Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - "Imagine the Worst Thing" | Quick Question Ep. 330

Episode Date: May 5, 2026

Daniel outlines the sleep-deprived realities of early fatherhood, prompting a discussion on parental anxiety and intrusive worst-case scenario thoughts. Soren recounts his history of furnishing apartments with items found on the street before detailing his recent domestic upgrades. The episode's Quick Question asks: What is the most overdue improvement in your life right now? Additional topics include hotel room design flaws, the physical consequences of unsupportive footwear, and the practical necessity of being able to sprint at any moment.To explore coverage, visit ASPCApetinsurance.com/QUESTION.  The ASPCA is not an insurer and is not engaged in the business of insurance.Follow the guys on Bluesky!https://bsky.app/profile/danielobrien.bsky.socialhttps://bsky.app/profile/sorenbowie.bsky.socialBonus episodes 2x/month at patreon.com/quickquestion OR Apple Podcasts

question for you. Hello. It's not important. I'm just glad that we can talk tonight. So what's your favorite? How did you get? I think you'll have a great time here. Hello again.

It's a quick question. Soren. It's Daniel. It's a writer for American Dad. It's a writer for last week tonight. It's just a couple of guys that maybe you know from crack.com. Maybe you know from our two shows. Maybe you know because this podcast showed up.

in your YouTube or Instagram algorithm. And we're just like, just the funny guys who live in your phone. Hello. We're back and it's the show. I'm loving this energy. Yeah. I like it. Yeah.

It's very welcoming for like a public radio crowd. It's a long time listeners have known. I've never really known what to do in the beginning of this show. And like I, there's so many podcasts that I love that do very clear intros every single time for a new listener, like secretly, incredibly fascinating. And there are some shows, like the Daily Zeitgeist, other friends of ours, where if it's your first time listening, it seems like designed to drive you away. Because there's a lot of lore built into the hosts. and they have their their nicknames that change every episode. And sometimes the nickname is like a 30-second song parody.

And you're just dropped into it. And you don't really know. You clicked on a thing maybe because you saw the name of an episode. There was like, oh, it's a special guest, Andrew T. I like Andrew T. And they're going to talk about the White House Correspondents dinner. I can't wait to listen to a guy. I like and some strangers discussed that.

By Andrew T, you mean Andrew Tate, right? Andrew Tate, yeah. He's constantly on daily. He's like, guys, he's basically the third time ghost at this point, I would say. Yeah, it's a, his lore also is very confusing. Tough to follow. But once you get it, it's, you like it. Well, it's worth it.

It all makes sense. It pays off for you. It's like, you see a bunch of people doing inside jokes and then you're like, well, I want to be a part of that. They're having a lot of fun. I'm glad you like my energy today. Soren. It's changing week to week with baby, baby Cooper, the love of my life. It's, it sometimes feels a bit like when we would do after hours as we got older. After hours was a show that we filmed overnight. And a trap that I kept falling into as an older man and relearning in real time

would be we would stay up all night. And then I would go home. and sleep a few hours in the morning and that and wake up at like nine or 10 a.m. And do a whole day. And I would think I'm out of the woods now. I stayed up all night, slept four hours. And now I'm a person again. I must have, I must be really good at this and case closed and everything is done. I would keep forgetting that the real pain is the following day.

It compounds. It compounds. And I didn't understand that at the, I just, a lesson that I kept forgetting and relearning. And that's sort of where I've, I've hit a few times with Cooper needing a lot of attention in the middle of the night and it being me who's on that. And just like from about three to five in the morning sometimes where I'm just awake with him, both of us awake, waiting for it to be a normal time to actually be. awake and to feed and to start the day. And I will do that and not sleep after that. Like the day will start at seven or eight when my wife wakes up. It was like, all right, we're going to just continue the day. And the whole day, I'm like, I can't believe I'm functioning today. I'm,

it must be the love of a child that is, that is keeping me through. And then I'll get to sleep that night and I'll think, all I need to do is sleep. And then tomorrow, like, it's, I didn't miss a beat. And I did miss a beat. It just shows up the following day. when there's less of a straight line to it. Yeah, you wake up the next day and the sun is going down and you're like, what happened? Your wife's like, I tried so hard. I thought you were dead. Yeah, I remember that feeling.

I remember getting up, especially in Tucson, for whatever reason, you know, kids sleep worse when they go somewhere else. But like my daughter, when they're babies, they don't, their circadian rhythms, fuck, they don't know anything. And they, and she would get up and it would be dark. And I know that it was going to be dark for another. I had another two hours of darkness ahead of me where in a lot of different ways where I was awake, didn't want to be and exhausted, just staring at the lights of the city being like, we got a long time you and me before anyone else is even close to getting up. And then afterwards, you know, doing that whole day being like, yeah, no, I'm good, I'm good, I'm good.

And then you are, it's basically like being hung over the day after that. You're a mess. It's just strange to be like, I feel like shit on Sunday because I stayed up all night Thursday is a hard thing for me to connect to. But it's fine, it's lovely. The thing of it is, is these 3 a.m. to 5 a.m. shifts is the conventional wisdom from my doctor, which is Instagram, is that you shouldn't chase sleep if the baby doesn't want sleep. Like Cooper can reliably, when we think he's tired,

it's minutes to put him to sleep. It's the most it'll be is like 10 to 14 minutes I've found. And then he's still out. And the conventional wisdom is like, if you get between 10 and 15 minutes and the baby's not sleeping, don't force it, which is wisdom that I subscribe to. Like,

I'm not going to keep bouncing him or anything like that to drive either of us crazy. The issue is that there's simply nothing to do. This 3 to 5 a.m. thing is the baby. baby just kind of wants to look at me, which I love. He just wants to make eye contact and just like, okay, then I guess we're just going to like both, you're not screaming, you're not crying. We're both just going to be two awake guys making little noises at each other until mommy wakes up and frees us both.

