BEST OF: I Love My Family, But They Need To Stop Doing This

20:19Amy Wilson:It's a lot of yelling, but it's not as much yelling because I just try to reflect back. Like we've heard this one before. the objective reality. And you don't want to get to fourth ask. It's not going to go well for you. You're going to be moving to pick Karen Island. Does this happen for a long or a short step? For short or long term stays? For a long or short visit. Cheryl says, I love my family. But if one more of them says, but that's not mine, when I ask them to throw something away, I will throw them in the trash bin as well. Wow. She's a little closer to the line than Anna, who's just going to cop a bit of an attitude.

20:55Amy Wilson:She's actually going to throw human children into trash. But it is interesting how proprietary people become about messes. Like they're happy to have you clean up their cereal bowl, but they could never do that. I had to lay this down for my family once. Like, are we all only cleaning up after ourselves? Because let me tell you, it's going to be a lot more messy around here. I'm signing up for that plan. I'll get on board because as it turns out, I clean up for five people. And everyone else is like, I just recently had a gentle conversation with my beloved spouse, when I went down to change over some laundry.

21:31Amy Wilson:And I found a load of laundry that was just his underwear, shirts and socks. And I said, when do you think is the last time I did a load of laundry that only involved my items? I see. So it was like a half load. And he's putting soap in anyway and there's extra room and he's like oh well he doesn't yeah it doesn't occur to them that there's always laundry i mean you could argue the other side of it i guess which is everyone every man for himself and at least he has clean underwear but i'm like i have been wearing your boxer shorts for two days because i have not managed to get a pair of my underwear to the wash for doing everyone else's laundry so staring at a load that is merely your items floating free it's giving me what what did Anna say I'm catching a bit of an attitude about it I guess is what I would say I'm not at Pitcairn Island but I am peeved Angie has a good one here she says I love my family but if one more person mentions something that needs to be done rather than just doing it I may just let the dam break holding back all the snarky comments in my head watch out this is my My mother-in-law has a very useful phrase for this is also used in the we should really check into summer camp soon.

22:54Amy Wilson:And she always says, I hope you have a rat in your pocket, because I don't know who we is in that scenario. I hope Piccairn Island is nice this time of year. And it is, it's like, who is the we we're talking about it? Is it you? Or is it me? Or is it you and the rat in your pocket? Because what we is going to be doing this? It's a protective mechanism, I think. It's like, have you thought about what you are making us for dinner? It's a step to like, have you given any thought as to what we're having for, like, they're trying to be less accusatory, but we see right through it. that's the problem.

23:37Yeah. Have we thought about summer camp?

23:39Amy Wilson:No, we have not. Yeah, the we there is it's doing a lot of work at the sentence as we say heavy lifting, heavy lifting. Kristen says I love my family. But if one more person questions why I'm asking them to do something, I will go on strike and let them figure it out. Yeah. Why? Yeah, because it makes every ask. So you ask and then there's a pause and what and then you ask again and then the next thing said going on like a little you know flow chart here is either but that's not mine or why or maybe why aren't you asking her to do it that's a good one right all of which has already definitely taken longer than walking the socks over to the hamper and putting them in you could have done it by now for all of this drama, we could be done.

24:33Amy Wilson:Yes, we could be done by now. We could have been done by now. Yeah, not great. Not great, as we say. Let's move on to a sort of like expectations management section. These are very loosely gathered, but this is another sort of set of types of things. Melissa says, I love my family, but if one more kid walks past dad to ask me a question when I'm already doing 10 other things, I'm going to lose my mind. This is a trap I've fallen into. Yeah, we had a pandemic video when we were doing them. And you had a line that you were like, look at my face. Does it look like a good time to ask mommy a question?

25:13Amy Wilson:And I find myself often with like a pot on the stove, and I'm throwing something in the trash with my foot. And I'm like bending behind me to grab something like I'm doing a full yoga ninja move with the four things I'm doing at once. And one of my kids says, Hey, can you grab something for me? And I just think I want you to walk out of the room, come back in and really take in the picture here. Is this possible something you could do for yourself or ask your father to do? We need to have those numbers like at the deli counter. Yeah, that would be helpful. You know what I mean? Those paper numbers.

25:51Amy Wilson:I thought you meant like a number that magically appears on our forehead that lists how available we are to watch something funny on Snapchat, or to like answer a question about where a shoe is. And it's like a zero means I have no availability. It means back away slowly, do not make eye contact. And a 10 is like, I am sitting here, just waiting for a kid to come chat with me. I wish somebody would come ask me where my their shoes were. It's that meme that was shared like 350 ,000 times and it said me hydroplaning across four lanes of traffic, kid in backseat, mom, are you listening? I said, knock, knock.

