The Prepper Broadcasting Network - Matter of Facts: Teachers' Pets

Episode Date: January 26, 2026

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Welcome back to Matterfax podcast on the Prepper Broadcasting Network. We talk prepping guns and politics every week on iTunes, Stitcher, and Spotify. Go check out our content at MWFpodcast.com on Facebook or Instagram. You can support us via Patreon or by checking out our affiliate partners. I'm your host, Phil Ravale. Andrew, Nick, are on the other side of the mic, and here's your show. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to Matterfax podcast.

This time with four of us. Nick and I brought our, what, our handlers, our supervisors, bosses, bosses, neurodivergence and the women who marry them. That's probably accurate. I mean, this whole, that's probably really accurate. This whole episode did start off by Nick and I both remarking that we both married women who have experienced dealing with special needs children. And that cannot be a coincidence. It's like we were saying in the other episode, in my trade at least, it's extraordinarily common to marry a teacher.

I do not know why, but I know two tool and dye makers that are not married to teachers, and I know dozens of them. There's not a lot of us. I think that merits. That merits studying, because that's way too much correlation. So anyway, introductions are necessary because you two are the guess here. This is my wife, Gillian, for anybody that hasn't met her yet, although I think everybody in the chat pretty much has. Except for Dr. Scary guy. for Dr. Scary Guy, our news patron.

And this is my wife, Rachel. You guys have seen her harassing me in the comments. Yes. Rachel's still new enough that she watches y'all. I don't. It entertains her and bothers the dog, so it's even better. I don't take it personally that my wife doesn't feel the need to listen to me for another hour every week. Well, usually I get the conversation before y'all even go on.

So I've, well, and we've also been together for 20 years. So there is that. I kind of kind of get, I'm ahead of the game. Is that what we're going to say? I've got the notes and the cheat sheet already planned out. Already bored to tears, in other words. I actively try not to rant to my wife about what is going to be on the podcast. Yeah, I have to ask.

That's amazing self-restraint. I usually don't manage that. Well, you know, before we get on every day, I usually am cooking dinner, getting dinner on the table for the two of us. We do get the dishes all cleaned up and then I pop down here. Yeah, that's how we are. Yeah. It's not a whole lot of time to go into it in depth. And then y'all really don't plan ahead either.

You're kind of just the day of talk about a couple of days before. Usually on Tuesday, Tuesday, Wednesday at the latest. Sometimes if we, like, kind of have predesignated an episode for the next week, we'll actually be on the ball and do research and stuff. It's weird. Yeah, especially if, like, the episode where we were talking about conspiracy theories that were actually true or government shenanigans. We both did disturbing amounts of research. Yeah. The disturbing part was that I don't feel like we really learned that much.

Like, we pretty much already knew everything. Well, I mean, I learned the dates. That was about it. There is that. Did Phil come with an instruction manual like Sheldon? You know, sometimes I wish that there was an instruction manual to Phil. I had to figure it out all on my own. I deserve a prize and several trips to the beach for figuring this guy out.

Actually, he wasn't really that hard to figure out. I'm a very simple person. Yeah, he really, I'm going to tell on myself, I make it harder. Go on, keep going. I make it harder on myself with Phil because it just can't be that straightforward. There has to be underlying, like, emotion. There has to be something there. It just can't be.

He can't really mean exactly what he said, the way he said it. It can't be that simple. Exactly. Comments? I can't be the only one. Rachel? I don't know. What do you think?

Was I difficult to figure out? No. No. That's what you got no. That was a hard thing. But do you complicate it more? No, I don't think I complicated more. Rachel.

He's so complicated. in what he, like, what he talks about? I, I, I, I just tend to do things. And, uh, she just takes it, takes me at my word that if I've said something, it's probably going to happen because I, I don't tend to bluff. Sometimes I question it, but not all of them. Okay. I'm not talking like planning or anything like that.

I'm talking about like, like, emotional kind of stuff. Like she'll ask my opinion and I'll tell her. And then she's like, but you can't really think that. And I'm like, no, I'm pretty sure I do because I said it. It took her a while to believe that I was being honest with my opinions, I think. Okay. I would agree. Thank you.

Sometimes I still question it, though. And we are, we are, what, two months, a month and a half from 18 years married. Oh, yeah, 21. Oops. We've been together for 21 years. Yeah. Not 20. I got asked the other day.

I had worked how long Gilling I had been married. And I did the math. And I was shocked because I was like, it just, it didn't occur to me that we're coming up on 18 years. Like, I know what year we got married. I know what year it is now. But until I actually like subtracted one from there, I was like, oh, my God, we've almost been married 18 years. That's fantastic. Yeah.

This year, let's see, November will be 21 years we've been together. No. Yes. No. Yes. It is. 21 years we've been together. So I have been with Phil just as much, just as many years as I haven't been with Phil.

Does that make sense? Yeah, that's right. Yeah, because I was 21 when we met. You spent half your life with me. I spent half my life with you. And he didn't come with the manual. No, did not come with the manual. I got to lose back around to this.

We're going further. Dr. Scary guy says he misses the Raisin Values podcast. I know, I know. So does she. Yeah, I know. I'm not pressuring. Pressure, pressure. Yeah, raising values.

There would be much to talk about when we finally do that again. I think I have a topic for at least a year's worth. I know that I have notes in my phone for every chapter in my book. I'm going to write so maybe every chapter would be a podcast topic that day. I don't know if I'm just I'm just not there yet. I think there's still so much that's going on in my life and our life and everything that's happening right now that focusing on doing a show is just I don't have the bandwidth to do it.