Yeah. Yeah. Do you guys have a one of those? No. I mean, no, go ahead. What is it? Do you have one of those pads? that you can put them on and there's stuff hanging over them or there are lights above them?

We don't have any with lights. We have two different changing stations in the house and they both have mobiles above them. And that becomes very useful and also sometimes a bit of like a parental entertainment trap where he's happy, but there's nothing else around for me to play with. And it'll always start with like, oh, I need to change a diaper. Let me put it. And he's screaming. So I think, like, I'll change the diaper and maybe put him to sleep and that'll stop the screaming.

And then once I put him on the table and he's looking at one of the mobiles, he's just happy. And I'll change his diaper. And I'll think, well, I don't want to, I wouldn't dare move him from here because he's happy. And he's not screaming. And that's, I want to keep him in that zone as much as possible. But this is like, like the corner of my bedroom. There's nothing. There's nothing for me over here.

And I got to stand here. I can't, like, walk away. Because one of the mobiles, I spin, and he likes that. He likes when the things spin in front of him. So I keep that going. We say something for adults. We had one that had lights in it. It was like a little dome, basically.

Like a cloth dome. And what would happen is that as she would kick her feet, it would cause different lights and sounds to happen. But all the sounds are unified. So it's like, it sort of plays like what, would be sort of almost harmonious chimes together. Like one sound leads into the next and then you get these lights. It's infant TV. Yeah.

But in the morning sometimes when I was like just wrecked from days of this, I would be like, all right, we're spending the next 11 minutes in this thing. Yeah. And you're just going to sit in front of this and I am going to lie down next to you. And maybe I'll catch a few extra winks. And then, you know, I eventually I'm like, well, we should do something. I'll get up and we would watch the birds. We knew the crows would be coming through. I know the crows schedule pretty well in my neighborhood.

I know when they're leaving Bologna Creek. I know when they're coming back. And in the mornings, it's like you got to wait a little while until like the crack of dawn. And then you get to watch maybe 170 crows just like fly past your house. And that's what we looked forward to. That's what was keeping me going. we had a 5 a.m. session where, because you mentioned maybe you will get some sleep. And I never really nap, and I have kind of a hard time sleeping with him on my chest,

even though it's the best thing in the world. I just get so nervous that I'm going to do something. And this was like the 5 a.m. thing where he finally went down and he's on my chest. We're not in the bedroom. We're on a couch. And I close my eyes to try to sleep. And two things were happening. One is I would subconsciously stop breathing for I don't know how long, just so I could wake up and catch my breaths to keep myself from dying.

It feels like my body is like, you can't sleep right now because you got to make sure this baby doesn't fall off you or anything like that. And the other thing was I did get some sleep on that couch. And then I had a dream where I put, I was watching Cooper and our neighbor's baby. and the neighbor's baby when I wasn't looking climbed into the toaster and flipped the toaster down. And I was like, well, I can't hang out in sleep anymore. Sleep is not safe. Sleep is bad. There's nothing for me there.

Yeah, if you can find, listen, like the best situation is when your baby falls asleep in your arms, you're also tired. If you can make that adjustment where they're then lying right next to you, like up against you, but on a couch, on a mattress. But they're like, they're completely supported by the thing and not your arm or anything like that. And then you get to lie there next to them. Because boy, oh boy, I will drop like a light going off. I will go to sleep immediately. It's like I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be. And this baby looks so peaceful.

And everything about this situation is like, I want to, I just want to nap with this kid. Yeah. We have a quick message from today's sponsor, the ASPCA Helps. health insurance program. Hey, how many times have you been looking for your cat? I'm assuming you have a cat. Come on, our listeners are cat people. How many times you've been looking for your cat? And you've been like, I can't find my cat anywhere that's so weird. And then you find him somewhere super strange in the back of a closet or something just being sick by themselves. It freaks you out, right? It's scary. You don't know what to do for them. That's exactly why the ASPCA pet health

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Fatherhood's so awesome, man. It's really great. You got to learn how to nap, Dan. I got to learn how to nap. I know. I know I got to learn. I'm going to die. I keep I'm so the two things that I'm really hung up on that I can't break myself out of are the, importance of my sleep when it's sleep time when it's when it's when it's night and it's bedtime. I was like, well, these are the rules. We're supposed to go to bed now. And dinner when it's dinner time is something else that I really need to go to get over because that's his witching hour. Every baby's witching hour is like five to eight when they're just inconsolable. And that's incidentally the time when dinner happens.

and when I am at my like hungriest and crankiest and and like I need your battery's drained. Yeah. That problem gets solved if I'm just eating more strategically throughout the day and not thinking like that the baby is going to respect that it's seven o'clock and jeopardy's on and food is hot. That's never going to happen. So if I just eat when I can, then I won't be cranky at seven o'clock. But I'm still like, in this house, at dinner. time we eat like a family yeah um i don't know i learned the same thing i because i don't eat breakfast and then we get to like we'd go out for outings and stuff like that and it would get to be noon

and i'd be like just pissed off and mean yeah it was because we weren't getting food and me fast enough it's lunchtime the baby does not know any of that does know a single bit of that sentence doesn't understand well i'm glad things are going well That's so awesome, dude. Right where you're supposed to be. You know what I'm looking forward to is when you start driving with the baby and you have a consistent nap schedule because it's going to, you're going to do some lunatic things because babies,

as soon as they get in a car, a lot of babies, they just like pass out because it's the movement. It's like everything's calm. They can't move because they're basically strapped into a space shuttle in those car seats. You don't want them to go to sleep. You need to get home because if they, fall asleep in the car and then you get home and you take them out of the car and try and transition them. No one in history has ever successfully transitioned a baby from their car seat to the bed. It's never what's happened. But everyone thinks they might be able to do it. There's so many things involved.

