# Episode 45 - GenX Speaks Series: MJ Eldridge - MJ aka Mommie

- Podcast: GenX Adulting Podcast
- Published: 2025-08-23T17:00:00.000Z
- Audio: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2398379/episodes/17719471-episode-45-genx-speaks-series-mj-eldridge-mj-aka-mommie.mp3
- Page: https://genxadultingpodcast.com/transcripts/podcasts/genx-adulting-podcast/episodes/episode-45
- Source: https://genxadultingpodcast.com/episodes/genxadultingpodcastepisode45.html
- People: MJ Eldridge (guest), Brian Barker (host), Nicole Barker (host)
- Topics: GenX Speaks

## Summary

In Episode 45 of the GenX Speaks series, MJ Eldridge, known as MJ aka Mommie on TikTok, shares her experiences growing up as a GenXer, discussing her childhood in Rhode Island, her parents' divorce, and the challenges of motherhood. The conversation delves into the cultural shifts between generations, particularly around parenting and societal expectations.

## Key takeaways

- MJ identifies as a GenXer, born in 1974.
- She grew up in a log cabin built by her father, which she found challenging.
- MJ's parents divorced when she was 14, leading to a significant shift in family dynamics.
- She experienced postpartum depression after the birth of her daughters.
- MJ discusses the generational differences in parenting styles and societal expectations.
- She emphasizes the importance of communication in relationships and parenting.
- MJ reflects on the impact of societal pressures on women, particularly regarding motherhood.

## FAQ

### What does MJ Eldridge discuss about her childhood?

MJ shares her experiences growing up in a log cabin in Rhode Island, her love for music from the 80s, and the challenges she faced during her childhood, including her parents' divorce.

### How did MJ's parents' divorce affect her?

MJ explains that her parents' divorce brought relief to her and her brother, as their home life had been filled with tension and conflict.

### What challenges did MJ face as a mother?

MJ discusses her struggle with postpartum depression after the birth of her daughters and the pressures of balancing motherhood with societal expectations.

### What generational differences does MJ highlight?

MJ contrasts the parenting styles and societal expectations of GenX with those of millennials and Gen Z, emphasizing the importance of communication and support among parents.

### How does MJ feel about the current state of women's health discussions?

MJ expresses concern about the potential for women's health issues, such as menopause and postpartum experiences, to be weaponized against them in the workplace.


## Referenced links

- [Watch on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnBFCUw4WAg)
- [Listen on Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/episode-45-genx-speaks-series-mj-eldridge-mj-aka-mommie/id1764838823?i=1000723227445)
- [Listen on Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/0IsV4KWxWo9wa5CHt28D9K)
- [Listen on Buzzsprout](https://www.buzzsprout.com/2398379/episodes/17719471-episode-45-genx-speaks-series-mj-eldridge-mj-aka-mommie)