So the emotional bandwidth. Yeah, the emotional bandwidth to really take care of any like do that and then have to still take care of my parents. And then I actually, I start in with my neurologist on Monday to start going over all the Huntington disease stuff. So that's fun. Hey, you know, you might as well get ahead of it, though. Yeah, I mean, we didn't know that my grandfather had it. My dad didn't know that he had it. He was estranged from his dad.

and like now once we've learned all the symptoms and everything of Huntington's disease, I can look back on my life and think, well, gosh, my dad was in his 40s and 50s when I started to notice these symptoms that he's having, that have progressively gotten worse. And that 30s and 40s is about the time that the symptoms really start to hit. And so now I'm looking at myself going, well, crap, I am starting to see the same symptoms. and I'm in my 40s. So at least if, you know, however it progresses, if I truly have it or not, will be way ahead

of the curve than my dad was. And then my grandfather was. And there's promising, there's a new promising surgery that's out there and it is brain surgery, but it's been working wonders for people in the UK And the U.S. is now trying to fast forward the surgery with the FDA. Yeah. Yeah.

And we're very fortunate that like the foremost center for studying Huntington's is right down New Orleans. Yeah. So like we kind of luck. You know, I told Gillingham, Mike, we kind of lucked into that because a lot of people that have a disease as rare as you might have. It hasn't been confirmed yet. but they literally have to like hop on a plane and go cross country to go to the place where it's studied and treat it. So I don't know.

I mean, Gill and I've had discussions about what happened, what does our long-term life look like if you do get diagnosed with Huntington's and how does that change our long-term plans? But to me, it's always come down to like, you know, going back to me always telling her, like, I told you what I thought, just take me up my word. Like, I've always said, I'm going to make the smartest decision. from my family I can. I'm not going to make dumb decisions that are going to bite me in the butt later. It's just not how I'm wired. So if I know that earlier than we anticipated, you're

going to start to have issues with mobility and everything else, we're going to plan a heck for that. Yeah, that was the last, the most recent conversation of me going, are you sure there's not any underlying emotions here? Because I'm totally ripping up all of our future plans that we've had since we've been together and saying, oh, we can't do any of that now. Like, we have to have wheelchair access, have to have a nurse on call. I won't be able to walk, kind of stuff like that. Yeah, and I mean, and to the point I made then, which I'm sure Nick would agree with, I'm sure any decent husband would and any decent wife would, you know, when you put,

when you stand in front of the preacher and you say, till death do his part, I signed a blank check. Yeah. Yeah. I knew what I was signing. I just didn't know what, you know, I didn't know how many Zos were going to be at the end of that number yet. So if this is what our, if this is where our life takes us, like, I agree to take the ride. I'm not upset. You know, we, when we bought this house here, Phil, I know I've mentioned this to you.

I don't know if I mentioned it to Gillian. A lot of joint issues in my family. Just because we're all blue-collar people, we all beat the crap out of ourselves. It's just how it's going to be. We were very particular in finding a ranch house that would be accessible if one of us were to have a problem in the future. Because frankly, we hate moving. That was rough. Yeah, especially because I was laid up at the time.

Yeah, you were laid up. Well, even like looking for a house was rough. It was. Yeah, we bought this house 2020? Yeah, 2020. Yeah, so right during the middle of COVID, which was a little deceptive with how much traffic goes by the highway. But you don't really hear it in our house. So it's not a problem.

Gillian was five, six months pregnant when we moved in here? You were pregnant enough that you didn't have any business lifting heavy furniture. I was like four or five months pregnant. But she still packed up like probably three quarters of the apartment because at, leading up to, put you this way, I was working out of town, I flew home the day before we had to go and close on the house. Or was it two days before? That's aggressive. Well, you know, to be frank, at the time, I had spent quite a few years working my way into the career that I loved, got a pretty decent position, I thought, that had a lot of vertical movement in it.

And unfortunately, it came with living to have a suitcase six months out of the year. You know, it was a lot of travel and a lot of really aggressive work posture. I loved every minute of it. But it did mean that leading up to having to go close on a house and move my pregnant wife, I was at, I don't even remember what station I was at. I was at a town. And literally, I was in the airport waiting for my flight to come home. My boss called me and said, hey, can I extend you for a couple of days?

And I said, I'll be divorced. Like, I will have to move in with you. My wife will kill me. The story of this house is this is the house that we originally saw. I loved it online. I wanted it so bad, but it was outside of our price range. And then, I don't know, a few months later, like, we had been looking and go into all these different places whenever he was home. And we, that my realtor called me up and was like, hey, he dropped the price and it's in your range.

Do you want to go see it? So we came and saw it, put an offer in that day. And there was an offer that was placed right before us that same day. But I think it was because Phil, he was a veteran and Phil was a veteran. And that's why he went with us. It didn't hurt. And it didn't hurt that, yeah, we. I offered them asking price for the house instead of trying to low ball them and haggle him.

But I told Gilling, I'm like, here's the thing. You know, like, let's say we try to save like 10 grand principal. and we wind up losing the house. If this is really the house you want, $10,000 principal over, you know, spread out over a 30-year mortgage, you're never going to notice it. No, no, your interest rate is so much more. Yeah, just let's offer them what they're asking,

cut all the BS out, and let's just get the house. And that worked out in our favor. We kind of have a similar story. So we looked at this house, drove away. I told Nick, I love the house, we have to buy it. And he said, no, no, we have to look at more houses. We have to look at least the other ones the realtor set up today. Yeah.