There's so many little straps and bits and bobs. There's no head that wobbles and like and no one's ever successfully done it. Everyone's tried it. Everyone's been like maybe we maybe I'll nail it this time. It doesn't work. Even just transitioning from car to fresh air to house air feels like this is There's too much. There's too much working against me. You probably have one of those car seats that unlatches, like can go in a stroller or whatever and then also go in the car. Even that one, which feels like, oh, piece of cake, this thing moves. As soon as you unlatch it from even the car lock that it's in, that kid is like, what do we do?

What? We're up? We're up? We're up? No, no, no. Go back to sleep, please. This is a dream. You don't know what dreams are yet.

So you will either, you'll do one or two things. you will either let them go to sleep and then you get home and like your wife gets out of the car and you just stay in that car and maybe you even drive around a little bit more. I mean, you're just driving aimlessly because there's a child sleeping and you don't want to fuck up the rest of your day by letting them getting them up early. The other thing you might do is you will try to keep that child up in the car, which is insane. When they're they're tired and they're like because there's so many stages of getting to that point where you're like on the verge of falling. asleep, they've reached all of those. They're at the top of the steps and they're ready to just like, they're ready to just go to sleep.

And you can't let them. And so you're doing, you're playing with toys. You're like driving the car and you're like driving a Lightning McQueen on the roof of the car being like, look at him go. And like, anything you can think of to keep, and one of you will sit in the backseat and one of you will sit in the front seat. You'll never sit next to your

wife in the car again. And they will, and she will be back there just bless her. her heart doing whatever she can to keep your child awake long enough that you can get home and put them to bed properly. Man. My brother Tommy was telling me that he, his son, loved car seat and would fall asleep with the car seat.

And so he would just sometimes drive at 2 o'clock in the morning because the kid was not going to sleep. And they were just like, so I just put him in the car. And I drove around. And I was like, to where? Yeah, you just drive. Yeah. You just try.

That feels so symbolically dangerous of just like, I'm just going to just get Route 9 and just see where it ends. Just go and go and go. See where this road ends. My son would, when he would, they get sick when they're young, they're intolerable because they don't know what's going on. They don't know how to blow their nose. They don't know how to fix anything. And so they're just like crazy snotty and a bunch of stuff with their heads. and you can't, as soon as they lay down,

you can't put them on a pillow. And as soon as they lay down, it's all way worse. You think about when you have a cold and like you would lay on your bed without a pillow, that's psychotic. Yeah. And your child will scream all night long

and you're spending all night with them. They're waking up, I would say roughly 60 or 70 times. And you, what I found was that if I put my son on the changing table, because the change, they get so used to the diaper change. is so calming to them that he would fall asleep on the changing table when he was sick. And I was like, I can't move him. And so then I figured out, you know, you have that pad that sits on top of the changing table.

Ourses was fairly big and it was sort of like horseshoe shaped. Yeah. So they didn't roll out or less often. And I was like, well, this shouldn't hurt anything. And I would put some shirts or whatever under the side where his head was. So the changing table pad was propped up. And then I was like, okay, great. now I just stand here till morning.

And then I was like, wait a second, this whole pad comes out. And that was my progression is like when he would get sick, I'd put him on the changing table, change him. And then I would take that whole pad and I would put it down on the floor next to me in his room. I would pad up the bottom of it so that he was propped up. And I would just sleep on the floor, a carpeted floor, straight on the floor next to him while he slept slightly elevated to try and just save us both. Something.

So, and that's a fantastic segue into what we want to talk about today on the episode. Because you're talking about your changing table and all the modifications that you've made to it to make it the thing that you want it to be. So my quick question is, what is the most overdue improvement in your life right now? Yeah. This is so top of mind for me. In fact, I'll go first because it's so top of mind. Yeah. I have so many.

All right. Well, obviously, your whole life is different now. I also, just a quick sidebar. I'm also, I come up with a whole lot of inventions because I have a lot of time with just my thoughts and the boy as I'm doing these like 14 minutes to get him to sleep and then another 10 before it's safe to like transition him to another part of my body or to sit down or to try to put him into his bed or something. So it's a lot of time of just like me and my. thoughts walking around the house to come up with inventions that that that someone should have thought of by now one of which is is a book that hovers in front of my face and changes with my eye speed just a book that i can that not an audio book because i don't want to listen to it because i need my ears free for screams but something that i can read without my hands and also it follows my head around the house because I'm always walking and bouncing.

That should be fairly easy to do, I think. Shouldn't it? There's so much fucking shit on the market for babies and parents of new babies. And so much of it is just wrong. It's a whole lot of stuff that is like, it's really fun to buy and think about. But I was like, this is not the thing that I need right. now. I think you could do that.

You could achieve that with glasses. I feel like there's enough that you could get it distant enough from your face through magic. I don't really understand how it works, but like distant enough that you can read things through the glasses. And then you just nod your head, like a typewriter or something when you want to change. At the very least, an Iron Man helmet. I know he's got a lot of shit going on. Yeah.