## Transcript

[MUSIC]
Welcome to GenX Adulting, and
today we have MJ Eldridge with us,
better known as MJ aka
Mommy on TikTok. Welcome MJ.
Hey, how's it going?
We're so happy to have you here.
I think it's good to be here.
I've been waiting for this one.
Ever since I saw you on TikTok, and then I
knew you were coming on,
I was like, I can't
wait to get deep with her.
So I'm excited about this one for sure.
Yeah, me too.
Our first question is
always, what year were you born?
1974.
Okay, so you're GenX?
Yes, I am smack in the middle.
I do think that there's versions of GenX.
In my mind, there's the Fleetwood Mac GenX,
and then my version of GenX is
more Duran Duran GenX, I guess.
I know it's everybody, but there's older
GenX is more of the Fleetwood Mac time.
I never thought about
that, but you're so right.
Totally. Makes sense.
We're 1971.
So Duran Duran, like all of
that, Madonna, Culture Club,
that is more that time for us,
even though Fleetwood Mac was there,
but that was more going on when we were
like two, three, four,
five, I guess, right?
Right, right.
So it was like more of my parents.
It wasn't my parents' music,
but it was my parents' radio.
You know, it was their station.
So in my mind now, it is funny just
bringing up Fleetwood Mac,
because just recently I
started listening to it,
because when I was a kid, I was like,
that's like old people music.
And it's just been very recent
that I've even listened to it,
which sounds crazy
coming from a GenX person.
For sure. It's awesome.
Yeah, I love Fleetwood Mac.
I know it's really good.
And then I'm kind of embarrassed that I was
just like, oh, that's disgusting.
But yeah, when I was when I was young, I
was one of those alternative kids.
I listened to Debech Mode and
REM and, you know, the Smiths.
And yeah, that's that's who I aligned with.
And even now, even now I'll listen to like
Deaf Leppard and Guns N' Roses
and be like, oh, I never knew that song
because I was too much of an alternative.
Yeah, really, because I love Depeche Mode,
but I was also into like, you know,
like you said, Deaf Leppard, Guns N' Roses,
Bon Jovi and then Madonna.
So I was kind of like just the radio,
whatever was on the radio
was like all across the board.
But you were like really into that new way.
I call it New Wave. Right. Right.
So I grew up in Rhode
Island and in Rhode Island,
Brown Brown University had
their own radio station called WBRU.
And that was all like the
super alternative music.
And if you were like a
WBRU kid, that was it.
OK, that's cool. You were a student.
You're cool. Yeah, I was so
cool with my with my Doc Martens.
I like turtleneck. You know, yeah.
Yeah. It's goth, I think. Right.
Or as close as we would have
because goth wasn't a thing.
That was more like the millennial like
millennials, I think was really right.
We I was like proto goth, I guess.
It was, you know, like I did try to I did
try to dye my hair black.
And I remember I went to the to the CBS and
I got like a box of hair dye.
But I have so much hair that only like all
I could afford was one box.
And I didn't know I
would need more than one.
And so I had like half dyed black hair.
That's hilarious. That
was the look, though.
No, that was pretty cool.
But so like other ones.
OK, so where were you born?
So I was born in a place called Windsocket,
Rhode Island, which is
back then it was like,
well, in 1974, when I was born,
it was starting to really decline.
But in like the 1940s, it was the biggest
center of French Canadians
in all of the United States.
Like most everybody spoke French.
My entire family is from Montreal.
Like it was all the Canadian immigrants had
come down from Montreal
to work in the fabric mills.
And yeah, so it was
very, very French centric.
And so, yeah, that's where I grew up.
And but then, well, I
didn't grow up in Windsocket.
I was born there.
And then I moved to a place called
Barerville, Rhode Island,
which is ironically
where the Conjuring House is.
Like I know way. Yeah.
I like the actual Conjuring House.
I grew up down the street from because
that's where my my grandma lived.
And so which is bizarre if you think about
it, because like no man's land.
So I grew up in a log
cabin that my dad built
like by himself, like the Unabomber, like
just out in the woods.
And I hated it.
Like people always say,
oh, wow, that's so cool.
You know, to have grown up in a log cabin.
I'm like, am I can I swear on here or?
Oh, OK. Like I was always like in my
fucking Abe Lincoln, like this.
Yeah. Yeah.
Like I would go to my
friends' houses who had like drywall
and I would be like, oh,
like your your posters lay flat.
Like all my posters were
like, you know, like I did.
Dark.
I mean, it's dark.
So dark. Yeah.
And then it was also for years, it was
actually cold because people don't realize
like logs take a while to settle.
So like you could see outside now.
That's all the logs.
Wait, don't they normally fill in between?
Like when they do it now, right?
Because they do it like because people want
it because it looks cute or whatever.
Don't they fill those logs?
So they do like now with better materials.
But back then, my dad had like the sticky
tar paper type of tape.
And like even the logs
aren't perfect. Right.
So even though that there's there's gaps.
And so I was always freezing.
And my house was like kind
of half built for a long time.
And so, yeah, it was.
Were you off the grid?
Well, I mean, weren't we all
he had electricity and
water, you had like running water.
Yes. OK. OK.
We did have running water, but we for a
long time, we didn't have doors
because my dad didn't build the doors on
the inside of the house.
So we just had like curtains for the
bathroom door and our bedroom doors.
And then for a long
time, we had coal, heat like.
And so my brother and I
would have to shovel coal.
And then we had this stack like it was.
There was no reason for this.
Like the world had advanced like there was
absolutely no reason to live like this.
So what do you.
OK, so was this both your parents were
there or was it just with your dad
or your mom? Yeah, my mom and my dad.
So my dad was a firefighter and my my my
brother is a firefighter.
My youngest daughter was a
firefighter now for a while.
Like we kind of have that in the family.
And so in Rhode Island, the way the
firefighters work is like they do
two days, two nights
and then four days off.
So my dad had time to
like build this house.
And so that's that's why I
had to build a cabin. Yeah.
I could get outdoors.
A dream that he had always had from young.
I wanted to live on.
So prior to this, we actually lived in a
very cute subdivision.
I was really little like we moved there
when I was four years old.
And but we had lived in
a very cute subdivision.
My mom loved her house.
And my dad was like, like he felt, I think,
oppressed, you know, or
whatever by the neighbors.
And he's like, I.
My mom denies this to this day, but I
remember her telling me that he said
that I'm going to take an axe to these
walls if I can't go build us a log cabin.
And so, yeah, it is true.
So wait, how did they meet?
My mom and dad met in
high school in Windsocket.
And my mom tells a story that she would
look for my dad in the halls
to just think about how much she hated him.
She's like, I hated his face.
He always looked so smug all the time, you
know, because and he was tall
and he was handsome like he
he had dark hair and blue eyes
and was tall and handsome and smart.
And my mom just hated his
guts. I love this. I love this.
OK, so they didn't date in high school
because they hated him, right? Right.
And then it wasn't it was pretty
scandalous, honestly, like they
it was like a year or two after
high school that he was dating
one of her friends and they went to a party
together and he pulled my mom aside
and he's like, yeah, I really like you.
I don't really like her.
And so, oh, God.
And then they they got
married six months later.
And yeah, in all reality, my
parents just like to bone like.
That is it.
They just wanted to bang.
Like, I swear to God, that's
the only thing they had in common
because because they ended up getting
divorced when I was like 14 years old.
And like most of my life, they were always
like at odds, you know,
because my mom is very she's a
sweetheart and she just wanted
like a little family
life and all this stuff.
And then my dad is like, I'm
going to chop this house down
and build a log cabin.
And then, you know, he
was he was a partier also.
So there was that.
But yeah, I think at the beginning and if
my mom, if you're if you do listen to this,
I think you and dad just like to bang.
That that drama, that tension, all of that.
And then instead of kind of just like
writing it out there, like,
let's get married after
six months, six months.
Wow. And then do they get
like an apartment together
after they got married or
a house or what do they do?
They lived my so we're French, like I said,
so I like my uncles are called Monanc.
So like my man, Andy and his
wife owned an apartment building
and they live like in the upstairs.
OK. And then they bought a house.
And I want to say that their mortgage was
like 96 dollars a month.
It's amazing. Yeah. Yeah.
And this would have been what, like, well,
how long were they married
before you were born?
I think three years, maybe.
So like 1970, 1971.
Yeah. Yeah. Crazy.
Isn't that crazy for a
cheap back. Oh, absolutely.
So was your are you older or your brother?
I'm older and then my brother is 48, 40.
He's about to be 40. OK.
So you're both ex.
OK, so the spacing is like two and a half
years, two and a half years.
OK, so they get married.
They have you they have you in the
apartment or they have.
OK, they have you in the apartment.
And then they get do they
have your brother there, too,
or do they move into their home?
Burbs the house in the suburbs.
OK, where my brother was born.
And they're having their nice
little family in the suburbs.
And your dad is feeling the walls close in
and it's like, I got to get out of here.
I got to go make us
live in this piece of shit.
Where's your mom?
I'm trying to understand in the world.
Your mom, like what's that?
What? Oh, she was so upset.
She was endlessly upset because like then
she's living in this house
that is like never
finished, you know, because yeah,
we had to move in.
And in the meantime, we sold the house in
the suburbs and we moved to in socket,
which had already like
kind of turned pretty ghetto.
And where we were living was that's
probably not OK to say,
but like it was not nice anymore, you know.
And and so we lived there for
a year in this small apartment
while my dad built the house.
And then we had to move in.
And it wasn't I don't know if
it's still done, to be honest,
like we sold the house when I was 17.
It no, no, no, no, no.
Like my my dad passed away in 2012, but we
sold the house when I was 17.
And so OK. OK.
So you guys go live in this apartment.
Were you in school during this time?
I was still you guys didn't
have to change schools or anything.
So you go to your mom's leaving neighbors
in this nice little life.
Was she a stay at home mom?
Yeah, she was. But OK.
No, this is an argument I
have with like these old school
stay at home moms, you know,
because every stay at home mom
I knew back then had a job
like they my mom always had a job
like where she would she would pick up
waitressing shifts,
you know, here and there.
Like just to get a
little bit of extra money.
She was always she's like, I can always go
work breakfast, breakfast
and, you know, make some money.
And all the other stay at home moms I knew
like they were selling Mary Kay.
Like they had shit going on,
you know, they were a side hustle.
Always. Yeah.
Something. And also back
then, I think in general,
I make sure and say that because we always
get somebody it's like not my mom,
but in general, a lot of moms were home.
So there was also a village of support.
So if you needed someone to help maybe with
your kids for an hour or two
or you needed there just was
that more community feeling
and women had more
support, I think, from each other.
Right now. And so I think
sometimes for boomer parents,
they don't totally understand the grind
that Gen X moms,
millennial moms are going through
because that community isn't as available
for us and for the
millennial moms as it was for them,
because we're having to do all the things
without that support.
So I just think parenting in general is was
harder for us and for and is harder.
But you can't afford anything now.
So it's just like if you go
to compare it, you just can't.
But I don't think you
that, you know, no, not at all.
And then also like the rules have changed.
Yeah. You know, like there it's not just
that there aren't other people around
to watch your kids.
It's that we decided, I think, and I wrote
an article about this
a few years ago about like how we invented
helicopter parenting.
That's on us. Absolutely.
And we're the ones who did
such a hard 180, you know.
And so I when my kids
were little, I stayed at home
for three or four years and I would only
let them watch a half hour of TV,
you know, and then there
was no like go play outside
because all of a sudden we went mental and
got scared of the entire world.
Yeah. Right. And so I'm like, I'm just
staring at these children
like 24 seven. And it was so stressful.
It was so stressful.
It's a reaction. Right.
Because I think there's so many of us who
are like, well, we're going to create
the childhood we always wanted or we're
going to be the person we needed
or we're going to, you know, be more
attentive to what we experienced.
But we did. We went the pendulum went
completely the other way.
So we did totally create that.
You know, I there's I always say there is
two types of genetics parents.
There's the types that did that.
And then there's the types that
like it was good enough for me.
It's good enough for my kids.
And then you're starting to see the
children of those two types of parenting
and then observing the relationships those
kids have with their parents.
And it's very different.
I will say even one
positive of us attentive helicopter
is that we tend to have a decent
relationship with our kids overall.
Maybe they can't make
a doctor's appointment.
I get that at twenty five.
But they talk to us and there's a lot of no
contact going on on the other side.
So it's a trade off, I guess.
You know, I hadn't made the connection
between the no contact people
and that maybe they were
like, what was good enough for me
is good enough for you parents as well.
I hadn't made that connection at all.
That's a good point. Yeah.
It's where. Well, and it's something that
as we've had guests come on
and share things we've learned and then
have seen it from comments,
from listeners, for followers.
And we didn't either.
It's something we've learned through this
process, like, oh, we didn't even know
there were two types going on.
I kind of always assumed we're all
helicopters because everyone that
I was around the other moms and
dads were all kind of like us.
I didn't even know.
Maybe there was that one random.
We were like, they don't watch your kids.
Yeah, you know, watch their kids.
I mean, like, oh, my God, their five year
old is on a canoe in the lake.
You know, you know, but that
was like that one random family.
And they're like, oh,
you know, but there's more.
They do exist. There's a lot of them.
And so now you're starting to see as the
Gen Z's are in their 20s,
the relationships that
are going on, you know, and
or even the younger, what are they pissed
at their parents or something?
Yeah, they have some of the same issues.
We some of us have.
But we all kind of helped
our parents or whatever.
We're in that sandwich
generation where we still not everybody.
We don't know.
The Gen Xers that are no
contact with their boomer parents.
Yeah, that's a very common thing.
But, you know, it's just
weird to see younger millennials,
young millennials and older Gen Z's also
kind of following in some of that.
And that tends to be
that one parenting style.
So I don't know.
OK, so I didn't make the connection either.
Yeah, it was something we learned.
But OK, so you guys are in that apartment.
I'm trying to picture your mom.
Left this left is now in what.
How do you say the name of the town again?
What when when which?
Yeah, I just looked it up.
Is it up by
Massachusetts, North of Providence?
OK, yes. Yeah.
How many people are in one time?
Like how big is it?
It looks kind of out there.
Yeah, right.
No, when Saki.
So when Saki is just like the city where I
was born and it's not rural at all.
So I moved to Baroville and Baroville.
That's the rural, very
like deep in the woods area.
And I graduated in 92 in
Baroville with only 100 kids.
Oh, wow.
Yeah. But when Saki was more
like the city for you guys,
it was definitely the city.
Yeah. OK.
So she's there for a year kind of
contemplating, OK, my
life is about to change.
I'm going to go live in a log cabin.
I can't even imagine.
And then you guys move into this town
because you were there in
the suburbs to same town.
No, so this was we were in another place
like it's also close together.
It's Rhode Island.
So our little suburb house was in this
place called North Smithfield,
which is like in between
when Saki and Baroville.
And is it larger than Baroville?
Baroville?
My point.
Well, it's definitely like when growing up
after that, we were always like,
oh, the rich people
live in North Smithfield.
Like, OK, it was for rich people.
So another change for her.
So she also was
changed into a smaller town.
Yeah. In a log cabin. Yeah.
Has she ever talked to you about that
transition she went through at that time?
I know that she was just always mad.
And she was this is
going to sound really funny.
But again, you know, being raised like
French with like a French
my mamae and all this stuff like they're so
particular about cleaning.
And like the woman is
always like having to clean
and make sure
everything's perfect and presentable.
And she was always trying to clean the logs
like she was trying to wash the logs
and they and they they were not like the
pretty finished logs,
you know, like in some
Aspen Cedar Chalet, you know,
they were like rough, hewn
logs and it was just dark.
So it's just trying to clean up.
That's hilarious.
It's like is it almost like if
you went and you cut down a tree
and then just built a house with those
trees without doing anything to it?
It's like taking out the branches.
So there is.
There's things I'm literally picturing a
squirrel might have been mad.
No, so it so they sell
these houses and kits.
OK. And you can get
different versions of them.
And this was like it must
have been the cheapest version
because the logs themselves were just like
treated so they wouldn't rot.
But they weren't like
shellacked and shiny and pretty.
So OK. So and that's really
all you kind of knew, right?
Because what were you you said for?
Yeah, I was. Yeah, I was four years old
when we moved in there.
But I did remember my old neighborhood.
I have a very weird, good
memory from like two years old.
Like I do remember being in that
house when I was really little.
And and also our summertime babysitter was
in that neighborhood.
So we would go back and like I could see I
could see our old house
and be like, this could have been my life.
I could have had pavement like because we
had we live on a dirt road.
Right. And so like we
couldn't even ride a big wheel.
I'm telling you, you
can't ride a big dirt road.
You just peel out all the time.
Like there's a part of me that's jealous.
I know I would love all men.
All men are jealous.
Like you secretly you
like George Washington it up.
I know Brian would be happy living on a
hill in a log cabin with me and dogs.
And no one else. I still
don't know anyone else ever.
I know I know a lot of
towns like where there's no one
that I think we're going
to get murdered any moment.
He's like, oh, I could live
here for the rest of my life.
And like, you're insane.
Anyways, OK, so you and your OK.
So when you said summer babysitter, like
would you guys go back to your old
neighborhood and be with the summer
babysitter for the day while you're?
Yeah, well, that that was when
my mom we got we were probably
I was probably like eight or nine when my
mom did go back to work.
She didn't like stay at home forever.
So it was when she worked and we had a
summertime babysitter.
And so you'd get to go
revisit your old life.
Oh, yeah, I'd be like, look at this.
You can like write with chalk on this car.
Like I still remember the day that they
repaved because it was in a cul-de-sac.
Right. You could just ride
your bikes in the middle.
And then they came and
repaved in that fresh tar smell.
Yeah, this this is living.
Nice and smooth.
Oh, it's so good.
I was like, wait, when you smell that in
your adult life, does it?
Oh, did you remember?
And bring the right
back, bring the right back.
Good times.
So your dad must have stayed.
Did he remain a fireman there?
Yeah, like meeting from the cabin back to
the station type of thing.
Yeah, so we actually lucked out because
when Sockett was not a good place
to grow up, right. And so and
there I want to say it was like two years
after we moved that they made
the rule that you had to live in one socket
to be on the fire department.
And so we he got
grandfathered in and then we got lucky.
That's great. Yeah.
I would. Right. My cousins, if they watch
this, they're they're going to be like,
wait, that's mean because I go to my
cousin's house and I'd be like,
I am glad I don't.
So when your mom went back
to work, what did she do?
She worked in a bank.
Oh, OK, cool. Yeah, she did mortgages.
All right. Yeah.
So when you started going to elementary
school and through middle school,
were you an athlete or were
you an art or theater or music?
Was there anything that interested you?
Because it's a small
town, it's a small school.
Did they have any resources
to offer you guys like that?
I actually really lucked out, I think.
So I was not an athlete.
I was a chubby kid who was like failing the
presidential fitness test
like type of kid like I I
remember, you know, the whole
the whole whatever you call it, trauma from
the presidential fitness.
Yeah. Yeah. I remember the gym teacher, Mr.
Grello, like screaming at me like, you can
walk a mile in 15 minutes.
Oh, my God.
I definitely do you
remember all of these things?
I remember the little skinny girls could
really do that flexed arm hang.
You know, forget about it.
Like, yeah, weird thing I was good at.
And I only realized now it's
because I have very long arms.
I could do the sit and reach.
And yes, I like everybody. Yeah.
I have really short legs.
So I killed everyone.
I went over like by
eight inches or something.
And I can look. This is the thing I can do.
Yeah. Remember that.
What do you think? Don't do it.
I can't even know he's so
he can't pass his knees.
Forget it. Yeah. I remember.
I don't even know. I know.
I don't know if they still do.
I think they're
bringing it back in the back.
Yeah. Trump just said he
wants to bring it back.
OK, you know, gone for a while because I
don't remember my kid.
I think our older son did it.
But they don't.
There's no recess at
schools anymore, either.
There was at their school at
Nathan Kyes, but no, at Dylan's.
There wasn't. You're right.
I think for middle school, for middle
school, they took recess.
But I think we did. We
do that in middle school.
Was that elementary
school, the presidential thing?
We did it all all through high school.
Yeah. From our entire lives.
Gosh, I guess we did do it in high school.
Any those got about the
reference to the asshole gym teacher?
Because we all had one back then.
And these kids today, they
don't have the asshole gym teacher.
No, you're not allowed.
You're allowed to yell those things on the
kids like these to pick on us.
Oh, my God. They were so me.
Oh, yeah. And you can't
have mean coaches or any.
You know, everyone gets very upset now.
So OK, so did you have was
your elementary school divided up?
Like we were K through six
and then seven through nine.
I was junior high. You were middle school.
Were you junior high or middle school?
Junior high. They my brother is when they
opened the middle school in the town.
So did you have seven?
Did you go K through
six, seven through nine?
What we had, because the town
was so small, was that we went
I actually went to kindergarten in a tiny
little red schoolhouse.
Like that was like it's only like a one
room little red schoolhouse that was old.
And then we had multiple different schools
because as much as Burrillville
is a rural place, it's made out of like
seven different
villages, which is like a very
or maybe nine. I don't remember.
It's a very New England thing to have
things split up this way.
So I actually went to
multiple different schools.
Like there was I went to first
and second grade in one school,
third grade in another school, fourth,
fifth, sixth in another school.
And then the high school was actually a
junior, senior high school.
So we were in seventh grade
with all the way to seniors.
Like they everybody was in the same
building, which was
terrifying because they're like,
you know, full blown adults.
And I'm like, you know, yeah.
Hard enough for like a ninth grader to
assimilate and get along with 12th graders.
Right. Right.
Well, I feel like back then high school
boys look like young men.
They look like men compared to how the high
school boys look now.
So if you're in seventh grade back then,
you're looking at seniors and
they look like how someone at twenty five
or twenty six looks now.
Yes. You know what I mean?
Like, yes. I don't know
if it's like the hormone.
I don't know if it's the food.
There's a whole bunch of theories on why
the Gen X men in high school
looks so different than even the millennial
men and the Gen Z men in high school.
If you look at our imaginations, because I
was thinking that it
was like, oh, I was young.
So I thought that they looked old. Right.
But now with my job, I work with colleges
and I was just at the
University of North Carolina, North
Carolina, Greensboro yesterday.
And I was looking around
at these kids and I'm like,
every single one of these
boys has like patchy facial hair.
Like none of them can grow facial hair.
And I was talking to my friend about it.
She's like, I think it's the hormones, you
know, and the food and stuff like that.
It's disrupting. And I'm like, OK.
There is a whole thing that people.
Yeah, there's something because I will say
Gen X men in high school,
they did look like men.
They totally look like mustaches, beards.
They were bigger. I
don't know how to explain it.
They just looked more burly.
We were a grocer.
Probably. You're just dirtier.
Yes. Big.
You weren't bigger.
It was just layers of dirt.
This tower.
You have a lot of teen
shorts and a T-shirt.
Well, true.
It's very stylish today.
Yeah, depending on where you live.
OK, so you're you're 12 or 12.
Yes, seventh grade and
with 18 year old men.
Uh huh. Uh huh.
OK, so during that time, did you have any
interest in any extracurricular activities
or were you super academic?
Oh, my God, I was such a nerd.
But I also I the stories when I think back,
how I actually was, it seems crazy because
like I would do crazy things like,
do you remember that song?
The In the Morning Angel song, like like
just call me Angel in the morning.
Yes. Yes.
So when I was in first grade, I took
spelling slips and wrote the lyrics
of that song, then copied them all for my
entire class and passed them out
so we could surprise our teacher and sing
that song because it was her favorite song.
No, every everyone hated me.
Like I was such a nerd.
And so so then horrible, though.
Yeah, as an adult, at the
time, they're like, who is this?
Because I went by Missy back then I was
Missy Eldridge and Missy Eldridge had
like short hair and we need to talk about
hair like well, we could talk about that.
But I had short hair.
I was fat.
I was tall because I was also very big for
my age, like taller than everybody.
And I was a huge nerd
and I had a big mouth.
And I like it's the recipe
for like just endless bullying.
But I was relentless.
Like I was relentless.
Like I. OK.
In fourth grade, in fourth
grade, I wrote a play and.
Made a deal with the principal that I so I
I directed the play, I started in the play.
I cast my friends in the play.
It was a Christmas play.
And I made a deal with the principal to
cancel recess one day and have all
the kids watch my play
instead of going to recess.
That is amazing.
This is insane.
I'm sure there were kids that were pissed
that they had to watch the play, right?
Instead of going to recess, skip.
That's a big deal.
You know, I love this.
This is amazing.
Did your parents know this about you, that
you were going to school
and just sassing it up and arranging?
Because I drove them nuts.
Like I was always like when I was so this
all kicked off from Romper Room.
So remember, you're three years old and you
would sit there and watch Romper Room
and wait to see if she
said your name. Right.
And then I was like, though, those are kids
on that show, mom, like they're
they're kids like me. I'm a kid.
They're a kid. How can I be on the TV?
And so I could read when I was very little.
And so I would find the newspaper.
I would get the newspaper and I would look
for auditions and I would like circle
them and beg my my
parents to take me to auditions.
So I didn't like they didn't
do anything because they're like
they're boomer parents
and they're like, fuck you.
And I'm not dreaming you anywhere.
Such a dream.
Such a dream.
Nothing wrong with you.
And this may be amazing talent.
Yeah.
They're like, absolutely not like I'll
drive you there, but
I'm not picking you up.
And then I'd be like, oh, OK,
but I can't hitchhike, you know.
And so so anyway, I did end up doing a lot
of like local theater.
But again, again, I was
tall for my age, goofy looking.
I didn't even mention this.
I couldn't breathe through my nose until I
had surgery when I was like 30 something
years old. And so here I
am auditioning for these
plays like singing and all this stuff.
I can't sing. I can't hear.
I'm like, my nose is also.
Wait, did you did it affect like your
station tubes, like you had fluid in your
ears and affect your hearing?
And would you have earaches and stuff?
I had to get this is a very genic story.
I had to get tubes in my ears when I was in
kindergarten because my ears actually
grew shut on the inside.
And so my mom was always just screaming at
me to turn down the music or turn down
the TV until like they did
the hearing test in school.
And they're like, yeah, she's deaf.
Your daughter is deaf at
a handicap level, lady.
She's like, oh, no.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, it's just there
wouldn't have been major shame.
It was like if it happened to one of us, we
would have been like, you know, that's my
job.
Or hey, they do. Yeah.
It's like, it's fine. You're
fine. She's fine. She's fine.
Yep. And so I had to get the tubes in and
then I would get ear
infections all the time
because like I love to swim.
But I had to have a very special set up
like I had to have
Vaseline and a cotton ball and
then like these specially
made earplugs like on top.
And then I had to have a bathing cap when
you are like a tall
fat kid with like Esther
Williams freaking bathing cap
on your head like at the pool.
So anyway, I would end up with ear
infections all the time.
And my grandma was like,
I know how to fix this.
And so she would blow smoke in my ear.
Cigarette smoke.
Oh, I was thinking the
Yeti thing or whatever those.
No, you're legit.
Marvel like Chesterfield Kings.
Yeah.
And blowing smoke in my ear.
Did it work?
And then she would seal it up.
She would reseal it up with like another
Vaseline cotton ball.
So you had nicotine in there.
She's blow smoke trying
to capture real quickly.
That's awesome.
Oh, my God. You're like, I'm dizzy.
Yeah.
I probably have 16
brain term words right now.
It doesn't know.
Do I smoke?
Yeah, I don't get it.
Yeah. Oh, no.
They only got you got to
do it through her ears.
Right.
How long did you have?
Were you dealing with these ear issues and
infection issues and all that?
I think for three or four
years, I had the tubes for a while.
So I got I got them
out in like fourth grade.
So that's a long time to have tubes.
Yeah. Yeah.
Her older son had to have tubes because he
had you station tube issues and they would
get clogged and all that.
And he had tubes.
I want to say at five and then he was done
with them by six or seven.
Yeah.
My youngest had tubes, too.
So yeah.
But that's a long time
going into fourth grade.
Yeah.
And then do they know why you couldn't
breathe through your
nose until you were 30?
Yeah.
So I found out because my
stories don't sound real.
Like now that I'm saying them all out, like
none of it sounds real.
But so it was after I had my kids, my my
daughter, I have two
daughters, Aspen and Vivian.
I was at home at night and my ex-husband,
he was he played pickup hockey.
So he was like gone.
And this was in 2005.
We had cell phones,
but also like not really.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I was sick because I
was always, always sick.
Like my whole life, I would
have some kind of stuffed up nose.
And I'm sitting there on the couch just
like they're in bed
and I'm blowing my nose.
And all of a sudden I feel
something like skin out of my nose.
And I look in the bathroom, I have a whole
bubble of skin coming out of my nose, like
part of my body.
And I freak out.
I call my mom and she's like, well, you've
got to call the hospital because I'm home
alone with the kids.
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
I can't like push it back.
Oh, my goodness.
Call the hospital.
And they're like, you
blew out your membrane.
I'm like, what membrane?
Like what are you even talking about?
Oh, my gosh.
I had to have my neighbor come over, watch
the kids because I couldn't get a hold of
my husband.
He was at hockey and I drove myself to the
hospital and it turned out all this time I
had been growing like the biggest nasal
polyp anyone had ever seen.
Like the doctors all brought the other
doctor friends in to like
look at my scans and all
of this stuff.
And so then I had like the rotor rooter
surgery or whatever that they give you.
And I've been amazing ever since.
I was like, this is what breathing is like
because when I was a kid and you would see
like movies where people get kidnapped and
stuff like that and
they would put like duct
tape over their mouth.
I was like, how did they not die?
I was like, movies are lies.
Right.
Because you probably felt like how when we
would if we would get a really stuffed up
nose, you felt like that all the time.
All the time.
Wait, and no pediatrician.
I mean, I shouldn't be surprised, but no
pediatrician caught this
through your whole childhood.
No.
What did they just keep saying?
You just have a sinus infection?
They thought I had allergies, you know, and
I and I did have
allergies and I but I lived
inside a tree.
Like yeah.
Yeah, I was allergic to my entire house.
Like so you had this problem before you
moved into the house.
You know, I don't remember a
time where I could like breathe.
So I think I just I did have allergies and
all the resulting like endless nose blowing
my entire life made the polyps like bigger.
I think I think that's wild.
So how incredibly life
changing after that surgery.
Oh, it was amazing.
I still I am still so happy every day
because of it because I can I can breathe.
You can go to yoga and then they're like,
you know, you've been
through your mouth and
out through your nose.
I'm like, I know how to do this.
Yeah, I can do it.
I can do it.
I don't know.
The rest of it take that for granted.
Yeah.
Breathing.
You know, now that you're doing it, you're.
Yeah.
I know.
Breathing.
Breathing.
Breathing is flex.
Yeah.
This.
This motivation to come to school with your
own creations or your
own ideas or direct people
to do things or create things that continue
through high school or was that more just
when you were young, young?
Oh, no.
All through high school.
I ended up I was in everything like I was
in all the plays at school.
I was in the community theater.
I was in band.
I played the French horn for eight years,
you know, just being super nerdy.
And then I graduated top of my class.
Like I was just very, very nerdy.
Really involved.
Yeah.
And then I went to Hofstra.
I had a free ride for theater.
But I only lasted a year.
Like I had that was like a crazy situation.
Wow.
Wait.
So you graduated in a class of 100.
And back then, I don't know about for you,
but for me, like no one talked about going
to college.
It was just like I think we had a college
counselor and I think I met with her once.
It wasn't like how it was for our kids
graduating and how it is now.
Right.
Didn't anyone guide you through the
application process and to get that
scholarship and everything?
So I was thinking about this the other day.
I don't I honestly don't know.
Right.
I was in I don't know if you
guys had this at your school.
I was in that gifted and talented program.
So we had a very active one at my school.
And so all of my friends who were equally
as nerdy, it was just
like a given that they
would go to college.
And I do think that on the East Coast,
there's just more of a college attitude.
Right. Yeah.
This is this is where
Brown and Harvard and MIT.
You're up there.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And so but my parents, this is where the
little bit of drama comes in.
They they just want like they were the
first in their family
to graduate high school.
Like when I say I'm from like immigrants
who, you know, didn't
speak English and whatever
graduating high school was a big deal.
And then I was the first in
my family to go to college.
And so there was there
was a bit of a dust up.
So even though I so my mom took me, you
know, I found I don't
know how I did it, though,
like to be honest,
like looking at it, right?
If we didn't have a big deal, a free ride.
Yeah.
So like Hofstra Hofstra.
We've been to Hofstra.
We've been to Hofstra.
So that's that's so cool.
So what but this is the part
I don't remember how I did.
Like I I think I broke to the schools
somehow found out what I was interested in.
Like without the computer, I
don't know how this happens.
Right.
And so I auditioned at Boston University at
Ithaca in upstate New York at Hofstra and
at Emerson.
And I did go by myself to the Boston and
and Emerson auditions.
I took the train and did that.
But my mom drove me to Hofstra and Ithaca
to do those auditions.
But then this is where it all falls apart.
So I had gotten that free ride to Hofstra.
