Episode 293: Talk A Walk with Becca Freeman

“There's something to following something that sounds fun and just seeing if it leads anywhere. “

- Becca Freeman

Kate’s kids call her "cringe," and Doree dances up a Broadway storm. Then, all their podcast parasocial relationships merge when Becca Freeman, host of Bad On Paper and author of The Christmas Orphans Club, joins to talk about the healing power of an outdoor walk, the joy of putting everything you've got into creative projects, and allllll the romcom book recommendations your heart can handle. Plus: hair prods!

Transcript

 

Kate:                    Hello and welcome to Forever35, a podcast about the things we do to take care of ourselves. I'm Kate Spencer,

Doree:                And I am Doree Shafrir,

Kate:                    And we are not experts.

Doree:                We're not, we're two friends who like to talk a lot about serums.

Kate:                    Just this weekend started rewatching the comeback on Max starring Lisa Cadre,

Doree:                One of my favorite shows of all time, Kate,

Kate:                    One of the best TV shows ever made. But there's this fantastic scene, this montage of her working on a line from this pilot script and the different ways she can say it. And I realized I was just doing that in the intro of this podcast.

Doree:                Oh, that's so funny.

Kate:                    That's one of the best shows. I was like, this feels like a good comfort rewatch. I'm going to put this on and boy did it deliver.

Doree:                Wow.

Kate:                    It's the best. It's so fucking funny and smart.

Doree:                It's so good. She's so good.

Kate:                    And it's our first season's from 2000 and, I don't know, five, six. It's pretty old. And then they did the second season many years later, but that first season is, it's just so good. Anyway, anyway, I realized basically I'm Valerie Chairish is what I'm saying. I'm Valerie Chairish, not the best person to compare yourself to, but

Doree:                I'm bowing to you. She does.

Kate:                    Thank you. She does. Oh, so cringe as my kids and all the kids today would say such so cringe.

Doree:                So cringe.

Kate:                    Just like the epitome of cringe. Is Valerie Cherish, I feel like cringe really has taken off.

Doree:                Has it?

Kate:                    Not in a positive way. It's just this constant monitoring of people being cringe and it's kind of like, oh, it's good or bad.

Doree:                Yeah. I mean, it does feel like it's just something that is constantly, you always have to be constantly worried that someone is going to be taking a video of you.

Kate:                    Yes. And I think it's great to call people out sometimes, like Valerie Cherish cringe. Totally. I mean obviously that's a fictional character, but you know what I mean? But I feel like the kind of worrying about doing something cringe, especially watching my kids kind of have that concern, cringe, is just being too excited about things. It's such an arbitrary determination of what is cringe, I guess. Also, I'm seeing it through a teenager and a tween who are constantly telling me when I'm cringe, so

Doree:                Are they?

Kate:                    Yeah. My life is fucking crazy with a, it's wild over here. It's wild. It's really intense having a 13-year-old and an almost 11-year-old in terms of the feedback, the eye rolling the emotions. But I am very cringe.

Doree:                I guess this is just the fate of everyone who has children.

Kate:                    Yes. I'm assuming when your son is 13, the cringe might not be the word that they use. Embarrassing,

Doree:                But it would be the same idea.

Kate:                    Yes. It's just interesting to me that the topic of cringe is kind of this cultural conversation amongst Gen Z and alpha right now, and for generations that often feel so open-minded and inclusive. It's so interesting to me that they are also so aware and a little bit judgmental of people who are cringey.

Doree:                Totally. I mean, I think it is about establishing your own identity.

Kate:                    Well, also, I do feel like the generation before them, millennials are inherently cringey. That is the whole personality of, and I say this lovingly, but isn't that kind of essentially what millennials are?

Doree:                I mean, Taylor Swift basically talks about this. She embraces being millennial cringe.

Kate:                    Yes.

Doree:                I'm just saying. I think it is. It's a way of, at this very pivotal age where emotions are very heightened and everyone is trying to carve out who they are, that defining yourself against other things is a very natural response. So by them saying, Ugh, you're so cringe. Everything you do is cringe. They're saying, I'm my own person.

Kate:                    Okay, that's a nice way of looking at it. I want that for them.

Doree:                Just my thoughts.

Kate:                    I appreciate that. I appreciate you being my parenting therapist for this.

Doree:                Until you are that age, you are kind of like your parents do dictate so much of who you are and what you do. And as you kind of enter that tween age, you start to say, well, I want to forge my own path. Therefore, everything that these people who have been telling me what to do for 10 years or however long is cringe and I want no part of it.

Kate:                    Yes. I think I certainly felt the same way. A hundred percent. I mean, I wouldn't go out in public with my mom when she wore a certain jacket.

Doree:                Right? Exactly. Exactly. And now we're like, oh, that jacket was actually kind of cute.

Kate:                    No, Doree it was actually, we still have the jacket. My dad still has the jacket. It is a harrowing jacket. It is a floor, like a full length puffer jacket, orangy red on the outside, bright yellow on the inside. And my mom loved it. And we're talking, people we're talking Massachusetts where everybody just is gray.

Doree:                Yeah, that's true.

Kate:                    She really stood out and I didn't want to stand out when I was 13 years old.

Doree:                I get it

Kate:                    Anyway, but now I love it for who it represents, who my mom was. She didn't give a fuck about what I thought, 13 me. No, she wasn't going to be stifled by my criticisms. Anyway. Anyway, you know what I did, my number one self-care thing that I've had on my agenda for over a year, I finally did it, Which is I scheduled my preventative cancer screening MRI.

Doree:                Okay. This is exciting.

Kate:                    I don't know. I'm a little nerves because I've never had an MRI.

Doree:                Yeah, you asked me if I had had an MRI and I was like, I don't know.

Kate:                    I feel like you would remember. Right.

Doree:                I remember going into a thing, but maybe it was a CT scan. Isn't that similar?

Kate:                    I honestly don't know. I am very privileged to not have had to get any of these things.

Doree:                Okay. Yes. A CT scan is similar. I feel like I had a CT scan when I had a stress fracture,

Kate:                    So I think I did too, only because it was on my foot. They only put my half my body in to the machine. I think I'm going to be all the way fully in. Yes. And to be clear, I'm part of, I'm in a program at a hospital here in Los Angeles for people who are at high risk for pancreatic cancer because of genetics. So I'm not doing one of those prevo, have you seen all those prevo things? There's a company now where I keep seeing on my Instagram, especially with influencers, they do whole body scans basically. But you pay out of pocket and it's extremely expensive. But I'm part of this, I dunno if it's a study or a group or whatever, but it's like high risk preventative something, something. So that's what I'm doing. So I get an MRI every few years, and this is my first one. And it's because my mom had pancreatic cancer. There's no real early detection for it. So that's what this is.

Doree:                Okay.

Kate:                    And I think I go all the way in, chew, chew. I'm going in that machine.