Something like that where you get a lot of readouts. And you're doing it all with your eyes. I love that idea. Thanks, I'm full of inventions now. Okay, so the thing in my house that we recently upgraded, that it seemed insane that we hadn't upgraded it until now, was our bed. We got a new bed and a new mattress,

and this was the first time we had done that since. I want to say the year after I got out of college. I got a bedroom set because I was shamed into it. people saw that I was sleeping in a box spring and a mattress on the floor, which I thought, great system. Perfect system. I fall into the bed. Who was the president the year after you got out of college?

Obama. Are you sure? Yeah. Because during college it was Bush. Okay. Yeah. I thought for sure this is going to be it. It would have been a funny reveal if it had been Bush, but five.

That would have been great. No, because, yeah, because 9-11 happened while I was in school. Which, what? 9-11, do you know it? Oh, you're supposed to remember it. I'll make it, you know, I'll send you a little ping. I'll send you a note so you remember it. So, uh, we, I was shamed.

I was shamed into, first of all, that, let me just back up a little bit. This is very vulnerable for me, everyone, so please don't attack me for it. my roommate and I had an investment opportunity when we got out of college that we discovered on our own, which was we noticed that everyone in Los Angeles, when they were done with their furniture, would just leave it out on the corner. They'd leave it outside their house, and it was free, and it was easy to take. And so we would go take it, and we had a big enough in our apartment. We had this whole little den area, and we would just store furniture there, and then we'd turn around and sell it. Nice. So we'd clean it up, and we'd clean it up, and we'd.

We'd sell this furniture that somebody else was like, think of my time, but we were made of time at the time. And so we would sell this furniture. That also meant that all of our furniture was stuff that we had found on the street. And somebody came to one of our parties and looked around our apartment and did that, basically that you live like this sort of moment where they were like, you guys can't keep doing this. This is, everything here is, people don't even like coming here. And we were like, what? What?

We have everything. That's a testament to how much we like you. We like you. So I went down, there's people who don't know Los Angeles. If you go down Western, there are, I don't know, roughly like 3,000 furniture stores. All private, they own little small mom and pop furniture stores that are, for the most part, scams. But the furniture is real. It just, I think, falls apart over a certain amount of time.

And I went there just to look and got the real hard sell from a guy there who kept like dropping the price and dropping the price on a three-piece set. And finally I was like just pulled the trigger and did it. Colleen, my girlfriend at the time, furious with me because I didn't consult her on my bedroom. But that's the furniture we've had since then. And we've had it for a very long time. I realized taking apart the old bed that I had made modifications to it. by the way, this was a queen. It was a queen bed with a mattress that just, I don't know, I assume, I don't totally remember, came with the bed.

Sure. They were just like, and here's the mattress that goes with it. And I've talked about this podcast. This is really shocking news. I get talked about this podcast having lower back pain sometimes attributing that to other causes. My wife also has back pain. We just recently got a new bed. We got a Callie King.

which are you have to legally leave in California to have one of those. Sure. And then we got, yeah, new bed frame and then a new mattress. And we really did our due diligence with the mattress shopping. And we found something that we were both like, oh, I look forward to going and lying on this one. And we've had it now for a week. And oh, my God, my life is different. My quality of life has completely changed.

I'm sleeping way better, pain free. I'm not snoring on this bed I don't know what the system is Yeah It's been incredible I've really really loved it And I'm never looking back That's fantastic

So that So that does not need to be upgraded Because you've just upgraded Oh I thought that was the question What was something you recently upgraded Oh no no No no no no no no no no But that's a fine answer

Yeah It was it until we could go It was this bed Do you keep your old pillows, or did you upgrade pillows too? Oh, so we're very, that's one thing that we've always been very particular about is our pillows. We will take pillows to hotels because I hate the pillows in hotels. Sure. I don't want a down pillow.

I don't want a pillow that you sink in and I don't want a flat pillow. We get, I mean, like a memory foam, like a pretty plush memory foam is my ideal pillow. Yeah. I like a memory foam pillow. I've learned that I don't really know what I want exactly because at some point my wife and I divided up the pillows for the ones that she likes to sleep with and the ones that I said at one time,

this is what I like and I can't sleep with anything else. And then when we're redoing the sheets and the covers for the pillows and the cases and everything like that, I am completely turned around. And she's like, which is the one that you like? And I squeeze the pillows and like, I don't, maybe I never knew. I just, I just like to be bold when I'm talking to you

and have answers to things and firm opinions, but I guess I don't really know what I'm like or what I'm into. Should I just go? I know what you loved about me was the way that I made big decisions. Are we still okay? Yeah, I, it really matters to me now. I guess enough of my life went by where I wasn't feeling that way, I was more like you, just a savage.

And it hasn't been worth it since then. Once you get a pillow that you actually enjoy and that you like, it's like, oh, I'm never going back to that bullshit you get at Target or whatever. You don't know even that you are particular about pillows until you go to a hotel and you sleep on one of their dog shit pillows. Because I don't think I've ever spent a lot of money on a pillow and I don't feel like when I sleep that it's the thing. the peak of luxury that I'm swimming in.

And I've camped and I feel like I can sleep on couches. I can sleep on anything. Then you go to a hotel and you get one of their fucking, their piles of tissues, just they're all their used tissues balled up and shoved into a case. And it truly makes you realize for the first time. I was like, oh, I do have like a bar, a minimum requirement of what I need.