But when it came time and I'm very curious
to know if other Gen X people went through
this or if it was just my parents, my
parents refused to sign
any student loan paperwork.
They're like, we're not giving the
government our money because
I got a free academic ride,
but I still needed
money for room and board.
Right.
Right.
Like even though they were divorced, they
came together to tell me we're not because
if you don't pay back the loans and it's on
us and all this stuff
because they were that
was the one thing like I had a job since I
was 12 and I paid for I paid for my French
horn lessons.
Like I paid for everything, as
I'm sure a lot of Gen X kids.
What did you do?
Well, did you was a babysitting or I
watched I washed dishes in a diner.
OK, so that's that's back when.
They can wash their age later.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You worked from 12 and what kind of other
than like your French
horn lessons, what other
things were you responsible
for paying for three years?
My mom would give me money for school
clothes, but I would
buy like anything else.
Like if I wanted, you know, makeup or
hairspray or anything record.
Yeah, it's definitely that.
So you would have to
cover all that through.
And then like oftentimes school stuff, too,
like whether it was field trips or like,
you know, band stuff for band, like
uniforms or like any of the
clubs that I joined because
I was a varsity tennis for a while.
So I paid for like all of that.
You know, for you were not like when I when
I got to high school,
I did I did play tennis
and volleyball.
So, OK, OK.
So you that's, you know, that's so foreign,
though, to kids that we raised, right?
Because we pay for everything.
Like never would I ever think to make my
son cover any of that.
Like, you know, we just write it's a
different experience.
I did make my kids pay for
makeup, you know, to girls.
And so I'm like, I'm not buying your
makeup, although I will
treat like I still to this
day, they're 22 and 21 and I'm just and
they live on their own and all this.
And I'm just always like, here's 50.
I just owe them money.
I know that would have
like made me shit myself.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And for like extra like with my daughter,
when she was working, she started working,
I think at 15 or 16.
Then, yeah, she if she went to
Sephora, I would buy her own.
But I mean, the brain
six, I she we covered.
Yeah.
I got her hair spray.
That's you know, I
mean, that type of stuff.
Right.
Like that.
There's very few kids in any Gen X or the
Gen Z generation or
younger millennial, I think
that would have had to
take care of all that.
I think that's such a foreign concept.
I'm sure there are some, but, you know, I
think a lot of us did.
I didn't work like
that, but I was expected.
I think I started
babysitting at 11 or something.
And that was my spending money for like
candy or any mall, the mall.
But I don't know if you worked because you
were always in sports.
I always worked.
I worked from a ridiculously young age.
What are your cousins?
My cousins.
Yeah.
I also work for this insurance guy when I
was like nine or ten should never have been
doing it.
Digging holes.
Yeah. Like that.
And filing.
I don't know, you know, totally
inappropriate today's standards.
But no, I worked.
I also had I had my dad's.
What was it?
A shell card so we could
go to the shell station.
Yeah.
And, you know, buy soda or whatever.
Oh, that's like rich.
Yeah.
That was like a 98 cents in Jersey.
In Jersey.
Yeah.
So it wasn't the worst thing.
And that's where they pump it for you even.
Yeah.
Yeah. I'm from Oregon.
So gas has been expensive my whole life.
Oh, it was like 98 cents here too.
And it was funny
because it was like 98 cents.
And then we had like the
self serve or the full serve.
Right.
And I remember when I was 16 years old,
having the distinct
thought like, this is the one
luxury you'll always be able to afford.
And you will get
somebody to pump your own gas.
And then they took it away.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's not even an option.
In Jersey, they still pump gas for you.
I know.
I've heard about that mythical place.
And Oregon is the only two states.
Oregon and Jersey.
Yeah.
We have a couple here, but
like, I don't really know.
Like I know that there's
one out by my mom's house.
And you're not allowed to get out in touch
in New Jersey and Oregon.
You're allowed to get out
and touch the gas pumps.
You just have to sit there
like a princess and wait.
That's the way it should be.
Yeah.
But then I feel like I have to tip them
whenever they tip the guy
and we're like, do we tip?
We're not sure.
And I grew up there.
We didn't tip those, you know, so for it.
So to go back to your parents divorce.
So you were at that awesome
age of 14 when that happened.
Well, that's eighth grade, right?
Eighth, ninth grade, something like that.
So were you shocked?
Was this, did this make
sense to you at the time?
Or were you and your
brother completely shocked?
No, we wanted him to out like we, it wasn't
because he was abusive or anything.
It just like my mom and dad were like, my
mom was so upset at him all the time, like
our entire lives.
And he was never around because he was
either, you know, working
overnights at the, at the
fire station or so after
the house was built and stuff.
And this is common for all firefighters
around here, work that schedule.
You have another gig.
And so we owned an oil company for a while,
like one of those home
heating oil companies.
And so he was always doing that.
And when he wasn't doing those
things, he was out at the bar.
Like I think, I think
my dad never drank water.
I think he just drank, he was
90% Budweiser and 10% coffee.
There's water in Budweiser.
Yeah, right.
He had to get some hydration.
Yeah.
By that point, we're like, thank God, you
know, like, yeah, I
can't say that it was bad.
Like it wasn't abusive.
It wasn't screaming and all of that stuff.
It was just stop.
Stop bitching.
You guys hate each other.
Yeah, it wasn't more just tension, just
constantly tense and not
like, were you, were you, were
you actually kind of hypervigilant and kind
of walking on eggshells
because of the tension,
would you say?
When my dad was around, it was weird
because he was always
like, when I was little, we
had a very good relationship.
My dad and I, like, he would always talk to
me about books and, you know, whatever.
And I would help him like down in his
workshop and stuff like that.
And then as, as, you know, we got older, he
just had less of an interest.
I just think my dad was
never meant for family life.
And it was just like, I do, I do feel for,
you know, boomers and
silent gen people sometimes,
you know, that so many of them were just
like, you have a family,
get married, have kids.
And like, so many of them wanted nothing to
do with us or anything
to do with family life.
But they couldn't, they
couldn't just be, you know?
And so I always felt sad for my dad about
that because my mom
conversely, all she wanted
was, you know, she would have had 900 kids
or, you know, and so
it was just a bad match.
Well, and back then, and even for, I don't
know, we kind of
changed before we got married,
we had this conversation, but I don't know
if it's normal for Gen Xers, but definitely
boomers.
There was no conversation
about how do you see raising kids?
How do you see our roles in our marriage?
How do you be sharing
the domestic load at home?
Are we both working?
Is one of us saying?
And they also came from a culture of you
get married and you have
children, it's what you
do, but they also were that hippie free
love culture too that
was very about themselves.
And then, and we just talked about this
with another guest and
then they went through,
a lot of them went through that and then
they were get married
and have kids and become
domestic.
So like you're saying, I think so many of
them wouldn't have had children or gotten
married, but it really is only in the last,
I think 10 years, 10
years of that where that
conversation is narratives even starting to
be discussed where it's
okay to not have children.
It's okay to not get married.
It's okay to stay single.
I mean, that's really new where it's to
talk about that in a
normal way because even Gen
X women, we kind of all thought that's what
we're supposed to do too.
Yeah.
And I think that oftentimes people don't
really realize that about us, about Gen X.
Like they look at us like, oh, you guys
were the different generation.
Whereas in reality, we're really not.
Like I, my, when I was young, I never
fantasized about having kids.
I didn't play with baby dolls.
You know, that wasn't like my thing, but I
also knew it was just going to happen.
You know, there wasn't like, like I was
always going to get married.
I was always going to have kids and I
didn't ever think I wouldn't want that.
Because nothing else was
discussed really of other options.
It was just kind of how life goes.
Right.
And then, and I think now, especially with
younger millennials and Gen Z, they really
are changing that whole narrative.
And, and also I think if they do choose to
get married, they're
going to have such better
communication before they even get married,
especially the women.
And this is what I expect.
Like, you know, and we had that, but I
drove that because I came
from such a dysfunctional,
crazy childhood.
I didn't want to repeat it.
I was determined to break the cycle.
We got married at 23.
And even then I was like, I'm not going to,
I need to change something here because I
came from such chaos.
And so that's what drove that conversation.
But if I had come from a more normal
background, I never would
have said, let's talk about
how our roles and stuff.
So I don't know if that was normal, even
for our age to have before getting married.
It wasn't for me.
I'm really bad at as a whole at knowing how
I'm going to feel about something until I
do it.
You know, like I'm bad at
just like trying on hats.
I call it like, like, and it wasn't until
I, you know, met my, my ex-husband and like
got married.
And, you know, I was like, of course, like,
I'll stay home when the kids are little.
That's the right thing to do.
You know, and I was actually, I was very
conservative back then,
you know, like I was a, I was
a completely different human being.
And because I was like, this is the right
way, you know, I'm just so type A and I had
no idea that I would want to die.
Like I tell my kids all the time and they
get mad, you know,
when I tell them, but I'm
like, when I, because they were only 16
months apart and I stayed at home.
I had moved to this a whole other part of
the story, but like I
had lived all over when
I was young, um, after I graduated high
school and then I moved to
Michigan because my ex-husband
was from Michigan.
And so I knew nobody had no like family
system and I have these
two babies, you know, back
to back and I, I wanted to die.
Like I never slept.
I was just like, well, yeah, and none of
that had was discussed
before we got married and
had kids for us women.
Like I think we as Gen X women are talking
about all that now, hoping that the younger
women will know this look,
it's okay to talk about this.
It's okay to feel like this, get help or,
you know, but that was very taboo to even
talk about like postpartum depression or
you were not just
absolutely enjoy after having
a baby.
Something was wrong with you.
My mom, my mom would tell me her line was
like, Oh, I was in my glory, you know?
And then my ex-husband would say, you don't
know how good you have it.
And I'm literally Aspen's first memory of
me is when she was two years old and she,
and she wouldn't take a nap.
And I was just on the floor of her room
crying face down on the floor.
And that's so relatable though.
You know, I think every mother has gone
through that, but we
weren't, we weren't supposed
to talk to each other about that at all.
Right.
So thankfully I think that's changing.
So when your parents got divorced, did you
see a change in your mom?
Oh, all the, all we,
the house could breathe.
Like everybody just could take a breath.
But in all honesty, I, I hardly saw my mom
after that because she worked two and three
jobs.
Like she was really trying
hard to keep us in the log house.
Like she got the log house in the divorce.
She didn't get any child
support or anything like that.
But so she was still paying the mortgage
and all of that stuff until, um, until my
senior year of high school and she just
couldn't do it anymore.
But I was, I was so busy with all of my
extracurriculars and all of
that stuff and working all the
time.
Um, because by the time I was in high
school, I worked at this
pizza place and correct me
if I'm wrong, but like,
cause I did all these things.
Like I was, you know, student council and I
did tennis and all this stuff.
But like, were our practices maybe like an
hour or 45 minutes when it came to sports?
Like I feel like my kids, they're all of
their sports was like,
there's no way that they
could have a job.
You know that because it was like endless
practices that went on for hours and hours
and hours.
But I was, I was going to school and then I
would go to tennis practice, but tennis
practice would be over at like three 15 or
something like that, like in high school.
And then I would go home, take a quick
shower and go to my job for four o'clock.
Yeah, no, that doesn't exist because I know
for our kids, they have all been in sports
and that would happen after school.
And I think they would be
home by six or something.
There, there was like, I'm after, it was
like three hours or
whatever from the time school
and until they got home.
No, I mean, cause they didn't have
academic, they have to
do homework and stuff too.
I mean, cause it's different now.
There's actually, I don't remember as much
homework, but now they
have so much of that.
I know like when I was in high school, we
would go right after
school, go to like football
practice, but be done to
make the bus at like four 30.
It was like the after school
bus would take everybody home.
So it was boxed in, but our youngest now
plays lacrosse and
field space is such an issue
that he comes home.
He's home for a few hours.
Then we're driving them somewhere for
practice or practice.
Yeah.
So now it isn't as easy.
I don't think.
But I do know he's had teammates, older
teammates that a game
would end or a practice would
end and they'd be driving to their job and
then they'd be working to like 10, 10 30.
And I'm thinking, when are these kids
getting their homework
done, studying sleep?
So I think they're
burning the candle at both ends.
If they're an athlete and trying to work.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And a lot of them have to work, you know,
because everybody, everybody's broke.
Yeah. Parents are broke.
You know, like everybody's broke pretty
much what you're
describing though, is you grew
up fast.
You are that Gen X or who grew up fast and
were, you know, you see the memes.
I was 30 when I was 10
or, you know, kind of thing.
Yeah.
You actually had a
heavy responsibility load.
Really?
We definitely were typical latch key, you
know, we came home and this is funny too.
My mom will get mad at me for saying this,
but I'm still going to
say it because we argue
about it.
We love you, mom.
We would come home from school and we would
hide the key in one of the slots.
You know how the logs have slots.
Yeah.
I'm the key in the slot and we would be
home after school and my
mom insists that it was
fine because our neighbor who we called
onto you event was like watching us.
I was like, I never freaking saw that lady
mom anywhere near us.
And I think it's in her mind, she's just
like, because she lived in the house, like,
yeah, yeah.
We lived on property.
So it wasn't like next door was like two
feet away where she was
like looking in our window
or something like that.
But can we talk about like the struggle
meals we would make
after school because I did.
So on top of, you know how the kids call it
an ingredient house now, like you live in
an ingredient house
versus, you know, snack house.
We were definitely an ingredient house.
Like we, I was constantly like looking in
cookbooks, like trying
to put something together.
And I did set my kitchen on
fire by making donuts after school.
Donuts like here I am with the grease.
Yeah.
Here I am.
The firefighters kid.
I have this big grease fire going right.
And I completely forgot everything.
Yeah. Yeah.
Everything your dad's taught you.
What you're supposed to do, put a lid on
it, you know, do whatever.
So I threw, I was like
baking soda puts out fire.
So I threw baking soda at
it and just made it bigger.
And then I took the whole
flaming pan and I put it in the sink.
And you know how back then we would have
those mats and the
bottom of the sink melted that
set the curtains on fire.
I was hosing the curtains and then like,
you know, with the sink hose.
And then I just went outside and cried
until my parents came home.
But it sat on the porch and cried.
Yeah.
And it's a cabin.
Did some of the logs also catch on fire?
Were you able to go?
Yeah.
That's crazy.
That is crazy.
No, but that's definitely a good Gen X like
trying to handle things.
You survive as boomers
would say, but did you die?
You're fine.
Yeah.
I live to tell the story.
But my other my other favorite like
struggle snack that I
would make and I would eat this
today.
I would take Ritz crackers and I would I
would put a little dollop
of ketchup, a little dollop
of mustard in a slice of pickle and a
little square of cheese.
And I would bake them in the oven.
I would make like sounds good, like little
little fake burgers
like with no with no burger
on it.
That actually sounds good in a weird way.
It sounds really good.
I'm drunk.
Yeah.
I'm drunk.
I don't drink a lot anymore.
But next time I'm drunk.
Pickle is what I said, I think.
I sent you a picture.
I'm going to send you a picture.
I said that actually is you know, it'd be
good if you actually did make a little like
meat patties like maybe I could make them
for like a party party appetizers.
It sounds more like a
stoner meal than a drunk.
You need to make a TikTok on that.
Yeah.
What I eat in a day.
Yeah.
As a latchkey kid like that.
That actually would be really fun.
I would be firing the
background for a choice.
All of us Gen Xers, we should start putting
what we ate in a day as latch cures and put
our weird things and I think that's
something I think that's something.
I think that's a really good idea because I
would in high school I would get a dollar
like to bring the school for lunch.
And it was in my school.
We had a soda machine, but
we weren't allowed caffeine.
So all that was in it was
like Minute Maid orange soda.
I don't know if you guys
remember Minute Maid orange soda.
And so I would get for 50 cents a Minute
Maid orange soda and
then I would get a Susie Q.
Do you guys know what Susie Q's are?
Yeah, with the frosting inside.
Yes. Yeah.
That's what I would eat.
That's what I would have for lunch.
And then I would go home from school and if
I wasn't you know making some concoction,
I would eat like I could eat like an entire
box of honey bunches of oats.
Oh yeah.
That was I would eat it till my jaw locked.
Oh yeah.
Oh yeah.
Oh for sure.
Oh the cereal.
Oh. So much cereal.
Even though the sugar cereals back then
were like really bad or
you'd put more sugar on
top.
Yeah.
Would you do for walking charms and
separate the marshmallows out?
Do you ever do that?
That was for rich people.
Like looking at charms and that was that
was like for special treats for sleepovers.
Like we would get life
cereal or honey bunches of oats.
Yeah.
Or or grape nuts.
I loved grape nuts.
Yeah.
And then hot heated in the microwave.
Oh I never did that.
Oh my god it was a
recipe on the back of the box.
Remember?
Because we would just sit there.
We had nothing to do but
we ate the back of the box.
And so on the back of the grape nuts box it
was this you would heat them with milk
and butter and and brown sugar.
Oh my gosh that sounds amazing.
It's almost like cream of wheat vibe but
with grape nuts kind of.
I love cream of wheat.
Oh I love cream of wheat.
It was so and there's another thing too.
Almost almost like a grits kind of concept.
Yeah.
Your parents are divorced but they decide
to unite to say we're not going to help you
with college basically.
Yeah that's right.
We're back here.
And so and so what happened in a because
this was this was like three weeks before
I was due to leave to move into college and
like when all or maybe like a month.
And so I had a boyfriend at the time.
So in a fit of rage I moved all my stuff
out of my mom's house and
moved into my boyfriend.
His parents let me stay with them and they
signed my student loan paperwork.
Yeah.
And so but I only like I said I only lasted
at Hofstra for a year
because I first of all
it was a mind fuck for me to have the the
free ride for theater.
They gave it to one boy and one girl.
And here I was just like this kid from
Barerville Rhode Island
and then I show up at Hofstra
which you know in New Jersey like these
kids had been on
Broadway like other kids in my
class like they had like headshots and they
had been in commercials and all this stuff.
And I was like what is
this why I do not belong here.
Like you know I made your
imposter syndrome so bad.
And then also I was so stressed out about
money like there is and I do think that is
a very Gen X thing.
You know you know that one song it's been
making the rounds again that one it's like
she calls her mom and she's like I'm hungry
I'm dirty you know but everything's fine.
I don't it's like an old like like kind of
punk song from the from the 90s I guess.
No but now that you said it I'm going to
start seeing it on TikTok I bet.
Yeah but I don't know I
know it's not coming to me yet.
So I think I think for me and I don't know
about you guys you're still together which
is good.
But I think I was so scared all the time
like because I was out of
the house I had no fallback
family like money you know like and I think
that our kids and
maybe millennials too just
cannot understand like the sheer terror
that we were always
living in like where it was
like I couldn't call my parents for money
you know like there that wasn't happening
and I always wonder if it was like my
family that was like that
you know or if it's kind
of like a universal experience but it was
definitely like once you're out you're out
you know like there was like my mom was
always like I don't have
a revolving door so bye
and that really I'm a very literal person
so that like sunk in with me so once I was
out before I went to college I was not
coming back and then I was
just like raw dog in life
you know like I could have put together
like money to you know
and and thankfully when
I left Hofstra I did move back with my
boyfriend's family for like
another six or seven months
before I I I was working I dropped out of
college so I was working and
I and then I was working as
a waitress and got an apartment I had a
roommate you know so before
you went to Hofstra did you
um have like did you live in the dorms did
you have a roommate um so
at Hofstra I they um they
had dorms but they were suites so um I I
the other weird thing and I
think that I don't know that it
was just not meant to be my roommate didn't
show up like whoever was
scheduled to be my roommate
so I had the room to myself and then I had
uh suite mates who
shared a room and then another
a senior was in there and then so we had
these little suites and we
all shared a bathroom it was
actually like a super nice setup yeah
that's nice like Nathan's place at FSU so
there's two roommates
two roommates and you had a common like
bathroom area yeah okay did
you become friends with them
um I I did uh a little bit but I would it
was I always was sad that
I didn't because college is
so scary you know like you're just like
here I am from a tiny town
you know and whatever and then
all of a sudden not only am I at college
but I'm in the city you know
because where Hofstra is and um
I was just terrified I was terrified all
the time I mean it had to
have been such a culture shock
oh it was so bad it's like almost like
going to another country and
I'm way just totally different
culture going on because not only are you
leaving and going to
college for the first time like as
you said is scary for just any normal kid
from where you're coming
from and you weren't just
from a small town you're from a small town
and you live in the woods in
a log cabin you know what I
mean it's just it there's levels to it that
you take that young woman
and then you stick her in
Hofstra and you're so great you get a
scholarship and you know and
everything's wonderful go enjoy
your beautiful college life and you're kind
of like I have no skills
on how to do this no and
like I hadn't even met a Jewish person
before I show up at Hofstra
and Hofstra is like half Jewish
people right so like they have all these
holidays and all this stuff
I'm like what's even happening
no idea yeah I grew up like extremely
Catholic too so there there was
that and I oh my god I was just
scared yeah you were you were just treading
water it sounds like and I
mean were you able to at least
was it a positive outlet for your passion
for theater did you
have positive experiences
when it came to your major um no I think
because it was always just
like my imagination you know
like it was just my imagination of what I
thought being on a stage is
like being you know in um in
a movie or whatever like I just lived in my
mind you know out in the
woods and um and I didn't um
I didn't like a lot of the classes in the
end you know where it was
all these like things that I
thought were very dorky like these dorky
like you do a lot of
dorky things when it comes to
acting classes and I was just like
uncomfortable all the time I'm
all like I'm like why are we like
groaning you know and crawling around on
the floor and marrying people
like I I literally I was like
this is embarrassing whatever we're doing
is embarrassing was there
a lot of like improv and
stuff like that so no I I have done improv
now though so after I got
divorced in my 30s I joined
an improv troop and I loved loved that that
that was probably my
favorite thing I've ever done
ever um and they didn't have that at all
your freshman it was
later for a year or so maybe
yeah yeah yeah probably not of intro
classes yeah yeah
stuff yeah real real dorky
how did your parents react when you said
I'm not going to continue
on for another year were they
okay with it we weren't really talking
because oh so you kind of
went no contact after that
for a little a little bit like so I I did
go no contact my mom did
end up being the one to drop
me off at school but our relationship was
extremely strained and I I
hardly had talked to my dad
anyway you know so um it wasn't like any
kind of purposeful no
contact it was just you know
yeah not talking yeah and and then it did
end up though um again this
kind of goes back to us not
knowing stuff like I was screwed for a very
long time I did not
graduate college until I was 28
years old because you you can't you can't
get student loans
without your parents like even
until you're like I think even now until
you're like 26 years old
yeah so I would have had to
become like legally emancipated like all
this stuff so I had to like
pay as I went until I could you
know get my own loans at 26 so you leave
Hofstra you move back in
with your boyfriend's parents
you get a job waitressing and um and then
how long until you
started um taking classes again
over that time um I went to Rhode Island
College um for a
couple of semesters and then
by then I had broken up with that boyfriend
and I had a new boyfriend
and um he had a master's and
he wanted to move out west he had friends
who lived in New Mexico
so we left Rhode Island and
moved to New Mexico when I was over you
then uh 20 okay so that's
an adventure yeah so we we
I did not last in New Mexico so we uh on
our way there because we
drove cross-country and so
that's cool we stopped in Denver he had a
friend in Denver and we
stayed with him for a while and
then we went down to New Mexico and we were
only there for like two or
three months because I was
like I we're in Santa Fe New Mexico which
is very beautiful but
extremely expensive like even back
in the 90s um they don't have apartment
buildings there because it's
all about the aesthetic and so
you had to rent like a little adobe house
and um renting a house but
it was like fifteen hundred
dollars it was something crazy wow so um
and it was just a little to
again fish out of water type
of situation so I was like let's go back up
to Denver and we we moved
to Denver and I was there
for five years oh with your boyfriend no so
I I broke up with him
because I uh I worked with my
ex-husband and I I developed a massive
crush on him like an
undeniable crush and I was like
I've I've got a breakup with this boyfriend
so what were you doing
in Denver where were you
working I was selling furniture so I was
and this is even crazier um
I was 20 years old selling
furniture I was the top salesperson often
at the at the furniture
store and I was in 1994
I was making like 45 thousand dollars a
year because and which
was I I was like I am rich
yeah you're you're like 20 21 20s that's
good money yeah except
it was also very stressful
um because it was straight commission so if
you didn't sell anything
you didn't make any money
and so um prior to getting on the podcast
with you guys I was just
thinking about like being Gen X
in general and like I don't think I've ever
just breathed my entire
life you know even now at 51
I still feel like especially with the
what's going on in the
economy and all this stuff I'm like
I will breathe when I'm dead like there
hasn't been a second where
I'm like okay looks like we're
doing okay folks you know like yeah no Gen
X Gen Xers have been
grinding their entire childhood
yeah teenage years 20s 30s 40s especially
Gen X women women have
grinded through perimenopause
in their 40s and didn't even know they were
in perimenopause so they
were having all these symptoms
and being treated for all these symptoms
that really rooted to
perimenopause if somebody would
have figured that out that would have been
nice and then now we're in
our 50s and looking around
and realizing I have not stopped to even
look around and how insane
that is and now I'm halfway
because I always say I hope to live to be
100 I'm viewing it halfway
halfway um but I'm halfway and
it's I feel like this is the first time
where I've actually taken a
breath and looked around and I
think a lot of Gen Xers not just women I
think a lot of Gen Xers feel
that way because we've just
been because that's how we were raised just
grind through you just go
through you just go through
it do you mean that like literally or can
you can you unplug and kind
of decompress on a weekend
or if you take time off or anything like
that or you literally still
just kind of going and going
and going I I just mean about breathing in
general you know like I
like I was saying like
being 18 and out of the house and like
having to survive on my own I
do think that's why I married
my husband like really young you know and
um because I was just like
please like I need somebody
by my side you know yeah I don't want to do
this by myself and then um
and then you know we were
together 11 years and then we got divorced
and then I'm a single
mom you know and then I you
know and I'm the career my career being
what it is is very volatile
and um yeah so even like I
hear what you're saying like do I have
relax on the weekend show
like sure but I just mean like in
general yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah
and I think it's it's uh
very common for all of us
too and I think it's also one of the
reasons so many of us have
drank like you know I had a good
period of my life I was a functioning
alcoholic meaning I would
have at least two glasses of wine
and night easily without even thinking
about it Friday and Saturday
we would party throw I think
a lot of us dealt with that to come down
from the you know the
tension I guess I guess I've just
learned that I'm a functioning alcoholic
yeah I definitely am having
a couple of glasses of wine
like uh like because I always joke I'm like
I do not need to stay
this aware like what am I
fighting Jason Bourne you know like I do
not need to be this aware
at all times like I do it all
okay but then you know it also has helped
us it's just been a just
the cherry on top the gift
is social media because in 24 seven news
network because at least
growing up we didn't have that
but then they handed that to Gen X and now
we're really plugged in
and now we're really worried
about everything because then it's like now
we're super aware of
it so I think that just
inject like for us we have to make an
effort to um plug or else
we'll go crazy we'll learn
be in our mind I'll just be you know
without so but I think
that has not helped us at all
with that no no definitely not and I am too
much I think it's I go back
and forth you know I'm like
I should stop paying attention you know
like stop stop paying
attention but also I just feel
like the minute I do you know like all more
shit is gonna keep
happening you know I know it's the
weird thing of note of trying to it's the
balance of wanting to be
aware and and do good where you
can but also understanding so much is not
in your control and how
much of your mental health are
you willing to sacrifice right for that and
it's that constant
balance and struggle and I think
and I don't know if that's genetics or if
that's just every I'm not
sure but I feel like Gen X
because Gen X as much as we're like we
don't care we drink from
the garden hose but we do what
happened in our lifetime we're very
empathetic and we're very we
will mind our business but if
you need our help we're the first ones to
step up we're not nosy but
we'll be there for you so
we do care but we also have have we kind of
also can stand back and
just kind of let things happen
because we're it's a weird thing really
with our our personalities I
think I don't know we've gone
through so much like I always think it's
very funny when the
millennials are like we went through
the recession at 9 11 I'm like where we are
alive like we were here too
yeah but add to that I don't
know AIDS add in you know like thinking
that Russia was gonna blow
us up our entire lives like
add in acid rain do you remember acid rain
everybody forgot about that and the whole
of nose only are like yes I just find it so
funny that there I was like yeah I remember
because I was here as well taking care of
your houses yeah yeah we
were younger we were still
paying it and figuring it out the space
shuttle and then do you did
you guys ever go through um
like I remember laying in the back of my
mom's pacer in a gas line and
there was no air conditioning
just sweating because the gas lines and
like the late wasn't that
the late 70s they had the red
flags or the green flag at the gas station
your town so you guys are
just a little bit older than
me okay and that that window being born in
71 and versus 74 like
okay that's distinctly
that would matter without seat belts
looking out you might have
been in like a car carrier
apparently apparently the first car seat so
when my mom did bring me
home from the hospital it was
she was holding me yeah but then but then I
did get a car seat but
apparently car seats were just
kind of like um almost like folding chairs
you know that you have
outside like the first car seats
and she she was she tells me that she was
like waiting at at um to
pick something up or something
and she's like sitting in the front seat
and she could see me in the
rearview mirror and then she
looked up again and she couldn't see me
again and she's like where
are you and she looks back and
I'm walking across the back seat with the
car seats trapped in my back
get myself free that's amazing
Gen X that is so Gen X I'm oh my gosh that
is so fun yeah that sounds
about right sounds about right
okay so you meet your husband he was
selling furniture too then
right yes okay so how long
from the time you guys started dating till
when you got married um I
met him when I was 20 but I
was still dating the other guy and so I
broke up with him I want to
say maybe we got married when
I was 25 so okay yeah so we knew each other
for quite a while before
getting married couple years
wasn't like my parents you know yeah like
six months now was he
from Denver no he was from
Michigan oh that's right and said that okay
so he just happened to be living in Denver
he moved because his friend Bill moved out
there and they had he had
visited to go snowboarding
and we all snowboarded back then that was
like yeah because I was
like a real cool girl you know
and so I could talk for hours about me
being such a freaking pick
me because I was the world's
biggest pick me and um and so he moved out
there because he he wanted
to do something but he always
like wanted to move back to Michigan
because he was one of eight
kids like his parents were like a
big Catholic family and so he wanted to
move back to Michigan we're
in Michigan um he grew up in
Troy Michigan which is like um just outside
of Detroit we ended up
living in a tiny town called
Milford Michigan because oh it's funny
because if you think about my
trajectory like growing up on
the east coast right beautiful new England
then I moved to New Mexico
for a little bit beautiful
moved to Colorado gorgeous and then we go
to Michigan and we drive
to go to Michigan and we
end up at his parents house at night and
then the next day driving
around Troy I just sobbed I was
like this is the ugliest fucking place I've
ever seen it once I was so
sad it was nothing but strip
malls and it was all flat and never I had
never seen anything like
it and so um at the time he
had so he had moved with the furniture
company the furniture
company actually forced me to quit
they they were like you guys can't be
dating and we never had a rule against
dating he didn't even
work in the same store as me he worked in a
different location and
um but they forced me to
quit so he moved with the furniture store
that had made a location
in Flint and I worked in an
arbor and it just so happened that we we
literally looked at an actual map and
picked a town that was
right in between the two and that's where I
ended up raising my kids and how'd you like
what in arbor um so I love Ann Arbor my my
oldest went to the
University of Michigan so um yeah I
love it there I was just why did they make