Doree:                I just Googled. What's the difference between an MRI and a CT scan?

Kate:                    What is the difference? Educate us on this,

Doree:                I guess the CT scan. Okay. Here a CT scan uses X-rays to create detailed pictures of organs, bones, and other tissues. The person lies on a table that moves through a scanning ring, which looks like a large donut. This is from Memorial Sloan Kettering's website. The data collected, it can be assembled to form three dimensional images. And then an MRI also creates detailed pictures of areas inside the body, but it uses radio waves and a powerful magnet to generate the pictures. The person also lies on a table that moves into a donut shaped device, but the donut is much thicker. So it's kind of the same experience, it sounds like. I don't know. I think maybe the MRI takes longer. Oh yeah. Okay. Yes. CT scan is like you're in and out.

Kate:                    Okay.

Doree:                MRIs, it says, takes 20 to 40 minutes.

Kate:                    I get claustrophobic. And so I'm just going to figure out how to work through that and it'll be fine, but I am a little nervous for it, so if anyone has hot tips on MRIs, let me know.

Doree:                Okay.

Kate:                    Let me know. But I do feel like this for me is the ultimate in taking care of myself because it also requires me to confront my number one fear, which is getting pancreatic cancer. So that's also kind of terrifying for me. The knowing, I don't know if that makes sense, but I think for a lot of people, the fear is so great that it's like that fear of going to the doctor. It's like you don't want to know.

Doree:                Yeah, totally.

Kate:                    But again, this for me is the ultimate in how I could take care of myself. So I feel very, like I'm proud I finally did it. It's hard for me to make appointments with the old executive function issues I have. So it did take me over a year to make this appointment.

Doree:                Look, I get that.

Kate:                    But I finally did it today, finally. Fucking did

Doree:                It. Okay. Amazing. Amazing. I'm proud of you, Kate.

Kate:                    I mean, thank you. I am going to need to figure out what to listen to if I can have headphones and listen to something.

Doree:                I think you can. I think you can. Yeah.

Kate:                    I'm going to need to make a podcast playlist or something to listen to in there. Just catch up on old daily episodes. Maybe

Doree:                Kate, you know what? I haven't think I've discussed this on the podcast, but I've been going back to Broadway Dance class is back in person,

Kate:                    So I'm so happy for you because I feel like this was a real soul activity for you.

Doree:                It was

Kate:                    Broadway dance class.

Doree:                It was. It's true.

Kate:                    And it was taken away from you in the pandemic.

Doree:                It was taken away from me in the pandemic. It's true.

Kate:                    It is back. And does this mean that the teacher is here in Los Angeles again?

Doree:                So, no, he moved to the desert at the beginning of the pandemic, and he's doing classes every two weeks at a studio in the valley where he's just renting a studio and you can sign up on his website, which is josephcarla.com. And if you get on his mailing list, you can find out info on the in-person classes. He's still doing his live streams, but there's really nothing like an in-person class.

Kate:                    No, there's not. It's the best.

Doree:                So yeah, so it's a little inconsistent. You don't know exactly when the next one's going to be, and I don't know, but I've gone to three of them in the last couple of months and it's been great.

Kate:                    And do you feel, in addition to just the physical release of dance and moving, what is the joy release for you? Is there one, I mean, maybe it's not, you're purely just like, I love to dance, but do you feel like there's a little bit of a getting out of your head release too?

Doree:                Yeah. I mean, there has to be because you're learning a new combination.

Kate:                    That's so interesting. That's right. Because you're learning choreography. You're not just working out or free dancing.

Doree:                The way the class is structured is the first half of the class is a warmup, and the warmup is usually pretty much the same to the same songs, and those are the same routines. Sometimes he throws in a new one and he teaches it to you, but it's generally the same. And then the second half of class, you learn a completely new routine to a different song every time.

Kate:                    That sounds hard, Doree.

Doree:                So yeah, you have to be very focused. And it's fun. It's very fun. I highly recommend it. I will say if you have never done it before, you might want to take one of his livestream classes or he has an online studio where I think you have to sign up for a subscription, but you can get all the past livestream classes also and just practice, especially the warmup, just so you kind of have a sense of what's going on.

Kate:                    How did you stumble across Broadway dance class originally?

Doree:                Class pass.

Kate:                    Oh wow. Does that still exist?

Doree:                I think it bought, I think it got bought by mindbody, which is the class scheduling software.

Kate:                    Oh, I know it mindbody,

Doree:                But I think it does still exist. I I feel like we talked about this. Someone ask about it. Yes, it still exists. I stopped doing it. I remember when I first signed up, they were offering unlimited classes, so there were people who were taking five Pilates classes a day. Yeah, yeah. You could do unlimited classes.

Kate:                    Oh my gosh.

Doree:                And then they gradually kind of whittled it down and it was harder to find stuff that I was interested in. And then the pandemic hit and it was like, but yeah, I found this class through ClassPass and just randomly signed up for it.

Kate:                    Oh my gosh. I am sure you've told me that before, but I don't remember. And that's wild. That's like meeting on a blind date.

Doree:                Totally. You don't know what you're walking into.

Kate:                    No. But you found your thing.

Doree:                Yeah, I found my thing.

Kate:                    I am glad you're back at it.

Doree:                Thank you so much. Me too. Yeah.

Kate:                    I have this fantasy of dancing. I don't know, that's one of those things, remember we were talking about life things that you kind of wish you'd always done, but you never did. Dancing is that for me in a lot of ways, in addition to running a marathon, but I do think the ship has sailed. Do you remember when I was taking tap dancing?

Doree:                I do remember that.

Kate:                    Doree

Doree:                What happened to that.

Kate:                    Okay, so that was disrupted by COVID, because I started that in January, 2020. It was ballet tap combo class at our parks and recreation. And it was like beginners, but then it was so not for beginners, so not for people who had never done either of those things before.

Doree:                Oh, no.

Kate:                    And so I truly had no freaking idea what I was doing. It was very humbling. But yes. But it was disrupted by, I mean, one person, the last class, somebody tapped across the floor and their shoe got stuck and they fell and sprained their ankle. And then it was covid, the flooring, it's like a rec center. The flooring was not great. I'll never forget, they were like, tap, tap, tap. And it was like smack. And then, yeah, then we never went back. I'm pretty sure I might even still have my tap shoes somewhere.

Doree:                Oh wow. Okay.

Kate:                    Yeah. And you know what? There is still a part of me that would like to learn how to tap dance, but I would need to go ultra beginner.

Doree:                Okay.

Kate:                    So I don't know, maybe that there's too many things I want to do and not enough time. Anyway. More on that next year in 2024.

Doree:                Well, Kate, should we introduce our guest?