And it's not in the purveyors of sleep cubes. Something happens with those two. They're like smash burgers where like as soon as you put even one on top of another one, you just completely flatten the one underneath it. Or he tried to fold it in half. Even that's not working. Like now there's like a weird, at the crease, you get a little bit of rise. And then everywhere else is completely flat.

So that's an even worse way to sleep because your heads cocked to the side like a confused dog. Hotels would be a really tough sell to aliens if you had to explain why we have so many hotels and what they're for. You can say this is like if I can't go to home I could sleep in there and it's like oh So you could just it's just open all the time It's like absolutely not I cannot get in until three And I have to leave at 11

And there's nothing to do But really sleep and watch terrible TV It's like oh well then The surely all the money Goes to the sleep part of that equation Because that is the only thing that you're doing In a hotel is like Absolutely not

No It is a business that is premised on all of it is just a vehicle for the hotel TV channel where they tell you about how great hotels are. Everything else about it, that's where they cut the costs. They want to get you in the room watching that TV. So you know that there's a pool. And the pool's not good, but it looks good on the TV. But the breakfast is free and really bad. And completely cold.

there's a thing that happens in a hotel room, which is every single night, for whatever reason, maybe it has to do with folding or laundry. They refuse to use fitted sheets and even the most luxurious of hotels. So that sheet is coming up in the middle of the night. And it's so deeply annoying to have not something taught underneath you. It's like all the folds and everything and the, because now you don't know where you stay anymore. The sheets on top, they're allowed to get foldy. But the ones on the bottom, there's a rule.

Those are supposed to stay in place, and they just don't on hotel beds. But don't worry, because that's not the main reason that you're not going to be able to sleep well in the bed. No, they'll find a way with the pillows. I guess at this point, the best thing about hotels is when I'm done, I'm allowed to leave my towels on the floor. And in fact, it's encouraged to leave your towels in a pile on the floor. They like that. It's how you communicate to the hotel staff at this point. That's sort of what you're paying for.

There's the other thing I really like about hotels is that even the mid-scale hotels have floor lights in the bathroom. They have a different lighting system where it's like you can have the traditional lights on, sure. But man, wouldn't it be nice to just have some beautiful little floor lights on? Like you just open a car door kind of lights. Yeah, they give you a peek into like what kind of life you could have if you were an insane. Whether it's floor lights in the bathroom, where there's, there's some hotels. This is even some of, like, the nicer hotels

where there's, like, unexposed, no-glass window between the bedroom and the bathroom. Just that, like, weird tunnel where you can pass notes back and forth. Sometimes there's, like, an incense thing on there. It's like, yeah, I didn't think this was something I would want. And now that I'm here, I'm certain I don't want it. But it's neat that I've been presented with, with an alternative

I it's also obviously been a minute since I've stayed in a hotel but we in Las Vegas when we go they have all on systems so the minute you get into your room you just push it's completely dark in the room but you have a light switch there that just has this big button that says all on and you push that

the blinds open up on their own the lights come on but like a really nice ambient lighting the TV pops on so you get that channel and some music starts playing and everything. And I love that. I love that. I love having an all-on button,

specifically because I can go into, when I am there with friends, I can go into their rooms and even just crack the door and be like, all on when they're sleeping. And just push it. That does feel like an incredibly vagus-specific thing

because one of the other things about hotels that make it a hard sell to the aliens is that in a lot of them, you get a key card to open the door and then you can't, the lights will not turn on unless you slide that key card into a little slot somewhere on the wall that you can't find because it's dark. And this is a situation that only exists in hotels. So if you're not a frequent hotel user, you would never jump to this conclusion at all. You would never think like, oh, the key, I have to slide into this little tiny card slot that is at now height on the wall.

for this room. Yeah. I also, I don't think the key cards, I think, on purpose, just don't work great. Yeah. I think that you get to your room and you're carrying six things and you're like, and now I will scan it and now it will scan it. Come on, baby. And then like, like, search surely eighth sign of the charm.

And yeah, it worked. And so for correct fans, this is just like, this is how we would, this is sort of like workshoping how we would write an honest ad sketch for hotels. and then we would riff in the room for a while and then with zero energy left in my body I would say does anyone want to write this?

And no one's eyes would find mine. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Daniel, what is yours? What is your thing that's overdue? There's some bed stuff that I feel like is overdue, but I'm fine enough with my bed. There's some office chair stuff for the amount of time between this podcast and my job that I spend in a chair in this room.

You'd think I would really spare no expense on my office chair. But the one that I'm sitting in now is an old swivel chair that made the move from my wife's home to homes ago. And the one that I use sometimes is like a softer chair that we got to be decorative. for our living room, I sometimes take that and I sit in it here. And it is also not perfect for my throne that I sit in and spend all my time in and make money for the chairs in. You'd think I would spend a lot of money on a chair because of its importance. So is your time.

I just don't. None of the chairs that I've ever used have even been intentional for me. And yet, that is not the part of my life that needs up. grading. Part of my life. Okay. Go ahead. No, no, no.

I want to hear this. And then I want to ask you a question about it afterwards. Go ahead. It must be shoes. I will spend time and research on my running shoes. And I have, I will get a pair of running shoes. And I know how much mileage you're supposed to put on a running shoe until you swap it out for a new running shoe. Yeah.