you quit not him I took one
for the team because by then
you know because I'm the girl I don't know
and also by then he he was
like an assistant manager
okay yeah and the other little guy but he
was a little bit higher up
yeah okay so did you guys
get married in Denver or Michigan in
Michigan and did you get
engaged in Denver though like when
you moved you knew you were going to get
married so it was a
controversial topic at the time because
I did not want to move unless we were
engaged and he didn't want
to get engaged until I moved
there and decided I liked it because he
didn't want me to like
hightail it out of there and so
I ended up being like okay you know I'll do
that and so we got engaged in in Michigan
and then um and you lived in Milford did
you keep and then you
said once you had your first
daughter you started to stay home uh yeah I
started so I had had a
semi-traumatic miscarriage
like around 15 16 weeks like I had already
seen the heartbeat you
know all that it was it was
kind of traumatic and um so and I had a
very stressful job at the
time and when I got pregnant
again um I I quit like relatively early
into the pregnancy because
I was like I don't want to
yeah have a stressful job and so um I
started staying home
before Aspen was even born
and you still selling furniture in Ann
Arbor is that what you were
doing no no I was working um
I was working for a place called Mobile
Dentist which I know does
not sound stressful at all
but we um we really stressful we would um
go to all the schools
like throughout the state and
we would take care of all the kids who like
had Medicare or Medicaid
and um and couldn't like
their parents you know very like uh you
know kids who needed assistance and we
would do like all the
teeth cleanings and all of that at the
schools but Michigan's a big place so
oftentimes like I would
my call time would be like 3 45 in the
morning to like go drive to
you know Paul Paul Michigan or
something crazy yeah and see kids all day
and then you know do it
again the next day that is
a stressful job so I I understand why you
you quit yeah yeah it was
like a crazy and stressful office
too like the culture was terrible yeah how
long between um your
miscarriage and your daughter being
born um so I uh I want to say a year maybe
yeah it was kind of crazy
because I um I got pregnant
the weekend of 9 11 um because uh because
uh we were supposed to go to
Greece for our um anniversary
and 9 11 happened we were supposed to go to
Greece on 9 12 and 9 11
happened oh wow and I felt so
guilty because I cried a lot about not
being able to go to Greece and
that's very selfish of me but
I um so instead we took like a little uh
road trip to Chicago and um
do you remember that people
back then were like standing on the side of
the highway with like with
candles and like flags and
all that and so we we drove through a lot
of random people doing
that and then I ended up
getting pregnant that weekend and had the
miscarriage like in at the
end of November beginning of
December and um but then I want to say I
was pregnant for Aspen in
the spring by by that year
and then your second daughter was 16 months
after so you were pregnant
pregnant pregnant yeah yeah
Aspen was six months old when I got
pregnant for Viv yeah so and you'd had this
traumatic miscarriage
and then you're pregnant again and then
pregnant again and it have
and living somewhere with no
family and I had bad postpartum too like I
I remember that was the
first time I ever went
to therapy because I I remember after Viv I
got really scared of the
knives in the house like I
I was I was like I don't want to touch the
knives because the the
babies were so small that I could
hurt them like I was just like I was scared
of my own hands like I
remember feeling that way um
because we had a big uh brick fireplace and
I remember this was
with Aspen actually coming
home with Aspen and I was like I could just
hug this baby like it was
too much you know it was
just like overwhelming and I I had to go
outside and like take walks
around the house because I was
like like my hands are scary is that how
you would describe postpartum
to people is that you're just
filled with intrusive thoughts I guess I
hadn't thought about it
like that but yeah that right
because that that makes sense because that
is just an intrusive like I'm
obviously not going to throw
the baby right and that's what the
therapist had told me at the time he he
said the difference uh
like you're not evil or anything like that
the difference is is that
like some people like the
evil people are the ones who do it like you
just like are thinking
it we're just having those
intrusive thoughts and it I don't know if
your therapist was they
told you this or if I don't
know if you know this is is it related to
the hormone fluctuations
I have to be because I I
remember having that after I had the
miscarriage right because
this is what also like drives me
crazy about like uh and this is a tangent I
guess but like people who
are like um anti-abortion and
all of that stuff to like the when they
always have this like talk
track that like women are
just like having abortions rather than like
you know um using birth
control it's like your body
is instantly ruined like the the second you
get pregnant you are in
a whole new chemical soup
and and like I felt pregnant still after my
miscarriage for months like for it like for
your your body to clear that out like
you're it's an incredible
thing like people don't talk about
that portion enough you know where you're a
pregnancy is a whole
new chemical experience
that doesn't just like flush out the minute
you know it's so funny
that you say that I had never
thought about that because I did have an
abortion at 22 and um and I
was six weeks so I got it early
but no one talked about any of that but I
know in my I can remember
for months after that I was so
fucked up in the head I thought more fucked
up than my normal fucked
upness and I know I you just
you just cleared that up for me that's what
was going on as my body
was the hormones everything
was fluctuating and trying to get back to
normal because I'm no longer
pregnant but um but my body
doesn't know that like it's still trying to
figure that out and I'm 22
and I'm still in college and
I'm losing my mind and that's that's what
it was yeah yeah it's like
you're like how you lose your
mind before your period anyway yeah
whatever and I had that horrible
I've had a hysterectomy in 2020
but up until then even I had horrible pms
oh my god horrible me too I
had such bad periods I had
I had a hysterectomy um in 20 what year is
it 25 I had in 24 and um
and oh my god my whole life
like was just like it's so crazy and I know
uh I know he finds all
this actually very interesting
someone framed the miscarriage and your
body's still pregnant the
way you just summed it up
which makes perfect sense and I guarantee
no one's thinking about it
yeah and I'm a guy so it doesn't
impact me nearly as much but for you as
women in our daughters it
does impact the men who are with
those women it's as a personal level that
it's it's wild to think
of it the way you framed it
because I think you're spot on and I don't
know if anyone's talking
about it maybe if you go to your
your doctor no that I don't know it's like
the doctors are even worse
somehow like yeah they'll
tell you to shake it off yeah like the I I
have a lot of friends who
are like oh I'll only go to a
female gynecologist or whatever and I just
ended up going to men
because I found the the women to be
worse because they have like I feel like
they have internalized
misogyny from having to like
fight their way through the medical system
you know it even gets taken
seriously as women doctors
that they're they're worse in a lot of ways
yeah that's a good point
no I've definitely I've come
across somewhere um in fact I didn't have
my OB do my hysterectomy I
went to a different OB who
was a man because I didn't feel like I was
being totally hurt and I
do love her but um at that
moment I wasn't being hurt and so I needed
a second opinion and
one of my um another woman
I know who just had one said oh I went to
this doctor and I love him
go see him and I did love
him and it was and he was very empathetic
yeah different way yep
so um I don't know I had a
female gynecologist when I had my
miscarriage and um oh it was
so wild it was so wild that I
I went to the appointment um without my uh
ex at the time and it
was just like because I was
having some issues like I was bleeding on
and off and all that stuff
and but we had already seen the
heartbeat and all that so we're like okay
it's cool and then I went
to this appointment no more
heartbeat and I'm like by myself with this
woman and then she's like
well you can go home and let
it happen naturally or I can like get you
in to for a dnc tomorrow I
was like let it like I was
just gonna go home and what just like bleed
out slowly you know
pretty much weeks and I was so
devastated I was like you have to take it
out immediately you know
and then um so I had the
dnc and all that stuff and it was just like
such a traumatic time and
um and then months later I
went in for like a normal checkup and she
um you know how they find
abnormal cells like on your
cervix sometime or whatever and she wanted
to do um some kind of biopsy
called the loop you know and
I this is early days of the internet and so
I was like well I want to
get pregnant what does this
do to me you know and it was like well that
can compromise your
cervix and you know maybe you
would have another miscarriage because the
cervix isn't you know solid
or whatever and um I was like
that bitch like that bitch because I want
to be pregnant and how dare
she want to just chop me up
you know and so um I found another
gynecologist a guy and um for a second
opinion he's like yeah
you don't need that and then this guy he
had um his dad had been
a gynecologist and they
he had taught him to keep all of his tools
heated like he had a
heating pad inside the drawer so
all of his stuff was all heated and he like
showed me on the tv
like what the cervix looks
like and all this stuff and um it was just
a great experience my
god I mean how low is the
bar that when you said he kept his tools
heated I almost wanted to
start crying like what a gesture
he just how do you know what they put in oh
no I get it I made the
instant connection I was like
that's pretty good no but I mean what a
gesture and and that and
that's the bare minimum if you
think about it come on but these women
doctors aren't doing this
like this I know I don't
understand like I don't know anybody like
no no no no no no well and
think about it there's so many
things that we have to go through where
they don't give us any pain
med oh you could have it like
what like if they do a biopsy or if they
need to do um because I did
have that I had that they did
a biopsy and that is painful or if they
have to um just different
I would just have something
because I have a little bit of prolapse
going on so I'm having to
have them look at that and um
when I was there for that appointment she's
like we're just gonna check
your bladder and I'm thinking
oh and I just was there just to talk to her
and we're just gonna put
this thing up through through
inside and and through your urethra or
whatever right that's what
it is and um or is that guys
no we have a urethra right yeah yeah all
the news it's just gonna be
like women don't have that
it's worth if they have to be in the jungle
and it's like we're just
gonna put up your urethra
and they did and I'm like and and now I'm
older I'm like wait are you
doing anything for pain she
goes well we can put some laticain I'm like
yeah whatever you have
well 20 years ago I would have
been like I'm like whatever you can do
right do it but even that
there was no real pain and I had
and I love it it's always take a deep
breath deep breath just relax
just a little pin yeah just a
little pinch yeah so many things that are
just a little pinched but I
know that if men had to do it
they'd get pain medicine it drives me crazy
it just you know it makes
me think it's good to be
again he always says I guess good to be
good to be a guy because
this is what you guys go through
what you women go through is crazy no well
yeah did you hear about
there is a whole podcast about
it this um woman nurse who was stealing the
fentanyl um that she
was yeah she was supposed
to be giving it was at a fertility clinic
and she was supposed to be
giving it to the patients and
instead they were just doing bags of saline
and so all these women are
complaining about all this
pain and they're like shut the fuck up you
know like this doesn't
hurt and because nobody gets
believed you know and yeah I'm saying I
didn't know that ever I
know a nurse stealing fentanyl
I didn't like read into it on the side type
or you see it no she was
selling it she's selling it
yeah asshole no no kidding my god talk
about internal massage I
mean that's like internal
massage to it as well yeah absolutely
absolutely right right so
you're home you've got your two
babies yes um and you're you're you're
going through the
postpartum thing um when did that
when did you start to feel okay I'm okay a
couple years okay and
mainly it was the lack of sleep I
never slept because I also believed um we
believed so many things you
know like gen x was just not
that advanced uh the way everybody is today
and um like I was of the
attitude well my husband's
working and I'm at home so he should never
get up at night and he
never did hello me too I never
slept I fell asleep driving twice like with
the babies in the car and
it was my youngest Vivian
she um she did not sleep because this is
this is a whole other thing
you know how uh it was all
back to sleep for us you know and but when
we were little because we
didn't want sids right we don't
want our babies to die but when we were
young it was just like
however you sleep sleep on your
stomach you know whatever and our parents
were like if they live they
live or whatever so here's
here's Viv who um was a thumb sucker in the
womb but then we're doing
back to sleep and so there
they're noodles right so she couldn't get
her thumb anymore because
we're also like swaddling
her because that worked for her sister yeah
so she cried for the
first five months of her
her life like did not sleep and not take a
binky that was also me
being type a and I'm like I'm
not giving these I'm breastfeeding I'm not
giving them passies you
know like all of this stuff
because I'm like I'm fucking doing it you
know that's what good
women do right that's what and
you know it was all this competition too of
like there's a good one
there's a better because gen x
women in general were raised to compete
against each other with
everything like not the gen the
gen z girls are really supportive and
girlhood and you go girl we
weren't like that we were like
I'm competing with that woman for a man I'm
competing that with
that woman for how good of
a mom I am compared to her it was so
different I never thought
about it that way but you're right
like the like my level of like pick me ism
you know because it was
a competition everything
you're everything and we should do it all
and we better do it all well
and whoever did the best is
the winner of what yeah exhaustion burnout
honestly kids first
memory is you crying you know
way but to the outside
world you looked great yeah
I think the illusion the illusion you're
rocking the illusion no no I
he also worked and I was home
part of it my chaotic childhood I just went
into that 1950s life and
all because it was the exact
opposite of anything close that I ever had
and I just needed I needed
the stability I needed to
make the cookies and all that stuff but I
did I was young 23 and um
so I did really I was like I
shouldn't wake him up he's so I and I think
that's very common with
gen x women we just were like
they're traditional like they're doing even
if they were working even
if the woman was working
she still would take it all on because no
one ever talked to us
about you don't have to do that
he should be doing half especially if
you're both working he
should be doing half of what
you're doing in the home that has changed
though I work with two guys
who've had younger kids and
they'll tell me how they're sharing that
load at night they're
millennials they're millennials yeah
I will itself admit I didn't get up no no
yeah yeah he's so I had
to get up and do the work
type of thing you did and I was home so
rational I'm not the thing to get down
I was exhausted and I was burned out and
all the things I was going
through you know I didn't know
I will say I did not have postpartum so I
can't speak to it um that
was the one thing I didn't get
but I got all the other stuff yeah me too
yeah so but I do think
it's awesome whenever I hear
about millennials that I think they've been
huge in the cultural
shift of all that well even my
brother so he's gen x right yeah so I'm 51
and he's actually about to
be 49 I lied he is 48 and
but but my nieces are 10 and 6 so okay he
had kids like way later you know and um
the way that they worked it was that when
the baby would cry and
need to be fed in the night
he would go get the baby bring it he would
change the baby's diaper
bring you know the baby to his
wife to be fed and you know they were both
working at the time but
like that that already
big huge shift you know um partnership yeah
but we were the first I
was just talking about this
the other day we were the first to be like
oh we're pregnant like we
did that to ourselves yeah
yeah we gave away all of our credit like
we're just like we're right
at that yes I totally didn't
think about that about that that's so true
yeah what to expect when
you're expecting bullshit
maybe I know I liked that book that book
helped me a lot but yeah
use the word we you are not
remember gather pregnant yeah maybe yeah
yeah maybe maybe I never
thought about we should have
held on to that no because that we did a
whole we did a whole
disappearing act because we we said
we are pregnant right so we exist less as
women but also at work we
were just like because we're
we're all working now and we're like oh I'm
just like a man who's just
fatter temporarily you know
that's it like that's kind of how we acted
about it you know yeah
yeah I'll go pump in a broom
closet like I don't this didn't exist like
this didn't happen yeah
um and that and we we were
forced essentially it like were we forced
or did we like not force it
like we are always too scared
of like not we couldn't get fired but we
could always not be taken
seriously anymore you know
like all like we have to act like none of
this is happening yeah we
already do it like with our
periods and whatever yeah like I had so
many dramatic period
moments on the job yeah work
when I went back to work oh my god the
female experience
completely was not honored in any
way for Jenna especially as Genex women
were really like I guess
our our moms were the first
to really go into that workforce in the 80s
so when we grew up it
was natural that we're all
supposed to work um it was odd to be home
like I will say when I
stayed home that was odd um so by
then it was like you're saying we were just
supposed to act like
men in the workforce in
order to get promotions be respected be
included you know and all but
then but then that our female
experience we had to shush and quiet down
and just stand over go over
there you don't exist because
if if I breathe if you come out at all it's
going to screw me here yeah
you know so but I think it's
true do you think it's changed at all fit
uh no actually and this might
be a little bit controversial
I did make a video about this but like I
had been seeing a lot of um
content and there was actually
some law that they were trying to pass in
the UK to like get women
disability or whatever for men
applause you know like for like having you
know all the issues and
I'm like oh my god stop like
we're we're not there you know that's the
problem with it like
already I'm at the age where it is
oh what's coming for me now age
discrimination you know like nobody wants
to listen to some old
bitch you know and whatever and and
technically for me and you and
what uh like this is our peak
earning years because it is the peak
earning years for men but yet we have all
all these women and it
kind of makes me mad I know that doesn't
sound like that doesn't sound
okay but it makes me upset to
hear all these women just like talking
about oh I have brain fog I
have all this stuff I'm like don't
put this in men's head they're going to
fucking fight with you totally
three such a no-win situation
because oh bad we don't want women feeling
crazy that they're alone
and crazy they we want them to
be educated like these symptoms need to be
treated get on some
HRT if you're a candidate
you'll start to feel normal diet all the
different supplements
all the things so we want
them to have the resource for the
information so they don't feel
isolated and alone but we don't
want it to be weaponized against us by men
that's it weaponized like
I've had lost the word that's
exactly it though imagine you're you're a
51 year old woman and then
like the CEO because I work
with all startups now the CEO of uh not my
current startup but could
be CEO is a 37 year old guy
like oh he's gonna he's gonna scroll
through tick tock and learn
about me having you know brain
fog and you know he's doing blame something
maybe on brain fog and
it's not just worse you see
they're gonna fire you or not hire you
because of your age because
now you're a liability I agree
with you it's you got to be careful what
you wish for and that's
what you do though because
it's a no-win situation it's the cultural
world in that sense well I
I pretend I'm just like oh
I've had hysterectomy so I don't have any
problems oh there you go
like no like like I guess you're
having to show you feel well you have to
have damn know what I mean
because I don't need to have any
experiences at work I will just be a robot
listen depression yeah you
can come on at 6 p.m tonight
that's all right you have to hide you
granted I saw that I haven't
even thought about that yeah
yeah that's oh that's just a that's a tough
one that's that's also
inclusive of of just ageism
right as as all of us get older and it's a
change you know that just
happens but you take the double
hit I don't think you guys I don't think
you guys deal with
ageism in nearly the same way
I think you do but like in different uh
like um fields you know
like like let's say you're like
you know you're more of a laborer or
construction worker whatever
then yes like but then if you're
like in a white collar business like you
can work forever you know
like you're you're looked at at
differently but I think that I don't know
about you guys but I have
forever in my life given up the
idea of retirement but also it's also
because just because of how I
am like I would never want to
retire poor and so like because to me I'm
like what's the point of
being home if all I can do
is I don't know like putter in a garden
I've yeah hate gardening I
just have to stay in my house
I would rather work and and the idea of
like having just a
declining balance yeah until death
like freaks me the fuck out like and so I
would rather work until I die
I think that's a gen x thing
I see that all over gen xers don't plan on
retiring and I think it's for
not just for monetary reasons
but I do think we there's a weird thing and
if we keep working we
won't die or if we keep
keep doing these things we'll keep living
and thrive like keep in
it keep plugged in keep in
society I don't think we want to go sit in
the chair and watch TV and
wait to die or sit on the
porch in the rock they're like we were like
no what's next what are
we gonna do next you know
head of us once they retired I don't know
you know they didn't live
on forever and ever they
died oh yeah so I don't plan on retiring no
I don't think that's a thing
so then um how long you got
you said you guys were married 11 years
yeah so when you went back
to work what did you do so I
when I went back to work I I really really
lucked out and this is like
my whole how I got lucky in
my whole career so I um uh I had always
been like a tinkerer and a
like an inventor and so I um
I ended up um because I did like marketing
stuff prior to so I had
done like copy copywriting and
and things like that and um I had this is
uh sounds like a crazy
story but um I had always
made like inventions and when my dad and
like in his little
workshop and stuff like that I was
always coming up with ideas like that when
I was a little kid like the
first thing I ever invented
uh we lived on a dirt road so I made um
like a drawing of like
screen windows for cars I was
like because I wanted to have the windows
open because we didn't
have AC but like I didn't want
dirt and stuff to fly in the car and like
like filters for cars
yeah yeah but I was like six
years old when I made that and so I had
always been making stuff
and I at this point I had made
this prototype for um it sounds like crazy
story so anyway um you
know how women would in the in
the like the late 90s early 2000s were
using those big velcro rollers like I
people probably still
use them you know that big velcro hair
rollers you know I'm talking
about like to put in your hair
oh yeah yeah yeah and so I didn't use them
obviously but I saw these women at the gym
and like they're they would bring all these
rollers with them and their
gym bag would just be full of
rollers and I was like there's a better way
to do that so I made um a
prototype I went to Joanne
fabric and I bought this velcro and a hot
glue gun and I made
velcro rollers that were just
like in squares and you could like roll
them up different sizes so
you could just put them in a
packet you know what I'm saying yeah and so
I had made that
prototype but then I am like uh
a nobody living in the you know in Milford
Michigan and I didn't
know what you did next
you know like I don't know how you get
something made or do you get
a patent nothing like that so
it just so happened that there was a
company called Hometix
which maybe you guys have heard
yeah so that company is in Michigan and
they had an opening for
like a marketing position
and so when I went I was like I'm gonna
bring this prototype with
me that I made and I ended
up getting a job as a product an assistant
product person instead of like a marketing
copywriting type of job because I showed it
to the guy who I
interviewed with who was like the
the COO of the company who ended up being
like my my the biggest
mentor in my in my life and so I
worked my way up through that company as
far as I was gonna get like
I was only gonna get so far
but I have um I ended up with a bunch of
patents with them like for
a while there I was making
most all the sound machines that exist you
know like the little like
noise machines they get for
babies yeah like that I I was making all
the almost all the ones
that were on the market
at the time you were inventing them the
sound machines uh-huh like
I had um I had a few that
were just straight up like my my product
and I would work with the
engineers to you know design
them and then go back and forth to China to
work with the factories
and all of this stuff and I
really like looked into this job by like
bringing them that prototype I had with the
no no no but what's funny is somebody else
did and this is this is
what's interesting about the
entire world like even now on TikTok not
too long ago I got an ad
for a product I invented
like no because they'll just steal it like
in China that's how it
goes like if you don't like
it's very hard to like protect things but I
was like no way that's my
thing I like one of my one
of my first products that I made with the
company but um so surreal
I can't even that's such a
unique life experience what you just
described yeah I think so
I'll send you I'll text you the
because I made a video about it it's old
like it's from a while ago
now yeah and um so anyway uh
after I left there um yeah I had so many
amazing experiences there like we the
company had a private
jet you know I would I would fly uh to
China like all business
class and we always stayed
this was before Trump was the Trump that we
know now but like he had
just beautiful hotels and so
we would always stay at all the Trump
hotels and I had I had
such a fancy life um and this
is working here what early 30s yep and so
um Aspen and Viv uh were
like five and four I think maybe
when I started working there and so you're
traveling then well this
is what happened and so
I didn't really start traveling until after
uh my ex and I got
divorced and I tell everybody
the only reason why I have my career is
because we had 50-50 custody
if I ever gotten divorced I would not have
my career because it was always like
like I had to come home like what you're
saying you know like even if
you're working you're still
mom who is doing everything yeah and so I
would schedule all of my
work travel on the days that
I didn't have the kids and um and that's
that's how we were able
to build your career and
participate in all aspects of it so how
come you guys got
divorced um honestly it we just
ultimately were not compatible and um and
like it was all me it was
all me he was gonna sound so
bad um I I don't think he actually liked me
like I I honestly think
it was more like um what do
they say in Sex in the City like when the
taxi light is on yeah and
like um my daughter uh she
always brings it up it's like the taxi cab
theory or something like
that but it's not that yeah
like when you're ready the next woman that
shows up is the one they're
gonna marry and that was me
and even when we were dating before we even
left Denver I was like you
don't like me you know like
you know like and I tried to break up with
him I was like I swear too
much I'm too wild you know
like all this stuff like you don't actually
like me and he was like no
no no he never fully accepted
you like he was always kind of trying to
change you that's what how
I felt right and so um and
yeah so that's I was like yeah do you do
you think your professional
success had anything to do with
it definitely didn't help like me wanting
to go back to work because
I I was dying at like I was
saying about being a stay-at-home mom and I
was like I'm I can't do
this and probably going from
dying to thriving though and something
sounds like that yeah it
really you know um and people it was
it was very guilt-ridden at the time
because people would be
like well why did you even have
kids which is a crazy assertion to make you
know nobody says that to a
man um and and I remember
when I first started working there like the
guys that I worked with
they were like because I'd be
there late you know because I was thriving
and like loving life and
they're like don't you have
to go home you know and I was like well my
husband's home you know what they yeah yeah
you know like don't you have to go home
yeah no no no exactly
exactly and so um yeah yeah so then
you did you file were you the one that oh
yeah yeah I was I was the
the one I was just like I can't
um yeah the I couldn't we had um there's
probably more stuff that I
don't want to get into but we
had a lot of political disagreements um
where he had over time
become very very conservative
and and we went to therapy and I remember
the one time the
therapist said you know like some
couples grow together like this and then
other couples grow like
this and I I was like that
that's what's happened so then when you got
divorced I assume you had to stay living in
Milford right with the girls so um I I just
got an apartment like
down the street and I let him
have the house because I was like just you
know how it is well maybe
you don't know how it is but
you just like want it to end you know and I
was just like whatever you
have the house and um and
so I got an apartment down the street and
um we always lived uh even
after I bought um a house
and whatever we lived down the street from
each other so the girls
didn't have to change schools
and everything was very smooth for them yes
yeah and you guys
co-parented really well together
yeah I I mean in the end like we um he like
he does not like me um
and it's not like and uh and
but it was we were always there for the
kids and um he was actually he is an
awesome dad and um he
he was probably better at a lot of things
than I was as a mom you
know when it came to like as
the kids got older um with me traveling all
the time for work and
stuff he was always the one who
was like taking the kids to like their
sports and and all that stuff
and he got super involved my
my youngest is actually like a third degree
black belt in uh wow
Taekwondo and um and he was like
got and she was like at one point when she
was 12 she was like the
international champion to
champion in her belt class but that was
like travel that was
travel though you know yeah yeah
florida traveling to you know canada you
know all that type of stuff
that's so cool yeah and he and
the way we kind of split it though was that
I would stay home with my
oldest you know and then he
would travel so it wasn't like this big
family expensive affair and um yeah I uh
probably you guys when you got divorced I I
think one of the pros if
you have if your ex-husband
I'm speaking as a woman is going to be a
good father or is a good
father one of the pros of
divorce is they step up have to step up and
are more involved with
their children and it ends up
being such a positive experience for their
children that relationship with their father because the
mother isn't there to fall back on so they
have to do even more with
them and as a result their
relationship is even better in some ways
you know because they I think
so they they have so many of
those little nuanced experiences together
because there isn't the
mother there yeah if he's going
to be a good dad that doesn't always happen
right you know no if he
was he was a great dad um and
he still is a great dad yeah that's great
so then you so you guys get divorced you have your own
place that actually probably was pretty
cool right getting your own
apartment oh my god it was
okay yeah no it was um
her own place in and our house that would
be perfect oh my god it
was honestly like I was just
like wow like it was very stressful you
know don't get me wrong
because back then I was still like a
young product person I was not making a lot
of money you know whatever so it was very stressful
but um but yeah definitely having my own
place but then also it was
just like coming back alive
and dating again was absolutely crazy
because I've been with my ex
since I was 20 years old you know
I'm like 30 like yeah it was like 34 at the
time so and that would have
been when apps were dating
apps were like what were the dating apps
then so it wasn't apps yeah oh okay yeah so it was
yeah oh okay yeah so this all happened like
very quickly like it
wasn't apps on the phone it was
match.com on the computer oh yeah yeah and
there were a few others
that are now gone like
maybe it was called chemistry and then
there was um e-harmony which
I did not do but it was before
it was prior to tinder and like all of
those so what was it like
going back in the dating world
and having meeting men and all of that like
did I learn every single
lesson and this goes to like
what we were talking about on on text but
it was like um at first at
first I was very much like oh
I'm gonna find a love you know or whatever
you know because like I
had just picked wrong for me
you know like we were ultimately not
compatible and I had picked
wrong and I blamed myself you
know you got married too young you know all
this stuff so the world is
my oyster like I I was I had
met my ex so young that I didn't like I
didn't have bad ideas about
men you know in general like
I didn't I didn't have any kind of bad
taste in my mouth I was
like oh it's gonna be a fucking
carnival up here so I was like so excited.
You're rubbing your hands together unless
it's because like if I if I love anything
on earth it's making out
you know give me some good old
fashion dry hump and like that's my house
and so anyway I could not
wait to get back out there and
I and I realized like things had changed
you know like when it came
to um sex when it came to
expectations when it came to like anything
and a lot of it for a long
time I was very much like
um we're just older you know like when
you're with somebody from
you guys know from very young
you're kind of like this is how we do it
this is what we like we know
each other whatever yeah well
this was when I first came upon like the
expectation of hairlessness you know
because like yes you know
Gen X we went into our marriages full bush
yes it was just like
cleaning up a bikini line you know
so you know like you know scare people out
in public but like yeah
if that was it and then all
of a sudden it's like oh yeah take this
down to the studs like that's crazy yeah
true well like not only now to the legs and
the arms every we're
hairless cats basically
yeah bazillion wax like what yeah I the
first time I did that I
was I'm pouring sweat the wax
can't even attach because I'm just like
pouring sweat and then she
like rips it off and I'm like
bleeding like oh my god I'm French we have
like big hair bowls you
know like so like we are hairy
people and I'm like never doing this again
you know like to put here I
remember I had to put like
my legs up like had my like I'm giving
birth like when you get
birth and you have to hold
it was like I'm like okay you know you're
just like Gen X you're
like whatever you say I'll do
I'm a people pleaser but I yeah and then
and then people like
started getting it lasered and all
that stuff oh I know too I never went that
far because I'm thinking
out like now I think bushes
are coming back I think they are yeah I
think Gen X women wandering around with
like a calloused hood
oh
we look like the Gen Z's
that can't grow a full beard
it's gray and she's out there like
yeah well we just we just well no but the
young men they like you
didn't go through this and I
don't know if millennials brought it they
manscaped the Gen Z too yeah
I have my I uh he'll kill me
I won't say it because he's my interesting
mother my mother you doing
well he's Gen X so they they
don't barely shower so he's like oh go
ahead now can you imagine
shaving your balls like that is
insane but I think they do and I think they
hold their leg up too it's
so dangerous like it's like
nothing but like it's like a finished paper