26:33That's it, right? And then they are very mad that you're not giving them your full attention when, yeah, it's a strange, are they really not able to see it? Are they, maybe they're just not able to see a parent as not their, you know, as independent of them. It's just like a two-year-old, no way.

26:52Amy Wilson:I mean, truly, they do not know that you're a real person. I mean, I remember, I want to say I was deep into my 20s when my mom and I were having a discussion about something and she said, yeah, I just think back on that. It was such a big disappointment for me in my life. And I truly had a moment of thinking, my mother was disappointed by something once. Like she failed at something and it hurt her feelings. It rocked my world, Amy. And I was old enough to know much, much better. But yeah, the idea, I think just there's biology and there's science behind it that truly as infants, an infant does not understand that you mother and them infant are different people.

27:36Amy Wilson:They think that you're one entity truly. And that to undo that just takes a lot of work and a lot of showing you Snapchats while you're trying to boil hot wings. Right. Or go up to the bathroom where you're just getting into the shower to ask you where something is, even though they had another authority figure in the room with them who could have figured it out. And I don't know, like, I think we can push back on that. And I'm not sure it's entirely like our fault. Like, well, then don't be in charge of doing everything all the time. Like, I'm not. I was just trying to take a shower. Yeah, it goes deeper than that.

28:10Amy Wilson:Yeah, it goes deeper than that. It definitely goes deeper than that. and I don't think that the science and the biology is what do you call it's not a zero sum it's not absolute it's not like well so then I guess you do have to find the shoes mom I mean this is goes a lot to like our mom blame episode and talking about roles and stuff but I do think like some of this is haha I can't believe you just walk past your dad watching football to ask me who's doing 10 things to do this. And some of it does go kind of deep and we got to work on it and fix it. Not today. But not today. Let's just complain about it.

28:47Bria says, I love my family. But if I have to spend one more minute of this rare and precious life, finding the only pair of gloves they haven't lost out of the five pairs they each started the winter with, I might just have to start a new life alone in a tropical climate. Pitcairn Island isn't tropical, I don't think.

29:03Amy Wilson:The gloves, we went, no, no, that's not going to work. This is going to be somewhere different. No, it can't be. It's a British Isle. It's in the South Pacific. It's below the equator. So let's go there. Oh my goodness. So it is Pitcairn. Their population is going to double after this episode from 67 to, let me try to do the math. Can you imagine like the what for a hell retreat Pitcairn Island? You'll have six days of not talking to anybody. What the heck is happening on Pitcairn Island. There's a bunch of Hellions hiding from their families. Lose our numbers. Yeah, the gloves, we recently, we're not a real ski family, but there's a little local hill that we go to occasionally.

29:49Amy Wilson:And we went last Sunday a little bit on a whim. And let me tell you, we have 100 gloves, but to find 10 gloves in pairs of five pairs of two, what a challenge it was. So everybody had mismatched gloves, like a pippy long stocking kind of look? No, I mean, out of 100 gloves to find five pairs was the challenge of our lifetime. We did, in fact, come up with them, but it was an uphill battle. And then it's like the myth of like, you're going to find the pairs and it's like socks, you know, it's just, it's very hard to get back to one on socks because you throw away half and then the next load comes out and it's full of mismatched socks again it's i do a they do not deal with this in the elf romance kingdom let me tell you mismatched gloves and socks is not something they'd once it gets i have like a thing you get a target that you put like flour or sugar in kind of thing you know like that something goes in your kitchen counter i have one and that's where i put the mismatched socks and when it gets full which takes like a couple of months maybe less i pull them out flower container takes months to get filled of mismatched socks uh i use a spare laundry bin well this forces me like you can't have too big a container so when it gets full it might take you a month that probably takes me you throw them away a couple of months i throw them away i pull them all out and match them up and just start a couple i mean who are you that it takes you a couple of months to fill a sugar container with mismatched socks it's a large it's a large yeah kitchen countertop container.

31:22Mine is the size of like a shipping container. I mean, it's gigantic. I was just talking about this over the weekend. Long story, but the gym at my kid's school, they're going to do some renovations. And they have a huge storage area behind the basketball court full of, you know, who knows what and who knows who put it there when. Hoodies, lost and found. Right, lost and found and like deflated basketballs and whatever, all kinds of stuff. And as they're renovating the basement, they have to recreate the same size storage somewhere else in the basement because they have to have room to move all the stuff and store it.

