, so a new year always makes me think of the year in review. Do you ever think about that? Do you reflect on the year at all of what lessons you learned?
Claire: I mean, I normally do, but this year I’m kind of ready to just run the other way.
Joy: Yeah. The only reason I ask is… maybe it’s a selfish reason that I want to talk about it. Maybe a lot of people felt this way, but 2020 was such a shit show that we were like, “Yes, 2021 is going to be amazing.” And it just turned out to be one of the hardest years of my life. So I think the lesson of 2022 is, you know what, I have zero expectations of whatever. The bar is low. Anything great that happens in 2022 is going to really be a cherry on top of the sundae. Because 2021 was just really, really hard. The thing that I keep wanting to bring up and I don’t know how to talk about it, so maybe we can just gloss over it, whatever, tell me what you think. But I’m still holding a grudge from the stuff that happened from leaving my job in May that I’ve been having these weird dreams about needing some type of closure, still having a grudge, somehow needing to let that go. And I don’t know how to do that.
Claire: So you want advice for how to let your grudge go?
Joy: Yeah. I’m asking you for advice.
Claire: Okay, let’s see. I’m really not a grudge holder. I mean, move on.
Joy and Claire: [laughing]
Joy: Just lift heavier. What did Mike say?
Claire: Just pull harder.
Joy: Just pull harder. Just let go.
Claire: Just let go. You want to go? Just let go.
Joy: I mean, it’s true.
Claire: What do you feel is holding you back from just being like, “Okay, I’m over it.”
Joy: I’m so mad. I’m just mad…
Claire: Do you ever see your anger getting resolved?
Joy: That’s true, no.
Claire: Are you searching for resolution?
Joy: Yeah, it’s probably never going to be resolved. I think when you feel like you’ve been wronged and betrayed – I’m going to say all these words. Truly people that I thought were my friends turned out not to be and betrayed me. And it’s all just me, me, me being hurt. Wanting to have some type of resolution or apology that’s never going to come. I think that’s just what I need to let go of. And the reason I bring it up today too is, man, it’s been 6+ months. I had a dream about it last night of asking people around me being like, want to write so-and-so a letter to really let them know – it’s just that whole thing of, it’s not going to solve anything. It’s not going to solve anything, Joy. I think that’s the lesson maybe. It’s okay to be hurt. It’s okay to have two feelings. It’s okay to be hurt by what happened because truly I felt super betrayed. It’s also okay to be like, alright, you kind of have to figure out how to move forward.
Claire: I also think there’s something about the way that we talk about difficult things and forgiveness and getting over something that makes us believe that something has to feel positive to neutral in order for us to move on from it.
Joy: That’s true.
Claire: You can still think that it was shitty. You never have to change your belief about that.
Joy: That’s very true.
Claire: That doesn’t mean that you can’t move on. You can be like, yeah, that was shitty that that happened. I can’t believe that happened.
Joy: Yeah.
Claire: That really hurt.
Joy: Yeah. You know what I think of? It’s kind of like grief where grief is always going to hurt when you think about it, but it just transforms you. It’s a very different scenario of course, but grief, you don’t ever get over it. You just work through it, and it transforms you in a different way. I think that’s kind of how I look about it. It might say seriously over dramatic without giving the full details of what happened. And that really just doesn’t matter on a public platform. What matters is my feelings were really hurt. Really hurt. So grieving the loss of friends and people who I thought I could trust. And then being able to move on from that to be like, wow, my feelings were just really hurt. So maybe it’s not so much a grudge as it is feeling so bad that people really treated me to poorly, and my feelings are hurt.
Claire: Yeah. My advice as someone who doesn’t hold grudges – but it’s not like I’ve never had a hard time letting something in my past go – is to think of, like, can you identify something specific that is standing between you and feeling like you could move on? If not, then maybe you just need to be honest with yourself that you’re not going to get – or if you can identify and you know you aren’t going to get it – then make peace with that and maybe “moving on” or “letting it go” just feels like making the conscious decision to say, “I’m never going to get what I needed from this situation, and I can’t keep thinking about it.”
Joy: Yeah. Definitely as time has gone by, it’s not as strong of a feeling. But it’s definitely –
Claire: Right, it’s not as sharp.