Kate:                    I would love to. Doree, our guest today is Becca Freeman. Listeners of the podcast might already know who Becca is as the co-host of the podcast. Bad on Paper. But she's also the co-creator of Romcom Pods, which is an amazing scripted fiction podcast studio where she has written, excuse me, co-written, directed and produced hilarious rom-com podcasts like Bone Mary Berry Showmance and Vote for Love. And she's most recently the author of the really heartwarming, sweet, funny, the Christmas Orphans Club. And she's currently working on her second novel. We were just thrilled to get to chat with her today.

Doree:                She is a delight.

Kate:                    And Bad on Paper feels like one of those sister podcasts started around the same time as ours. I think a lot of our listeners overlap. So it was very, it's kind of fun when we come face to face with a fellow podcaster in that way.

Doree:                Yes.

Kate:                    Before we get to Becca Doree, I just want to offer the following information to anyone listening that we have a website Forever35podcast where we share links to everything I mention here. You can find us on Instagram @forever35.

Doree:                That's Forever35podcast.com.

Kate:                    There's a .com at the end. There is not a.gov or a.edu.com.

Doree:                No. Just a .com.

Kate:                    And then on Instagram, we're @Forever35podcast on Patreon. You can find bonus content like season one where we recap the first season of the OC, including the iconic Krisa episode. We have our weekly casual chat, which is really just what it sounds like. That's the two of us chatting. But anything that comes to our heart or our mind and product recall, where we take you on a journey of the history of an iconic product. And that can all be found at patreon.com/forever35. You can also find our favorite products at Shopmy.us/forever35. There's so much more information. Look, if you want to reach us, (781) 591-0390, call, text, send us a gif, and our email is Forever35podcast@gmail.com.

Doree:                Thank you, Kate.

Kate:                    Alright, Doree, let's take a quick break and we'll be back with Becca.

Doree:                Okay, sounds good.

Kate:                    Welcome, Becca to Forever35. This feels like it's been a long time coming, as Taylor Swift would say.

Becca:                 Well, I'm so honored to be here because it has been a long time coming because I've been a listener since. I don't know about day one, but I would say year one for sure.

Kate:                    Well, thank you. But you are also yourself a prolific podcaster, so it's always fun when the podcast world of ours melds together via interviews. It's always very exciting.

Becca:                 Yeah, it feels like all of the Internet's fake friends are meeting.

Kate:                    Yes. All the people you hear in your ears are now together.

Doree:                All the people we parasocial relationships with are now converging.

Kate:                    We've all become one. Well then the drill, which is that we're going to put you on the spot and ask you about a self-care practice in your life. And it can truly be anything. And I do happen to know that you are a person who has quite a few practices, but I would love to hear one that's really popping off right now for you in the middle of this holiday season too. This is often a time that's extra challenging for any sort of self-care.

Becca:                 So I know that this is well trot in territory on your podcast, but I feel like my biggest self-care practice is walking. I am that dad who's like anything can be fixed with duct tape. That is my approach to taking a walk.

Kate:                    Well walking, it's like been proven to be actually mentally therapeutic. So I don't think this makes total sense to me as a self-care practice. I love it. Does your walking practice predate the rise of hot girl walks on TikTok

Becca:                 slightly?

Kate:                    Are you an early adopter to walking?

Becca:                 So here's the thing is I've always walked, but I feel like I just tuned into the benefits it was bringing me during the pandemic. I live in New York City. I used to commute by walk. I had a 40 minute walk to my office and back when I worked in an office. And so I was walking to get my groceries. I was walking to return packages. It was just part of my life. And then the pandemics happened and all of a sudden I was stuck in my apartment and I was like, wow, I, I'm my own dog. I have to take myself for a stupid little walk every day or else I am going to start to lose it. And all of a sudden I realized what a benefit that I had been getting from walking that I was just taking for granted. And I also had a very creative pandemic. I wrote my first book in the Pandemic. I wrote four fiction podcasts. I don't know, all of a sudden I had a lot of time on my hands and a lot of anxiety to deal with, and I just channeled it into creative things. But I also realized that I'm my most creative when I'm walking. Yeah. So now I have a block on my calendar every day from 1230 to two for lunch and a walk.

Kate:                    Oh, you do a middle of the afternoon walk.

Becca:                 Well, I mean, it's daylight savings. It's dark at 4:00 PM

Kate:                    That's true. That's true. I'm always impressed by people who can take a break in the middle of a workday and go do something completely different and then come and sit back down and have their body and brain work.

Doree:                Kate, I used to take a three o'clock walk when I worked in an office because that, I felt like that was the time of day when my energy really started flagging. So it was like I would usually walk to the coffee shop and get a latte or whatever and just do a little walk. So yes, I love the midday walk. I wish I did it more.

Becca:                 Well, that's why I have to have it in my calendar because otherwise I will never do it.

Doree:                Right.

Kate:                    Do you honor it? Are there ever times where you are sitting there and you're on a deadline and you brush the walk aside? Or do you honor that time? You know how people talk about I have to honor it.

Becca:                 I try to honor it. How intense is the deadline? I try to honor it. The other thing I'll do is I'll move it is if it's an appointment. So if I can't go at that time, I'll just move it to the end of the day and try to make sure I do it then. But if it's a really deadline deadline, I'll skip it sometimes.

Kate:                    That's fair. I'm not going to be upset if you don't make your walk every day. I think that's

Doree:                Kate is watching.

Kate:                    Well, I have it. I'm here in Los Angeles. Spying on you.

Becca:                 Well, I have it in my calendar. And then I also use this habit tracking app. And after I go on my walk, I have a goal to take a walk five days a week. Not like a, I'm running errands walk, but this is a mental health walk. And so then I get a little extra hit of dopamine when I check off that I've done it and it turns it turquoise is the of walking,

Doree:                Checking off of the to-do list item. Dopamine hit is so crucial. I love it.

Kate:                    Can I ask, Becca, when you mentioned you're your most creative when walking, I find this too, that I often do a lot of my best creative brainstorming when I'm physically moving in some way. Do you find that as a writer that stuff pops into your head just when you're out moving around and not sitting in front of your computer?

Becca:                 Yeah. It unblocks me if I'm stuck on something, but so I thought I was really hacking the system and I bought a walking pad to put under a standing desk and I was like, this is going to be great. I'm going to be creative all the time because now I can work and walk and look at me. Gaming the system totally doesn't work. I have to be outside.

Doree:                Oh, interesting. So it's something about the being outside that.

Becca:                 Yeah.

Doree:                Okay.

Becca:                 Yeah. I also find it really hard to type and walk on the walking pad at the same time. So it's a little bit of a coordination too. Just doesn't work.

Doree:                Okay. What is the status of your walking pad?

Kate:                    So I also bought a walking pad, but going into it, I assumed I would not be able to walk and type on it. I watch these videos of these people, they're like, and then I do my emails on the walking pad. I can't do that. I have to.

Becca:                 Oh yeah, the TikTok girls can do anything. They're like cooking dinner on the walking pad.