And I am diligent about doing that every six to 800 miles swap. out shoes. I also have a different pair of running shoes that are just my race day running shoes. And I know how many miles are on those as well for when I will eventually swap those out. This concludes the amount of thought I put into my shoes. And I don't wear running shoes all the time. I wear other shoes. And there are shoes that I think look cool. I have a lot of shoes that look cool that offer absolute dog shit support. And I have not investigated them. And it's, I spend so much time on my feet. I think about it now all the time because I'm walking around with my son in the house. Not that I'd wear shoes in the house, but like, I'm just aware of, of my feet and my posture and,

and the repetitive stress injuries that I'm doing to myself walking around with, with zero support. I just think, this is something that when I can, when I, when suddenly my bones fall out of my ass when I'm 60. The doctors are going to are going to say like you've been punishing your feet for six decades. Of course this happened. It'll be like the

clearest thing in the world because I've never done Googling of like what are good walking shoes? And the shoes that I wear when I walk all all over the fucking town when I'm putting miles on it walking a town to get coffee or walking my dog or walking the baby.

They're cool looking Adidas Sambas. There's no support in those. Or Converse or like some shoes that I saw somewhere that had sea turtles on them and I thought turtles are cool

so I got it and the shoes are made of gum. It's, it sucks. And it's gonna be the death of me. I'm certain of it. Everyone says, your shoes kill you. Comfortable shoes.

Everyone says it starts with your feet. If you go on Reddit and you're, and you are exploring all of the back pain and hit pain subredits. All of it is like, it starts with your shoes, invest in your shoes, spend the stupid money on your shoes, which I do only with running shoes. That's good that you're doing it with your running shoes, at least. I mean, I don't either. It's aesthetics exclusively.

Like if I'm going to, if I need a new pair of shoes and boy, yeah, it's always going to be overdue. It's going to be the glue in the soul and the leather has started to detach. and you can see my naked foot inside of it. It's like, oh, it's time. But yeah, I will, I'll just go and find aesthetically the shoe that I like. Already, before I've even tried it on, I'll know which shoe I'm going to get. Oh, yeah.

That's how I end up with so many shoes that hurt me when I walk around in them. Yeah, because then I will also, I know how to talk myself into keeping those. I will put them on, and when I find the pain points in my general day, I'm like, well, the shoes have to break in. And then six months later, I'm like, well, you just haven't been wearing the shoes enough because you don't like the feeling of the excruciating pain. That's the problem. You got to break them in more. I have these Birkenstocks that I love, but I can't wear them. I have to put a band-aid on my foot first to protect it from the shoes.

And I don't feel like doing that. Right. So I just don't wear them. Yeah. Yeah. Shoes is a good one. Now, I want to ask you, Daniel, the things that you know are overdue, just like a bigger question about this. this topic, the things in your life that you know that are overdue and that when you get them,

it will be a real treat for you, is the fact that the treat will already exist and that will be over and you'll have nothing to look forward to influence your decision in not pulling the trigger? I think what influences my decision in not pulling the trigger is Irish Catholicism, where you can just, as they say in the departed, just sit with something being wrong forever. Suffering is beautiful in causism. Yeah, yeah. It's one of our favorite things. And I think that's just, I'm just aware of things that, that can, how they can be better.

And isn't that, isn't that valuable? Just the knowing, isn't that nice that I, that I, that I, closer to God, the suffering. Yeah. I feel like, isn't it, um, a testament to my self-esteem that I know I deserve better than what I have. Isn't that good? Aren't those good lessons that I can,

you know, I'll pass it down to my son that he too should aim for the stars and he should believe him that he deserves nice things. He's not going to get them. Yeah. We should know where they are, though. Yeah.

Should know where what is attainable, but don't reach for it. What are you selfish? Yeah. Protestant? Get the fuck out of here. I don't know if that's true, Protestants. I find this is like something that I deal with regularly is that I have these little things that I know would be a treat for me.

It would be like a luxury for me. And how just the dreaming of that luxury is like what's carrying me. If I was actually do it and get it, I'm not worried that I'm not going to like it or that it's not going to be right. Like it's not a sour grape situation. It's I think I might really enjoy the things. but once I get it and it becomes part of my life, I become blind to the joy. I've now like entered a new level of comfort.

That's like now that's what's expected. And that makes me scared every single time. Now what do I look forward to? Like what am I going to go do now? When we got this bed, I was very worried that I was like, well, if I sleep in a comfortable bed, this is like a general concern of mine. If I sleep in a very comfortable bed, what's going to happen when the world burns up and we're all in a tent as a family and I can't sleep

that's reasonable your head's in the right place I thought you're going to I thought the direction was what if we get this bed then for what reason will I go to work what will be my purpose if not to work towards a bed one day I worry every single time I do anything every single time that I take a new medication or like I'm like on Claritin and I'm like but if I'm training my body to that it needs this what's going to happen when society collapses and I can't get it or what's going to happen when we're sleeping in the woods for a while because we can't do anything else every single time my biggest concern is always like look at all these needs I have all of a sudden I didn't used to have these we're suddenly so high maintenance a comfortable

bed and shoes. When I'm buying new shoes, okay, I'm going to walk back, walk back. What I said earlier, which is that I only do it for aesthetics. A big part of when I buy a pair of shoes is, would I be able to run away from police in these? Sure. I haven't run from police since I was a teenager or campus safety in college. But like, I, the first thing I think is like, could I run and climb a fence in the

shoes. And so I get nervous about leaving the house. I won't leave the house in flip-flops unless I know like I'm not going very far because what if I need to run at any given moment? And I'll tell you, Dan, that's a valid concern for me because I'm not the police but I do, I do end up in situations where I'm like, oh, kids are playing back the kids in the street are playing football. Yeah. Oh, I'll play with them. I'll destroy these fucking kids. I'm going to teach him a lesson. And I need to run. I need to run around. Or my, especially when your children get older and like your daughter is going to be like, I want to race to the, your daughter, when you have a daughter, Daniel. She's like, I want to race to the end of the block. You're like, bet, let's do it. And

you're like, I will destroy you. There's a lot of running that happens in your life. And you want a shoe that that can handle that. But I don't know. I even then, even with shoes, I'm like, I do need a new pair. I have been able to run in these in the past. Time. has proven that. Would I... Am I really going to gamble on a new pair? I did have that thought. We, my wife and baby and I went for a stroller walk into town and I just had my flip-flops on because it was a nice day.