Joy: Right. But I’m like, oh yeah, it’s so weird I had a dream about it last night. That’s so weird. It’s still there. So it’s not like this grand moment is going to happen when 2022 is here where I’m like, “Okay, I’m over it.” But I feel like because this all happened in 2021, and you guys know I like to think about life in calendar years and just being like, oh, 2021 was the year that all that crap went down with my previous place of employment. But I think you’re right. It’s just acknowledging that really hurt. And not to say I have to have this grand epiphany of fully letting it go. But just being like, yeah, my feelings were hurt. I can’t stop my life for that. Crap happens. Guess what? Crap happens in life. And what? Do I think I’m exempt from bad things happening to me? I don’t know. I have this weird expectation that I was going to leave this job on such a high note and a good feeling, and it was not that. I think that’s what really bugs me. If anyone else has advice…
Claire: I know, right. What is some advice if you out there are a grudge holder and you have had a lightbulb moment about how to get over grudges, please share with us. So we both had job changes in 2021. I feel like that was kind of the headline. We didn’t go anywhere.
Joy: Didn’t go anywhere. I had the best break of work of my life because I just got to chill out and get my priorities in line.
Claire: You healed your body.
Joy: Fueled my body.
Claire: Healed it.
Joy: Healed it. Yeah, I healed my body.
Claire: This time last year, you were not even a month out from your Graves’ Disease diagnosis. And now that feels like it was so long ago.
Joy: Yeah. Feels like it was so long ago. Healed my body, got all relaxed and priorities straight, and I have a new great job that I love. And you have a new job.
Claire: This year for me was a lot of waiting. A lot of biding my time and waiting for the right thing to come along and being luckily in a position where I could do that. And here I am. I have a fun new job. I’m going to be doing some fun things in 2022. I feel like 2022 for me is already shaping up to be a year where I just do a lot more. Oh. Unfortunately my hunting trip did get cancelled because of COVID. Which I feel like is the right move. It’s people from all over the country in close quarters. Like, we would all be sleeping in a bunkhouse together. So I’m bummed about that, but I’m hopeful that I will be able to do it in the fall. It gives me a little bit of time to learn more about hunting education. But I still have my surf trip that I’m really looking forward to. And I think it would take quite a lot for that to get cancelled because you have to show proof of vaccination for the trip. But who knows? May is a long time away. And I do feel like with my new job, honestly because it pays more – I know money isn’t everything, but at my last job, we weren’t quite living paycheck to paycheck, but it was close to that. Now I feel like with the additional income, I can be more quick to make decisions without having to worry, am I going to be setting myself up for a big financial fallout from this. Even though I do have the money in the account for it now, will I when the time comes still have that? It’s nice to feel like I can put myself out there a little bit more. Like getting a tattoo of a bear with a croissant on it on a whim. Or signing up for a big trip. So do you have an intention or a word for 2022? I know we always do that.
Joy: I don’t. Honestly, I feel like 2022 – this sounds really bad. But honestly, I’m not putting expectations on it. I had such high expectations for 2021 because of 2020 being such a crap show that 2022 I’m just like, alright, bring it on, whatever happens. I really just want to keep the pace that I established after the past six months where I’ve been really backing off and taking a step back from work. The pace of my new job is perfect. It’s exactly what I need right now. I love my team. I love the environment. I love the culture. So I think maintaining, and also trying to go with the flow. Because who knows what’s going to happen? It’s not to say I’m just setting the bar low and not living up to my potential. But I want to be a little bit more relaxed about whatever comes our way.
Claire: So my word or phrase for 2021 was “structure equals freedom.” That came from our episode with Casper ter Kuile we always talk about. If you still have never listened to that episode, I would highly recommend it. Where the concept really is we think that just having nothing but free time and choices and getting to choose moment to moment anything that we want to do is really the goal, and that’s what freedom is. But usually that turns into analysis paralysis, and the more structure you have – not saying that you have to be dogmatic about it, but if you have patterns in your life and rituals in your life, that actually can feel a lot more freeing because it sets you up to have a lot more agency around what to do with that structure. I think I’m going to stick with that. I feel like I did really well with that for the first four or five months of the year, and then I had some health stuff that happened at the beginning of the summer that just knocked me out. I’m feel like I’m finally resetting from all of that. I think I want to try that again. I really liked it the first half of last year, and then I feel like I had to just give it up when I stopped being able to control a lot about what I was able to do.