It was the first, the second house we looked at? I think the second house. And then by the time we tell the realtor, he's like, oh, it's under contract. Yeah, we texted him the next day that we wanted to set up an offer. And he said, well, just so you know, it's under contract. So then I spent the rest of the summer looking online, waiting for the house to come back on the market. And then one morning I was drinking coffee looking. I was like, Nick, the house is back in the market.

Call the realtor. Like, we're not looking at anything else. Call. No. No. There were not a lot of houses that fit what we wanted to begin with. You know, you guys live in a pretty high-price market being near New Orleans. The county were in in Illinois is one of the higher.

property value counties that are that's outside of like chicago um so it's not uncommon for a house like ours to hit the four hundred thousand dollar range and that is just well outside of what is reasonable for us um so we were looking for a house that needed a little bit of work you know had a large yard wanted it to be a ranch if at all possible and she wanted a natural fireplace Yeah. Which fortunately we found everything in this house and it's all brick and it's actually a really nice house. It's just the house had never been updated since it was built in the 60s. So, you know, the long shag green carpet in the master, which is still there.

I need to tear that out. We had carpet in the bathroom. There was carpet in one of the bathrooms. I remember growing up in a house with carpet in the bathrooms. Yeah. Oh, that was terrible. But Chal just finished a bathroom, so you're getting there. One of them.

We finished the one with carpet in at first because one of the things we didn't realize when we put a bit in on the house was the drain for the shower was not connected to the shower pan in the master bathroom. That's interesting. We figured that out when I was tearing the carpet out of that. Yeah, the PVC flange had broken and separated. Yeah. Huh.

So there was like the electrical in the house needs updated, you know, standard old stuff. We said some, there's still copper drain lines that we're working on replacing. In fact, we have to do some emergency plumbing. I was actually doing plumbing last night until about 8.30 at night. And I'm going to have to redo all the plumbing to the kitchen as far as drain lines and one of the bathrooms tomorrow or Saturday. Yeah. That sounds like no bueno.

It's not bad. You're going to be working on plumbing in what temperature? Is it outside? Oh, no. It's like 74 in my basement. Oh, okay. I'm thinking maybe you have to go outside and dig holes in your frozen tundra. Oh, God, no.

You need a jackhammer. So I know you guys, you guys don't have really basements down there. No. So they'd be below ground swimming pools. So right now, the basement we're in, it has like an eight foot ceiling. So this stays warm pretty much year-round or cool in the summer. It's really nice when it's exceptionally hot out and our air conditioner broke. Okay.

Two summers ago. Yeah. Yeah, that was horrible. But fortunately for us, because of the way the frost situation is here and the fact that most people have, basements, all your plumbing is accessible to a lot of people. Okay. So it's not buried in concrete. It's not buried in dirt.

It is buried in the walls, but sometimes you can access that stuff. Yeah, no, we don't have basements. We bury our dead above ground. I mean, some places around here in the water. So I had done some looking into several years ago to see like how hard would it be to sink like a shallow water well into the back. backyard is an emergency water source. And I think what I came up with was right here, if I could drive a sock pipe 16 feet into the ground, I'd have water.

Oh, you can drive pipe there. But my point is, that's how high the water table is. So, oddly enough, even though I'm like another 900 feet above sea level from you, we can drive. So our house is up on a hill, right? And our backyard kind of drops off into a valley. It's what about 30 foot drop? I think so. It's like a little 30-foot hill that goes down there.

Down on the bottom of that hill is an artesian water source. Nice. That's for, if you dig a foot deep, you have water coming up out of the ground. Sweet. A 30-foot hill would basically be a mountain down here. Well, that's the hill from our house to the bottom of our property to where the highway is or town is, is like 400 feet down. That's crazy. Makes a decent sledding hill.

Wouldn't know. Yeah, if the weather would get warm when the snow would stay. It's gross that you're saying if it only got warm enough to go ski or to go sled. Well, it does need to get warm enough to snow. Right now, the weather's so cold, the air is so dry that it can't. And we did get a lot of snow this week. I did. And it would be a great day tomorrow.

to go out and play in the snow if it was a negative 40. She has been bemoaning the lack of snowshoeing depths of snow this year. Okay, so what happens? It's just like, I should know this, but there's no precipitation when it's that cold? Or it does something different? It just won't. Well, so it basically the pressure system is such that the air is really dry. Because it's Arctic air that's coming down out of Canada.

that's bringing all this cold down. And the Arctic air is really dry. And so the humidity drops a lot. I think our humidity today was minus 22 was the due point. Yeah. So you couldn't even get condensation until minus 22, in which case it's already solid. So there's no evaporation from the area around us to put moisture up into the air.

That's gross. Yeah, Jeff's got a point here, good point here. So the air is too cold to hold the moisture. That's true. Your humidity level feels worse when it is warmer because the air has a greater volume for moisture at higher temperatures. We're familiar with that. But we're not familiar with the opposite. What do you mean air too cold to not be humid?

What do you mean there's no moisture in your air? Yeah. Unfortunately, that is the consequence. of it getting that cold. But I guess, you know, it beats mosquitoes the size of cats. It's true. We have to run humidifiers, yeah, in the winter. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Dr. Scare guys, right? Yeah, I'm also unfamiliar with this whole needing a humidifier. We just open our windows. Not even that. You don't even have to do that. I mean, that's the air runs during the day. Heater runs at night because it just warms up so much during

the day. No, that's not. I'm sure this weekend will be different when we drop into the teens, but that's going to be like a day, or maybe two. I will say that, like, I keep a humidor here in the house to keep my cigars. And with a humidor, there's kind of a happy range for humidity, so they don't mold, but they don't dry out. In the summer, I can usually go the entire summer, bear in mind that's like eight months down here. I can almost go. I can almost go. I can go the entire summer without having to top off the reservoirs in my humidor because it stays so humid inside

the house even with the AC running. And then in the, when it gets to the winter months, I have to remember to top off the water like every two to three weeks or those cigars will start to dry out. So when I was keeping a humidor here, it was

in the winter, it was every other day it had to be topped off. Oh, that's gross. Wow. Yeah. No, we won't be sleeping. Oh, Jeff Jagg, so I won't be sleeping with the windows open. Rachel says we will also not be sleeping with the windows open. No, we don't sleep with the windows open here.