you want to have
children you know don't do it
it's permanent but an artery exactly no but
okay so so you're in the
dating scene you're a hairless
cat and then how's it going oh then and
then also there's like so I
purposefully this is where I
made so many mistakes like I purposely was
like I want to date
somebody who's also been divorced
you know same experience I want to date
somebody who also has kids
same experience right like I'm
just thinking about this completely wrong
because I'm not dating a
woman I'm dating a man you know
and and so and then I wanted somebody who
didn't want kids again you
know I didn't want to ever
have more kids right and so um I'm just I
end up dating just an
absolute bushel of like busted
divorced men like men who like we in
Michigan too yeah right like exactly like
for the record it's beautiful and I lived
there so oh like we we
they're everywhere I've got a
family in Troy a family mil for I have my
family name of town I have a
family there but um I didn't
grow up there I just would visit my dad
when they got divorced when I
was two I'd go spend like six
weeks because of summer and like every
other Christmas so I didn't
grow up there but you know
a mission I know for a year after we were
married so he went through
a Michigan winter yeah like
it's like Canada cold um so he knows he
worked in Michigan during
that year so we are familiar with
it right right so I'm dating and like all
of these men like I didn't
learn this until learning right
again like I said I have a hard time not
like learning stuff
until I experience it and all
these men had been divorced by their wives
like because women are
always the ones who file for
divorce and why did they do that either
because he cheated or he ate
shit like that's like one of
the two reasons like yeah because like a
woman and I do I do think
this is hard like you know
in the online world and whatever women are
not just throwing out
amazing men you know and they
just aren't and so I learned the hard way
though you know like
because you believe oh my ex was
crazy you know and I like on and on and on
and um and then it like
boils down to just like the
like the sex world had gotten freaking
weird and I was thinking about
this prior to our conversation
and I'm just like for a while there I I
think I just thought we
were just older and now like
like I said about being with somebody since
you're young and I was like oh this is what
older people do you know so all of a sudden
it's like do you mind if I
get graphic no oh no we're
talking about everything oh okay so like
all of a sudden you're
getting choked you're you know
expected to do anal like the menu of
services yeah like compared to
what we had when we were young
you know which was basically like oh 69 was
like that was crazy
and um and doggy and then
and being on top and then and then uh
regular but that was it
yeah it sounds more interesting
and if she where she was going like you
said 69 but that that was it
right you know was like scary
and weird and not expect like that wasn't
something that was part
of the natural repertoire
that was more fetish or like you would say
he asked for he asked
for anal can you believe it
but then it's now like I think just that's
they brought it in and
maybe it was around that time
it was brought in well and I do think it's
because um like we were
talking about just the um the porn
yeah like I went from the Gen X life of
like what we knew about
porn and I think you've
seen my video on it and basically like we
know you know like you uh
when we were kids who saw porn
the pervs and the trench coats who went to
the triple x theater right
and that was when we were
really little and we were like those guys
are so gross like we we
talked about it that way they're
losers who can't get girlfriends they don't
have wives they're
disgusting perverts and then as we
got older obviously we got VCRs you know
and and in the 80s too I
was thinking about this like
we have naked ladies in movies yeah so like
you were we were always
seeing boobs and bush you know
like on and around and about to get killed
by somebody yes and
everything and everything you were
seen was natural it wasn't all it wasn't
this expectation of big
things you know it was like
real boobs not I have nothing against fake
boobs at all but everything
went so fake that and we'll
probably get the bet that I think young men
expect boobs to all look
like fake boobs yeah they don't
right I mean so but then the young men the
gen x men when they
were watching those movies
at least it was all real so when they saw
when they saw the real thing
it wasn't like a jump scare
which it might be for the young men but
they're like why aren't
they all up here why are they
no why is one bigger than the other why
aren't they perfect yeah why
can I tie them behind her neck
so we do it all
yeah pretty much yeah so then you know
obviously we get VCRs right
yeah you still had to as a man
publicly out yourself if you wanted to
watch porn you had to go to a triple x
theater or you had to
go to the blockbuster not even blockbuster
like the little family
video or whatever and go behind
the curtain but they had your license they
knew who they had your
credit like they on record you
rented you know like two milfs fisting you
know whatever it was and
you had to risk that you had
to be seen as the creep who went behind
them and and other men
would judge other men for this
you'd be like okay you're a loser you have
to wank it because you
don't have a girlfriend
and then you know obviously playboys and
all that existed and um
you know like so we found my
brother and I found my dad's playboy stash
in the basement once you
know when I was like visually
scandalized and then I remember my brother
came home and he had
like a porn tape like he had
gotten from a friend and he he like showed
it to me because my brother
and I were super close he's
like you have to see this this is crazy and
I I wanted to throw up
like I was I was like 12 or 13
years old um and I we put it in the VCR
after school right you know
watch key kids yeah and um
I was like that's what sex looks like I was
so upset it traumatized
well because it was also like
the angle it burned into my mind it was
like literally from the
like the guy's butt like going
in it's like it's visual for men men want
to literally see the
medical act like they do actually
yes see the penis going in the vagina it
like turns them on where
women are so much more nuanced
like we like the idea of what's going on to
see it ever you know we're
not visual like that but I
mean we've talked about I've told you you
know we've had these
conversations where I'm like
we like that's why I find dick pics to be
such a weird thing because
no woman wants that we really
don't know but men men would want it but
men don't want it because
they're like the most yeah I don't
I don't get guys you don't get guys to send
a dick pic yeah fucking
crazy to me yeah yeah so
yeah all all that they had like throughout
time until the internet
was static images or if you
got a VCR tape but then also like what were
you even doing with it like
sitting in the living room
watching it with your family you know like
no like you like you had
to figure out the time yeah
be alone and struggle was real struggle was
real but the struggle
needed to exist that is my point
because now so I re-enter dating and all of
a sudden these guys are
disgusting and expecting me
to do disgusting things you know like what
I literally I don't want
to be choked I don't want
to be slapped I don't want to be like I
don't want to be peed on you
know like all this crazy stuff
they like I shouldn't would they just yeah
would they just try it or
would they at least communicate
with you so I I've talked about this with
like all of my friends
too and we all think that
it happened to multiple of us different
stories of like the
element of surprise you know like
where it's just like um oh I I slipped it
in you know like by accident
all of a sudden you're like
surprise annealing girl or whatever or or
like I remember being in a
shower with a guy and he's
just like oh I'm peeing on you you know and
I'm just like what is
happening and and like it's
always like this surprise element where
you're just like taken
aback I think that's part of the
uh the turn on too probably it's like it's
almost like not an assault
but it's almost it is it is a
free rail to the salt um and it's no no um
what do you call it consent
or anything but um I think
that's part of the hotness maybe in that
moment for them is um that
they they can just force it
on and it's also they're they're seeing how
far they can go how far
can I go with her oh she'll
let me do this I'm gonna try the next thing
yeah I couldn't even imagine
yeah it was it was horrible
it was a horrible time because also I felt
like well I should be
open right because I again I
I was so naive like I just honestly was
like oh they have my best
interest in heart or they're
they're gonna think I'm having a good time
with this you know and
we're gaslighting yourself
yes totally yeah totally I was just like
yeah this is probably
great you know this is probably
feel good or whatever and um and then I I
started um realizing the
other thing and this is the other
big lesson was that um I thought these guys
uh dicks didn't work
because they were old like
because a lot of them had ed problems right
really this is oh my
god yes and so and this
I'll get into it a little bit more but this
is so common and I was
like okay either of of course
gen x I turn on myself and I'm just like oh
my god he thinks I'm ugly
you know or whatever yeah
but then it was like over and over and over
and over again and it
started being very consistent
where guys could not get off unless they
did it to themselves so
I'm like wait what age are we
talking I'm in my 30s these guys are like
in their like 30s or 40s
and in my mind I was like well
they're just getting old maybe they need
viagra you know or whatever
and um I didn't think about it
it wasn't no it wasn't until I started
talking to my girlfriends
about it and I still talked
so this would have been in like um 2013 ish
you know so this is like
well into um uh like online
porn you know whatever and I realized
consistently that these guys
who had been separated from their
wives and started dating again they like
binged it you you ever see
the family guy where quagmire
discovers porn no oh this is very funny
because like it is it is
funny so quagmire discovers porn
and like he doesn't leave the house and
when he comes out his
one arm is all jacked like
big muscle arm and that's like what I think
about with these guys you
know like they were separated
in divorce now and they got to be alone you
know in the house and then all of a sudden
they're also gen x guys who like fully
fully just got to go to
town yeah binge endless
content for free like yeah and weird shit
too though and weird and
then you keep going down
into these further rabbit holes of like
weirder and weirder stuff
that it takes to like get you
there and um and I wrote about it like in
because I was writing on
medium there for a while and I
wrote an article about it in like 2017 or
whatever and it was
basically like they're they get
habituated to like the psi of their own
hand you know so like they
can't even be with a real woman
and like get off again because of the
visuals like they've put those
visuals of like women who have
had medical procedures and and all of that
stuff into their mind and
um and it's what's really sad
now um is a bunch of things like I think as
gen x that we have a very
unique perspective on this
because we got to see the evolution like we
were with guys in high
school when it was just making
out and fun you know and everything was a
mystery and now the kids in
high school they're I don't
even know I don't even know it's honestly
so disturbing and I get I
get really upset about it
because I would love for us to do something
about it as society like
I think we should be doing
something to especially stop the kids from
seeing this stuff but it
really seems like nobody is
doing anything and here's what I realized
it is because after I
started experiencing this because
the men would also send me videos that was
the other thing like
they're like oh let's see you
know oh does this turn you on is this what
you're into you know and
endlessly sending me videos and
I'm like what the fuck is happening and so
I I started talking to my
friends about it because
we all had like younger kids at the time
and the moms did not know
they didn't know because they
had been married and with their husbands
and all this stuff they did
not even know what the kids
had access to because even logically they
couldn't believe it was free
yeah yes why would this just
be free yeah and um and I was like look on
my phone like just here it
is you know like yes whatever
and they were appalled but I hate to say it
all their husbands knew
yeah and and that's just it
so what I realized is that it's always the
moms who are doing what
mothers against drunk driving
where like when we were young it was you
know whatever tipper gore
doing the whole explicit
lyrics thing it was nancy reagan with just
saying drugs you know like
it's women who stop this shit
but what's unique about the porn situation
is that it's too
embarrassing for us and and and what I
mean by that is that um if I talk about it
like I get called every
name in the book you know and
then you're at like a certain age where
you're like oh you're just
an old broad who's not getting
any or you get accused of being like super
religious right rather
than just being like no
I don't think your kid should smoke crack
and I also don't think
yeah be watching step sisters
fuck when he's 10 yeah I agree 100 like
that is like we have to
do something to stop it and
everybody is just like what can we do I
don't think there's a
solution though because in Florida
they do ask for age verification now oh do
they interesting but
there's vpns to get around it
yeah or there's just sites that won't
comply and there's just no way
to block it but so I don't you
know I mean I hear you I don't disagree but
with AI now now there's AI
porn well yeah I definitely
think one thing that would help is that and
I think that they're doing
this in the UK um is just
give kids dumb phones you don't get
smartphones if like I want to
track you or whatever you just
you get a dumb phone I don't care if you're
like we all need to agree
yeah I'll need to agree I know
because I love I what I love about the my
kids when they've had
phones and our youngest still
has when he's 15 is the family group check
because we all communicate with each other
throughout the day so that's awesome I love
being able to track him
and we still track her
we have our 20 year olds are the ones in
their 20s location we don't
track them but in case you
know there's safety whatever um so I like
the tracking I like to be
able to communicate with
them but I'm fine with everything else
being off of our youngest
phone and because yeah he has
you want to access yeah he has full access
to uh porn and I know my
oldest so for my oldest
he was he's 28 so phones just really came
on the scene when he was in
middle school up until then
there were no phones and I think it was
seventh grade when they all
started discovering porn on
their phones and I know for my 15 year old
I think I started here
whisperings of it maybe
fifth grade yeah and young it's too young
it warps their mind it
because to me it's like
a kid in a candy store like yeah it's your
favorite thing you know
like I like it is your
favorite thing and my even my brother will
say he's like had I had
access to that as a kid I
would have never left home yeah I would be
one of the kids in the
basement like yeah because he was
just that 40 you know and he had like a
couple of posters in his
room and that was like yeah
and so I do tie this all to you know the
whole male loneliness
crisis that we talk about and
all of that stuff because I do think boys
have largely lost their
mojo like if you never have
to work to see a boob if a boob is just in
your pocket and has been
there yeah it's great like
so much of what men have always done and
pursued women for were like
those moments and that access
and you know all of that stuff it was like
it was a great thing you
know like we were like oh first
base second base you know all all of our
genics periods and everything yes it's the
there's no slow burn technology I've said
this before technology
and phones have removed the
slow burn because even the pursuit they
don't even have to pursue in
the same way it's all through
their phones there's no uh crossing the
room to say hello you know
it's great it's and you can
and my older one he's very anti get kids
having social media and
all that and he's like it's
messed up because you know you can they're
they're they text you text
back and forth even with the
dating apps but you're giving everybody so
much time to create their
response so it's like the
perfect response and then when you're face
to face it's like the
communication totally breaks down
because you weren't that person who was
being able to come up with that perfect
response you had time
to think of it so then you lose the ability
to think quickly and have
that natural banter because
you've been doing it all through technology
and had all had been given
the privilege of having all
this time to come up with the perfect
wedding response so that
skill isn't practiced does that
make sense yeah you know so I think that's
been the breakdown but
I'm sorry you were gonna say
something no I'm just curious there's a
question for both you guys
and then something you said
just spurred the thought for me but when
growing up as gen x women
were sexualized right there was
charlie's angels there was the cover of the
supermodel emerged then but
porn was still hard to get
yet to work for it yes it feels like and
this is the question it
feels like it's no longer
as okay to sexualize women but the porn's
easier to get and it's more
graphic yeah I think we're
living in a very uh a time that makes no
sense because like yeah
like on that front because
I've often said on some videos like um how
do we still have a movie
rating system like why bother
having an r-rated movie when we have kids
watching you know sock
puppet yeah you know and like
knowing what a cream pie is like when
there's yeah yeah what the
fuck and um and so I I think
that at the same like what you're saying is
like this is why and I know
this is getting too in the
deep weeds of like online discourse but I
think this is why we see
so much manosphere content
being obsessed with women's body counts so
just think about it this
way these guys it is now 2025
so since since the 2000s because you could
look at porn on your
laptop you know it didn't need
to be a cell phone and so all these guys
have habituated their
minds to believing this is how
girls act like this is how they act with
sex they're doing all
these men you know and that
is what has been impregnated into their
minds since they were
eight nine years old and they
started you know looking at this stuff so
that's why they're all like
oh you have so many bodies
you're disgusting and that's why they're
like like just like oh a
virgin you know is like you're not
gonna be like this girl that I I believe
exists because that's the
other thing when they're
looking at stuff like OnlyFans and they're
looking at you know porn it is an endless a
seemingly endless variety to where you
think this is every woman
I've just I have looked at
every woman on the planet so like every
woman is doing this and I
think that that is why you know
these guys have like so what you were
asking about like not
sexualizing women and all of that stuff
I think it's just like uh they they end up
hating women instead you
know they're they're like all
they want to do is sexualize us but then
they're being told like that's
inappropriate and that's
why they're so like angry about me too and
I'm just gonna get I
can't go near a woman because
what I would do would be inappropriate
because everything they saw
and learned was inappropriate
yeah not how to actually act they have been
watching you know a a
a sister screw her step
brother because you know he he was lying
naked on his bed and she
just pushed the door open like
yeah like yeah and and I do think um uh I'm
sorry I get this so heated about this but I
I do think that um this is also why they
they can't connect
because they see that it's real
people like they don't learn like this is
literally the WWE you know like you need to
think about this is fake this is fake
reactions this is fake
activities you know like she does
not like what is happening to her you know
like these videos of women
just being like slammed on
concrete and like men coming at all angles
you know and all this
stuff like there's so much
horrible stuff and she's coming off like
she likes it but they
don't realize it's acting yeah
because it's really happening you know yeah
and so it's not like a
green screen or something
and I think it has warped them way more
than we dare to admit and I
get very frustrated listening
to podcasts that often talk about um young
girls getting affected by
Instagram you know like all
all these you know social media is just
hurting young girls and we're not
addressing how this is
affecting boys yeah and I I truly believe
in a lot of ways this is
why like you know girls are
pulling ahead they don't have this interest
like they haven't been lost
in the sauce you know like
which like I said I do believe this has a
lot to do with boys mojo you
know for them wanting to get
out of the house and pursue a woman pursue
a good job all of that stuff
it's always been because of
sex it's always been this is why I want to
get a fast car this is why I
want to make a lot of money
you know but but I think it's been so it's
been for it's been for sex it's been for
I want to get that a woman I want to get a
girlfriend I want to get a wife I feel like
that's been more of an end game more of a
relationship tied to it like you're like I
I don't know I could be wrong but I feel
like it wasn't just to to
fuck multiple multiple multiple
women choke multiple women you know have
anal with multiple women
I feel like at least back
when we were growing up it was yeah when
you're younger dating
girls or getting girls but then
eventually even those men had the end game
of girlfriend wife you
know and I do think it was
maybe I hate to say this they were just
raised a little bit better
you know like if you think about
how our silent gen and boomer parents were
they're like they always
had the threat of pregnancy
right so we were raised even even though we
had access to birth
control we had access to abortion
we didn't really like I I couldn't just go
I lived in the woods I
couldn't just go find a
gynecologist and I definitely did not know
who it would be some witch
you know a hill who would
give me an abortion so I didn't know and
and and also we were raised
very religious too so I was
I was terrified like I had sex for the
first time when I was 17
and I swear to god I had every
method of contraception contraception like
shoved up there I had
condoms I had a sponge I had
spermicidal jelly like I said at all I was
like that was a chemical
soup you're like I was so
terrified for round two you know joking
very funny you know
peace on you when we're done
but I the shock though I yeah because you
go from even you know with
your ex-husband you know it's
probably more traditional oh for experience
and then you get out there
and it's like and I'm sure
he treated you respectfully right in your
marriage right so in that at
least in there that area so
then you get out there and you have these
men coming to you so
aggressively because they've
been able to have access to all this shit
it had to have been I mean
you had to have been like well
it sounds like you were worrying with okay
um I just don't know and
so I'm gonna do this because
this is how it's supposed to be and I'm
sure it's fine everything's
fine I'm sure it's fine but also
the other part of you is probably like what
the fuck what the fuck is
going on and so how do you
how do you balance that how do you find any
um like any way to go
with that how what did you do
with that I I went along with a lot of it
because a lot of it happened
it happened and then I would
the next day or the later that night be
like what the fuck was that
because it was just happening
to me you know and I was like I had already
said like you know like
oh like okay you know like
we're gonna sleep together or whatever and
then everything would
just unfold you know yeah and
it would just get weird yeah and then shit
got weird and um the same
guy like after something
would happen would you cut it off then and
be like okay no or would
you give him a chance because
you're like well maybe this is how it's
supposed to be yeah I would
oftentimes I would tell them
like no you know after I'd be like I didn't
like that or whatever but
I was I was having a time I
was yeah I was uh I was being uh I was
doing all the things I
didn't do when I was younger
yeah like yeah they're they're every man in
Michigan that you know
they there are six degrees of Kevin Bacon
away from having fucked me
hey
it's amazing but really did see what was
going on out there I sure
did like I said I love nothing
more than making out yeah you know like all
all the things and so I
was like let's go have fun
you know and I yeah I had just it was like
I had sprung out of jail
because I had also been like
uh you know I didn't have my kids half the
time yeah so I joined a
band I was doing improv I was
like dating like it was my job you know
like one year one year I
went on like I had a spreadsheet
I went on like 72 first dates like yeah
like yeah and and like
obviously didn't hook up with 72 guys
you know um but uh yeah so in that in that
time because now dating
is so different like it's
coffee dates and it's splitting the bill or
there's this whole
like the young some of the
young men are like if I pay then she should
come home with me and
there's all this stuff going on
back then was it so fairly traditional like
where the guy took you out
and he paid and it wasn't as
complicated or was it something to get away
I really don't know
where this whole notion of um
women feeling like if a guy pays for your
dinner that you're supposed
to sleep with them yeah like
I honestly don't know where that's coming
from. I think the baby came
from some of those um I don't
know what they're called but those podcasts
with the men you were
talking about the manosphere
yeah I think I feel I don't know so just to
be clear I don't know
but I think I feel like it
came out of that a little bit you know
because it's new and I don't have a
suggestion. Yeah it's
like the high value man concept of well
it's it's weird it's this
weird flip of I should also be
treated the same way men treat women and
you take me out and you
open the door for me and
it's I don't understand these men that want
to be treated like women
like which don't like there
should be pride in acting like a man and
being in your masculine and
letting her be near feminine
but not an impressive weird way just in
like a normal man-woman
respect enjoyable way. The amount
of young couples I have seen at the gas
station where the woman is
out of the car pumping the gas
and he's just sitting there like a
passenger princess I want to
toss a match like burn this
whole place down like get out and pump or
gas. It's a fast I don't
get it it's fascinating though
because you do see that where women work
and men stay home and play
video games and the women take
them right or they get out and they pump
the gas and the dude's just
sitting there right I think of
them they're fucking losers to me oh
they're losers I'd be mad at my daughters
that was going on I would
be real pissed. You're not talking about
though like if it was a
situation where she's the bread
winner and he's choosing to be a
stay-at-home dad he's awesome
at it. He worked it out he's
dad who stays home with kids and all that.
You're talking about the guy
that's just sitting playing
video games and letting her do everything.
Yeah that's a major
problem. Yeah that's a major
problem. Yeah so I don't know I don't I
don't understand this at
all and I and I always say
it's up to the girls you got to stop you
got to stop letting them
and then people get mad at me
why is it always up to the girls I'm sorry
they're these men are going
to take what they're being
allowed to take they're not going to stop
so it's up to the girls.
It's 100% up to the girls.
That's what I say that nicely. No it is
because you let people treat
you however you're going to
let people treat you. I mean I can take
advantage of you if you don't
let that happen. Parents need
to raise their sons to do better so as a
mother I you know I don't
open the door. There's plenty of
boys out here though. There girls have to
say nope. Even my 15 year old
he I stand he get every I will
not touch groceries I don't touch the door
and the reason I do this is because I'm
because I'm like I'm the queen it's because
I want them to treat
their future partner that way.
Yeah I'm trying to raise a man who treats
the does those special
things for her because that's
important in a relationship. I think yeah
my daughters like I said
they're 21 and 22 and my
youngest she's been with her boyfriend
since high school and and he's
a great kid and you know always
like even will get out of the car go around
open her car door you
know like all of that stuff
always has he's awesome and then my my
oldest she's you know
dating sometimes and whatever and
we we've talked about everything all of
this stuff and you know I
think a lot of young women
are always at risk of gaslighting
themselves like you were saying earlier
like you're like okay
I think I saw this like she was just dating
this boy for like a little
while um just a couple of
months but like on the first date he like
didn't you know um walk her
to her door you know and all
of that stuff and she was just like oh he's
just he's only 22 too so
maybe he he has to learn you
know like what I like and all this stuff
and I was like okay let's
see how that goes and then
fast forward a couple months she's like
absolutely not why did you why
didn't you stop me in my tracks
I was like I can't you know I'm gonna tell
you what I'm gonna tell
you but if by accident he's
gonna end up being my son-in-law I can't
just like shit on the
kids yeah on the entire time
it's so true yeah you you do kind of have
to learn and I do
think the hard part is like
you know how you feel you know how as a as
a woman you know how
you were raised you know
how you saw your dad act or whatever and
then you're you want to have
a boyfriend you know you're
you you're horny and young and you know and
you want to get married
someday and all this stuff
and so you just forgive a bunch of behavior
that you shouldn't I was
so guilty of that oh my god
there were so many things in my life that I
could have been like oh
hell no you know but then you
know I've learned my lesson now like now
fast forward because I got
married again after my uh
my first marriage and then I'm divorced
from him too and I I've not
dated since and I won't like
it's been like four and a half five years
or something like that
and I you will not catch me
on an app you will not catch me on a date
like but you're just done
yeah yeah I feel and my family
gives me a hard time um because they're
like oh well you know don't
close off your heart like my
mom is such like a fantasist like she's
just like whatever you know
maybe god god has somebody for
you and I'm like mom like I can't tell her
I've already fucked the
planet well at least all of
Michigan and and so I'm like how many more
men am I supposed to
entertain on earth like I can't
I can't and uh so yeah how long have you
been done done for like uh
since I broke up with my last
husband uh like five years so when did you
okay wait I want to go
back real quick when what did
you do in a band you said you joined a band
I was a singer so could
you always sing was that part
of your theater well remember remember I
couldn't because I had I had like the nose
but but I could hear and so I played the
french horn like I said for
eight years and um you have
to you have to be able to like sing through
the french horn to play
the french horn like it's a
specific it's a specific thing um different
than like other
instruments where you just like press
the the keys down and you make a sound like
for the french horn you
have to like you only have
like you only use like two keys so you're
actually using your voice
when you play the french horn
your voice it's like you have to hear that
you're in tune and you're
kind of making the sound also
it's hard to explain um and and so but you
definitely have to it's
not like a piano where
you tune a piano and then you hit a key and
it's the right sound you
have to kind of listen to it
so I could always like hear you know hear
if I was in tune here if I
was out of tune and I knew
like when I had my my nose issues that I
was always just horrible
and flat I just couldn't
make the right sound yeah and um so after
that I challenged myself
um and joined the band and
was a singer there for a while how'd you
get connected with the
band like it was it was I
started at um taking voice lessons and so
it was like a connection
through the the voice lesson
was this after your divorce yes because I
got to do things yeah one
of your new things you got
you had your new apartment and then you
were buying new things so
you started picking voice
lessons and then through that did you meet
people that were starting a
band um yeah it was all part
of the school so it was at the school and
they had they had other
lessons there they had other so
it was all girls in my band and they had
lessons you know for bass
and guitar and drums and all
of that stuff so it all got banned yeah
yeah and it was really fun
and um but there it did get to
with everything even with improv and stuff
my uh my career overtook
like I had to travel too
much I had to get up too early you know all
kind of being an adult
right yeah yeah were you doing
the improv along with the band or was that
like separate I did the
improv after I was after the
band I was like I gotta do something else
you know so so you're doing
the band you're doing improv
you're traveling for work um you're dating
in this weird world yep how long did you
date in this world until you met your
second husband um five
years okay it was a one year
dates yes yeah I met him on match okay the
week after I turned 40 um and uh then we
we've got married we flamed out real fast
like we should have
never gotten married but
at the time I was like um I I definitely we
wanted to live
together but I wasn't going to
live with a boyfriend considering we both
had kids right and I was
like we need to be a family
you know and again like very like
romanticized ideas you know
but we're going to be a step
family I'm going to be a stepmom and all of
this stuff and um yeah he
was my best friend like he
was definitely we were we were each other's
best friend but he it was
not it was an impossible
situation like there was just too much like
uh partying you know
and he like this is when
edibles and stuff became legal in Michigan
and like I truly believe
like they're just too strong
they're scrambling people's brains you know
and I think he like and he
was undiagnosed ADHD like
all sorts right it's not good to mix that
no yeah how long did you
guys when did you get married
like how long from the time you started
dating to when you got
married three years oh okay that's a
long time and then how long were you
married five okay so you also
also Covid happened and that
really made everything yeah because then
you're all together that
when that happened how do you
co-parent oh my god it was that was always
that was such a bad time
yeah because it was like um
I never thought about that how did people
co-parent during Covid so we
had times where we ended up
having everybody all at once like because
like if the step kids their
mom got Covid they weren't
allowed to go back there for you know six
weeks or however long it was
and um that really was a lot
of the nails in the coffin you know it was
during that time um it was
just a very stressful time
and then I also realized that my um my
stepson was kind of going
to be a failure to launch
type of situation and I hate this is this
is gonna make me sound bad but I just
couldn't I was like I
can't have this 20 something year old in my
house that I didn't raise
you know like there's there's
something um that I was just like I can't I
can't and so it just all
kind of fell apart really um
yeah I think I was just gonna say Covid's a
good test right it's either
it either works or it does
and that helped right that's or you know
expedite that decision I guess okay
listeners your eyes are
not deceiving you we are still with MJ
Eldridge but this is the next
day we had a time stop and so
it's kind of a part one and now you're in
part two so I am wearing
different clothes MJ is in
different clothes Brian is in the same uh
outfit he wears pretty much
every episode yeah not the same
exact I have changed and showered he has he
has but if you go by
Brian you'll never know which
episode it is so we are in kind of part two
so we're back with MJ
welcome back yeah it's good to
be back well I feel lucky we get two days
with you so where we left
off was Covid hit and things
kind of went a little bit downhill with
your second husband um you
guys got divorced and then
what happened then what with your life well
okay so we we split up like
we tried at first to do like
the uh together living apart type of
situation now ultimately
that that just didn't work but
it took us a while to get divorced because
again I'm the woman I have
to do it and during that time
was um I I decided that I should go move
back east right because I
grew up here and my whole
family is here my mom's 77 you know and I
was like my kids uh were out
of the house essentially so
my um oldest was uh at going to the
University of Michigan my
youngest um she was uh graduated
high school but she was gonna go live with
her dad you know so because
I was like I have to take two
things actually I had to take advantage of
the market and sell our
giant house like that was
the number one thing that was really
driving me because you
remember housing was like awesome at