Kate:                    Yes. No. So I listened to an edit podcast episodes or if we have to watch something for the podcast, that's when I use the walking pad because I just try to get up and move around. But listening to a podcast episode I can do and make the edit notes while on the walking pad, but I don't walk fast. I'm not power walking. It's just more to have my body upright and moving.

Becca:                 Do you put on shoes?

Kate:                    I do wear shoes.

Becca:                 Okay. That's another big blocker for some reason when I'm sitting at my desk and then to have to go put on a pair of sneakers, it feels like an insurmountable deal to me.

Doree:                Oh, interesting.

Kate:                    I think that's a good point. I mean, the walking pad, to me it's a little bit of appears to be an easy fix that's actually more work than it's worth. And it just looks really great in somebody's TikTok video. But I've used mine more than I thought I would, but I totally, I hear you on that. There's a little bit of, what's the word? Like some barriers, entry barriers to entry. What's that saying that I can't think of? I dunno. All right. You're hit or miss on the walking pad. Do you still have it?

Becca:                 I have it, and sometimes I'll use it if we go through a particularly hot or cold stretch where it's really uncomfortable to go outside and walk, but it doesn't bring me the same thing.

Kate:                    Yeah,

Doree:                I bet. What's the weather in New York right now?

Becca:                 Right now it's kind of nice. It's like high 40s. It's fine.

Doree:                Love that.

Becca:                 Walking weather.

Kate:                    Did you take your walk today?

Doree:                Great walking weather.

Becca:                 No, I'm doing it after this.

Kate:                    Okay. Okay. Alright, we'll keep you on track then to make sure you don't have to do it in the darkness of the afternoon. I would love to just switch gears and talk about your book because I mean, I loved it, but also it to me captures so many things about the holidays in a really unique way while still being a cozy read. So for our listeners, Becca, who have maybe not yet picked up Christmas Orphans Club.

Becca:                 Yes.

Kate:                    Can you give us the synopsis that you deliver every time somebody asks you this question? And then can you just give us the moment where you were like, oh, this is the thing I want my first book to be about?

Becca:                 Sure. So the Christmas Orphans Club is about a group of four friends who are each alone on Christmas for a different reason. It's told in two POVs. So Hannah, one of the main characters, her parents have died when she was a teenager. And then Finn, the other point of view character, his parents rejected him when he came out as gay and he's estranged from his family. And the two of them have built a found family tradition of spending the holiday together, having these fun kind of outrageous adventures. And the book is told an alternating now and then timelines. So in the past we get to see the greatest hits of their past Christmases and how their friend group came to be. And then in the present, Finn is getting ready to move from New York to LA and they are planning what might be their last Christmas together. And they're all in the present timeline around 30. And grappling with that time in your life when it goes from your friends being the most important people in your life to having all these competing pressures of jobs and relationships. And so they're really grappling with how do they grow up without growing apart.

Kate:                    That's a really hard transition to go through.

Becca:                 Yeah. I feel like we talk about coming of age a lot with young adult fiction, and I feel like I just keep coming of age over and over again in my adult life. And so every time I think I have it figured out every five years or so, then it's like, oh, everything's changing again.

Kate:                    And when did this, or how did this become the idea that you landed on or the thing in your head that you couldn't let go of and knew you had to start writing it?

Becca:                 So kind of indirectly through Instagram. So I always had this very amorphous idea that I wanted to write a book at some point. And I thought that that was too big a goal. It was kind of like a bucket list thing, but I was like, I don't know if I'm ever going to do this for real. It was just something that had been sitting in the back of my mind. And as I said, during the pandemic, I had really creative pandemic and I ended up writing quite a few fiction podcasts, which is kind of like a radio play, so almost like a TV show without the visuals. And that was almost like a crash course in storytelling. And I'd done it a few times and I was kind of building my confidence. And then in December of 2020 on Instagram, people kept asking me what my favorite Christmas books were. And I think they were asking because I love a Christmas movie. And honestly, the worst the better. Your family has competing inns. I'm there. You are a high powered undersexed ad executive who needs to go save a Christmas tree farm. Let's go.

Kate:                    Yes, I love it.

Becca:                 It can just be completely preposterous. And I am along for the ride, but I realized when it came to Christmas books, I didn't have a whole lot to recommend. Not because they don't exist and not because they aren't good, but just I feel like it's a different commitment to watch a 90 minute Netflix movie where I'm scrolling on my phone for half of it and reading a book, which takes 12 hours, let's say, of undivided attention. And I realized that I just didn't feel like I related to a lot of Christmas books because they tend to be really family centric. A lot of them are about going home for the holidays. And Kate, I am a fellow member of the Dead Mom's Club, and my mom passed away when I was a teenager. We moved. I don't really have a family home to go home to. And I just didn't really relate to a lot of Christmas books. And so I started thinking, what if there was a group of people, well, first of all, I was like, what Christmas book would I want to read? And then I started thinking, what if there was a group of people who had a tradition that they thought was better than kind of a traditional family Christmas and what would that look like? And I started noodling on the idea, and I'm a fairly impulsive person, so I thought about it for about all of two weeks before I started it. So we can't say that it had been something that was really, really sitting on my shoulder for a very long time, but that's where the idea came from.

Kate:                    But the story really centers in this idea of found family. And I know that's a very important part of your own personal life, and it's a story that it gets told a lot, but I also think it can feel very hard to figure out how to create that community for yourself, especially if you're coming into it as a person who doesn't have the traditional family structure in play. Have you had to think about how you did that yourself and how you wanted that to come across in the book? And also then having readers that resonates for,

Becca:                 So I feel like the way that I've done it in my own life, there's not been a lot of masterminding of it and trying to be like, here's what I'm building. But I think I've just gravitated towards trying to build really meaningful friend relationships because I have a very small biological family. And so from the beginning, the idea was that these two people, Hannah and Finn meet in college when they're the only two people alone on Christmas. And that's what I don't have, is I don't have a lot of friends who have also lost family or estranged from their own families. And so this immediate moment of understanding, and yes, you are my person in the Grey's Anatomy way, I get you. And so yeah, it was almost kind of magical thinking in some ways to be like, wouldn't this be amazing? And to build this fantasy friend group that was really built around the traditions, but then also not to make it, I really wanted it to also deal with some of the negative emotions around the holiday season because I feel like we were so focused on the happy and bright and shiny, which there is, but I feel like for a lot of people, for whatever reason, in my case, because of my mom's death and I feel like everyone has their shit, whether you have a complicated relationship with your own family, you've lost someone, you have your relatives nagging you for being single. I feel like the holidays can also have all sorts of more complicated or negative emotions with them. And I feel like we don't really talk about that in a lot of holiday content.

Kate:                    So much of what we talk about is how romanticized the holidays are fictionally, they're so romanticized, but then it's easy to focus on those fun and shiny things. But this could be a fricking dark time for a lot of us.