Not with. It's just, I don't know, because I feel like y'all aren't like you are far from us, but you're not, I mean, you're not too far. I think we could probably drive to y'all in a day. but the difference in the weather to me is just so it's just crazy so you don't want to move it no and i've been seeing a lot of stuff from mackinall island on my feed lately i don't know why i love it but that that to me is crazy like what they're dealing with up in the u p and all that stuff is like and it's and just thinking like we were just there like in june was it june we were there. I guess I didn't realize. I thought maybe like April was when the island opened up and it's

not it's not it doesn't open until June up until then you have to fly to the island from the main main island the main land whatever if if they're lucky the ice will start breaking up in May I saw this I saw one picture where they had snowmobiles parked out on the side of the street immediately talking out of her moving there. Yeah. Yeah. Done. Don't move there. People actually, I thought the whole island shut down so that they could do like repairs and things like that.

And that's not true. People actually go to Mackinall Island to vacation in the winter. Intentionally. Intentionally buy tickets on a plane or whatever. Well, this is what happens when we shut down all of our insaney islands. And reserve hotel rooms. Didn't they have a Christmas thing up there?

there that you wanted to potentially go do one year? No, they had the lilacs, I think. Oh, the lilac festival. Yeah. Okay. Like the week before we were there. Yeah. So.

So Raggle, for those that don't know, the UP is the upper peninsula of Michigan. It's beautiful. It's like, it's just country. Like, it's just woods and it's just so pretty. I mean, it's nothing like we have. down here in Louisiana um I will say though like some of the stuff we saw at the UP was just beautiful like uh what was it a kit kitchen kitch to kippie was that where they had that that's that blue water oh yeah they had a I mean we I'm pretty sure we posted all those pictures

and everything on our Instagram but like just some of the sides up in the the upper peninsula were beautiful I know the the shipwreck museum had had gillian and you pretty aghast at the kind of weather they get up there uh yeah 10 out of 10 convinced me I'd never, never want to be on a boat anywhere in the Great Lakes ever. Zero stars. Just like crossing the McAnall Bridge was scary enough for me. And I used to drive the causeway to work every day. But the causeway doesn't like sway back and forth underneath you.

Like the causeway, you know, it's anchored all the way across the lake. But that suspension bridge, like, you can feel it. moving underneath you. I had to close no eyes. I was like, I can't do this. Don't look down. Don't look forward. Don't look.

Just don't look. I'm glad I was driving where we might have had a problem. Yeah. That was awful. When we were heading, when we were heading back, do you remember what the bridge looked like when we were coming up over it?

No, I don't. You could see that we were shifted off center, almost a full lane. Yeah, it was really windy that day. They closed the bridge a couple hours after we left. Yep. Did y'all get back before us?

Or no, maybe. Yeah. Yeah, we did. Yeah, I think we did. We crossed that bridge and then they closed it. Thank you for not telling me. No, when we went home, like when we left. Oh, y'all went up and then came back to asking.

Yeah. Never mind. Yeah. I'm sorry. I thought you meant when we all went up to the in the UP. No. Oh, no, no, no. No, when we left for the trip.

Yeah, when we went home. Instead of driving south around Michigan and going through Chicago, we went north and then came back south through Wisconsin. I do remember that now that you say it. Yeah, I think the Raines did the same thing. Josh's family did the same thing. They did, yeah. Because there was, it's. Well, there was one of our stops in the UP where Josh was like, you know, we're only like a couple hours from home right here.

Yeah. That was a fun trip. I'm so glad we all got to do that. I was. I'm looking forward to this summer too. I got a little bit. Yeah, Kentucky'll be nice. Kentucky would be fun.

I've never been to Kentucky. I mean, we drove through it. Yeah, but that's not being too much. Did we stop? We slept, we, oh no. We stopped in Tennessee. No, we didn't. No, we stopped further up in, what's north of Kentucky?

Michigan. No. Indiana? We didn't stop overnight in Indiana. I don't remember where we stopped. Ohio. We stopped in Tennessee. How about Tennessee?

Yeah, I would say Tennessee. You look at the map. I'm going to answer Dr. Scary Guy's question. It wasn't Tennessee. It was Tennessee. There's only one correct way to spell that word, and it does not include a W. I'll let you argue that one to death with Gillian because... I don't know what we're talking about.

I think that was when we talked about McAnall Island. Oh, I said McAnall. He's saying it does not include a W. Oh, Maconnell. The spelling doesn't, but the pronunciation does sometimes. Because, because we learned this when we went to the fort. We did learn this. It was because of the Native American tribe, right?

No. Yes. I thought it, anyway, it's pronounced McAnall. Where'd we stop? We stopped in Louisville, Kentucky and spent the night. We stopped in Louisville. Louisville, Kentucky. On the way home?

No. Well, yes, both times. We stopped in Louisville and spent the night. I'm right. You're wrong. I thought on the way home, we stopped in Tennessee. Maybe on the way home, but we stopped in Louisville on the way up. Okay.