31:55And I, as the parent standing around, the mother, I was like, no, you don't. Make the storage half as big and then keep half the stuff. Most of the stuff in here, it just expands to fill the space available, right? It's garbage and nobody ever had to throw it out because there's more room. So just make less room and then there'll be less stuff. So I hear you. Somewhere in between the sugar container and the laundry basket is the right size container for mismatched socks just being thrown out. Don't start a new room in your basement for mismatched socks. You will fill it.

32:27Amy Wilson:I'm close to that. Very close to that. Yeah. You're going to fill it and you're not going to match the socks. I'm learning, Amy. All right. We'll be right back. Do you hear that? Sounds like breakfast is ready. Because Quaker's coming in hot with morning nutrition. 100 % whole grain oats and a good source of fiber to fuel the rhythm of your morning and kickstart your day. And that sounds absolutely delicious. Fuel to start whatever's next. Quaker, official sponsor of FIFA World Cup 26. I, oh, let's go! Choice Hotels get you more of what you value. Here's a little tune to help you remember. Same drive, different day.

33:11Amy Wilson:Don't you wish you were getting away? Pack your bags and come on through Texas, Ohio, Alaska, we're up there too Comfort Inn It's calling your name Save on the stay Oh, and free waffles are yours to claim Well, I hope you like my little song Book direct at choicehilletales.com

33:40Amy Wilson:And now, two kinds of people. From the What Fresh Hell podcast. Weather people. Oh, I can almost feel it's spring. I love to bake in the sun all day. Vitamin D makes my heart feel alive. Why is the glowing ball in the sky about to start torturing me again when all I want to do is lovingly cradle a mug of chili by a roaring fire. Coffee, people. Oh, I don't need coffee. I function on a whirring engine of kombucha and positive vibes. If you speak to me before I inject the warm brown liquid of life into my veins, I am not responsible for my actions. Sunglasses, people. I have a pair of tortoiseshell Prada glasses that I've had for like six and a half years.

34:25When not wearing them, I place them in this special case and only clean them with its designated cloth.

34:31Amy Wilson:I have approximately 98 pairs of$10 sunglasses scattered all over my life, and I have no idea where any of them are at the moment. Morning people versus night people. Good morning. I can just tell today is going to be amazing. Why would anyone speak to another human being before 10 a.m.? Shoes in the house, people. Oh, sure. You can wear shoes in my house. Or instead, you could just go ahead and spread actual dog feces all over my floors, you monster. Ew, I would much rather take my chance with germs than see your weird sock feet. This has been Two Kinds of People. From the What Fresh Help podcast.

35:14Let's talk about some of the little things they do that makes us love our families. But.

35:20Amy Wilson:I mean, I think a lot of these were kind of little, but I want to see how low we can go. You know, I feel this one. How minute the crime can we react to? Jennifer says, I love my family, but why do they use so many cups? The middle rack of the dishwasher is only so big and it is always filled before the top or the bottom. And inevitably, someone shows up with another cup as soon as I start the dishwasher. Amy, I'm going to have to lay a little Taylor Swift on you here. It's me. Hi. I'm the problem. It's me. I use a minimal a minimum of eight to ten cups a day every day and I will say my husband is a saint he just follows me around and brings them to the kitchen and puts them in the dishwasher I never leave a room without taking those yeah I have the water glass at the top of the stairs to go downstairs downstairs to go upstairs in this room to go to this room yes and I am constantly bringing my own empty or half empty water glasses back to the kitchen to wash them so at least I'm clearing up my own problem.

36:22Amy Wilson:I'm not my husband cleans up after me. Do you want to know how crazily I raise the glass game? When I'm driving in a car, I only like to drink out of a pint glass or a stemless wine glass. This is a two car and I'm talking about like water, coke, anything. That's how I like to drink pint glass or stemless wine glass. We've run into issues before with the stemless wine glass. Margaret doesn't drink coffee. She drinks coke in a wine glass. It looks like port. I know I'm always drinking it on the podcast. Yeah, it looks like I'm having wine at 10 o 'clock in the morning. I finally stopped doing it on like zoom meetings with professionals because they're like, why is she drinking wine at 9am?