the time like all the prices were through
the roof um I did not
need I had you know myself in
this house it was like 4 000 square feet
like something stupid and
so I decided I should start
looking for a job back east so I um found
the job with the company
that I'm with and I moved back
east my um my oldest when she was off from
college she would come out
here and um stay here and uh
work out here and whatever but yeah so that
was in like um 2022 yes by
the time you moved were you
guys done and divorced no no no you know
this is funny so um it took
a while like for me to file
the paperwork you know and all that stuff
because you know I'm moving
and whatever and then I finally
got around to doing it and then um you know
the court date got said it
was uncut like no contests
we didn't have kids or whatever together
and so um so so then when
it was finally final I was in
Arizona for work and um I had to get a late
check out because like
all the courts would do
everything on zoom you know because of
COVID and so um I'm like sitting there
waiting for the judge
and then my ex-husband showed up it was
like his proudest proudest
moment I swear to god he was on
face like doing it on facetime or whatever
on his phone and he
was sitting on a jet ski
like he's outside on a jet ski getting
divorced on the phone and
then and then me I'm in this
hotel room and I'd asked for a late check
out but they're like during the thing
that's like housekeeping
I was keeping like banging on the door I'm
like if this is an
emblematic of my entire life with
this guy that here I am stressed out
working you know sitting in a hotel room
and he's just like on
a jet ski oh my gosh well I saw you you
were like and this is
why and this is this is it
were you like hold on I'm getting divorced
I'll be out into you out
it was actually so fast I
want to say it was like seven minutes or
something it was so fast so
had you been working in Michigan
at that same company where you had done the
inventions no no so I
had left home medics um
2014 2015 and then I started doing startups
so it was interesting my my
time at home medics was all
coinciding with the crash right so like um
and most of our uh clients
like a lot of our customers
were like remember old businesses like
linens and things and bed
bath and beyond you know and
all these places start like linens and
things closed and then
bed bath and beyond started
really struggling like everybody started
struggling so um my company
started truly struggling and
because I was like a junior person they
kept they were firing all
of the guys who made a lot of
money you know like so like all the the
managers and all of that
stuff so slowly over time I got
to learn like every single aspect of the
business because I had to do
all the jobs you know so I'm
making products but then I'm also learning
about um all of the the
logistics and the shipping and
you know like and you know working directly
with the customers and all of that stuff so
uh when I left there I started working with
startups and so now I'm
on my my fourth startup
that I'm I'm working with now because I can
like I can I can take a
startup like teach them how to
set up all of their um all of their
operations all of their
product development all of their
you know logistics their sales like all of
that stuff because I had to
learn because of the crash
you know like I I lucked out it was it was
rough at the time because
we had two major rounds of
layoffs that were very devastating because
you have a lot of
survivor guilt you know yeah your
friends going too right yeah yeah like the
first round my boss um
actually he got fired and then
they hired him like temporarily to come
back and teach me how to do
his job oh my gosh how awkward
yeah yeah but I think he works there again
like I've heard that he
went back there so um it it's
such a unique place and like that world of
making products and stuff is
like it's just a very unique
microcosm and there's not a lot of places
you know that yeah that
you can really do that so
on that though um not that you're
underselling it but I think what what
you're describing too is
the international supply chain so you
probably is it kind of like
the you design it in the US
go to China probably Shenzhen and or
something like that and get
it made and sourced then you've
got to deal with the international
logistics of it coming over on boats and
figuring out the timing
and then distributing it throughout all
these retailers right
yeah and that and you so you
know that and you're now you're helping
startups do that yep yep
that's cool that's it in a nutshell
I've I've been to Shenzhen many many times
yeah but um but yeah like
I've been all over China
actually um but because it is interesting
like they're all where
everything is made is very
regional you know so it's like Shenzhen,
Xiaomen are all like the
electronics and stuff like that
and then you go further up north to like
Ningbo and places like that
that's where like a lot of
the handicrafts are made and um so like you
know like plates and
vases and stuff like that
and uh so it's just it's crazy what's
happening now you know from
my point of view and if you've
seen me talk about like the tariffs and all
this stuff like the level
to which people like me who
do that but not only like the way we're
fucking ourselves is
literally remarkable because we we
don't make anything like that in the
country anymore and um so
yeah and you know it's very
nerve-wracking because now you know I've
built my entire career on
making products and all this
stuff fortunately I still I have all the
tech side because a lot of
the products I've made have had
apps associated with them so I can still I
can do technology you
know startups as well but we
we need things as people you know yeah we
use things every day
targeted Walmart full of things
yeah Amazon I was I was in I got to go to
Shenzhen once I was helping set up a
sourcing office there
people don't hear don't realize how
oriented the Chinese culture
and society is there right to make
all this happen you don't just it doesn't
just appear they've got a
whole world focused on I
don't know I guess it's it's kind of a
pull-through system in some
ways right you figure it out then
you pull it rather than just design stuff
or or dumps product and push
it so it is one of the pull
right like so we um we taught them we
taught we yeah so we it was
a wild time to even have seen
China go from you know when I started going
over there in like 2020 until like you know
Covid like shut us down in like 20 2010 to
2020 so in 10 years time to
see how society had changed
in China just because of our western money
that we are pouring
into all of these you know
electronics places and everything like that
and like just think
about like the infrastructure
that Apple created with all of their Apple
products and that's just a small it's a big
portion but it's small relative to every
other you know uh
electronics company that makes in China
it's small people and it is it is very
interesting that I think a
lot of people don't realize that
yeah okay in the US we make these things we
design them and everything
but then like when you go to
another country whether it's like China,
South Korea, India, Taiwan,
any other place like yeah you
can say this is my design make this but you
have to also kind of teach
them like not how to make
it because you'll you you know source a
factory that has
capability like you see that they've
made something similar okay like we know
you make speakers great do
you make speakers that have
bluetooth though because if not I need to
find somebody who makes
bluetooth you know so uh and
they have this raw capability but then you
have to teach them um about
the aesthetic that you need
that will translate to the US market and
they've gotten a lot better
at that like years ago they
you could tell something that was like a
straight Chinese product
you know that didn't have that
like American sauce on it and um and we're
always putting the American
sauce on things you know yeah
and the packaging and like what the
products are called all of that
stuff yeah um yeah so you know
I've noticed it's gotten better even on
Amazon the way they're
describing things and
because you I right away you know as a
consumer you if the
description wasn't you could tell you
like it was English instead of full-blown
English everything has gotten more
Americanized which is
smart marketing wise so well it's because
there's a whole subculture
of people like me who worked
explicitly with Chinese makers who want to
sell into the American
market so you'll take somebody
like me who has my skill set and you'll
hire me to work with
straight with the factory to be like
you know what no you should use these
colorways instead this is what what's
popular right now you
should you know you call it this write this
on the box you know all
sorts of stuff like that
so they've gotten hip to that and they use
people like me to sell on
Amazon and write the copy and
stuff like that so for the startups are you
working with startups
in America or startups
and okay so and those companies hire you as
a consultant basically as a liaison between
the China and their company so I have
always been hired you
know full-time like permanent
right I I I do some consultant work on the
side um but I I'm at my
current company I'm the head of
operations and product development and then
over the years I kind of
have a team of people who go
with me you know each place that I go where
you know I have um a guy
who does all my sourcing
and engineering work and you know he works
directly with the our
suppliers on the China side we have
somebody in China who is um a Chinese
national who will go visit
the factories we we've had to um
since Covid China was closed down way
longer than everyone else so
since Covid we've really just
developed a system where we don't even have
to go anymore because we
have um we have good people
with boots on the ground over there and um
that's what I've been doing
and it's you know it's not
necessarily um it's not a glamorous ideal
life like it's very
stressful working with startups
um but I my family thinks I'm crazy they're
like how do you not have
like some stable job I'm like
what is a stable job you know yeah you know
my mom my mom is like I
don't know I think she thinks I
should have like a pension somewhere I'm
like well I don't maybe
government workers still but other
than that those are out the window I think
maybe the railroad workers
still get them because he
has a cousin that works for the railroad in
Jersey I think they maybe the longshoreman
maybe police and firemen I think there's
still some yeah yeah the idea of a pension
it's not even like millennials and Gen Z
never would even think of
that no they probably most
of it to 401ks yes you know that kind of
stuff yeah yeah yeah the
pension yeah it's so funny my
my daughter was here a couple of weeks ago
and we were having
dinner with my mom and we were
talking about my mom was like the last
person at the bank where
she worked to get a pension
and I looked at Aspen and I was like do you
know what that is and she was so
mad that I said that was like but I I feel
like why would you know yeah that's true
she's like I went to school I was like so
they teach you about ancient history
that's a big class mom I have two top I
have two questions I'm gonna
forget so don't forget yours
but so when someone hires you they're kind
of hiring you and your
team then everyone moves
together like an amoeba but yeah a little
bit so like the the people
who I reach out to like I
they're not like my team that I pay you
know but it's like this
group of people who have followed
me around from place to place to place that
I always know that I can
be like hey this is our need
do you want to jump in do you want to bid
on this project you know
whatever and my one guy we've
been working together for like 15 years now
so and he and we hardly
ever like we talk on text we
talk on email we never talk on it's the
best relationship I've
ever had I'm not gonna lie
you might be on the phone thanks
exactly how involved I
want to be with a man
yeah that's probably priceless and part of
your success too is
that you have people you
can trust and that you've completely vetted
and has been on you know
yeah it's gotten to the point
with him like he's a little bit older I
want to say he's he's
probably like 60 now and I'm like
dude like if he doesn't text me back like
in a day I'm like I need to
know what our death plan is for
you like I need to tell like if something
happens to you if you get
hit by a bus like who am I
calling and and he's like don't worry I
told my wife she's gonna
contact you and I was like okay
and he's in China no no no he's here he's
here now he was stuck he
was so he married a Chinese
woman and he was in China for years and he
essentially got stuck
there during COVID like
where he would love to like move out but
they and he would tell me
and he would be like don't
like say like he would be nervous to text
it to me like because you
know the government and stuff
and um but they were so strict like they
live in a high rise there's
tons of high rises over there
and their whole high rise if one person got
a whole high rise locked
down nobody can get out
and then they were also like scanning
people the minute you walked
in and if you had a fever you
had to go leave and get quarantined
someplace else you couldn't
even go home like it was very
very very hardcore yeah I saw some stuff
during that time on TikTok
like people would kind of get
some videos out and it it definitely it was
a totally different world
yeah things happened here
too but China well they have leveled up on
that and they have apps on
their phones and if you've
been exposed or near exposure you would get
kind of not a social score
but you'd get kind of the
red green yellow type of thing yeah I know
someone who had that and
they weren't directly exposed
but they were at the mall the day someone
else was exposed or showed
up so now you're within the
blast radius even though you might have
been there three hours
later because they're tracking
everybody right they know where everybody's
going they're watching
everybody's phones it's a trip
but yeah but that's kind of going on what
was your question though I
interrupted you no it's cool
I've kind of probably two questions one is
um like I say I've been
there and I'm there as a guy
I'm six two kind of big um as a woman go in
there how was that to
navigate you know for me in Shenzhen
it's probably the only spot I've ever been
to where as we're driving I'm looking
I couldn't watch because it was crazy I was
like we're gonna die we're
gonna get in the cab it was
just like not watching but it's definitely
a male-dominated
society right you know how how
are you interacting with that is you kind
of further up you got I
would go I would be there
by myself first of all I don't speak
Chinese second of all and
I this is gonna sound crazy
um I found it to be very relaxing to just
like first of all I found
it relaxing because like not
understanding the language it is kind of
like being in a white noise
machine like you can't even
like you're just calm you know and and
relaxing and I know that
sounds crazy because I know what
you mean about driving around there and all
of that stuff and I was
just like look at all this
I feel it always I would always say I felt
like I'm unstuck on
earth like I'm unstuck in the
universe where it's like do my after two
weeks I'm like do my kids
even exist you know like you
feel like you're in this other like
alternate universe in a lot of
ways where everything because
I would have I would always have a driver
right that I would get
hired before I would go there
so that was always good and the drivers
could always speak English
very well and whatever and
I would feel safe with them and then um but
I would be you know at
on a factory floor for 12
hours straight it's freaking exhausting and
I would often say that
um I'm very claustrophobic
right and so um but I was fine doing
elevators and stuff in China because they
everything is taken care of more and like
there's it's all pretty cool
yeah people and people have
jobs that are like the smallest job but
it's a job like somebody's
own job there'll be one lady
whose job is to just sweep like a 10 by 10
area and that's all she's
doing and so but the other
thing of it is is that I think the job
itself was so exhausting and I was so
exhausted all the time
that there was no way I could feel anxiety
like I was just burned
out you know and um but then
there were times that I had like really
good times like um this one
guy Greg who I I as part of my
my posse that comes around with me um I met
him up there and he's
he's an American and um
Xiaomen is actually a beautiful place like
Xiaomen is um down like
towards Taiwan like you could see
Taiwan across the um water and um we were
down in Xiaomen and they
have all these outdoor bars
and it's like it's like a resort-ish area
and um and so they we went
and this is it's so crazy
because we went on this like these rides in
the park in the night and
I was like we could just
it was like one of those big shot things
that shoot you up you
know yeah slowly come down
and we were stuck up there for like half an
hour and I was like is it
broken are we just gonna the
sun's gonna come up and just burn my face
off you know in the morning
and what it was just that the
guy uh the guy running the ride wanted to
give us a good experience of
like sitting up there for a
long time and looking around but we
honestly thought that we
were just trapped but okay since
you guys are like la la la meanwhile you're
having an anxiety attack
you're like broken yeah and
America is broken because next right next
right next right there's
no like going up above so
yeah yeah yeah but I will say so I'm tall
I'm five seven you know I
have this big hair and whatever
so I always just felt like a like a monster
anyway like whether I'm in
Taiwan or China I'm just like
because the ladies there are so small like
yeah they're you have like
that's why when people order
clothes you know off of xian or whatever
you have to get like they
need to come up with just
American sizes because like their extra
large is like I don't know
our extra small okay I have to
real quick say something so my so Brian
because his dad's from West
Virginia and he's got family
from West Virginia and he spent summers in
West Virginia he has West
Virginia in him right he's
a huge Billy Strings fan I don't know if
you know who that is but
it's like he's he's like he's
awesome jam band bluegrass but so he has a
part to him that's very West
Virginia where this is going
so he he loves overalls so he'll wear like
denim around the house not
he's not allowed to go out
so allowed to go out not even in the front
after they're black he
has black he has a tan her
he has stripes yeah and so for his birthday
my daughter she texted me
first and said is it okay
if I get him overall shorts and I'm like
fine he ordered extra
large off Amazon it's it's a
like a woman's small like we're dying he's
like I can put these on
but part of me is going to be
hanging out of them that's reminded me like
literally I don't know
if I could fit into them
I'm returning them this week I feel like
that was a product that
got pushed and not pulled yes
that is the sizing error there is like and
they have a man on there
where I'm like it they don't
look like that picked it this is not this
is didn't match up so that
was one of those areas that
got through and it's not accurate they went
by piney sizing or
whatever yeah yeah and I I will
say this like I I also love the food um
like back when I first
started going a lot of the um so I
would go with like other people when I
first started going and a
lot of the Americans were
scandalized by the food you know they're
like I can't eat and they
would be the ones that the
you know anybody from the factories would
be like oh do you want
to find a KFC they always
could find a KFC or like a McDonald's but
me I'll eat I'll eat
anything and I love it and I
I'm like yeah I'll eat that fish's eyeball
you know like I'm here
I might as well you know
why am I doing it uh I don't really like
the eyeballs um but and
like chicken feet I had
chicken feet did you like it I it's a
texture thing for me like
yeah me too so the the Chinese
will eat what I consider to be like snot
texture they're like a lot
of their food is like uh salty
snotty like that type and which is gross
but that's that's a big
texture that they enjoy
and that's like the the chicken feet the
sauce on the chicken feet
is always really good but the
feet themselves are like very that
gelatinous you know yeah I
didn't like it and it actually
it raises another question so when you're
there because you know we
were out to dinner had this
big round table there's a bunch of us and I
think it's the lazy susan thing that's been
that's our old gen x term yeah yeah so that
thing's rolling around and
here comes the chicken feet
and I'm like all right I don't want to
offend anybody try this
then I'm like you know and I
finished it and they're like you like it
I'm like not really and they
so we spun it and they'd love
it yeah you went in on it it's a culture
thing though right that's
the thing that's what they're
like yeah yeah there's no waste probably no
waste whatsoever yeah you
eat it all and I also really
like um their style of eating they eat the
same foods breakfast lunch
and dinner there's not like
breakfast food and like a sandwich for
lunch and then a dinner food
it's the same stuff and I love
like all of it I love congee I love
dumplings I love it's so
much better than I don't like
American Chinese food because it's
completely different um but
yeah I so are there like how
when we breakfast at a certain time and
lunch and dinner do they
also have similar timings for
their meals yeah yeah they they definitely
do like they're they're
still like going to get lunch you
know in the middle of the day leave the
factory whatever and go out
to lunch and I'll say it's
like a little bit nicer at least the way we
were treated um you got
you sit down and have lunch
you know it's not just like let's sit in a
conference room and I'll
shove a sandwich and have a
working lunch like right yeah there's a lot
about like American work
culture that I do not care for
and like a working lunch is one of them
like yeah yeah eat and peace
or I don't want to eat at all
like yeah look at your powerpoint Jared
what I noticed though is
they would and this is more
office work as opposed to factory but they
would the day would start
later which was awesome so
instead of being in at eight it's like
let's meet tomorrow at nine
or ten and then to your point
at some point you go to lunch you go and
you sit down and it goes on
for a little while it does it
does it then but then they work later so
they may go from like nine
to nine something like that
right and then they have the family time
but they start later they
work later and longer yeah but
it's I don't know it's different it's a
little more I'll say
relaxed but maybe it isn't I'm
but if they're working till nine so that
they not if they have young
children are they not seeing
their kids and stuff like they are but it
felt it my impression was
it the whole culture was
work was later it started later it ended
later it was elongated
like school starts later then
I felt like it I don't know but yeah I
can't really say about I
didn't come across a lot of
kids in the factories I know that's ironic
right because everybody says
it's nothing what kids yeah
it's it's not kids at least it wasn't by
the time I started you
know going there because
uh a lot of American retailers put a end to
that because they would do
factory audits and all of
that stuff and we're like they would say to
his suppliers like me like
we're not going to buy from
you unless your factories can pass these
audits and the audits were
very strict about you know
the age of the workers and and also like um
there's I'm not going to
use the right terminology
but basically there's always this risk of
like indentured servitude
type of practices happening
especially like in Taiwan and stuff where
like the some factories
will use like um people from
Cambodia or Vietnam or whatever as like oh
you work off this to
become a citizen or earn your
housing or whatever and those practices are
obviously very frowned
upon and so the audits
from you know Target um Disney honestly
like they a lot of the
factories always wanted to be like
we're approved by Disney that was like a
big um a big thing and um
yeah and the Home Depots and all
that stuff they they really improved the
working conditions in a lot
of ways like I'm not glorifying
I'm not saying it's great but um it's not
you know children like
it's not forced labor no at
least not in like the the big brands the
big brands and where I would
go like on the further west
I'm sure there's lots of bad practices
still happening did you
find that is there pride in
are they uh do they find pride in what
they're making to sell in
America like are they really
wanting it to meet the standards and like
you said have that
American sauce are they trying to
do they want to get it just right and are
they oh yeah oh yeah like
they'll they'll work they will
work tirelessly to make sure that you that
they get it right because it's so
competitive that like
they know like even when they're pricing
something out for you that
like five cents off another
factory will steal that business right so
they're they're super
competitive with each other and they
want the business they want to retain the
business um and so they
will they will keep the
quality up and and as you can see I think a
lot of people don't
fully realize um how long you
haven't really bought anything made in
America you know like I I
think people there's so many
people who comment on my videos if I talk
about the tariffs and all
this stuff and they'll just
say just buy American I'm like you haven't
bought anything made in
America since like 1998
yeah you literally have not even like your
car that's made in the
USA half of it's coming from
someplace else like even even if you buy
soap at the farmer's
market like the ribbon that
they put on it is from China you know like
where we're we're toast on
that front and so a lot of
people will still say well oh my god it's
like poor quality it's
not it's everything you have
because everything you have junk like I I
don't think it is you know
so right well it's gotten a
lot better you know yeah because we kept
working with it because it
was always worth it for us the
the bottom line is that they have so a lot
of people I don't think
realize this either that the
um the labor force in China is also migrant
workers a lot of times
they're just still Chinese
they're just migrating from the country
site China's a big place
and they're migrating from
the country and going to the city to work
and a lot of them now are
doing really well so when
Chinese New Year's happens and you know
they get three weeks off and
they go back to their families
like 40 50 don't come back anymore like so
they're they're actually
having a labor shortage because
they're able to do really well working in
the factories and then
they go back and they don't
come back and they can just live off of
what they made and then go
and then travel again and it's
wow it's very similar to migrant workers
here in the United States
you know coming up to like
be day laborers or you know work in a field
or whatever it's a very
similar culture except
they're just all still Chinese yeah yeah
that makes sense so when you
were there you never felt um
to Brian's this is a piggyback off your
question you never felt like
how us how women in America
in general like I don't feel comfortable
running at night alone I'm
on alert like that feeling of
you could be hurt by a man at any time
doing anything walking to
your car in the parking lot
where I'm always on high alert I have my
daughter always on
high alert all that stuff
and I think that's fairly common for women
in America did you not
feel that at all over there
honestly I think because I I feel like
because like I said I'm
five seven which is like
all for China for China yeah and I felt
like I could take any guy
like and and they're they're
not they they don't do stuff they don't
like cat call you they you
know they don't have guns like
they're like it's just it's not even more
civilized believe it or not
yeah it just it just is and
largely like this one time um I had landed
in Shanghai and the
Shanghai airport's really cool
by the way but there I had to funnel out
through this area where
there was a like green line for
one set of taxis that would take you to one
completely different
region and a red line for
another set of taxis that would take you to
a completely different
region and I just guessed I
was like well rolling the dice let's see
when I just got in the
taxi line got in with this guy
this guy couldn't speak any English you
know and then we I had to
call the hotel and whatever but
most of the time I would say if they
weren't being nice to me
they were just mad at me like
frustrated with me because they're like god
this dumb broad like this
useless American is in my
cab and now my day sucks and I honestly
feel like yeah I was just
largely ignored and I like that
what is the general vibe towards Americans
well if I will say this um if you're just a
a business person coming in to do business
and um and essentially bringing them money
good very nice everybody's happy to see you
and uh and it's very good
but according to my you know
co-worker you know who are my partner who
live there they can be
extremely racist towards
Americans because if you think about it if
you think about it in
um just in terms of uh
general like shortages or whatever they
have a shit ton of people
in China they want Chinese
people to have the jobs not not white
people you know coming in and
um because they have a lot of
people to support and a lot of mouths to
feed and all of that stuff
so he he did uh experience
quite a bit of of racism like he was he
wasn't able to work that's
what was his role because
that's what feels role dependent so he um
he he did sourcing right
so he would work with me
but um he married a Chinese woman and his
role was being
stay-at-home dad while he was there
yeah because he wasn't able to so he wasn't
taking a job really from
but they wouldn't have known
that he couldn't he couldn't yeah they were
treating him like he
was but he wasn't he was
one of the ones that he's just taking care
of the kids right yeah and
this is what I know from him
I you know I never experienced anything
myself I know that there
are people who are uh who have
you know migrated to China like Americans
um who live there and and
whatever I do think it's a
little bit different in like the city
centers you know like if you live in
Shanghai there's a lot
of international people always walking
around Shanghai so yeah I
think it might be different
in different areas yeah so the startups
that you work with are
they all selling stuff is that
kind of just to simplify it I know I'm
simplified it but is that as
someone who knows nothing about
what that industry or anything is that the
concept behind the startups
you work with so I've done all
different ones so uh the first startup I
was with we were doing
vitamins um and so I did vitamins
for a while then I had my own startup for
like half a minute where
I was making um these that
never went anywhere but I counted because
it was part of my journey
but I had made uh earbuds that
were uh also earrings that you could just
like because uh you know
like I uh ear pods like fall
out of people's ears all the time so these
like look like jewelry
and because I have um all my
connections they sounded just like air pods
like the quality was
exactly the same and I did a whole
kickstarter and whatever to try to get that
going and I just needed too
much money like I needed like
250 000 and that was too much money at the
time and so great idea
though yeah you know it was
it was very interesting and enlightening to
meet with potential
investors because um they were like
but this is only for women I'm like yeah
tampons are only for women
like what are you talking about
like women are half the population and they
can also be for men who
have peer stares you know or
honestly people are so integrated into
their headphones now people
would probably pierce their
ears to have them you know like not fall
out and and the thing
because I made electronics for so
long I was so frustrated with the world of
electronics like all
of electronics are made
for men or made with this like bland
aesthetic that essentially
appeals to nobody yeah I would
call it um cool gray six syndrome yeah uh
that's a a pantone number that is just like
it was determined at the time to be like
this will be a fine gray
color to make everything
so it applies to a man or a woman and I
just think there's so
much room in electronics to
make beautiful electronics that would
appeal to women nice
looking speakers like I have this
no shade to the speaker it sounds good but
how boring is this
thing like it's just like
whatever just like it could be cute you
know yeah yeah yeah and so
um that's my soapbox about
electronics but um and then after that I uh
I made cosmetics so I
worked for a startup in Detroit
called um the lip bar and um there now it
was that was a really good
time I was there for four
years I was um I was the it was all women I
was the only white woman
um and uh it was a very big
learning curve for me but we went from
essentially a practically a
dirt floor uh warehouse in Detroit
to like when I first started there we had
they had done like four
hundred thousand dollars in sales
and she got her first million of investment
and when I left uh we
had done like 10 million
and we had grown out to target and walmart
and mire and all that yeah so I left that
I left that job to move back east and now
my current company uh is
a sustainability company
so we make reusable containers um for
college campuses
essentially like takeout containers
so that is so cool so did you have that job
before you went out back
to Rhode Island or did you
or did you move for that job I I moved for
the job um because I you
know hey we're trained by
our parents you can't quit a job unless you
have another job and and
despite the story of my life
that I'm telling you I am not a rich person
I need everybody to know
this like you can you can have
patents you can have like made products and
all this stuff I have
still just been working to make
white men rich like that's all I've done my
whole life so if anybody
wants to make me rich like feel
free no well going sorry oh no no um so
that's why when after I
did my startup I purposefully
uh worked for Melissa Butler at the lip bar
who was a woman of color
and I was like I only want
to work for women CEOs my my current ceo is
a woman and I'm like at
least trying to you know
are you finding a difference in the way the
startup is run between a
woman ceo and a male ceo
no they're all crazy
okay they're all crazy okay
on the product front getting a product
developed offshore like that
in China we could do it anywhere
probably but China's it's not just like
sending a CAD file over
with color choices right yeah
what goes on there we and I'll give a
little background we had a
uh an inventor on as a guest
a young he's a millennial right he's a
millennial young first
millennial like no the youngest
millennial yeah he got scammed uh he I'll
plug his product he's got
a great product it's called
chappy and it's a container it's a vacuum
sealed container that you
put your chapstick in so it
doesn't melt in the summer oh that's smart
yeah very smart and he
made it for uh deodorant for
cosmetics for women water bottles but the
idea the concept was like a
yeti for your chapstick is
how he started it yeah you're a super smart
kid um I call him a kid he
probably wouldn't like that
but he is a kid to us right um so how do
you how do you do that you
you probably do need to have
CAD designs right you got to choose the
Pantone color or whatever and
you've got to find a sourcing
office or a partner and you've got to
probably send them some
money how do you do that like
without getting scammed like without yeah I
mean how would someone do
that and I'm really not asking
for myself but I think for listeners it's
an interesting concept
besides hire you and make
you rich that's the answer rich for free
yeah it's funny I do it I
do it for free all the time
though like I'm actually working with um
somebody off of TikTok
like uh who um where we became
mutual friends and she wanted to make some
merch essentially you know
so um and actually not the
hell but maybe the pitfalls because I don't
want you to give away the
secret sauce I do want you
to I want something to pay me a lot of
money it's so funny I I have
told so many people when people
find out what I do and then I make products
and and whatever and
they're they're always like
oh I have an idea you know because
everybody who's like we
used to have a poster that said
that anybody who's ever taken a shower has
had an idea yeah and um and
they're like I have an idea
but I don't want to tell you because you're
gonna steal it I'm like
listen motherfucker you know how
hard it is to make products I am not
stealing your idea and I will
tell anybody my ideas and lots of
times I'm just like listen I'm not making
it so I want it though so
you know yeah yeah like please
steal my idea I've proven already how not
to get rich at doing this
and so so anyway yeah there's
there's no secret sauce to to worry about
but I will say that um
having somebody like me an
American who has a Chinese national working
for you will help you not
get scammed like I there's
no there's no secret to that because I
can't say go fine like okay
you can go on Alibaba as a to
start and you can start looking around at
um people who are making
something similar to what
you have in mind like for example the uh
the kid that you had on the
millennial obviously would
start looking for people who are making
yeti like products right
like and and and say I have this
idea and then you have to before you reveal
your idea you have to
like essentially do like a
sourcing list you know figure out their
capabilities figure out
their location you can do
quite a bit you do have to have some
background knowledge though if
you can't physically go there
and even if you do physically go there
oftentimes the factories will