I'll give you that on the way up. I was thinking on the way home. What? So Doc says sometimes the wind can throw cars off the side rails of Mackna. I've not heard that, but I would imagine that's probably why they close the bridge. I'm never going to get her on that. bridge ever. No, we are going back to

Maconnell Island. But not on the bridge. We'll go together for the lilac festival when it's warmer. But they do the lilac festival a week before we were there. Okay. But it's

still not frozen ice water and having to take a plane in from the mainland. Do we want to stay at the fishing cabins again? No, absolutely not.

I wasn't a fan of those cabins. That was not fun. I got to put this down. I'm sure Stewart's going to kill me later because he's going to be like, well, it's all the popping. You didn't even take your swipe at Stewart about the question he left us. I will in a minute. We were talking about the cabins. The cabins, and then at the last few days, we were up there.

The wind was so strong. And that was crazy. And at least in our bedroom, the curtains were blowing on the inside of the cabin were blowing in the wind. It was like, this is crazy. Raggle said, you're afraid of bridges and you live in Louisiana. Square that for me, please. I know. See, and that's what I said.

I drove the causeway every day for work for almost. 10 years and well not that long but because i would take the twin span which is anyway another bridge i don't know but the causeway is not as high as the mackinaw Island bridge it's not i mean it's 12 feet off the water oh gosh no yeah yeah i think them i think the deck on the bridge is like five or six hundred feet above the water it's up there something like that yeah yeah it's quite high It's a scary bridge. But, I mean, it's not the Achapalaya. It's not the Mississippi Bridge, Mississippi River Bridge in Baton Rouge.

This thing does not compare to anything we have down here. Well, I don't think you guys have the bedrock needed for large suspension bridges up there. I think the water table's too high. I mean, you draw a piling deep enough. I guess. I can't think of any suspension bridges that we do have. And suspension bridges alone, like bridges scare me, but suspension bridges. I don't know what it is.

It's just, I guess, I don't know what it is. They just freaked me out. There's one in Alabama. We used to have to cross when we would go see my parents when they lived there. And I would have to close my eyes every time. And there's one in Arkansas when we're heading up to go back to Hot Springs. We cross it sometimes. None of this concerns me, by the way.

What? What are you talking about? Never bothered me. I mean, bridges, just stay between the lines and, you know, don't rear in the moron in front of you. Do our bridges have to be taller because of how high the water can get? In some cases, yeah. But that's not the problem up in McAnaw. The problem up in McAnonaut is they've got to get all those big, the big ships through.

Oh, that's right. That's why that bridge is as tall as it is, because they get the big ore haulers and the big car. ship that run through there. Yeah. So it's, it's almost like a sea lane under that bridge. That's why it is as high as it is. And yes,

the rainbow bridge in Texas, that one when you're going, like to get on it, is freaky. But it's an optical illusion. I don't, y'all, y'all probably don't know what that bridge is,

but it is, it is pretty high. Isn't that the one that comes down at a bridge city heading towards Netherland? Or am I think of another bridge? You're thinking of another one. the one from Louisiana to Texas. Okay, that goes over to Sabine.

Yeah. Okay. I think that's the one we're talking, he's talking about. Anyway, we started off with neurodivergence and the women that marry them and now we're talking about bridges. I feel like Sheldon. We're going to progress to trains here in just a minute.

Hey, look, it is not my fault that Instagram has been feeding me a bunch of miniature steam engine stuff and the elderly men that dried on them. Dude, I'm not. You're not. I'm not going to lie. Maybe old.

But by the time I get one made, I'm not going to lie every time the, every time the algorithm locks on me and starts showing me like all these old, old single cylinder machines that, all these old single cylinder engines that run like mills and stuff like that,

I just sit there and just let it run on repeat three or four times. It is the coolest thing on earth to me. You guys, if you do ever want to come to Illinois, I know you probably won't, but in the summer there is, is the Sycamore Steam Show. It is hundreds of acres of antique tractors

from original single-cylinder steam tractors up through like the 1940s, 1950s stuff. It is so cool. Nick was telling me, Nick is trying to coerce me and go into a, what was it, the Salangrad shoot up in Wisconsin? Oh yeah, the Stalingrad match. So it would be,

you won't be able to sign up for it this year because the sign-ups already closed. I can't sign up. I can't sign up for it because I don't own clothing thick enough to go to it. What is it? Well, there's that. Okay, so you're familiar with the Battle of Stalingrad, right? I'm the history nerd.

Okay, so World War II in the Russian theater, the city of Stalin. Nope. Okay, I thought of for sure what had got her. First of all, correct your wife's cultural knowledge and make her watch that. I mean, I got to cut it. You are going to watch that this weekend. Rachel, you shouldn't have said anything. Now you have plans for the weekend.

She knows more about... Yes, she does. Here's the thing he'll forget. Nope, not this. Oh, somebody will text him and remind him in the patron chat. I'm sorry. I will remind him and he'll remind me. And we can smoke on the couch on Saturday and watch it.

Oh, boy. I'm so excited. It's a good movie. It's, what is it, Jude Law and Kieran, I think? Yeah, Jude Law and Early Kieran. nightly. Actually, when she was good. Yeah.

It's a really good movie, but anyway, the point is. Yeah, it is. So the Battle of Stalingrad largely took place in the winter, or at least the portion of it that everybody mythologizes took place in the winter. And that's why this match gets called the Stalingrad match. What it is is a rifle pistol match. You must use a World War II era service rifle. and a World War II era service pistol

or a pistol or rifle available for civilian purchase that was used during the war. And if it has a bayonet lug, you must mount a bayonet. And I have an SKS. Fraggle, Fragile is saying that you're wrong. I'm not wrong about. Oh, Raquel Weiss.