36:58Amy Wilson:Also, I drink Diet Coke for breakfast. It's a problem people. But I bring a pint glass of my beverage of choice into the car with me. So I leave then pint glass water glasses all over the car. So it was you you're saying you were blaming on the person in the rear, right rear passenger seat. I really upped the game. It's never Cherry Pepsi. And that was in a bottle. So you know, I was not implicated. How very dare you? Right. You tested it. Your DNA test the swabs that it was Cherry Pepsi. Yeah, but I am the monster. I can't be fixed. I can't be fixed. Yeah. And the dishwasher, Jennifer has a three row dishwasher, which I want to know more about that.

37:35But yeah, I mean, all the rows are filled with cups.

37:38Amy Wilson:Three rows. I've seen the one where there's a silverware, like thing on top tray. I don't like that like a tray that must be what it is yeah yeah um yeah we just do a load of dishes I mean by way like the rat in my pocket is my husband my husband does the dishes in the house we split duties and yeah we just are constantly doing 30 glasses because I like to drink out of glasses and I like to leave them places and then start all over again my like I love my family but when we have like a dishwasher full of dirty dishes and nobody turned it on and then also more dirty dishes in the sink, right? So now you have to run it before you can get to that?

38:14Well, we have that with the laundry a lot that and also we have a basement laundry that you have

38:20Amy Wilson:to walk down like two sets of stairs to get down there. And it does kind of feel like the torture dungeon. And I mean, I do it all the time. I trudge down, I put the laundry in, I trudge back up. And then I just forget about it. And then the next day you got to you have laundry to do. And you got to start the laundry from yesterday. Again, it's a waste of water. It's a waste of everything. But I do it. I'm sorry. I'm the monster. Our washer dryer is right outside our bedroom. Because we live in New York City. We don't have a basement. But anyway, I think we're probably lucky in that way. Like it's easier when you pass by it all the time.

38:51Oh, I'll just throw these in.

38:52Amy Wilson:It really is. My dad's house has laundry right off the kitchen. In my old house in LA, we had a garage. And it's a detached garage. So you have to walk across the lawn to go to the garage. And that's where the washer dryer was. And that really was torture. Because even though it's LA, it's raining, like you have to expose yourself to the weather to go. You just never want to do it. You never want to do it. It was where laundry went to die. Basically, you only we only did laundry when like, literally nobody had clean underwear for three days. Or like the laundromat. Have you ever lived? I've never lived as a parent.

39:28But when I was a A single living in New York City. Yeah, I had to take my laundry to the laundromat. That's like set aside a day to sit there. Yeah, it's a lot. And then you got to have quarters. It's a thing. Delaney says, I love my family, but I secretly fantasize about the joy I would feel if I vacuumed up every single God forsaken Lego in our house.

39:50Amy Wilson:That day will come. The Legos will disappear. We speak to you from the future. My son is a continuing Lego enthusiast, but now doing those like crazy elaborate sets and like building, you know, he has it very contained in his room. Like, God forbid, there's never Legos out. Like, he keeps it very organized. He has a system. And we no longer deal with Legos. And it is a great day when you step on your last Lego. I'm going to say it's a day to celebrate. I just went through like some toys and games and like, OK, I don't really need these. I don't have anybody young enough to play with these. But you know, once in a while, you have kids come over to your house, you got to keep something.

40:28So I kept like a rectangle of Lego grass and I dug through and I took out all the guys. So now if you bring your kids to my house who like Legos, I do have a very satisfying Lego grass thing covered with various Toy Story and Star Wars people. But all the other bricks are...

40:45Amy Wilson:Yeah, yeah. I'll bring you my 15 year old, Amy. That'll work out great for us. It's good pickings. Yeah, but it is. It's fun to have a little, you got to have a box of magnet tiles or something just in case a little comes along. Michaelene, this is tough love. I love my family, but if one of my kids gets hurt again while goofing around, I might just say, I told you so. It's going to come out of your mouth sooner or later. My husband and I were just talking about it the other day, and it's because I said so. You know, I mean, it does come out of your mouth and you do think, I'm never going to say that to my kids, but you will.

41:20Amy Wilson:because they're just, they break you. They break you down, man. There's just a time where you're like, why? I have no interest in doing a 15 minute lecture on what led me to the decision that you need to pick up your underwear and put it downstairs in the laundry instead of on my living room couch. I think if you don't know the answer to that by now, it's like, if you have to ask the price, you can't afford it. If you have to ask why your underwear does not belong on the dining room table, You're getting it because I said so. And if you come at me with a, but that's not mine, you're going to get a different speech, right?