And I hate socks, which is another part of why I'm going to die of foot bone disease at some way too early age for that. But I was just in my flip-flops. And then maybe a quarter or half mile from the house, the baby was screaming crying. inconsolable, nothing was working. And I thought, I'm not prepared to sprint home, get the car, take us back, and not even like emergency take us to the hospital, just like get us home where we can get the baby inside where he'll be happy again. And now I don't walk around on my flip-flops anymore.

Now I do those walks in my running shoes, like an idiot. Because I did notice a situation where it's like, well, I can't run right now. And that is unacceptable. I need to be able to run. There's, I can't remember a while ago I had seen a video where maybe. is when my son was first born. I was terrified of everything. But there was a woman with a stroller.

The stroller started to get away from her a little bit near traffic. She fell down and couldn't get herself back up as the stroller was like going. It's very heartbreaking to see. Somebody else stopped it, by the way. Somebody stopped this stroller. But that somebody would, you'd ever find yourself in a situation where you cannot help your kid. And you're like, I'll never be in that situation. I'm going to do everything I can.

It was in my power to make sure. sure that I am prepared for fucking everything. That was certainly my thought in the dream when the neighbor's kid jumped into the toaster and popped yourself down. I was like, well, not my son. My son is, is not the toaster. My son with his octopus arms is here in my arms. This is why you start preparing yourself for mortal dangers that don't exist.

Like toaster, I would have dreams that my son was in the bed with. He never once slept in our bed. We were very careful early on to make sure that he was not co-sleeping so that we'd have to break him of it. But I'd have dreams where he was in the bed and that he was falling out of the bed and that the bed was surrounded by water that he was going to drown in. And so I would wake up lunging and grabbing onto Colleen because you're so tired that I couldn't tell the difference between my wife and my baby.

And she would freak out and then we'd have a fight about it in the middle of the night and then I would go back to sleep. Do it again three hours later. get ready let me ask you this Daniel a thing that I noticed that I was doing when I first had a baby oh I guess I'll phrase this in the form of an episode

Daniel quick question yeah when you think of the dangers that your son could face when you're like in a new space or you see him doing something with his with a toy it's too small for him to be holding

or whatever it is do you can you vividly see what's a what could happen the awful terrible things that could happen we're not in new enough yet yes i do but not in the way like i look around my house now and i imagine him crawling in the future and i see all the dangers that can happen with him him crawling and like knocking a mirror down and the mirror collapses on top of him he's not crawling right now so i'm just he's he's he's he's not far away from it though this kid is so fucking strong agile and advanced. You got an athlete.

We really do. He's going to be such a basketball player. It's crazy. I think one of the Globetrotters, I think one of the Harlem Globetrotters, because he's doing tricks and stuff. This is upper echelon basketball. He's making money every day.

But I imagine the things that he can hurt himself on in the house, the things that are more vivid, when we are out. like I had him in the stroller and I was pushing him around back and forth in front of my house before we went inside the other day and one of the neighbors was walking by that I don't like and he came

up to look at my son and talk to me and I'm barely listening to what the guy's saying because I'm imagining him hurting the baby somehow. Him like grabbing him the wrong way accidentally or him just like

smushing the baby's face for no clear reason. Just all of these these like, I don't know, someone comes up and I just, I just think, like, don't, don't look at my son because I know you're just gonna smear his face, you're gonna do, like all, like these crazy, completely irrational things where someone's coming up

a well-meaning stranger. And I have to bite my tongue. I'm like, you don't need to tell them. Because what I want to do is like, hey, uh, don't, don't spit on him, please. Just like, he's, he's, he's only six weeks old. So don't, don't drop any, any, uh,

Forks or knives into the stroller, please, because, again, he's very small. So please do not light my son on fire. Like all these things that, like, I'm imagining them doing, which would be insane for me to caution them against. Yes. Yeah. And those are, are those like, do you indulge in the playing it out in your brain? Are you like, well, I need to know how to deal with this situation.

So like, let's run it. Let's run a dry run. Like in the same way where you're writing a story, you're like, you don't know. if a scene's going to work. And so you just run it in your head. And you're like, well, let's see how it would play out. And you're just kind of like, you're vividly seeing it. Like the glass falling on a mirror falling on him. Like, do you run out the whole scenario in your brain of something terrible happening to your kid? I, yeah, a few ways I do in the house. Because I, the chief thing that I imagine all the time that I allow myself to imagine is that, I trip when I'm holding him and land on top of him. Yes. Or especially going up or down the stairs, I land on top of him. And I imagine every bit of that up to and including the worst thing happening.

And then... Yeah. And I was telling my wife this recently. My aunt and cousin were over to see the baby. And I was like, Shay, if I... We were... Because we all... All we do is think about the worst case scenarios.

All parents do. is thinking about the things that can hurt the baby. And I was telling Shay, because she also has the fear of the stairs. I was like, honey, if I'm, if I'm going down the stairs and I fall with him and the worst thing happens, you're never going to see me again. And she said good. And my aunt said, of course. Because not only do I imagine the worst thing.