I think he's right. I don't know who that is. No, it's another... That says Rachel. Rachel, whatever. Fasad and facade? Yeah, that. Jeff's got our back. He said it's a romance.

Oh, I'm so sure. It is a romance. It's a better romance story than Pearl Harbor was. Dear God, he said a bad movie. It was a better romance story than Titanic. Still better romance than Twilight, too. He's still not interesting. Look, I'm telling you, Twilight would have been so much more watchable if only Blade had showed up halfway through.

I actually never seen Twilight either. Good. Don't. My high school girlfriend made me watch it. It was terrible then. It's terrible now. I wouldn't have made you watch it. That's why he married you.

That's why your marriage material. Yeah. Yes. Yes, absolutely. But the reason I want Phil to come up and shoot that match, not only is to make Phil shoot rifles in the cold. In February. But because it was fun.

It's in Wisconsin? Wisconsin? Yeah. It's further north than I am. It's actually halfway to Jeff's house. Oh, Lord. Or no, Josh, it's halfway to the Raines' house. Jeez.

I think Jeff's in Wisconsin, too, if I recall correctly. I think he might be. But I'm not sure where he was. I really hope I did just insult the hell out of him and he's not from somewhere else. But in the back of my head, I say he's from Wisconsin. What are we shooting the guns at? Targets. Each other.

No. 25, 25 yard to 300 yards. Jeff said, Jeff correcting me, Minnesota. Oh, Minnesota. I was close. Part way to Jeff's house. Yeah, I know of a range that does this shoot.

Some of the guys will come dressed in authentic period uniforms, which is pretty cool. And everybody brings World War II surplus guns. One guy brought a Sturm Gavere one time. Yep, that's... That was pretty sweet. My wife is not a gun nerd. She's a bug nerd.

She's a biology nerd. She's a marine biology nerd. She's not a gun nerd. Or a history nerd. You don't know of Stone Gavarius either. I just shake my head and nod. Yeah. Sure.

She figured me out. I was about to say... If you just agree, I'll be quiet. Rachel figured this out a lot better than I did. I should just shut my mouth and... Oh, yeah, that's... Yep. Can I get that in writing?

No. Damn it. No. Anyway, 41 minutes in, we still haven't talked about the very first thing we said we were going to talk about. The tent. Oops. I was going to skip the tent. Go straight to like how the two couples respectfully met each other.

Okay, we can do that. No, the tent. Do not spray Diet on tents. We've covered this multiple times. Just don't do it. We've covered it a couple times. More than a couple. We covered it last week.

We did. Oh yeah, gear care. Don't spray your gear with stuff. You don't know what it does. Yeah. Yeah. I said I would address it. Yes.

Don't put bug spray on your tent, even if the bugs are literally knocking on the door of the tent to come in and greet you with their blood-sucking mouth parts. And by the way, you know the one thing that didn't happen, the bugs did not get away from the tent. I know. That was the weird. It was crazy. That was crazy. Dissolve the DWC. Bugs were like, oh, this stuff's great.

Can I get another hit? Yeah. Pricking swamp mosquitoes. But anyway. Or they just get sprayed so much down by you. They don't notice anymore. That's true. I mean, it might have gave him a buzz, no pun intended.

Do, too. That was a good one. Nice. Moving on. Go for it. What are we talking about? How do we meet? Well, everyone knows how we met.

Well, then screw, we won't talk about it. Nick and Raykel. How did you two meet? How did y'all meet? Go ahead. You start. I want to hear. She almost said you started this.

No, she started this. We actually been on the internet, kind of like you guys did. But friends didn't introduce us. Plenty of Fish, was it? Yeah. Back in the day, Plenty of Fish was actually a pretty decent site. There were actual people on there instead of just bot scammers. What a concept.

So she reached out to me and we found out we were going to the same college. Just I was from a whole county over. So it was, yeah, went on on a date. I didn't think she was going to show. up. He showed up in work clothes. I did because I came straight from work. Smelled horrible. You're lucky my friend said you're gonna judge him on one date. Mm-hmm. I am. But hey, I admire his game because if you had judged him after one date, then he would have known you were not marriage material. True. True. Playing the long game.

No, actually what it was was I was sick and tired of putting in effort and getting stood up for dates. Phil, you missed out on the online dating thing, how it is. But really, really common then and now from what I've heard from my friends that are still dating online. You'll set up a date. You'll show up. The girl will not tell you that she's not coming and you will just be stuck. you know, you just show up there by yourself, which gets irritating after it happens three or four times in a row.

So I was like, you know what? I got a chance for some overtime at work. I'm going to take the overtime and then I'll go because I didn't feel like missing out on overtime when at the time I was trying to buy a house. So. Making adult decisions. True. And then she made an even sketchier decision and went on a hiking date with me. Yeah.

So what I'm hearing is that you just decided to go like all eggs in the basket and see if he was going to wear your skin like a coat. Well, he was much closer than the other guys that were coming up on my profile. A lot of them were in Chicago. Which? Yeah. Instant disqualification. Wasn't there one that wanted him to meet him to meet you at his apartment in downtown? Yeah.

Yep. That's not sketchy at all. either guys from Chicago or guys that went to high school with. True. So I have to ask the obvious layup question. Does guys you went to high school with immediately disqualify them? No, but it was the guys that teased me in high school that were coming up on my profile. Oh, dirtbags.

So I've been there, done that. No, I had the problem of when I, where I went to high school, my family is very large. And they don't tend to leave. And then they tend to have even more kids. And they don't leave either. So I had, of my graduating class, which was like, I want to say, it was shy of 300 people. I can't remember what the number was now.