41:56I'll pull out that card. That's fine.

41:59Amy Wilson:Yeah. I mean, we're going to go deep into the mom catchphrases if you make me. I don't want to go there. I don't want to be that parent, but I will be. And I am. Trisha says, I love my family. And what's really amazing about them is that nothing has ever been their fault ever. You know, I have a similar thing going on at my house, which is that I am lucky to live with the three tweens and teens on planet Earth who happen to know everything. Unfortunately, I am a dum-dum. I know nothing. But luckily, I live with three tweens and teens who happen to know everything. So they are really generous about educating me about how the world works and how everything should work.

42:44Amy Wilson:I do sometimes have to put up with some eye rolls because I am such a dummy that delivering this information is exhausting to them. But they push through that exhaustion and they continue to teach me every day. My mother was like a duck with this, like a beautiful mallard. It would roll off her back like, don't you know anything? It would just she would just say, well, I guess I don't. And it would just roll off her back. And I would laugh about it. God bless Nancy Wilson. She is the patron saint of the What Fresh Hell podcast. Yeah. And I would be like, that's so funny. It was clearly the right thing to do, right?

43:21When applied to my own case, my husband will remind me that I used to do a whole bit about my mother saying, well, I don't know when I got so stupid. And he's like, don't you remember? This was you. You highlighted how she would say that and clearly not thinking she was stupid, thinking she was living in a higher level of consciousness to be able to do that. And now that's you. And I'm like, yes, but they're making me angry. This shall not stand. And I don't know what's the right thing anymore.

43:44Amy Wilson:And listen, I think there's room for both. I do think it's important sometimes to push back and be like, actually, guess what? I'm a human being with actual feelings. And I am not just going to be. I just saw my beloved Madonna in concert. She sang one of my favorite songs. And in it, I can't say it on the podcast. We're clean rated. But she says, I'm not your blank. Don't hang your blank on me. And I often think with my kids, can you put that together? and it's a b and an s it's a b and an s it's not something you actually it's a metaphorical hang i'm like it's i'm not you're like i do not say it to my children but the lyric comes to my mind sometimes when i am being when everyone i'm like take take a number the line forms please an orderly cue to the left to come in and dump all your stuff on me and i i i'm with you and uh I'm not always standing for it.

44:40Amy Wilson:I'm not always going to let it roll off my back. I think that what we were talking about before is true. Like I think kids, it's only a dawning realization and an occasional one like, oh, like my mom has feelings. My mom has wants and needs that aren't beyond making dinner. That's how we are. We don't usually think of that most of the time about the person who takes care of us. If we feel secure and safe in our mother's love, which hopefully most of us listening did and provide for our children, then what comes with that is kids being like, here, here's my trash I don't feel like holding because they're so secure that you can handle it, which doesn't necessarily make it feel any better.

45:19Not today.

45:21Amy Wilson:And sometimes it's okay to be like, not today, Bob. Not happening. I think we should finish with Shannon, who wraps up the thread saying this is the best thread ever. honestly it just makes you realize that we are all freaking normal and indeed we are indeed thank you shannon for wrapping it up for us because yes we are all normal this every single one of those things happens at my none of us live in an elf romance sadly or a fairy romance or a dragon riding romance we are all on planet earth with our our loves who we love sometimes but we are all either short or long-term visitors to annoyed mom island to pick care an island and we picked her and there's a lot of room here pick her and otherwise known as annoyed mom island little do they know their tourist uh department is about to get very very busy can you imagine like oh my gosh our google click-through rate right something happened What was it?

46:22Amy Wilson:Inquiries to visit our island. Amy, we solved it. And now we turn to I love our listeners. And I have a request. Some new updates have come to the phones. Some new things are going on with podcasting. Would you make sure that you and all of your beloved friends and family are following or subscribed to the podcast on whatever app you are listening to? I recently realized that I myself was not subscribed to the podcast, Amy, which made me think it's time to go back to people and say, whatever, boring, I won't go into the whole story. Phones used to order deliver and now you have to opt in. Please go back, make sure you're following or subscribe to the podcast.

47:02Amy Wilson:Because you know, we want listeners and tell your friends to like, follow and subscribe as well. Helps us keep making the podcast, which we want to keep doing. And with that, thanks so much for listening, friends. We love you and always and. We'll talk to you next week. Bye.

47:46Level up your summer at Columbia.com to spend more time outside and less time slathering on aloe lotion. You're welcome. Columbia. Engineered for whatever.