Becca:                 Totally. And I wanted it to be both. I don't want anyone to get the wrong impression that it's all doom and gloom, but

Kate:                    No, no, I'm not. Yes. And I'm speaking more about the real world and not about your magical fictional world. But

Becca:                 Yeah, I mean I feel like there's so much pressure around it too, of having it be the best time of the year and needing to do all the things you do the other 11 months of the year, but then also buy presence for everyone and plan a family gathering. And there's so much with it that you have to make look seamless.

Kate:                    Well, that's the top icing on the cake, the making it look seamless. And then I know you mentioned Instagram, but it's like, then there's the fact that our lives are so lived so publicly that the portrayal of how it's going needs to appear.

Becca:                 Completely. You have to perform.

Kate:                    Or must, we feel like it must appear seamless.

Becca:                 Yes. Yeah. Performative joy.

Kate:                    Performative joy.

Doree:                What are some of the holiday slash Christmas movies that you go back to every year?

Becca:                 So my number one favorite is Elf. There's something just so pure and that is love, just purely so happy. And then on the complete opposite side of the spectrum, I'm a really big, the Family Stone person, which I feel like is polarizing.

Doree:                Oh, interesting. I've never watched it.

Kate:                    I watched it once, but I think I watched it too soon. There's a Dying Mom theme to it. Doree,

Becca:                 there is

Kate:                    spoiler alert. Sorry. And I think I was in my kind of angry at everything dead mom related when it got out or when I watched it.

Doree:                That's the Sarah Jessica Parker one, right?

Becca:                 Yeah. It has a really star studded cast. It's Sarah Jessica Parker and Claire Danes is her sister. And then Luke Wilson, Dermot Mulroney, it's very star studded.

Kate:                    Diane Keaton.

Becca:                 Diane

Kate:                    Also, It has a weird couple swapping. It's like people bring partners home for the holiday and then they all fall in love with their person's partner, right?

Becca:                 Yeah. And I feel like people don't love it because Sarah Jessica Parker is probably one of the most type A unlikeable characters in this who does find love, which I love. But she is a tough woman to love. She has her walls up in this movie a lot, and so I feel like she's a little bit off-putting purposefully, but I love this movie. Talk about messy family dynamics in movies. It's my favorite.

Doree:                You're making me want to watch The Family Stone.

Kate:                    I would maybe watch this again too.

Becca:                 Its very good.

Kate:                    Where do you stand on love actually? Has it aged well?

Becca:                 No, not really. It's fine. I do have some nostalgia related to it, but if you really look at it through, if you were to see it for the first time in the year of our Lord 2023, I think you would be like, what is happening?

Kate:                    Yeah,

Becca:                 I'm sorry. Colin Firth falls in love with his housekeeper. They do not speak the same language. They have never had a conversation. And then he decides he needs to marry her and goes to ask her parents, her father's permission to basically export her to another country, like Oh, ooh.

Kate:                    Yeah. Yeah. I've never had the thing for love actually that so many people do have. So I don't feel like any particular way about it. But it's interesting to me the hold it has on people.

Becca:                 I like it. I will watch it. Do you know what my favorite Christmas romance movie is? I can't imagine you have seen this. Have either of you seen the Christmas contract?

Doree:                No. What is it?

Kate:                    Hold on. I'm just googling, but I think I would remember if I had seen, no, I haven't.

Becca:                 So it is a lifetime holiday movie.

Kate:                    Okay.

Becca:                 That is a glorified one Tree Hill reunion.

Kate:                    Oh, I see Hillary Burton's in it. Okay.

Becca:                 Hillary Burton's in it. Robert Buckley's in it Skills, I can't remember his name is in it. There is a strong showing of the One Tree Hill cast, and it's about, it's one of those fake dating things where the woman doesn't have, I can't remember the circumstances. She doesn't have a boyfriend. And so she's a lawyer. She convinces this guy to pretend to be her girlfriend and takes him home and ends up falling in love with him. I think it's great.

Doree:                Wow. Okay.

Kate:                    Do you think Die Hard is a Christmas movie?

Becca:                 No. I think it's a movie that takes place at Christmas. No, but the main character in my book does think it's a Christmas movie, and I've really tuned into a lot of this battle on the internet.

Kate:                    Yeah, we watch it on Christmas in our house or around, yeah, our kids have seen it now. It's a whole,

Becca:                 Yeah. It's like, is Die Hard a Christmas movie? Is a hot dog a sandwich? These are the great questions of our time.

Kate:                    Is a hot dog a sandwich? I mean, the other question that we pose in my house that's hot for debate is Nightmare Before Christmas. A Halloween movie or a Christmas movie.

Becca:                 That's actually really interesting.

Kate:                    Maybe more of a conversation when you have children, but this is truly, we've never settled on an answer in my house.

Doree:                What do you think, Kate?

Kate:                    I don't know. I honestly don't. I think maybe I don't care.

Doree:                Sure.

Kate:                    But I think it's a Christmas movie.

Doree:                Okay.

Kate:                    Like a haunted Christmas movie?

Doree:                Sure. Yes.

Kate:                    I mean, do you have an opinion? Doree? Have you seen it?

Doree:                I have seen it, but I think I saw it in the theater. So I mean, when was that? 30 years ago. And I've seen the Disneyland theming of the Haunted Mansion.

Kate:                    Listen, these are the great debates, like you said, is a hot dog a sandwich? Which by the way, the answer is a hundred percent. No. This is,

Doree:                I agree with that.

Kate:                    Go to my grave with that one. Becca, please say you're on the side of No.

Becca:                 Yeah, I agree, but I don't know what it is then.

Kate:                    It's a hot dog. What about a lobster roll? Is a lobster roll a sandwich?

Doree:                Yes.

Becca:                 No.

Kate:                    Okay. I would say no, it's a lobster roll.

Doree:                Yeah. I think anything served on a, I would argue that anything served on a hot dog bun is not a sandwich.

Kate:                    Wow.

Becca:                 Agree to disagree except for hotdog.

Kate:                    Be the debate that tears us apart.

Doree:                I mean, look, this is what makes the world go round, right? We don't all have to agree.

Kate:                    We don't. We dont Doree.

Doree:                So we're just going to take a short break and we will be right back.

Kate:                    Becca, I wanted to talk a little bit about how you have carved out your career, because I find, and I don't know if I've ever expressed this to you personally, but I find your career kind of amazing, the fact that you've dabbled in both conversational podcasting, storytelling, podcast, not dabbled, professionally done it and gone and done it hard all the way. And these are not easy industries to just be like, I'm going to do this now and then go and do it. And same kind of, I think applies for publishing. And you come from a marketing background, so I kind of perceive you as a person who is very self-made in your creative career. And I could be wrong, but I find it very interesting. And I would love to just have you share with our listeners how you accomplished the things you did. What were the ups and downs? I know that oftentimes online perception is not the reality of what's going on.