But I think it was like 12, 12 of the ladies in my graduating class were not at least. second cousins or closer. Oh, geez. And most of the teachers I was either related to by blood or marriage. That's like small town Mississippi dating opportunities. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's, um, so dating in high school, I had to either, I had to explicitly attempt to date

women that moved in from out of state or not dated at all. literally dude literally just my family so this brings up the the story that i love to just drop on people that um yeah i always joke with people that and it's not a joke but i always joke with people that like you know gillian trying to think how i phrase it gillian met one of her cousins in my family reunion which literally happened we i think we were just in we were engaged we weren't married yet uh no i think we were just dating It was your grandmother's 100th birthday. Great grandmother.

Great grandmother's 100th birthday. And I don't remember who introduced us. And they were like, I needed to introduce you to this woman. And I said, oh, okay, great. And she goes, I was a house. Was a house? Yes. Yeah, it was because my dad was like, oh, good greeting sense.

Her maiden name was house. And she married into the opposite side of my family tree, four generations, were over. Huh. So I met my cousin at his family reunion birthday. Nice. Yeah. It's just fun to start that layup that my wife met her cousin at my family reunion.

And then you just see the look of abject horror on people's faces. And then you explain the situation to them. Yeah. Yeah. When we started dating, when she would stay the night over, I'd take her out, we'd go out to breakfast in the morning. a fair amount of times. And I warned you a couple of times. I didn't believe you. She didn't believe me that just about everybody in town was family or knew us very well. What, how long did it take

when we sat down to breakfast the first time? Like two minutes. Two minutes. My uncle Bill walks up, be my great uncle on my mom's dad's side, walks up and starts having a conversation with me. And then what, three more, three more couples came up? and then there was the one time you sent me to Jule. Yeah. And I was walking around Jule and everybody's like giving me a look like, I think I know who you are, but I don't know who you are. And I go home and I'm like, why was everybody looking at me Jule?

He was like, oh, you probably saw my whole entire family. What is Jewel? It's a grocery store. Yeah. Jules Oskow. Jewel, it's, it was a grocery store and pharmacy and now it's pretty much just a grocery store sometimes with a pharmacy. I'll follow you.

So it's like a, it's like a Walmart without all the like toys and home goods and stuff like that. It's just food. Yeah. But it's a big one around here. But the, um, let's see. There's like five big families in the county I live in, like really big farming families. that have been here a long time.

And my family is intermarried to all of them. So up until about COVID, we were doing a family Christmas party for my mom's great grandma's family. Every year they would do this. And we would rent a Legion Hall because it was like 350, 400 people that would show up. Yeah, I'm number 385 or something like that. in that family line. I guess when you're snowed in, you don't have much to do.

You don't. You don't. And when you're a farming family, you really don't have much to do other than farming and having more kids to do more farming. This is like the meme of like the gigantic family and like, what did grandma and grandpa do before there was TV to pass the time? Right. Turns out, there's a reason there are 14 aunts and uncles. Yeah, you see, because my family moved, you know, from Southeast Texas over here and all the rest of my extended family pretty much until you go a couple of generations back. Like my great-grandmother before she passed away lived in Evergreen, Louisiana, which is Raggle knows where I'm talking about.

It's outside of Bunky, which is outside of Alexandria. It's the little town next to the little town, next to the moderately sized town. But that and a couple of scattered cousins really like the only family we had in Louisiana unless you went back four generations. All the rest of my more immediate family was still in the Houston area. So when we came over here,

I didn't have that experience up like just bumping into cousins and uncles and aunts everywhere I went. You mean when y'all came to Slide L? Yeah, when we moved to Slide L. It was just us. And then I made the mistake. of getting a job in the district that he went to school in.

So everybody there knows everybody. Yeah. Well, yeah. I mean, the nurse, well, all the nurses at D200 are at least cousins of mine. The lady that ran food service for a long time was, I think my mom's cousin. And I think half the school board are still related to me directly. Nick was going to say all the nurses treated him when he was in school. Well, that too.

And you know, I got sick a lot of as a kid. You know, like, know each other, know each other? Yeah. Yeah, like if you bump into a first name basis. That's nice. Yeah. I mean, maybe. Well, it is until you're a senior trying to skip assemblies and you go to Burger King.

Oh, yeah. But your mom's best friend who is also her cousin works as the manager. Yeah You don't get to go very far I made it three blocks Before I got a phone call See so we live in Mandeville But my

My dad's Dad's family And well I guess really Both of my parents My dad's parents They settled in a little place Over here to south side of Ponchatula So it's

I mean what 20 minutes 20, 30 minutes away. Anyway, I have tons of cousins over there. I don't know any of them. I know that they exist. And there's even like Bufalo Street or Bufalo Road or House Road. There's, you know, all the last names are out there. But I don't know who they are. I don't think I could pick them out of a lineup or grocery store or anything. And there's a lot of them. So that's crazy that you know more than just your, you know, first cousins or whatever. Well, you know, you got to remember when everybody's within six miles,

I mean, people show up to the family reunions. Yeah. And you're like, well, you know, everybody's going to be there. So we might as well go because people are going to notice if we don't. Yeah. And what are these family reunions like, Nick? Are they like bookworthy? Like you're going to write a book?

book, do do therapists and psychologists salivate at the thought of you guys getting together and I think that's only your family. It's not only my family. Think of, think of card tables

full of a lot of German and Swedish cooking. Okay. And then baked goods. I like his family. Mountains of baked goods. But do you all get along? That's what I'm asking. Thank you for your honesty, Rachel. Not everybody. Not everybody.