Joy: Yeah. I have a silly one that I thought of the other day. For whatever reason, I had a selfie with a really close up of my skin. And after all the talk that we had a couple weeks ago – which by the way, thank you to everyone who sent us their amazing photos of Botox or lip fillers that look natural. You look fantastic. So thank you for proving us wrong. Because we are just seeing the ones that are done poorly or their face just looks like it’s really puffy, bloated, and/or frozen. And I don’t like it. I don’t like it. I don’t like that look. Okay. So it’s done really well. So I was looking at this photo and I was like, oh man. Maybe it’s the wintertime. We’re not in the sun a lot. But I was like, I need to get more facials. I just need to get more facials. And I don’t do stuff like that for myself because I have this weird thing. It’s that whole thing of it’s self-indulgent. Whatever. I make up excuses because there’s better things to do with my money, whatever, whatever. But that’s a very silly New Year’s resolution that I want to do more facials for myself. Because that would just make me feel good. Not to be getting rid of wrinkles, but it feels good. I always love getting facials. I don’t love getting massages. Which you would think that’s a weird thing to not like massages. I prefer facials over massages.
Claire: I love facials. I hate massages because I don’t like being touched by strangers. But I do love facials. I should say – I’ve had one. It was earlier this year, and I would like to do it more. Actually I had two. I had one a couple weeks before my wedding. That was a social experience. But I had this great one at Alchemy, which they have an Alchemy in Denver.
Joy: Oh my God, that’s where I’m going. They have one in Boulder. I’m getting the resurfacing one with the Dermaplane.
Claire: That’s what I got! It’s so good.
Joy: Yes!
Claire: You’re going to love it. It’s so nice. They might try to upsell you into this face oil. Buy it.
Joy: Oh really?
Claire: That’s my face oil that I love.
Joy: Okay.
Claire: That’s how it came to be.
Joy: You’re like, “Buy it!” I thought you were going to say, “Don’t buy it.”
Claire: At the end, they’re like, “And this is our regenerating tea tree face oil.” You’ll be like, “Claire told me about this. I need to buy it.” I’m going to influence my influencer friend. I’m influencing you. Get the face oil.
Joy: Oh, that’s so great.
Claire: Yeah, it’s so good. If you guys live in the Denver or Boulder area, go to Alchemy and get the resurfacing facial. First, they do a little microdermabrasion where scrape off your skin and suck it up with this tiny little vacuum. It’s so satisfying. And then they Dermaplane you. It’s lovely.
Joy: Yeah. Didn’t I get you Dermaplane for your birthday a while ago?
Claire: Yeah, but I’ve never gotten the whole facial.
Joy: Oh. Did you get Dermaplane though?
Claire: Yeah.
Joy: And then you got the resurfacing facial?
Claire: Resurfacing facial. And you walk out like a lizard that’s just shedded.
Joy: I can’t wait.
Claire: This would be gross, but they should call it the molting facial because you definitely feel like you just molted your skin.
Joy: I can’t wait. So I’m going this week. I just need to have that feeling. I need to have the feeling of someone just taking off a layer of skin.
Claire: You need to molt.
Joy: I do. It’s time. It’s totally time. Oh, can I give an update on Cadet?
Claire: Yeah.
Joy: Yeah, I think I posted a couple weeks ago that we got her first report card. It was so cute. Basically, they give you a monthly report saying how she’s doing. She’s doing great. Everything that was on the report was pretty standard as far as things I already know that she does. But I was surprised that they checked the box that said “prey drive,” which means she’s chasing after things. She never did that when she was with me. I’m going to give her another month to see if she’s getting the squirrels out because she’s in a new place. But then they sent us these awesome little Christmas cards with her training class. So I posted that on our Instagram if you want to go look at that picture of her. It’s the first photo that we’ve seen of her since we dropped her off. It made me miss her so much. I kept zooming into the photo to see her face to be like, is she happy? Is she having a good time? Joy, she’s a dog. She’s having a great time. She’s with all her friends. And I was zooming into her little belly because I used to rub her belly. It was so great. It was really cute that they did that right before Christmas.