And it's also like, and then what I can't imagine is how I, where I go. from here. Yeah. How we move on. And I was like, well, I mean, you know, death by suicide by cop, I think seems like a pretty neat solution. You get to also, yeah, it's got a message behind it. You get to kill two birds with one stone.

Yeah. I would, I found early on, and I don't know if this will be helpful to you, but it was like something that I really had to contend with was I was playing all. these scenarios out in their entirety in my head, not intentionally, just like they would, they would run the finger in a light socket or things like that, where I, leaving him in a hot car, any of these things where I'm now seeing it and I'm seeing him in my brain and I'm watching it happen. You get that wince because like something happens to your kid, like they get hit by something. Like you will, you feel it. You're so connected to them that you feel it. And it's really tough to see. And so. something mortal would happen in my mind and I would allow it to play. And because I thought I was doing this to like protect him. And I was like, I need to know how this will go so that I can make sure that it doesn't. That was not helpful in any way.

It was really put me in like pretty dark places. And I was thinking about these things the wrong way. The general fear was enough. Like the general fear that something could happen is enough. don't need to torture yourself by playing it over in your brain exactly how it would go. But what I think I was probably doing was not trying to protect him, but I was trying to protect me from the possibility that he would be dead someday. Yeah.

And so that was so scary that I was like, I need to know exactly how it'll go. I need to know in every situation what it will be like and what will happen. One one scenario I play with a lot that is less dark to me. I constantly imagine slipping on the stairs in a way that that kills me and saves him. I think about that a lot, the ways where it's like, we're both going down. I spin so that I land. Neck first. On my back or on my head on the stairs.

And then he like calmly slides my corpse. to the bottom of the stairs. Right. Like the amount of ways I've imagined myself falling at like total peace of just like, well, my arms are protecting the baby. And so I'm falling face first onto a spike, one of those spikes that that stick up out of the ground. And I was like, well, I saved the boy and down I go.

Like it's, it's oddly comforting scenario to imagine. Yeah. Yeah, because that's a better scenario. I like that. I like thinking about the ways of which, like, the happy endings where you're dead. Yeah. You're shot. But, like, the thought of you accidentally hurting your child, I think, is, like, the biggest one where it's late.

Because I, even when I was in charge of clipping his fingernails, I clipped one of his fingernails once and clipped his finger because every parent will at some point. And I was, I was a mess after that. It would be way more of a mess than I should have been because I was like, I disfigure. figured him. And it was like my fault. He got hurt. I saw his blood and it was my fault. And like what that meant was was you're not good at this. Like you're not doing it right. I was very scared for that. It's it's scary. It's fine. When I talk about how strong he is and he's not rolling over yet or anything like that. But I, but the scary thought is. The first, the first. The first. time he does something physical new will be the first time that it happens. He's going to do something that he couldn't do before and there won't be a close warning to it, whether that's like flipping over easily or like grabbing something and pulling something down because there's so much warnings about, you know, don't at at this many months and you can't have anything around him

that he can't like pull and hurt himself on. He can't do any of that yet. But, One day he'll be able to, and it's not going to be like, there won't be a training wheels version leading up to it, so I have enough warning. He is just suddenly going to be able to do a physical feat that he couldn't do before, and I'm going to discover it. And I'm very worried about that discovery. The first time he learns, he can do a kip-up from the changing situation. What if I don't have the mats around? for him to land on safely. I remember my son having a wooden cone, like building cones, like building blocks,

but one was like a cone or spire that you put at the top of a building. And it's wood. And I see him not only discover that he's got two hands, but see him pass the cone from one hand to the other. And being like, oh my God. Like he understands, like that was an intentional move. And he understands that these two things are his. And then he put it in the other hand and then just slowly put it into his eye. He's like, no, no, no.

Okay. He doesn't totally know that they're his yet. Or maybe he does. Maybe he didn't want the eyes. I don't put into his eyes and started crying. And so I was like, I didn't even, that wasn't on my radar. I know. I wasn't even paying attention.

Well, folks, we gave you a lot this episode. Yeah. We did some, some bookends with the parents. We did the kind of like upgrade question that we feel like if you're listening into the car, you're shout your own answers or you know, this is maybe when you get to your destination, you ask

the person that you run into. It was like, here's a fun thought story. You don't need to give a credit to the podcast. You could just say like, here's a fun. It's yours. These are all free, baby. Just do it. And we workshoped a crack. Oh, great show. In the middle of there. Man,

don't be mad at us for anything. Thanks, everybody. If you like that topic, go have a kid or get a new mattress or, you know, fucking whatever. You've liked our theme song that's by me, Rex. If you like this podcast enough that you want to watch it, you can do that on YouTube. Daniel and I are both in the frame. That's all we can promise. And there it is.

Now we are both in the frame. And if you like this podcast so much that you want more of it, you can become a Patreon subscriber. And we do bonus episodes of this show. that are only available behind that paywall. But the pay is pretty generous in terms of what amount that should be. All right. Oh, sorry. Also, obviously, the sound engineer, editor, producer, everything, the heartbeat of this show, Gabe Harder.

Shout out to him. And if you want to use him, tough luck. He's ours. Tough luck. Goodbye. Bye. quick question for you all right the answer's not important i'm just glad that we could talk tonight so what's your favorite who did you get when do i be your best friends and comedy rights

if there's an answer they're gonna find it i think you'll have a great time here i think you'll have a great time here