show you their showroom right
but you have to be like no I need a tour I
need to go see everybody
working I need to make sure the
conditions are good and all of that and you
really kind of need um
somebody who speaks Chinese
somebody who's also on the ground who can
kind of take you around
and that that really helps
unfortunately like my my current ceo before
I came on board got
completely scammed like she
gave the fact she did a an initial p.o she
placed an order for a bunch of um
containers and um she
kept being told oh look it's on the water
you know here's the
building link all of this stuff and
then the day it was supposed to show up
nothing nothing shows that's
what happened to him exactly
is it really oh my god it's so devastating
and there's nothing you can
do like there's no recourse
no no anything so um there are groups who
do what I do I do what I do
so if anybody's watching this
you know they can email me or whatever and
I can help you like I was
saying so um the woman who
I'm helping right now uh even if you don't
it depends on the nature
of the product right like
so if you have something complicated that
has particular
dimensions you know that needs cat
or whatever obviously you should get some
cad made but even if you
just have an idea and you
and you're like man I we were just working
with this one guy who what
he did uh which I was like
oh we've really advanced he had an idea and
um he had uh ai make renderings of it like
where back in the day it used to be I would
have to give my my cad to
somebody who could make me a
rendering right like a person this guy just
put his design idea into
chat gpt and got a photo
realistic rendering product yeah I was I
was very surprised by that
so you can do that and then um
um and then what you do is you can take
that idea give it to somebody
like um my partner that I work
with who is able to then make the the cad
right because you it's hard
to find people who do that
that is a that is a big hole in the market
I was trying to get my
oldest daughter to do this forever
because there are people who learn how to
do product design but
they're always funneled into
automotive right so they end up like just
doing like automotive
cad and stuff like that
which does not translate into making cad
for a speaker like this
you know and so um it's
difficult skill to find to find somebody
who can make like products
but then and the other thing
that works often is that even like with um
the uh the kid that you
were talking to even if like
he's like okay so it's like a yeti it keeps
it cold he could send
them like here's the material
you know like here I need it to be you know
double walled stainless
steel I need it to you know
be vacuum sealed I like this finish find
something else that it could be a
toothbrush that has the
finish that you want and that that all
helps make the soup to help
them make the product and then
and then what happens is that you start
doing some prototyping
back and forth the prototyping
is just made out of you know SLA or
whatever it won't be made
out of the finished material
but this is all very expensive you know
like I feel sad for him like
he he probably lost a bunch
of money yeah um because I'm sure they
wanted deposits for
tooling and they want you know
all of that and so um you do need you do
need a group that you can
trust for sure so do you do
consulting like if we have a list listeners
that like oh I want to I
want to hire MJ to help me do
you have the time in your life where you do
consulting for people
so you do freelance type
of stuff I guess okay all the time I I've
been doing that for and I I
don't know why I'm so lazy
like I I should try harder to do stuff but
honestly when I I've
just um I don't try very
hard and um that you know that's why I was
saying you know mediocre at
best like I only I only try
so far and um and so anyway but um yeah
I've been consulting now
probably for 10 years and I've
made a lot I've helped people make products
of their own on the on
the side and the thing of it
is the hard thing about being an inventor
being somebody who has
ideas and all of that stuff is
that it costs a lot of fucking money yeah
it really really does
like so many people have said
to me why don't you just do your own thing
and I'm like I need half a
million dollars for for the
electronics that I would like to do but
like though the project
that I'm working on now her
her project is um relatively low FOB and so
that that's the the cost out of the factory
and then um the other key part is that the
minimum order quantity is
low so she only has to order a
thousand pieces that makes this a lot more
affordable to get into
and um and I think that
and again this is maybe soap bucket soap
box ish but we've had so
many people in the United States
be able to build little businesses you know
whether it is like their
own little shop downtown or
at the farmer's market or even like a
website or an Etsy store or
whatever these businesses are
going to get so screwed by these tariffs
because they just cannot they they cannot
the it's just honestly so bad and it's on
every single country you know like there's
do you say that meaning like they're raw
materials because I do know
someone who does some silicone
uh molding and that's a concern a lot of
his source materials
are coming offshore well
everything is everything's off show so here
here's my real life example
and I've made a video on this
before so the reusable containers that I
currently make are stainless
steel they're stainless steel
with a silicone lid we are 100 plastic free
super proud about that
right so in uh January I had uh
an order of 8 000 pieces and the tariff was
2 percent right that's
the tariff rate that I've
had on these things for the last four years
and um so that order of 8
000 pieces the tariff was
850 dollars I just had another order come
in in July same amount 8
000 pieces but with the new
10 percent on China another 10 percent that
was the flat tariff rate
the 50 percent on stainless
steel right so now we're up to 70 percent
it's compounding and then
and then the 2 percent that
existed my tariff that was 850 dollars in
January was 30 000 dollars
on the same exact product now
if you are just an Etsy shop yeah what are
you gonna do you know and
you were like chugging along
and and that and that's and yeah I'm using
Etsy shop but you're also
say Melissa Butler at the
lip bar which is still a small business you
know it is a woman-owned
cosmetics brand yeah in target
stores and then all of a sudden you you you
can't have all your products
just go from being you know
uh a 14 lip gloss to having to be 35
dollars yeah to absorb this and um these
these things can't be
found in the United States yeah but they
they don't have a
replacement so even if I wanted to
make my stainless steel containers in the
US I can't I can't and not
only that on stainless steel
it's on raw materials too yeah and we bring
all that stuff in so did
you have to pay that yep
so you want to say did you raise your
prices then not yet so this
is what we've been doing um
what what you can do and um if people
aren't sure this is very nerdy
now but um so I I brought this
stuff in I put it in a free trade zone
everything in Rhode Island
Rhode Island the whole state
happens to be a free trade zone what that
means is that I don't pay
the duty at the port like I
normally would I pay it when the goods
leave my warehouse though so
I did that to buy some time
essentially I've had to ship out like
10,000 pieces or I'm
sorry not that not 10,000 1000
pieces from that order but I've had to pay
the tariff then so okay
so you're not having to pay
it because you're in Rhode Island when you
get it right then you can
kind of piecemeal it out
well I can because of how my customers work
right but like if I owed
that whole 8,000 to Walmart
right I'd have to pay it right away because
you're extending your cash
flow yeah I'm still paying it
well I'm also hoping because the tariff
rates change based on what
it is that day then so I'm
hoping that somebody comes to some sense
yeah I don't know I don't
know it's interesting because
the tariffs for someone like say a Walmart
they knew they were coming
so they just bought surplus
and probably stored it in the free trade
zone like you're talking
about um they kind of game
the system or they got it they bought it
when the tariffs were low
got it through the trade zones
and into sitting in their distribution
network somewhere knowing
they're going to sell it at a
future date but they're not paying that
high tariff that's coming
behind it I mean possibly
um I don't I don't honestly know what
Walmart is up to you but you
know the distribution centers
are like generally places of like
turnaround right so oh they need to roll
that inventory quick yeah
so to say that they have a whole bunch of
storage available yeah but then also
Walmart doesn't make their stuff they make
some stuff like they have
their own house brand you
know like the weight drugs versus Advil but
um they have tons of
suppliers and tons of seasonality
like you go into Walmart and it's like all
the every everything
changes you know in spring,
summer, fall, winter and so that's where
I'm just like now that the
fall reset is happening you know
how we all get super mad that we start
seeing like pumpkins in
August when it's 40,000 degrees
like that's what's happening now and so
that was that was nothing to
be planned for right because
that was all done last year yeah yeah I
feel like I started seeing
it beginning of July even the
fall stuff depending on the floor yeah yeah
I see if we're going to
the store I'd die to avoid it
yeah it's just randomly like I go to Costco
a lot um I love Costco um
because just uh my children
I've grown up where the or I raised my kids
where they're their friends
we were an open house they
could just come here so I always had tons
of snacks and drinks and
food like the last like 28 years
because my oldest son's 28 so I've just
been in the habit I have
to buy bulk even though now
my older two are gone I'm still buying them
I need to at some point in
just but my point is is I saw
Halloween stuff in Costco mid-july wow oh
yeah yeah it was already
starting and I saw some a
tick tock of a woman who kind of keeps an
eye on holiday stuff for I
don't follow her it was the
first tick tock but she said what she's
seen is you know if you go
into uh home goods or marshals
or something and they have like the
clearance wall or whatever
she's saying that there's
there's Halloween fall stuff on the
clearance wall from last year
and then it's taking up like a
third of the store and then another section
of the store is the
new stuff and she's like
this is the first time she's seen that and
she said her advice
because this is why people follow
her she's like as soon as Halloween's over
get out there because
they're going to have so much
surplus of stuff on even triple clearance
this year like she's
never seen and I don't know if
that's related to tariffs or related to
anything but she said she's
never seen such a surplus of
stuff before so I know it's an interesting
consumer pressure maybe I
don't know I don't know yeah so
I do think that there will just be
shortages I I do think that what most
businesses are going to do
is just pull up stakes and not order like
they'd rather have no it
would because the the tariffs
are so margin destroying like that you'd
rather not order it and
because you can't take the hit
like most most margins that I've ever
worked on you know for like
electronics and stuff is like
30 points right so you can't what are you
gonna do like give it away
and so yeah I think people
will like businesses will just stop buying
for now until this slows
down or stops or something
that's an interesting thing because I can
see Walmart having the
ability to to squeeze their
suppliers and say we're sharing in this
burden or you're taking the
brunt of it but that's Walmart
not everybody's Walmart Etsy right Etsy
shop compared to Walmart
Etsy person has no no leverage
right but what I'm saying is is that even
Walmart like these numbers
are so out of control that you
you can't go to your supplier as you're
picking out of business well
or you can't even say let's
share it let's do anything there there is
absolutely no way that
Walmart and the supplier
will not have to raise costs on the
consumer but like there's
no getting around it because
if you're going from having you know a
three most tariffs before like our our
worldwide tariff rate
was on average about 2.8 percent because we
want to encourage free
trade you know and so
now that's gone to like I've heard like the
Yale economist person
is saying it's 18 percent
I truly believe like I listen I'm such a
nerd about this I don't
think they realize their
additive nature of this I think that
they're they don't know yet that is
stacking on top not only
are they stacking on top of the tariffs the
new ones they're on top
of the old ones that Trump
did the first time around that Biden didn't
get rid of so when I was
at the lip bar that's when
Trump was he first did rounds of tariffs
that he put 25 percent on a
bunch of stuff coming out of
China not everything you know but it was a
bunch of different classes
of goods and that's when and
this is what's funny that's when we were
buying components in
China and bringing them in the
United States and we were making the makeup
the actual cosmetic fill in
the US so we would buy the
compacts and the lipstick cases all that in
China bring them here I had
to move production to Taiwan
because if I took the components from China
to Taiwan and then
brought Taiwanese makeup into
the US I only had three percent tariff so I
actually took business
away from the United States
because especially with cosmetics if you're
doing and maybe you're
familiar but drugstore cosmetics
are very different from like Sephora
cosmetics stuff like the the price
structure that can be
handled so if you've positioned yourself as
a drugstore makeup brand
you can't just all of a
sudden be like okay this is a $40 lipstick
yeah at Walmart that
wouldn't work so we had no choice
but to re-root everything around. What's
interesting is this is another plug for you
so you could be hired by somebody what
you're describing you really have an expert
understanding of the logistics and how to
optimize the the the supply
chain where to source from
understanding what what the different
tariffs are the additive
components of now they're taxing
stainless steel it's not just the finished
product but there's a
stack-on effect. I find this I think
this stuff is fascinating and you mentioned
the fall reset a lot of
people don't think of it in
that terms I kind of I get that I think in
those terms because that
fall reset is being ordered
probably what in January or earlier or
earlier ahead right
you're freaking out next year's
product now now and so it's it's just a
fascinating thing I think
the whole global supply chain
is fascinating and you're someone who could
somebody could hire you
to help navigate all that
yeah for sure develop a product now I don't
know where to go anymore
am I making my shit on Mars
like what's the tariff rate at the moon I
don't know have you seen
any movement right the the
intention of all of this is to raise
revenue and to bring product into the US
and make it here right
and that's great grandiose I'm aligned to
that however the
implementation of that is extremely
difficult right because we don't do this
stuff anymore and you don't
just it doesn't just appear
out of vapor if you've built your entire
company using contract
manufacturing that was your premise
and if you're a new company in the United
States in the last 25 years
that's exactly what you did
like unless you had unless I don't know
you're you're you're
making like leather belts out of
cowhide on your own ranch you know what I
mean and so you built an
entire business on contract
manufacturing you have to keep that
business afloat during this
time yet you're paying instead of
850 in tariffs all of a sudden you gotta
pay 30 000 in tariffs
where's the extra money to build a
fucking factory yeah yeah and nobody and I
and here in the in the US
uh venture capitalists now
have been very like well tuned into looking
for a unicorn that is a
tech startup and all they're
into right now is AI and I keep saying AI
doesn't have arms and legs
yeah it's not making shit and
so oh and what's also funny is that uh when
I first moved back to
the east coast uh before I
bought my house I lived in a factory like I
lived in not like a bomb I
lived in a converted factory
right because all of the factory buildings
here that used to be for
all the textile mills this
is where all the textile center was lots of
jewelry factories and
stuff like that they're
apartment buildings right so part of that
rejuvenation of a lot of
old rust belt urban centers
they converted the old factories into nice
condos same thing in
Detroit same like that's part of
revitalization of downtown Detroit is all
these old buildings being
turned into apartment buildings
and so where are we going to do it and
who's giving us the money
to do it because my company
I I've never worked for a company that was
just sitting on millions
of dollars like in a just
emergency factory fund yeah yeah you know
so there there isn't an option and then
to make it even worse it still won't be
cheaper it still won't be
less you know it's because
we have to pay American workers we have to
pay American insurance we
have to pay you know all
all of that stuff that doesn't exist
overseas and my my gut what I
believe I I do think and this is
not necessarily me giving the president the
benefit benefit of the
doubt but I do think that
he's an old man who remembers tariffs
possibly being impactful in
the 80s because that that could
have helped that could have helped a lot of
toy companies not leave
that could have helped you
know stuff like that that could have saved
some industry in the 80s
and I think he just doesn't
know that we don't make stuff well what's
the last time he's been in a
target you know or picked up
something that says made in Vietnam on it
you know and right I I
honestly I I think a lot of people
don't know that we don't make anything yeah
some somewhere some there's a secret like
blender factory you know and like whatever
just sitting idle and being
so mad at all the you know
Chinese blenders yeah do you think they
don't know or just don't give
a shit well okay you have to
know what I mean do you like so many people
have commented on my videos
saying just buy American I
do think that I think there's just a lack
of understanding and
they think that you know
Chinese products are just getting shot into
the country you know and
then just showing up at
Walmart or that Walmart's doing it yeah
like everything inside a
Walmart is from Walmart
somehow I I there's a massive disconnect
because I'll often ask
people I'm like well who do you
know who works in the vacuum cleaner
factory yeah yeah like nobody
you know and I think the country
is so big that maybe they think you know
Arkansas people don't realize
you know everybody thinks the
Walmart is a retailer which they are right
they're the largest
retailer but they're truly the
largest logistical company in the world too
yeah yeah yeah the largest
supply chain when I think
of a made in America I actually would think
of like how you just said
like some a person making
belts from cowhide on their like if the
farmers market if I buy
something made in America like
truly made in America I know I'm spending a
lot of money because
it's almost like a a special
specialty item I'm I'm I'm and I'm willing
to spend that I this
belt or this box or whatever
it truly was made from a tree on land and
they carved it and I'm
going to spend 150 dollars for
this box it's almost like art yeah you know
and so it those things I do
think exist like people are
making you know clay pots and their thing
and although maybe the
clay came from China I don't
know but made it was made by an American in
America so let's just
not maybe not all artisanal
product right maybe not every item was made
in America but an
American made it so I think there
are those things and I think people
sometimes will say made it by it and I
support that I do support
support people Americans who make things so
I'm 100% on that on board
I just want to make that
clear but if you say by American you're
talking more about that
type of stuff and yes support
those people support people that are making
things in America but
they're not making a blender
they're not making a dishwasher they're not
making a maybe a plate
a clay plate but that
plate might cost you 15 dollars a plate
because this is a piece of
art they made with their hands
so that I think is a disconnect sure you
can buy American but
you're not going to go get
plastic plates that were made in America to
give your put your kids
lunches on does that make sense
yeah I think that's disconnect a little bit
I it's completely a
disconnect but I also think the
one silver lining that I think could
possibly exist is that we'll
cut back on the consumerism
like we we I'm not a big consumer like I
made a joke the other day
I'm like if you scroll back
through all my videos you're probably
seeing me wear the same
eight shirts that I've owned for
the last like four years like I'm not a big
shopper yeah and and I
think a lot of our our culture
like through social media is also like
added into by the
consumerism by the availability of
things like now you can have a whole gender
reveal party that has a
whole packet of accessories that
go with it you know like we'll do all these
things we do uh I don't know
why I'm stuck on babies but
like we do like sprinkle baby showers right
now like instead of you
just get one baby shower you
had one kid and that's it I know and that's
not foreign to me
because when we were growing up
having kids you had your one baby shower
and then that was that was
kind of it yeah and then you and
then you just have everything for your
whole life and then but if
you think about it now like all
these little things all these little
instagrammable moments or whatever they
have accessories they have
shit to buy to make this party make this
picture like and I I do
think this was the end times when
it was like the peak consumerism of see how
did you see videos of
people decorating the inside of
their fridge why I would see videos of
people like buying like
organizers yeah there there
were there were the organizers but then I
saw people like putting like little like
directory picture frames up and stuff like
that like inside no yeah
but even even all those
organization things you know like consume
consume yeah and it's all
plastic and it's all it's all
shit yeah on the planet forever yeah yeah I
do think that
inadvertently between the less trash
if there's nothing to buy you're not buying
trash and that's part of
the reason why I got into
sustainability now at this stage in my
career because I realized
oh all this shit that I made
is just actually shit like I don't care if
it was I was making air
cleaners for a while those air
cleaners are in all landfill like nobody
fixed them like I've just
polluted the planet for the
last 15 years you know and so I think
between not having stuff to
buy but then also less traffic on
the ocean less container ships going back
and forth less container
you know riding on a on a
mac truck you know but it'll be devastating
to the economy and that
and that's the problem right
because people people need jobs yeah what
you're describing is
fascinating right you've got this
whole global shift with the tariffs but
then you have this huge
influence of AI to very
one's more controllable right maybe you
could say back off on the tariffs and
that'll get us back to
status quo but then you've got the AI
disruption so it's you know
the world's crazy I do think the
AI thing is um a bit overblown and I only
say that after years of
being like being told every
everything that is like the next major
disruptor you know like
bluetooth is changing everything
you know wi-fi is now changing everything
the internet itself
like I remember do you guys
remember when uh we really first started
being online so this was
like that for me um back in
like 1998-99 my ex-husband and I we had our
pc in the house and we
would like take turns on it
you know like to go online and whatever and
I remember going online
and I'd be like I'm online
what now like everybody's like oh online
online it's so great and
I'm like okay now we're all
connected and we can you know we have
social media and whatever but
is it like online doesn't wash
my dishes AI is not going to wash my dishes
it's not going to feed
my cats like it's not
gonna cook my dinner it's just not and I
think it like eventually
okay it can compute fast and
I do like using chat gpt I know it's very
controversial I do like
it I did tell it to stop
blowing smoke up my ass though I was like
you're like because I gave
it my resume I was like look
at my resume tell me you know like what you
think and it was so
complimentary I was like you are
full of shit like calm down man like I am I
am not Gandhi you know and
um so but I I think that there
is a huge difference between AI doing AI
stuff and then being
surrounded by robots like wow and
and not only that and I've said this before
and people find it a bit
controversial I think robots
are never going to be cheaper than people
it is cheaper to have a
whole bunch of Chinese people
working in a factory with their fine motor
skills you know like
okay maybe you can have
a robotic surgeon you still need a human
person guiding the robot
yeah everybody's like they're
gonna get better they're gonna get better
okay but are the robots
gonna make robots like is it just
gonna be robot in there yeah I don't know
if you've looked into like a
genteck AI it's kind of getting
into that right where you start to build
these agents that's the
agentic part that are autonomous
that start to have human reasoning and
start to make decisions it's
it lives in the computer yeah
yeah yeah you know what's funny is that um
how we had talked about
porn earlier and men and porn
and young men in porn well with the AI um
what how AI is AI is
affecting women in some similar ways
or it's just at the beginning and I'll be
curious to see how this pans
out but women are having AI
boyfriends or getting validation through AI
um but truly creating AI
boyfriends and getting their
emotional needs met through chatgbt and
other ways um and boys are
too men men are men are too but
men need the physical pleasure women need
that emotional connection that we want that
emotional connections and that validation
or young women at least in that journey of
trying to find a partner and all that or
wanting to find a partner
so um so it's almost I'll be
curious to see how that pans out because
that could also create as
much as the men are disconnecting
because of the overload of the physical
stimulation from porn that
their physical needs are getting
satisfied through porn and they're
struggling to connect with
a real woman if the women's
emotional needs are getting so perfectly
met by AI then regular men
are never gonna they can barely
meet it right I agree that that's why I had
to tell it to you know
calm down and because it's so
complimentary yeah it honestly is I'm like
this is disturbing like it
but it feels good right and
you're you've had life experience you're
self-aware you're right but if
you take a 24 year old or a 28
year old you know who has maybe gone
through these dates with
men and been treated horribly
and shot down and then you have this AI
like filling that void
and and all those that's to
me that's very dangerous oh it is men will
never be able to meet that
ever no I'd be willing to bet
you're on you're spot on I do I develop so
I do some nerdy shit
I'll make scripting and
python development html stuff like that
right and I use co-pilot
and I'll be like make me a
script that does this and it'll be like
sure thing Brian hope
it's been a great day for you
let me pull that out and and give me just a
second that kind of thing so
it's like it's just kind of
weird you know there's a loneliness man
loneliness male epidemic the
AI could fill the loneliness
that women are could be feeling like the
disconnect between the
sexes right now for the reasons
could be getting filled through technology
I think dangerous yeah I
could totally see it was
only men with porn we were worried about
now there's technology that
can fill the needs of a woman
emotionally that's just a recipe and then
you have robots so we're
actually heading towards
terminator well then you if you if you type
something into say
chat chat gbt or co-pilot
there's tons of llm's the large language
model AI models right you
could say something like
you could you could search what are the
symptoms of menopause now
it's got that and then you come
back a week later and you'd be like how do
I what's the best
medication for you know headache
it'd be like oh hi Nicole I know that
you're in menopause at
this moment and I hope you're
feeling good and you're getting rest and
all this bullshit and
you're like oh my husband doesn't
say this you know yeah yeah 100% but nobody
does you know like
where we're we don't really
treat each other with much kindness you
know all the time like we do
with our kids right I would
say we're very solicitous to our children
and maybe to our parents
to some extent but on a
daily basis I think a lot of us aren't
getting like seen and
even though like the llm's or
whatever don't see you it feels like it
like I was um I was working
on um I've had this idea for
uh a movie script rolling around in my head
for a while but I've
never written one like again I
only take it so far and so I uh I put it in
the chat gbt and then it
was just like oh this is
amazing like I was like really like tell me
more and uh and I was like
that's when I had to tell
it to be like okay you you gotta knock this
shit off because it's
almost like a drug in a way it's
opening it yeah yeah it's like that first
time I ever smoked a
cigarette you know yeah yeah
yes do you have a lot of hobbies so I would
say right now um my my
main hobbies are um writing
um and and then doing my tick tocks you
know um and then at
this point I'm kind of like
spiraling a little bit not gonna lie
because I'm trying to do all these
different things but with
my job I travel so much that it like
interrupts any potential
continuity yeah like oh I'm gonna go
to this class you know and it's every
Monday or whatever um that's
that's really been kind of a
screw in a lot of my and I I also have to
go to Boston two days a week
to the office and from here
the the whole journey is two hours each way
and so so it kind of just
throws my life into disarray
yeah yeah what do you guys do for hobbies
well I'm doing I find it
funny because I don't think
Gen X women in general have had time for
hobbies you know I have to
be thinking about it like I
think it's more men that have hobbies
because we've given them that
space to have hobbies because
we've done everything you know so when I I
don't have a hobby I I
actually hit 50 actually I do have
a hobby now I did not have a hobby I'm a
writer so when I had time
through my life I did write
but I utterly and completely devoted every
ounce of my soul into
raising children and a lot of
that was rooted from my own childhood and
I'm very like I've gone
through healing and all that
I loved being a stay-at-home mom I love
being a mom I love being a
wife we have a helicopter
pad yeah yeah so I I I didn't need I didn't
have the need to work
outside the home because the
stability I found from creating a home
fulfilled every ounce of me
like it really truly did so I
was like totally fine like I'm a
stay-at-home mom and I'm completely fine
with that because I really
truly am in the meantime I'm also grinding
through life and probably
ignoring a whole bunch of trauma
that I stuffed down and didn't deal with so
when I turned 50 is when I
you know my older two are
left for college I'm my youngest my our
bonus baby as we call him
um is getting older didn't
need me his hands on anymore and all of a
sudden I could look around
and breathe and I was like I
have no idea who I am because I'm a mom and
I'm Brian's wife I
wrote a book back in 2009
but other than that I have no idea what I
like yeah I like the
grateful dad I think I told you
that I commented on your words or something
but I don't know what I
like if you asked me what I
liked I could not have answered you now so
I spent I'm 54 now so I
think my hobby the last four
years is figuring out who I am so I went on
a healing journey
because I realized if I stay
the path I am with the alcohol I consume
because I was in
perimenopause in my 40s and coping with
that with alcohol because I didn't
understand I'm in perimenopause I just
thought I'm going crazy
I'm gaining weight I'm uh have anxiety and
maybe some depression and
brain fog I also have thyroid
disease so I call my 40s just this I'm
surprised I made it through
I'm always I'm surprised with
every decade I'm always like oh I made it I
made it through my teenage
years like I totally didn't
think I was making it through that and then
I'm like I made it through
my so everyone's like wow
the 40s though I will say that's why I'm
always like talking
perimenopause perimenopause but
um so I cut down my alcohol significantly I
changed how I was eating I actually finally
implemented a true lifting weights because
that's so important our age
I always I hated that and I
always put that off walking um trying to
learn how to meditate
which is so challenging for me
and really trying to get into yoga so
really trying to focus on
myself health wise and then
this pod and I also reclaimed my energy
which we actually have a
hoodie that I wear that says that
from because within our marriage um I had
given over so much of myself
uh that I needed to balance
that because he naturally was used to me
giving over so much of
myself that and men just don't
see that they really don't and so I had to
reclaim and then basically
set boundaries and kind of say
look this is where I am right now this is
what I will accept and this
is what I won't and if we're
gonna work you need to adjust that and and
and we would talk about
that and um and that was a
learning curve for him you know because I
was there were things I just
I'm not going to do anymore
I'm not going to put up with anymore and I
was putting up with it
because I was just part of
that journey but then I just hit and that
could be perimenopause that
could be menopause because
you stop giving a fuck about pretty much
everything because of the hormones the
estrogens dropping and all that I always
say that's probably a
catalyst and and and reclaiming
but um so there was a shift with us and
then we started doing
this podcast so I would say
it's a very long answer but and it's so
convoluted but that has been
my hobby is just figuring out
who the fuck I am I know and I think it's
so crazy like I you know
um some people say that
oh working out is a hobby or whatever and I
I work out every day I
have ever since I was 22
yeah and I always say that that that like
saying working out is your
hobby or um or meditating or
or journaling or whatever is kind of like
saying brushing your teeth
is your hobby yeah but women
get so stripped down when you're a wife and
a mother that basically
taking care of yourself
has become glorified as a hobby you know
like going to yoga is a hobby going to yoga
I'm sorry is not a hobby because that is
self that is taking care
of yourself it's like saying
you know washing my ass is my hobby yeah
and um and so I think that
that so much has gotten we get
so stripped back to being like a husk of a
person yeah that like I and
and and I think about this
with Gen X women a lot too and um just
because I was such a pick
me as I was saying earlier
like you're such a pick me to start off
with when you're young not
maybe not you but I was no no
I'm one of my pick me moments definitely
definitely to the point where
I don't even know what I like
yeah because I I spent my whole life being
like yeah I love
snowboarding I'm cool you know oh I
I'll go see the Grateful Dead 400 times
yeah I'm cool like I'm a
cool chick I'll watch baseball
like yeah fuck all that shit in the great
ality yeah but then but
then it was so deep inside me
that I'm like well what what do you like
yeah yeah and um and I
don't I don't know if men fully
realize that um we're on some fake ass shit
with you guys like we're
just like you know yeah we
cleave to the man yeah and and to where
we're like um and and I will
say like my uh ex-husband um
he would like actively make fun of stuff I
liked all the time too you
know so um you know whether
it was a tv show um or music or whatever or
like like I don't know getting ready doing
me like where I think a lot of men may like
have carp launch to like
make fun of all the stuff
that women do because it's girly or I don't
know because we're women
and uh and and then um I've
thought about this too like how men always
say that women shop all
the time you know like oh
women's only hobby is shopping it's because
we buy everything for
your life yeah like we made
your house we bought your food like sorry
we had to spend money at a
store to do it yeah or or we
bought your mom's christmas gift or
mother's like right and the
kids don't even get me started on
holiday like women are the magic makers yep
when I'm not saying
before any listeners write in I
know there's always those few men that are
like amazing unicorns I
get it but not always yeah
not all men no women are the magic makers
and in the holidays I I will
I will fight that because I
fight anyone who says that's not true
because it is true and nothing
gets me more mad than on social
media when I see that she doesn't have
anything in her stocking oh I
know I want the flat stocking
to my phone and strangle her husband I'm
like I I don't even okay I
will say this like from the
day we've been together he's always been
awesome about all that like
my talking's been overflowed
I've gotten way too much talk about
consumerism the birthday
mother's day so like I'm definitely
married to someone who um hit all the
important points like I
wasn't slighted in any way or if
I had a dream when I wrote my book he was
right there supporting
anything I wanted to do yeah
he's always been incredibly good I was in a
slumpt away and he was incredibly
supportive totally so
you know because I'll see that people
saying just divorce and I