Claire: Yeah.
Joy: So I was really excited. And I have an update for Be the Match. I just heard today that I’ll be donating the bone marrow.
Claire: You will? You didn’t even tell me this.
Joy: I just found out! I just found out. I just found out. I literally just found out like five minutes ago.
Claire: Now I know how it feels when Brandon finds out personal things about me on my podcast. He’s like, “So I heard on your podcast that you’re really unhappy?” And I’m like, yeah, I probably should have told you that. Go on, go on.
Joy: I’m donating bone marrow in about five weeks. I don’t want to give the exact date. I try to make it kind of private. But I’m very excited because that means my patient’s doing well. I shouldn’t say “my patient.” The recipient. My patient sounds like – I don’t own her. The recipient. I guess the prayers have worked. She’s well enough that the transplant can happen in five weeks-ish. So more news on that, but I believe I will be flying out for that at a different location. If things haven’t changed, but more to come. They just contacted me, like, “Hey, can you do this date?” Her treatment team is asking if this date will work. I was like, “Oh my gosh, yes.”
Claire: That’s such a relief.
Joy: I know. I was so worried about her. My mom even asked me today. She was like, “Have you heard from Be the Match to see if they have rescheduled the donation date?” I was like, “No, I’m just really worried about her and hope she’s well enough to get this transplant.” So that’s a good sign. That’s a good sign, so I’m really excited. More to come on that.
Claire: That is exciting.
Joy: Do we have any good resolutions that people wrote in? I know you did that post yesterday about –
Claire: Yeah, so I asked people if they had their own words or resolutions that they had already made. A lot of them are similar. I think a lot of people are feeling the same way. I think coming out of 2020, we all were ready to hit a reset button and that reset button never came. So I think people are really feeling, okay, well, if we’re going to have to make our own reset button, then so be it. A lot of people, their word was consistency, discipline. I saw a lot more of that than we have in the past. Words that I think are coming from that place of, I’m sick of feeling untethered, so I’m just going to create that feeling for myself. Are you looking at the post?
Joy: Mmhmm.
Claire: Do you see any other patterns?
Joy: One that I like is to learn Spanish. We had a team of workers working on our house for the past three weeks, and I was so mad at myself that I didn’t – because most of them spoke Spanish and only spoke Spanish. I was kicking myself, like why don’t I speak Spanish. It made me so mad. I took French when I was in high school because I wanted to be different from everyone else because everyone took Spanish. And now I think that was not a good choice of me trying to be against the grain. And granted, I learned a lot of French, I lived in France. I do not regret it. But practically speaking, I’m not speaking a lot of French and there’s not a lot of opportunities to speak French around here. But there’s always plenty of opportunities to speak Spanish. So I started listening to this learn Spanish podcast. If anyone out there has really good resources of how to learn Spanish on your own, please send them to me. But someone wrote one of their goals is to learn and practice Spanish every day. So that reminded me that’s something that I really want to do. Someone said be present, be mindful, disciplined, donating blood for the first time. Swim one time per week to mix up workouts. I think that’s great. The mantra I’ve been doing lately for workouts and movement is less is more. Because diet culture mentality will always be like, “you should have done more” or “you should have done this.” Lately I’m just like, less is more, Joy. 20 minutes? Great. You did some movement. That’s awesome.
Claire: I posted something on my personal Instagram last week. I had taken a break for a week from working out because the two weeks leading up to Christmas had been really, really crazy at work. I was like, “Work got busy, so I took the week off.” Someone was like, “Thank you for normalizing that you can drop your workouts when other things are busy.” There was totally a time in my life when I would have said, “I worked out anyway,” and I’m so done with being that person.
Joy: No. No.
Claire: I think that’s what we see so much is people who are like, “I could have skipped my workout today because my meetings went over and my dinner was burned, someone threw a brick through my window. No, I didn’t.”
Joy: [laughing] Someone threw a brick through my window.
Claire: “I could have skipped my workout because of all these things, but I didn’t. I got it done. #hustle”
Joy: No excuses.
Claire: I’m not that person anymore #dontgetitdone
Joy: #sitonthecouch #chillax
Claire: Chill the f*** out.
Joy: Amen.