Becca:                 Well, first of all, Kate, I'm so complimented by that. But at the same time, I can say that there was probably zero forethought in that. So it all worked out in hindsight, but it just as easily could have not worked. But I guess the short version of my career trajectory, as I graduated college into the recession, I got a job in consulting, in traditional management consulting. I did it for two years. And I was like, wow, is this adult life like this for 40 years? This sucks. And so I had a major quarter life crisis, and I quit my job and I moved to San Francisco from Boston, and I found a job on Craigslist as one did in 2011. And I kind of went back to that thing of what did you love when you were a kid? What do you want to do? And I loved fashion magazines and fashion magazines were kind of on the way out, so that wasn't really a good place to go. But I decided I wanted to work in fashion, and I was like, I'll take any job I can get. And it happened to be in marketing. So I worked for this custom denim company for a year and a half, and then it folded, and I was like, okay, now I'm going to get another job in fashion. And I ended up going moving to New York from San Francisco, and I worked at Bobble Bar in the heyday of big chunky statement necklaces like the J Crew bubble necklace. And just the bigger the statement necklace the better. And I did that for three years. I'm a very much like a two to three years I stay at something and I'm like, I'm bored. I want to do something else. And then I went to a organic tampon company called Lola, where I was the head of marketing there.

Doree:                Wait, can I ask a question? Sorry. This is a total sidebar. Does Lola still exist?

Becca:                 It does, yeah.

Doree:                Okay.

Becca:                 It does. I feel like I see less advertising for it than I did once. And I think a lot of the mainstream brands have also come up with competitive products, but that's totally, yeah, it still exists.

Doree:                That's all.

Becca:                 No, that's fine. And then I decided to go freelance from there, and I kind of did freelance marketing for five years all in. And when the pandemic hit, I have this friend Rachel King, who we met when we were in San Francisco in our early twenties. And we overlapped there for a very short period of time. And I moved to New York and she moved to la. And so a lot of our friendship was crashing on each other's couches when we were in the other person's city. And we watched a lot of rom-coms together. We drank a lot of wine together. And every time we watch a bad rom-com in particular, she would be like, I think we could write a movie. I think we could write a better movie than this. And every time she said that, I do have a little bit of a practical streak. And I was like, with what time? Neither of us have any connections. We both have full-time jobs. This is just the most impractical thing one could propose. And for years, every time she said it, I kind of just rolled my eyes. And in 2019, I was in LA and I was complaining that I didn't really like consulting. I kind of felt like a mercenary doing client work. And she brought it up again. She was like, what if we wrote a romcom? And by this time she'd started a podcast production company. And I had started bad on paper with my good friend, grace Atwood, who I met at Bobble Bar. We were work wives there. And I was like, oh, okay. This does sound like a good idea. I feel like I'd started to, through my podcast, bad On Paper, started to be exposed to the world of audio books. And at that time, it was the same year Daisy Jones and the Six had come out and people were obsessed with that audio book because it had a different person narrated every chapter. And I listened to it. And there's something contrarian in me that if people like something, I'm like, it's not that great. And so this time Rachel was like, what if we wrote a rom-com? But we wrote it as a fiction podcast. So we started this in January of 2020, not knowing what was coming. And we were kind of halfway through writing a script. We had no idea what we were doing. We were just making it up. I think that's a good way to go into anything is to be a little naive about what it takes, because otherwise it's too scary. And the world shut down in March of 2020, and all of a sudden we had empty calendars. We had all this anxiety, and so we really just threw ourselves into it. And I tell you, we beg, borrow and stole to get that first season made. We put our own money in. Everyone recorded it in their closets. We found actors on backstage.com. It was the least professional process one has ever run. But we had so much fun. And I feel like there's something to everything I've done is You don't need to know everything. And look, I had a full-time, not full-time, but I was consulting. I had an income. I didn't quit my day job. But I think there's something to following something that just feels fun and seeing if it leads anywhere and not really expecting anything out of it. And that's the same with that. On Paper, grace asked me, grace is a professional influencer and she has her blog, and she kind of had this idea of wanting to start a podcast, and she was like, you're my friend who likes to read the most. What if we started a podcast together? And I was like, okay, sounds like fun. And so, I dunno, I think that's a trend in my career is just finding something that seems interesting, trying it out and seeing if it still feels fulfilling. And that's really how writing started too. I had this idea for almost all of the first draft. I feel like I fully convinced myself I wasn't going to publish it. I was just going to shove it in a drawer at the end. I don't know.

Kate:                    It is funny that your podcast kind of started similarly to our podcast where we were just like, this seems fun, here we go. Almost like you're thinking things through and you're making smart and reasonable choices. But I don't think we went into it with a lot of, I don't want to say intention because we did, but do you know what I mean, Doree, right.

Becca:                 You didn't just go into it with pressure. You weren't like, we're going to make a million dollars. We're going to be the biggest podcast that's ever podcasted because that's so much pressure. How do you do that?

Kate:                    I don't know. I feel a lot of pressure to do that now.

Becca:                 Yeah.

                             If you do know, I think call us.

Kate:                    Yeah. Someone let us know. Let us all know. But do you have advice for people who are, I think oftentimes we get asked this of what's the first step of either starting a podcast or a writing project or anything like this? And the most annoying advice I always give is you just do it. Make it however you can and make it your way. I don't know if that you share the same advice, but is there anything that you tell people when they're like, I want to do this thing do, but it feels so insurmountable? How do I just start it?

Becca:                 I mean, of course there's a certain amount of privilege and having the time and having the ability to just decide on a lark that you're going to be selfish and take this time for yourself and do something. But I think something that I feel from getting asked this a lot or reading advice online is people are looking for an easy button. They're like, once I figure out how to make this easy, I will do it. And then it will be simple. And it's like, I don't think any of these things are easy or simple. So it's like you're never going to find that. You just have to do it. And with writing and with podcasting, with anything, it's like you're going to do it. You're going to suck at it for a while, and then if you liked it enough, you're going to keep going and you're going to get better at it. It's like, what is the iass thing that it's like when you start out, you have better taste than you have execution. And so you have to wait to the level where your execution catches up to your taste. And so I would not want to go back and listen to our first few episodes of that on paper. I'm sure they were terrible with all kinds of technical glitches and who knows? But you just keep going and you learn things and you get better. And the same with my first draft sucked. It was so bad. It was 55,000 words, which is not long enough to be a book. And you kind of just keep going and hopefully you find something you like that makes you want to keep going. I definitely have. I'm not a quitter. I I need to prove it. To whom am I proving it to? I have no idea. But I definitely have that. I'll show them, dunno who them is. So once I'm in something, I'm pretty in it. But I feel like you just have to start. I agree with you, Kate. I feel like doing any of these things is inherently hard, so you're not going to find the pill that makes it easy.

Doree:                What was the experience of writing the book for you? Is that something that you want to do more of?

Becca:                 Well, I'm writing my second book now, and I think it might be trying to Kill Me.