never had that point where it was
like just divorce them I never had that but
there were still things
that needed to be addressed and
because us being gen x and because of all
that I just you know they
had to be righted I wasn't
going to go into my second half giving over
as much of myself as I
had and thankfully he also
wanted to stay in this marriage and was
like okay so I need to
adjust some things and and you've
talked before about your maturity jump and
and it's it's like
feeling seen like I need to feel
seen in these ways and if you can't see me
in that then we have a
problem and so there's just
and that's like communication but um I
think so many women are gen
x women feel this way like
who am I whether they've been a
stay-at-home mom or worked and been a mom
because a working mom is
doing both those jobs and I'm a big
believer in that um so it's
you either way are culminating
to this quote unquote midlife looking
around and saying okay what
what about me and the self-care
thing shouldn't be a hobby but it becomes
one because we haven't
been doing any self-care for
30 years anything it's like you know
Maslow's hierarchy of
needs you know like you have to
start at the bottom you're like okay I've
been breathing yes serving
you know this is the bottom
part of my pyramid and now I need to move
up and uh go like brush my
teeth and move my body you
know and then I can you know eventually get
to self-actualize or
whatever but I also think that
we live in a culture where what do women
like in general right
because all of our our likes and
things that we do have been built on like a
lot of it has to fit in
to some level of serving
somebody you know and so what can you even
do okay you can sit there
and maybe knit something
because you can throw it down real quick
and go up and you know take
care of a baby or whatever so
your little hobby of like something like
that can exist because you
can throw it in a bag and go
cook dinner but like you can't do that when
you're going to play 18
holes of golf you know and so you
can't go on like a scuba diving photo shoot
you know you can't just
be like okay now I'm an
underwater photographer as my hobby yes as
a woman maybe what you
can do is make some TikToks
of you cleaning you know and then you're
you know and so our our
worlds are are limited by
everybody that we take care of and I've
said before that I feel like a
lot of men don't realize this
because I I do say um that men operate off
the three P's I don't
know if you've seen my videos
I think I have seen that one that's how
familiar yes yeah which is uh
there it's the the three P's
of male motivation which is basically like
pay praise or pleasure
right and so if they're not
getting one of the three they're not going
to do it right and which
is like okay like even even
the outdoor work that men do there is
potential praise for that and
maybe because oh your neighbor
sees oh yeah yeah exactly yeah not getting
praise for cleaning a toilet right
but I do believe because I don't like my my
brother's amazing guy I
have like my uh cousin's
husbands are all amazing and I I don't
believe all men are bad but I do think
there's like blinders
on so they don't since you're able to
operate with three P's in
mind for most everything like pay
praise or pleasure you think women do the
same so you you tend to
think oh she really likes cooking
dinner she likes doing all the Christmas
shopping she likes doing
all of this because otherwise
she wouldn't do it because I wouldn't do it
you know and I'm sure as
hell not doing it and I I
think they don't realize how much we do
because ain't nobody else
doing it you're still right
nobody else is gonna see it yeah you just
nailed that it's so true
because it's so true oh my gosh
and and we will do it because we know it
needs to get done because
we love our children because
we love our partner because we we want to
create this family we'll do
what needs to be done now I
do think men will say we go to work because
we know we need to make money
because that needs to be done
because that pay your mind is better
it's also easier I will be the first to
admit you know we've been
together a long time we've
three kids there's no fucking way I could
have woken up at three in
the morning and you know
rock the kid back to sleep and then go be
functional and be happy that would drive me
fucking crazy right but you know
tell us what you can do no that's what I'm
saying it's like there's
roles right we've talked about
this you fall into these different roles
and some they're
functional but they do wear you know
they wear on you yeah especially for women
you start feeling seen and
you are only seen as your
role not a woman not not the woman that you
fell in love with not the
girl that you first met you
know not your wife who you've committed to
you're just that role and
that's where I think women get
so lost and so then when their children
leave the home and they
don't have that hands-on
responsibility anymore they don't have the
role and that's when
they're like okay who am I I mean
I know I'm here still with you but wait you
know what happened so
what do I do now you know and
um and thankfully because I know I've had
boomers come in and be like
you think you're the only one
that went through no I'm sure they're very
stoic and they grinded
and they got through it but
that's the point Gen X doesn't want to we
don't want to just Gen X
women aren't going to be stoic
and grind through this part we're going to
talk about perimenopause
and menopause and all the
shit that goes along with it we're going to
talk about self-discovery
getting to know ourselves
again because we're entitled to do that and
I'm sorry no one made you
feel that way no one made
us feel that way but we're claiming it and
we're hoping the younger
women learn from this so we're
going to be part of the change just because
you didn't talk about it
doesn't mean we shouldn't
and I'm not only that we're not going to
drop dead anytime soon like
they did like a lot of them
were like okay I'm going to make it to 65
you know and yeah and
whatever and then and also a lot of
them were already in a grind of taking care
of grandkids and we're not
you know and so I think we
unlike any other generation really before
us you know we're not
dropping dead and we're not taking
care of grandkids I know a lot of us are
maybe taking care of older
parents and stuff like that
but we have time to think we have time to
to figure out what it is
we want to do and I will
see even though I was always a working mom
after you know the first
initial three or four years
um I still was lost when they left I was
like okay I'm still accidentally spending
$200 a week on groceries yes it's me in the
cat like what am I buying
I keep just putting stuff
in the freezer I'm like yeah I don't know
how to cook small oh well
that's right that's a shift I
did though I cooked Sunday through Thursday
for almost 30 years and um
and I made a decision like
to a year and a half ago I'm like I'm done
with I'm done figuring
dinner out every night
I'll do it sometimes but punch out so but
when I do cook now I have
no concept how to I cook
and I cook like the Costco all that chicken
I still cook all of it
and I could cut it up and
it's all going on and now we're eating
chicken for seven days
because I don't know how to make
anything small yeah but that's that's also
breaking those habits so
I'm sorry you were gonna
no well what's fascinating to me is I
thought I was asking an innocent question
the hobbies that was like three hours ago
yeah I did mention about
one of your hobbies is TikTok
so we should talk about AK MJ AKA mommy
well let me go back to the
reason I asked is because
I thought we were gonna relate on something
and then boom sorry you
mentioned how you'll get
so far and then you don't finish or you'll
do this I do that but I'm
gosh I'm gonna plead the
fifth but I have some hobbies that I do
that with so his just
about his family um notoriously
are hoarders and his mom is a hoarder and
he's very much like gets
anxiety if there's too much
stuff everywhere because of that but what's
so funny is he hoards
hobbies so Brian'll have like
10 hobbies no doubt going on and then he
owns all the things that go
with that hobby so if it's
fishing he has all the fishing stuff you
know if it's music he has
all the instruments you see
some of these instruments we don't play
these you don't play them no
but we have to have them all
okay no we don't have to I tried you tried
but I always say the
hoarding projects through the
hobbies you know but also his brain is
constantly as one of those
brains that never stops in a way
ever so I think the hobbies are an outlet
for him it's actually
relaxing to go to a hobby from
that's kind of where I was going with you
you're in operations you're
logistics these are pretty
technical things is your brain constantly
going so you get so far
then you're like well now I'm
distracted I go somewhere else well I think
I have always gotten to the
point where I've done it to
like a level of satisfaction like when I
was when I was in the band
we we played out a couple of
like festivals like not like like little
tiny festivals and and
then we ended up playing at
the hard rock in Detroit when that was
still there and I was like all
right I'm like I need to go to
bed you know like this was this was enough
like I I feel like with I
think I've always maybe felt
like you have to keep going at it and maybe
this is just like
capitalism in general or something
until like it's gonna make you money or
something like that and then
I will say though with the the
band stuff that my ex-husband and I after
we would we would play garage
band he was very good guitarist
and he was in bands in the in the 80s and
90s and stuff and he still
does it now like he still like
drops in and bands and so we would hang out
at you know Wednesday night
whatever just like singing
and you know we had guitars and amps and
whatever um and so stuff
like that but I always feel like
I have to take it to like some nth degree
like back when I was
doing improv it's like okay
am I gonna go do a stand-up set or whatever
and I'm like no I want to
go to bed yeah I don't I
don't know I don't know I never I I guess
maybe it is like collecting
hobbies you know like where
and a lot of it was um bucket list stuff
which ties into my tiktok
because so I had on my bucket
list like I'm gonna be a published author I
have I have you know I've
now I'm a published author
I've got you know patents I've got like all
this stuff was originally
written on a bucket list
like being in the band you know doing all
that and then I added during
covid I added become tiktok
famous onto my bucket list just to fuck
with my kids I was and I
was like but you know what mom
does with her bucket list right and they're
like so embarrassed
they're like oh my god my mom's
gonna be on tiktok and then um and then I
just started making
tiktoks to essentially fuck with
them and um I had a tiktok that I stitched
um with extra ex
patriarch I don't know if you know
him um he's a he's a white guy with a beard
um anyway he had asked the
question uh for women like
um what was it it was something like what
was marriage like for you
or whatever for women who
have been married who are divorced what was
marriage like and I
made a video just telling
how I felt and that video got like 1.5
million views or and all of
a sudden I was had all these
followers and yeah it was just on and I was
like just messing with the
kids that was literally it
and and so I was like well I guess I do
this now kind of keep this
up and um that was a wild time
when that first happened I'm sure you guys
know too like when you
first have like when yeah you
go to bed and you wake up and all the
notifications and whatever it hasn't
happened it was happening I
would say two three years two years ago
more often I would end up
waking up to like 500,000 views
or whatever not anymore not anymore tiktok
is not well tiktoks change
even doing this like I said next
week will be a year and I feel just in the
year tiktoks changed yeah
definitely and ever since
cut down and came back it's been different
yeah so it's like there's
something that's going on um
but you definitely have a solid following
you have a loyal fan base I
think you know because I've
watched your videos every time one of yours
come up come up I watch it
um and you seem to have a
few regular commenters that come on and so
um are you posting daily I
don't I'm so bad about it see
this is I'm taking it just so far and I I
don't what will happen is
I'll get in the mood yeah and
and there will be um so maybe this is like
a couple of times a week
and I'll get in the mood
and maybe I'll do like two or three videos
that day what I do is
I'll stack up comments that I
need to reply to like I'll save comments
and be like okay I should
reply to that and I'll do I'll
do a bunch um and that and then I'll go
about my I I am so bad at
this because all the things that
that they say you should do like you should
post at least once once a
day or twice a day or whatever
and I can't I can't like the days I have to
go to Boston there's
there's no way I'm not I'm not
going to be the person who's like making
videos on the train you
know um I'm just not and um
but I think that's part of your success is
it's authentic you're
making videos when you truly
are inspired to make a video you're not
just making a video to
make a video yeah I think
that's what comes through so but you know
it's the quality versus
quantity which I think I enjoy
more from creators on social media in
general because sometimes
I can tell when you're just
making this someone's making a video just
to get that content out
versus no this is truly they're
inspired to talk about this whatever it is
so um I think what it's
working for you how long have
you been doing it now um it started when I
was still living in
Michigan so um four years okay
but it wasn't until I moved to Rhode Island
where I had that first viral
video so I think I was doing
it for probably eight months a year before
that okay hit and I I was
just like talking about stuff
like when I felt like it and um not trying
to I don't know be a
brand or have a positioning
and then I fell into talking about men and
relationships because of that one video
but then I still would um explain you know
stuff this tariff stuff
I've been explaining now for
years um and because it really has affected
all of our costs you know and
so it's a big reason for the
the consumer um inflation that that we've
seen you know and so
anyway um yeah I've always been
surprised I'm like how why are people
interested in the bullshit
that comes out of my face I think
because you're just being honest you're
being real and you're not
trying to sell them something
you're not trying to influence them you
know you really aren't like
you have your opinions but
you're not coming across as you should
think the way I think you're
just saying these are the facts
as I see them and here they are you know
and I think it's more of
a straight shooter concept
which is very gen x yeah yeah that's true
yeah you definitely are
have a gen x vibe about it so
now did doing the tick tocks um your tick
tock career hobby whatever
you want to call it persona
has is that what's led you to want to do a
podcast or is that an
inspiration coming from somewhere
else I would say I wanted to do a podcast
before I did tick tock okay
I didn't have a good enough
idea and then also the kids were still at
home and stuff so I
didn't have the time but ever
since um ever since I I heard I learned
about podcasts like I told
you you know 15 years ago
listening to Joe Rogan for the first time
because my brother's like
listen to this and I was like how
do you how do you even find that you know
like where do you go and
then back when I was doing
improv too I remember um guys at the improv
place they had started
a podcast and I was like
podcast like why are you in a pod you know
like I didn't even
understand and I still don't kind
of know where that name came from like why
I think it's from no I saw
something it was from um Apple
Apple it came from Apple something with
their like there had that
AirPods and something with
it did yes it somehow the room it came from
Apple now I can't remember yeah that's been
doing it forever that you realize that to
your point you couldn't
find podcasts right where do
you go yeah Apple's been doing it forever
Apple had something in the
phone they put about podcasts
right they came out with the software you
can listen to shows
from Apple on your phone
on your computer that so somebody couldn't
can correct me if I'm wrong
but I I did read that yeah
I didn't know that it wasn't TikTok because
sometimes I say I read something but it was
actually TikTok I actually read this I read
it with my eyes with
words you were even listening
to a book oh and I read it so um what's
your plan as far as uh your podcast
mediocre at best when
are you hoping to start launching that well
hopefully in the fall
so so that's the goal now
um I've I've done all my my back work you
know as far as like this
is what some of the episodes
are going to look like like this is very
very raw so like I haven't
even talked about it on TikTok
like at all and so um but yeah the the
concept behind mediocre at
best is exactly what we were
just talking about which is like being gen
x taking everything just
this far like doing all
this stuff and I feel like as a woman as a
a gen x 50 something year
old woman like you are only
mediocre at best you know what I mean like
you can only and and it's
a joke like the whole the
logo is with an exclamation point too but
it came from this is funny
it came from I was walking to
the train and um it was like early morning
and whatever and I'm
walking to the train and this
like homeless dude outside of the mall in
Providence he's like
hey mediocre at best lady
mediocre at best like I got cat called by
mediocre at best and I
was like you know what
nothing's ever been truer man like you have
that oh my god you have called me out and I
and ever since then I'm like I'm gonna get
a t-shirt that says that I
and I feel that in my soul
you know I do because and I also feel like
we've made such a culture
of just extolling all of this
like idiotic like grind mindset and
everybody's just gotta like
all you gotta do is you know get
up every day at 330 in the morning and get
into your oxygen chamber you
know and take a cold plunge
and eat wheat germ and and it's just like
you know what fuck it
yeah maybe I'm gonna have a
drink and I'm gonna I'm gonna find somebody
to bum a cigarette off of
like a like a disgusting freak
like how do you like me now I love that
love that it's like the
antithesis of everything that's
going on all all of that and then you'll be
there with your past like
taking a smoke and be like
come on over here it's fun over here yeah
can you imagine having a
cigarette like I like that's
like so far outside of my my realm I I
remember like in the 90s oh
yeah having like a beer and
a cigarette in a bar and I wasn't like a
smoker I was I was that one who would
always bum a cigarette
yeah I was a smoker so if we were partying
I'm smoking yes so if I go
to the hotel and hold it in
and then you let it out yeah I think vaping
is a million times worse
I wish kids were smoking
cigarettes vaping is a whole chemical
process of crap at least and
I'm not saying cigarettes are
better at all I don't think kids should be
smoking period but if they're
going to I'd much rather see
them smoking a cigarette than vaping roll a
drum before you do yeah I
could do that yeah there's my
gen x advice kid they're old ones real
cigarettes actually just
smoke it's going yeah you could do
that too instead of all the the other
chemical stuff stay away
from the chemical stuff kids
say if it grew in the ground you're good
but um I think that sounds
awesome I love it I can't
wait to see like where it goes because I
love that um it's raw it's
honest and I do think you're
going to be kind of the counter to so much
of the we're gonna do all
those things just to and
and that type a attitude that a lot of
people especially midlife
are starting to have and so
you have to have that balance of you know
like I said I cut down on my
alcohol but I do still have
a drink sometimes like we actually went to
dinner last night and I
didn't order wine he's like no
alcohol no no booze tonight so that tells
you I do still order it.
Am I in the boat you're talking about there
like I'm building a cold plunge we walk
yeah he's yeah so I balance out a little
bit. I call it my cancer
prevention push out mode we're all gonna
get cancer right so I'm
trying not to feed it I'm
trying to hopefully not starve it out
there. I still like all of
that I still like a sauna
or whatever but if I just think about my
life as a whole and the
level of grind that I've been on
like flying all over the world trying to
make it in corporate America
or whatever and I'm just like
still double middle fingering my way like
ow you know because like I
still like only got so far
and I think that I should embrace it though
and that's kind of what
it's about you know like it's
it's about just relaxing and having a good
time and and stopping that
that grind I'm like maybe
the opposite Mel Robbins you know. We love
that platform MJ we just
figured it out right here
that is a great vibe I'll tell you a lot of
people are looking for that I
think it's great it's almost
like look we are who we are and we've done
what we've done and fuck it
like I'm not gonna you know
we're not gonna have a perfect body we're
not gonna have perfect
skin we're not gonna have you
have perfect hair but the rest of us don't
have perfect hair we're
not gonna eat perfect like
we've been grinding as we've given over our
fucking souls yes and
so we're reclaiming some
of it back and fuck it I love that I think
it's a great balance too
because there is something to
be said about the cancer push-off but you
can get gen x also can get
obsessive about things and like
really into something you know so I don't
know if that's a gen x thing
or whatever but if you go too
far that way then you're like stress that
out I'm not saying you but
in general like then you're
don't worry I'm not saying no I want a cold
punch I think I would like
it yeah but oh do you ever
cold punched I I've definitely cold punched
in a um there's a place
around here where you can
it's a whole cycle it's like you go in the
hot sauna then you go in
the tub and then you get a
cold punch literally awesome yeah love it
that's cool see I want a
sauna he okay so here's a little
we're trying to not have it look a little
west virginia in the backyard
but he did buy a freestanding
freezer and he's going to create a cold
plunge and he's gonna Brian
also is a big do it yourself for
another hobby where he if I find something
like in pottery barn he's
like I can make it oh yeah
sure so I'm gonna build a frame around it
to match our pergola that
he built in the back so he's
gonna make it look real nice but right now
it's just a freezer in our
backyard so we're like go
inside a freezer yeah you can buy you know
a horizontal freezer
not a stand-up oh my head
you're like a kid in the in the in the
trash dump like getting trapped in a
refrigerator no no no
no this is the most claustrophobic thing
I've ever heard of no no and
then they close the door and
you're just no it you would get you would
open the lid get into the
cold plunge the lid stays open
um oh you turned your freezer into yes yes
he's making it into a cold
plunge and he's gonna have
a filter on it and a temperature thing and
so he'll lift up the lid
and that's what I'm in the
process of sealing it now yeah and once I
seal it I'll build the frame
around it and all that it'll
look pretty no yeah it sounds like it
sounds like a great way to
repurpose yeah yeah absolutely so
and that's cool that's bad it's all balance
right yeah can't be too
crazy like you did have
a pint of Ben and Jerry's last night I go
back to the mountain of
cold I've had a point the last
five nights I think okay but you'll love
this he hasn't gained a
pound no of course not of course
not yeah well you know I breathe in some of
the ice cream and I
gained five pounds yeah off his
yes yeah I'm screwed I'm screwed for the
week you know but the reason
I was asking about the hobbies
because I'm I go there the halfway not
pretty close but like so
for instance I have a nice
hydroponic garden in the backyard kind of
crazy it's I use raspberry
pies to control it a bunch
of shit right but in someone's like you
should productize that you
should go sell that and for
me it's like no that takes away the fun
right I don't want to go
that extra step I want to
have fun I need to I I'm turning my brain
off as much as crazy as that
sounds I'm turning my brains
off my brain off with this highly complex
thing I built you know and I
don't want to productize it
I don't read the whole thing yeah that's
why I was curious just you
know not to circle back on that
but I have a feeling you could probably
relate to that oh I know
your stand up or your you know
the improv the improv the band if you take
it too far now you're on the
hook to go to the hard rock
in Detroit every Friday or Saturday that's
not as much fun yeah exactly
exactly it ruins the balance
yeah it fucks up the balance yeah I need to
have um I maybe overall I
just have commitment issues
I can't commit to a man I can't commit to a
hobby I can't commit to a
location like it's fine I just
like fit about the planet I'll do whatever
the fuck I want for you
on that this and it's maybe
it's personal maybe not I don't know um now
that you've shut off men
and you're done do you think
that I don't know if holding out hope or
anything that's not the
right word but what if it happens
now that you're like fucking I'm done and
you've got that energy of
I'm good I'm at peace I don't
need a man and now mr. wonderful strolls in
and you're like oh shit
here we go are you okay mom
my mom called you and asked you to ask that
question I've got her on speed
okay Louise listen um I don't know how that
would happen I honestly don't because like
I don't know how it would happen I I feel
like I've been out and about the world for
years now as a single person and aside from
like if I go out to eat
normally like if I'm traveling
for work or whatever and I'm by myself I
always sit at the bar right
because I'd like to talk to
the bartender or whatever and I always
think it's weird to just sit
at a table by myself and um
there have been men who have tried to talk
to me at a bar but I'm
like ew you're a gross guy at
a bar and then I'm like well you're also at
a bar I'm like I don't
count right so uh so anyway um
I don't know how it would happen first of
all and um second of all I
I and this is gonna sound
bad you guys seem to be in like a really
great relationship and
whatever but I can't imagine
like putting myself through it I guess
which is like how is this
gonna be how how I'm gonna go
out on dates I don't find it that enjoyable
I guess anymore like in
between my first and second
husband I dated like it was my job and I
had so much hope and I
believe that like my person is
out there and all this stuff and but the
actual date portions were
always I I would wake up the
next day and be like thinking oh I had a
good time and then realize
no I was I was the good time
I was like entertaining somebody I was like
and they were like being
real good chat GPTs you know
and like reflecting back at me like oh this
is interesting or whatever
and um and I I gotta say I
I don't know if I could find somebody who I
ultimately wouldn't feel
like I was always doing
more than I was getting back it's just been
my history and but but
that being said when you
decide to also your kids aren't at home and
also you don't have a man
around and you're not trying
to find a man it has left a hole that I
could drive a truck through
because like a man was a hobby
for a thousand years right so I just set
that hobby on fire you
know and that's gone and um
so I'm just like twit on my balls like I
don't I don't even know
I don't even know just
trust us the podcast will take up all that
time I know this does seem
like very complicated the
more I've because I've had to like dig in
and learn about it and
all of that stuff I was like
oh is this gonna be too hard you can you
totally can do it there's no
question but it is there it
is um there's more commitment than people I
think really more
commitment than we realize for sure
you know and it's way it's really technical
if Brian is very
technical if he wasn't we couldn't
do this I'm thinking I might hire a kid to
do that like there's certain
parts of it that just won't
I won't have the attention span for you
know like the technical
editing portions and stuff like that
and I know that so I've already been like
looking for a kid yeah to do
that that's local to me that
I can talk to yeah no that's a good idea
because that it that'll
take a huge weight off of you
and allow you to focus on the the meat of
the podcasts and not be
stressed out with all the
editing and the technical stuff you know so
but either way even so
that you have the time
it sounds like to devote to this and it
will take it'll fill a lot of
that time if you keep it just
yourself it's actually kind of easy if you
start to branch out and do
guests whether in studio or
online it's that gets a little bit more
exponential yeah I'll
definitely have have guests on because
I think it would be boring to just listen
to me I don't know I mean
at least a good six months in
this a lot of just you talking honestly and
then you guys just spent
your whole weekend with me
I love it I practically live with you now I
love it I love it and and
on that note before I ask my
last question do you have any more because
I always have to check
with them because afterwards
he'll say I had another question so no I
got my that was my main
question and the only thing I'll
circle back on that is I could relate if we
weren't together I don't
think I'd be out there and
it just sounds like a lot and I'd be
probably hobby mania mode yeah and and
maybe it is our age too
right like I don't have you know I've got
I've got some functioning
ovaries in there but that's
all I got left you know and then they're on
their last legs yeah like I
don't have the drive that I
used to yeah it will say since I've said
everything else that I I get
sad sometimes thinking about it
like I'm like am I gonna die never having
made out again like that's
weird to think about or you know
that is sad but I also think that I could
just like knock on a
neighbor's door and make out with
them if I wanted to actually I had a I had
a thought on this I'm
making out no I was thinking
about this because I don't ever not think
the concept of dating and
you're dating guys that were
divorced and you had mentioned that you
know all it's women divorce
men I found that interesting
too that men don't divorce and I think
you're spot on but it's
like you're out and the people
you're meeting are guys that women have
kind of said no good what
about a widower it's men are
widowers right correct yeah that might be
the that might be an uh niche
that you haven't tapped into
so I'll just start
hanging out at the funeral home
I'll just get in the processions you know
when they go down the highway
they're big juries like just read the
obituaries every week and be
like okay I gotta go over here
no you know what I never thought about that
but yeah they those ones
weren't cast aside no that's
true but they're sad they're be sad but
maybe it's been like
five years and they're okay
uncle was a widower very dedicated husband
father became a widower
and he was a great guy
he was a world war two vet and just uh too
old actually yeah I know I mean
peace now
now that we put that out there now tell us
in the next year I bet
you she meets some widower
oh god that'll be the one and all he wants
to do is make out okay I put it out there
okay and then leave you alone I think you
have a lot to offer
someone I'll leave it at that
it's trying to fuck with you another man oh
no no I won't say that
I'm just easy um well because I think even
though Brian said like
if we weren't together but
men do want sex they really do and you're a
man that does like sex
and so I think eventually
you would go out there to get laid I really
do because I think that
drives them you know they
want to be taken care of they love the the
house that a woman makes
they love like cooked food and
clean laundry they they love those services
a lot of times yeah
yeah yeah you might still
want your services so I would I'd find it
hard if there weren't
the right services for sure
yeah yeah but uh I do but I do think it's
harder for men to be single because they do
they still and I know there's gonna be
women that right and they
get mad at me that women
like sex too I know women like sex I like
sex but I'm not driven
by it but I think men just
biologically I'm not blaming them are so I
think even 60 70 80 year
old men still are looking at
women and feeling I want to have sex you
know where I think that a
lot we're easier to stay
single in our older age than men I could be
wrong but I know no I
definitely think like maybe like
a 70 80 year old guy doesn't necessarily
like want sex but he wants
to be the guy who wants sex
yeah and that's like a huge part of your
identity right as a man like
and and I do think it's kind
of a shame I could talk forever on that
topic but just like that I
don't think necessarily that men
are as driven by sex as they're told that
they're driven by sex and
that they they might like some
men might like back like back off or not or
like because it's just in
the zeitgeist too much like
that's what their guy friends talk about
that's what like one way
they relate to each other and
whatever if they don't have like hobbies or
sports or whatnot and I
think maybe they would not
be that maybe it's not a thing of a deal as
they're told it it should
be well no you're touching on
something it's interesting it's it's the
you're always from the
time you realize what it is
you're pursuing it yeah right and so old
high old habits are hard to
probably break so when you're
75 or 80 yeah that you know the what is it
viagra right okay I can
still do this and also when
you're young porn and and society
especially gen x men naked
women in movies and all that
um it's fed it's that's what I'm saying
yeah it's a work condition
to want it yeah yeah that
maybe you'll have to come on or write that
as a topic for your
podcast oh yeah covering that
because that's a very interesting topic you
know to to cover so all
right any more questions no no
I'm good okay so my last question is always
where do you see yourself
in five years oh um well in
five years I um I hope we will have sold
our company that's always
like the goal is to exit
and then I won't ever work for anybody but
myself again my goal is to
ultimately do the consulting
that you're talking about and I would like
to keep working with
startups and um but only
hire me as a fractional coo right like I
come in for six months to
a year I get you all set up
with all your systems and processes and
then I go someplace else I
don't want to like have the work
politics and all of that stuff and um I do
wonder where I'll live like
I think about it now like am
I just going to keep this house you know
like what what am I going to
do and I don't know I like to
keep all that flexible but the only thing I
have any remote idea
about is that I will work for
myself in five years because if I'm still
working for somebody else fucking kill me
great goal and I you're such a wealth of
knowledge I completely see that happening
there's no question and on that note if we
do have any listeners
that want to reach out to you
uh we'll just for our listeners we'll get
the right contact
information from MJ and have it in the
notes in the description so people can get
a hold of you if they do so
even if I and I do give it away too much
but even if you just maybe have some
questions or whatever
but I I do need to start working on I don't
know charging people for
all that because I'm helping
everybody for free yeah especially
especially like helping women
entrepreneurs um uh and so if you
have questions and stuff like that I'll
yeah you know reach out I
would say you have a unique
highly sought after skill set and it's you
shouldn't give it away for free absolutely
yeah I'll do it I'm
still married to him say
I said this is why I'm still married to you
you're just as nice as
chat gbt yeah that's like
literally what chat gbt said like word for
word that's the new
nickname I think you should charge
I I get what you're doing it's global it's
big it's needed it's
cool stuff and it's a unique
skill set not everybody gets it and you're
an expert are building
that business now so in five
years it's charged that's what my psychic
said I I saw a psychic last
week for the first time in
a thousand years and she said all all of
what you just said I'm I think
that we're aligning with chat
gbt and the psychic there you go that's
this is your third oh that's
because you know things come
in three so oh okay there you go on spying
on us so of course it's
going to run for a moment
it's just connected into the suit yeah
absolutely but we mj we can't
thank you enough for sharing
your story with us for sharing your story
with our listeners I know
there's going to be so much in
here that so many people it resonates with
so many people that helps
people feel seen that they can
relate to that they learn things from so
again I know it was two
days with us and we you're very
busy and you travel you're traveling and
you've got a lot of things
going and so we can't thank
you enough for giving of your time I mean I
had the best time um and
I'm gonna come over and I'm
gonna get in the cold plunge yes there you
go but wait till it
doesn't look like it's just a
toilet on my back my backyard that he had
don't leave me I'm gonna
put a child on the floor
oh I'm gonna put a crunch on the floor and
for all our listeners
please check out MJ on TikTok
MJ aka mommy and it's spelled M-O-M-M-I-E
check her out on TikTok
keep your eyes open for her
podcast mediocre at best again it'll be MJ
Eldridge mediocre at
best and if you have any
questions for MJ please leave them we'll
make sure she sees them so
she can answer you and again
all of her contact info and where you can
find her will be in the show notes
and thank you again for listening and we
will see you next time bye