Claire: Working out is not the –
Joy: No. And if there’s anything I’ve learned – here’s the thing. I’ve learned some things in my years. The one thing that I’ve learned, and I always quote my naturopathic doctor because she’s amazing, is if you are already stressed out and you’re exercising to be like #norestdays, you’re freaking screwing yourself. It’s a lot of undoing in the brain because you have that #norestdays still playing in our head. It’s just not true. It’s just not true. I’ve never had a day where I’ve been like, “I’m not going to work out today” or “I don’t feel like working out this week” where all of the sudden my life was upended because of it. Everything’s always fine. And you’re fine. I just hate that ticker tape that’s the drill sergeant of “you should work out.” Guys, rest more in 2022. Maybe drink a glass of water. Maybe just take some deep breaths. Calm your nervous system. And don’t be so hard on yourself.
Claire: I also feel like maybe we should have an entire podcast about what I’m about to bring up. Maybe we should do it with Laura Ligos. Which is that you can make “healthy” choices. You can eat vegetables and drink water, workout in a non-disordered way.
Joy: Yeah.
Claire: We have gotten to the point where we feel like that word “restricting” immediately sends up red flags. But yeah, some amount of restarting is normal and natural and needed. And some amount of prioritizing is normal and natural and needed. And some amount of pushing yourself to get something done every once in a while is normal and natural and needed. It’s not all or nothing, and it’s not like if I don’t feel like I 100% want to make this choice, then that means it’s toxic and disordered. No. It’s an in between. It’s a grey area.
Joy: It’s a grey area. Yeah, we talked about this last week with Vanessa Rissetto, which is one of the registered dieticians that we’ve had on the show, who is awesome. Highly recommend that you listen to the show. She reminds me a lot of Laura Ligos. Her mindset is very much the same and the way they talk about nutrition is the same and how we can’t get caught up in – you can still have goals to eat healthy. Highly recommend listening to that because she covers that too. We can eat healthy without it being falling into the diet culture trap.
Claire: Well you guys, that’s it for 2021, I think. That’s a wrap.
Joy: We did another year of podcasting.
Claire: Another year.
Joy: Without missing a week. I don’t think we missed one week.
Claire: No, and in fact for most of the year, you did two episodes a week.
Joy: Yeah.
Claire: Sometimes even three.
Joy: Sometimes even three with On Your Marks, Get Set, Bake! But TBD what will happen in 2022. We’ll see if we can maintain that pace.
Claire: I will say, I finally watched the holiday On Your Marks, Get Set, Bakes!
Joy: I did too!
Claire: Well maybe we should do a holiday –
Joy: Oh my God. Oh my God. We may have to do an extra episode because Scott and I were just browsing. I think it was on Peacock, and there’s a new baking show that’s kind of a rip-off of The Great British Bake Off, but it’s with Maya Rudolph and Andy Samberg.
Claire: What?
Joy: Yes. And they did a show called Baking It. It’s Maya Rudolpb and Andy Samberg. They host a baking competition inspired by the holiday season. It looks so much like The Great British Bake Off, but they win like $50,000 in prizes and whatever. I think there’s five or six episodes. It’s only one season, but it looks amazing. It looks like so much fun. And especially because it’s Andy Sandberg and Maya Rudolph.
Claire: Maya Rudolph is my favorite actor.
Joy: We may have to do a little edition of the baking series because that looks like so much fun.
Claire: I was definitely watching the holiday one and thinking I have a lot to say. For example, how did Jamie ever make it on the show at all?
Joy: I know. How?
Claire: What is he even doing there?
Joy: I feel so bad for saying that, but it’s like, how?
Claire: No. At one point Prue was like literally all the other bakers would have to just not show up tomorrow.
Joy: [laughing]
Claire: How was he ever on the show? And why did they bring him back? Clearly, I have feelings about it, and we’ve got to do another episode of On Your Marks, Get Set, Bake! So keep an eye out for that because I just decided that we’re doing one.
Joy: [laughing]
Claire: Alright guys, have a great New Year’s.
Joy: Happy New Year! Thanks for hanging with us for another 365 days.
Claire: That’s crazy.
Joy: 52 episodes.
Claire: Yep. Talk to you next week.
Joy: Love you guys.
Claire: Bye.
Joy: Bye.