Kate:                    I think you might. Yes. Yeah. Text Me Anytime. Literally almost just this second book really rocked me to my core.

Becca:                 I'm in that right now. I do though. I've been a reader my entire life. And so the experience of writing something and other people consuming it has been mind blowing to me and I've really enjoyed it. Maybe not in the moment a hundred percent of the time, but have really enjoyed the overall process and been really proud of creating a book. And so yeah, it is something that I want to keep working on, but it is something that has not been easy this year.

Kate:                    Doree and I have both been through Journeys with books, just being on the receiving side of when you were working on your memoir. And I know Doree, you've heard it from me this time around where I've literally been like, I don't think I can do this. Doree was like, you can and you are, and you will do.

Becca:                 But I preordered your book last week, so you did it.

Kate:                    Thank you.

Becca:                 It's done,

Kate:                    it's almost done, but it's been a journey. I don't even quite, I'm not even there ready to process it yet, but it's been rough. But there's something about the joy of the creative process that keeps you going. It's like, why the hell are we all doing this? I don't know. But we all are still doing it. Question for you, Becca.

Becca:                 Yes.

Kate:                    I listened to Bad on paper and I talked to you, IRL. I am familiar with your book Faves, but you offer great book recommendations. One thing I actually love about your book, recommendations that you and I often disagree about books that we like. Well, the biggest one I can think of is that you do not like the Hating Game. And I love th Hating Game.

Becca:                 I don't like The Hating Game. I think it's creepy

Kate:                    And I've read it five times, but I think this is, it's good to hear opinions from different people on books, but what are your book recs that you're taking away? It doesn't need to be end of the year. I kind of find those wrap up slightly nauseating, but what are you trying to push into people's hands that are books that are available right now?

Becca:                 Okay, so the most recent one I'm trying to push on people is this book called Maybe Once, maybe Twice, by Alison Rose Greenberg. Have either of you read that one?

Kate:                    I have not.

Doree:                No.

Becca:                 It's a romance, but it feels tonally very different than other romances I've read. And earlier this year, I felt like I was kind of in a romance rut. I'd read too many of them and I was getting a little sick of them. And this one is so interesting. The premise is a woman makes a marriage pact with two different guys that if they're still single when they're 35, that they'll get married and they kind of both come to collect.

Kate:                    Oh, what a fun idea.

Becca:                 Very, very fun book. It was so well written. I wanted to throw it out a window because I was feeling very inadequate by reading it. But I loved it. And it is one of those books, I think it's really hard to make somebody laugh out loud on the page and it is Laugh Out Loud funny, which I very, very much respect.

Kate:                    Okay,

Becca:                 so that's what I'm pushing on people. What else am I pushing on people right now? Oh, I'm in my Catherine Center era. Have either of you gotten into your Catherine Center era?

Kate:                    Yes, I do. I do like her books a lot. Bodyguard's Like

Becca:                 Closed? Yeah, like Closed Door, small Town Romance, which is not usually my vibe, and I am here for it.

Kate:                    She's an amazing writer.

Becca:                 She's an amazing writer, and she's also a really interesting person. I have never done this in my life, but one weekend a couple of months ago, I was like, I wonder what her story is. I wonder what advice she has. And I looked on YouTube and I was like, Catherine sent her interview and I watched this hour and a half interview. She did, and her story's really interesting too. She got her MFA and then didn't publish anything, just got rejected for 10 years because she was trying to write this very literary fiction and then started writing rom-coms and it clicked in. But I am very deeply in my Catherine Center era this year. I would say my favorite one, it might be things you Save in a Fire, which is also pretty feminist. It's about a female firefighter who is at a very progressive fire station in Austin and has to move home to take care of her ailing mother and moves to this curmudgeonly north shore of Massachusetts Fire Station where they've never had a woman before and aren't particularly welcoming either.

Kate:                    You were speaking both our lives, which is now.

Doree:                That sounds amazing.

Becca:                 It's so good.

Kate:                    Wow. A curmudgeonly North Shore Fire Station. Where are they?

Becca:                 What could be more Massachusetts?

Kate:                    Where specifically? Up the north.

Becca:                 It's somewhere on the coast. It's not Marblehead, but it's that area.

Kate:                    Winchester

Doree:                Wind

Becca:                 On the coast.

Kate:                    We're now just,

Doree:                I'm going to say swamp. No, it's not swamp. Scott Beverly, Manchester by the Sea. Rockport. Gloucester.

Becca:                 I'm too,

Doree:                I'm going to come up with it.

Kate:                    I'm still stuck on Winchester. Winchester Coast. Not on the coast of Massachusetts.

Doree:                No.

Kate:                    How did I not know this? In my brain, It is.

Doree:                I don't know. It's not on, but it's not, maybe you're thinking of Manchester. Manchester By the Sea.

Kate:                    By the Sea. Oh no. Oh,

Becca:                 And you know what the other book is that I'm pressing on? People Meet The Benedetto by Katie.

Kate:                    Yes, that's a good one. I've just started that one.

Becca:                 It is also so funny. The premise is Pride and Prejudice meets the Kardashians, and so it's this washed up reality TV family whose show is now off the air. They're living in this crumbling, calabasas gated community that used to be nice and is now really crummy. And this up and coming. I was kind of picturing Chris Evans esque actor moves into the neighborhood and one of the daughters gets embroiled in it, but everyone's looking down on them because they're reality show trash. I enjoyed this book so much, and I'm not a Kardashian person.

Doree:                I'm such a sucker for any Jane Austen reboot, redo, reinterpretation, whatever in any genre. There's a whole

Becca:                 What's your favorite Jane Austen?

Doree:                There's a whole mystery genre of it now.

Becca:                 Oh really?

Doree:                Yes. Of

Kate:                    Really where they retell?

Doree:                Well, it's like it's started as fanfic, but in the mystery genre, so it's right up my alley.

Becca:                 Wait, can I give you one more book recommendation?

Kate:                    Yes.

Becca:                 Have you read you again by Kate Goldbe?

Kate:                    I have it on my shelf when Harry Met. I'm looking at it right now and I haven't read it yet. Yeah, when Harry, it's like the one Harry Met Sally inspired book. Yes, I have it. But

Becca:                 The way I would describe it is an Emily Henry if the people were just bad people.

Kate:                    Oh, that sounds fun. I love that.

Becca:                 I feel like in an Emily Henry, everyone is ultimately a good person who maybe has some trauma and these are questionably good people who fall in love and it's so fresh.

Kate:                    You always have good book recommendations. I will let go of you not loving the hating game.

Becca:                 I'm sorry. I love your book.

Kate:                    I know you are a very kind champion. Do you have any skincare or beauty products that you just want to drop here at the end of our conversation that you love and want to recommend?

Becca:                 I have two, so I just cut my hair short. I feel like Kate and I are on a very similar hair weight length right now. Thank you. My book came out and I don't know. I'm going to blow up my whole life. Let's go done. Really, I feel like my new year, new me is starting early this year. I feel like it's coming in November instead of January. So anyway, since I cut my hair short, I am really loving this, what do we call it? I guess it's a texturizing spray. It's by R and co and it's called, the product is called Trophy, and it's kind of a cross between dry shampoo and hairspray and shine spray.

Doree:                Ooh, okay.

Becca:                 Yeah. So I'm really into that with my, I love, yeah, I've used of their products before, but this one was new to me since I've gotten my short hair and I really like, it kind of makes it look a little PC messy.

Kate:                    But do you also curl your pieces with a flat iron or something?

Becca:                 I mean, today I did for you.

Kate:                    Okay, looks great. Looks really good

Becca:                 For you.

Kate:                    I have to learn how to do that. Thank you. Maybe when I'm 45 I'll figure it out.

Becca:                 And then the other beauty product that I'm really obsessed with is a makeup product, and I got really into the Selena Gomez Rare Beauty liquid blush.

Kate:                    Okay. Noted.

Becca:                 I used to really like cream blush, but this is a liquid, it almost looks like lip gloss and it's really potent. It had a really steep learning curve for me because it's so colorful, it's so pigmented that you can only use the tiniest drop on each cheek, but it stays. That is my problem with most blushes. I feel like you put it on, you look great in the mirror. You go live your life for two hours, then you're like, was I wearing blush? And this stays.

Kate:                    Okay. Alright. That's a hot tip. Okay. Selena really came through with that makeup line.

Becca:                 Oh My gosh. The celebrity makeup lines these days. I like,

Kate:                    They're really doing it lot better than what we had in our youth. For sure. It's true.

Becca:                 Yeah. We just had Britney Spears' perfume and

Kate:                    Oh, I'm older than you, and we had next to nothing. It was rough out there, Elizabeth. It was like Elizabeth Taylor Diamonds, right? Elizabeth Taylor Diamonds. Yeah,

Becca:                 I remember those commercials.

Doree:                White Diamonds, wasn't it?

Kate:                    White diamonds. Yeah. Sexy.

Becca:                 Sexy. But commercials with her. Very blue eyes. Sexy. Yeah. White diamonds.

Kate:                    Yeah. Well, Becca, thank you so much for joining us. For our listeners who want to listen to you, read you follow you, give us the rundown on where to do those things.

Becca:                 Oh Yeah. So my book is called The Christmas Orphans Club, and it came out September 26th, so it's still fairly new. I'm on Instagram @BeccaMFreeman. My podcast is called Bad on Paper. And if you're interested in listening to any of the fiction podcast I was talking about, the studio name is Romcom Pods. The most recent one we did through that is called Showmance. It's like a great British bakeoff type romance. So I would start there.

Doree:                Ooh, fun.

Kate:                    Thank you, Becca.

Doree:                Thank you, Becca.

Becca:                 Thank you. I'm so honored to be here. I feel like I am living my parasocial dream because I listen to you guys so often.

Kate:                    I mean, same. Doree. We're back.

Doree:                Hello.

Kate:                    This is the part of the show where we kind of check in about intentions that we have set from the past week and we reflect on how they went.

Doree:                We do,

Kate:                    And then we discuss what we're going to focus on this week. And last week your kitchen was in disrepair.

Doree:                It wasn't in great disrepair. It went on for a little longer than I thought it was going to, and then it was fixed, and I was very happy to have my sink and half my kitchen back. It was a little touch and go for a while, but we made it. We all made it.

Kate:                    Okay, Good.

Doree:                This week, so we're recording this a little bit ahead, and although Hanukkah will still be happening when this airs, so my intention this week is about Hanukkah. It starts on the seventh, excuse me, it goes to the 15th and last week, last year I think partly because Hanukkah was, it coincided with Christmas. I think Henry got very overwhelmed by all the gifts and the whole thing. And so I'm trying to not really make that the full emphasis this year and not overwhelm him. He's very excited about Hanukkah. He made a little Hanukkah countdown thing, like a Hanukkah advent count basically.

Kate:                    Doree, That's really cute.

Doree:                And he hung it on his dresser and he put up a barricade around it, and he's the only one who's allowed to touch it. I made the mistake of touching it today. I needed to open his pants drawer and he was like, mama,

Kate:                    Stop. Because of

Doree:                Only I can touch the Hanukkah calendar.

Kate:                    Come on.

Doree:                I was like, I am so sorry. I didn't know. I'm so sorry. I won't do it again.

Kate:                    Oh, that is really freaking sweet.

Doree:                So yeah, he's excited to light the candles. I've also made a few, I think in the past I've felt sad because we didn't have plans or whatever, and I've made, made multiple plans for multiple nights of Hanukkah this year.

Kate:                    Oh, that's awesome.

Doree:                Feeling a little bit like, okay, I got this, and yeah,

Kate:                    You've got this.

Doree:                So my intention is to just feel calm about Hanukkah, I guess.

Kate:                    Well, I'm wishing you and everyone who celebrates a happy Hanukkah this year.

Doree:                Thank you. Thank you so much.

Kate:                    Well, my intention last week was to drink warm lemon water in the morning. And I share this because I was doing it because I was having a lot of digestion issues. Speaking of things that freak me out and getting an MRI, and I want you to know that I have been doing this every morning and I feel great.

Doree:                Wow, Okay. This is exciting.

Kate:                    I Wake up, I warm up my water, I squeeze a lemon and I put a pinch of salt into it and I drink that. And then I have some keifer, and then I maybe eat something and then I have my coffee. And it really helps to have other stuff in my stomach before just pouring 18 to 20 ounces of coffee into my gut. It really does make a difference. So I have been trying to be really conscientious and focus on doing that, even on those mornings. And I'm like, I just want to dump this bucket of coffee into my face. So yeah, I've been sticking with it. It's quite nice actually. And then this week I am going to try to commit to trying to figure out how to wrap presents ahead of time. My family celebrates Christmas and the wrapping of the presents, I'm going to be honest, it tends to fall on me in terms of the labor. And quite frankly, I think that's a good thing because my husband truly, truly, his wrapping skills are not, they're not his strong suit. He's got other qualities. So I don't mind being the one who wraps the presents. Actually, I get to hide away and I'll put stuff on TV and just wrap away, but I don't want to save it to the last minute. I don't want to be doing it on Christmas Eve. And I know if you're one of those people, you know what I'm talking about. You know what it's like, but finding the time to do it is really hard. But I would love to, I dunno, are you a person who starts early and does this shit way in advance? Tell me how you do it because I'm not

Doree:                All right, well, there you have it.

Kate:                    There it is.

Doree:                There it is. Forever35 is hosted and produced by me. Doree Shafrir and Kate Spencer are produced and edited by Sam Junio. Sami Reed is our project manager and our network partners Acast. Thanks for listening everybody.

Kate:                    Thank You.

 
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