Rachel's eyes are speaking loudly. Yeah, yeah. Well, I'm trying to be a bit diplomatic because I do like most of them. There are some of them that, you know how sometimes when a family member dies and people think there's money and there isn't money.

And then the will gets red and nobody gets anything and everybody's wondering where all the money went. I'm all familiar with that scenario. Fights like that have gone. on on. Some of my, some of my, uh, grandparents siblings don't get along with each other anymore. They're all in their 70s and 80s. I don't know why it's a problem now.

Right. Like, they were fine for 70 years. I don't know why they've decided to pick fights in the last decade. But hey, you know what? Maybe they got tired of it. Because they're probably just grumpy old fards. Could be. Could be.

And so we're, I'd say, they're usually pretty chill. Rachel, what about your family? Big farming family or? I mean, I have a big family, but I wouldn't say farming family at all. I have an aunt with more children than you have cousins. Okay, well. Total. So the comment actually hits then.

It says, Gillian, I mean, Nick has so much family that Gillian is the third cousin twice removed. It's, look, if you have. had any family members that came through the Midwest in the last 60 years, chances are good. Chances are good. Chances are really good because the Bufalo's, my Sicilian family, came through Chicago. Like, they all settled in Chicago and then sold everything and decided Louisiana's the place we want to go. That would probably be the Sarbaugh side of my family then. And they were in Chicago for a while before they ended up out here. They were farmers.

And then they moved to New Orleans. Not New Orleans. They moved to Bito, just outside of Ponchatoula. And Amy became farmers down there. Do you never know, we might be. Your grandma, Gillian's phone number. We. And then you can harass Gillian about genealogy.

No. We might be cousins. I don't want to do that to Gillian. No, that would be mean. Oh, right. No, you do it. Your family's pretty close. Yeah.

I would say have a close-knit tight family. But they're all, they're all, you know, local too. But they're a county over from us. Yeah, they're an hour away from us. Oh, God, the comments has been blowing up the chat. Matter of effects, keep you in the family edition. And just today, we were talking about Oedipus Syndrome and Electric Complex with Piper.

That's a fun one. Piper is developing an interest in psychology, and since I almost minored it in college, like I'm familiar enough with some of this stuff like Freud that I make fun of it while I explain it to her, and as I'm explaining to her, I can see, like, her screaming internally. Because everything with Freud is about sex, all of it.

Yep. He was a bit obsessed. Yeah, I don't think he was a well-adjusted human. being. But explain this to a 13 year old is always an exercise in like, how do I get the point across without sending her to therapy? Well, you could always make it awkward for fun. Yeah, this is me, Nick. I don't have to try to make it awkward. It just becomes awkward. That's fair. No, see, she's a teenager now, so we're trying to keep her in the conversation as long as we can. So if we don't make it awkward, she tends to stay longer.

When it goes awkward, it's when we don't see her until the next morning. Yeah, when she just unceremoniously and suddenly says, I'm going to Maroon, good night. Okay, love you, bye. We have pushed too far. She's like, and we're done. Enough talking to the rentals today. But, you know, sometimes when we, when, things are a little awkward in this family.

I actually like, don't shy away from it because like, yeah, I remember for like years, you and I always said that like we're going to be affectionate in front of her, even know that all kids get grossed out when their parents are kissing on each other. Because to me it's like, I want my daughter to know that's what a healthy, well-adjusted married couple supposed to look like. You know, we're not- Well, that's your job as parents is to model a healthy, well-adjusted, loving couple. Yep.

I think so I was just waiting to see where you went Oh I had It was a long yeah Oh the things I could say Not about us

Go for it No no no it's not about us The well-modeled couple That I didn't Get I didn't get that well-modeled couple So it's crazy to me That I can actually be a well-modeled

Well you just do the opposite Of everything you were shown All right there you go That's That's true. That's true. Yeah. No, she's, she's, she's, oh gosh, how do I put this without saying too much? She's very private. She's 13 and in high school and learning all sorts of things about herself and others. Does that make sense? Am I saying enough?

Yeah. High school. I remember high school. Mine looked like a prison for a reason. Hers doesn't look like a prison. No, hers doesn't. Mine was designed, yours was designed as well by an architect that designed prisons.

Really? Yeah. Same architectural firm that designed the penitentiary over by your grandma, designed your high school. What is with that? Because the dorm I lived in in college, also he was the architect for the Angola prison in just south of New Orleans. Why did they get all of those same architects? So it's construction materials are the same.

It's the same government bodies that are taking all the bids. And you're housing large groups of people in small confines. That's true. I didn't know that. Yeah. You know it. I think Guy that comes got the answer or got it. the kids or the upcoming generations. Raggle swooping in with a good question. So how much are you and your spouse alike and how different are y'all?

Who wants to start? Well, why are you giving me that look? Rachel. Why are you giving me that look? How are we different? I don't, you should answer that. No, no, no. You're giving me a look like you know.

You know. Rachel, I've only met you a handful of times. and I talk to Nick every week and I can answer this question. All right. Go for it, Phil. How do you think we're different? How do you think we're like? Based just from the outside looking in, at least from my perspective, I think y'all's

personalities are very, very opposite. But I get the impression that like on, when it comes to like questions of like trying to think of the word I'm looking for here, I think y'all agree on most things, but probably don't agree on how the thing gets done. if that makes sense. Absolutely correct. Okay, so is that normal just because, and I'm not joking at this point, like, you're more neurodiversion than I am.

Oh, I am a bucket of high functioning autism. Because that's very much our relationship too. So is that just because of the two that I would like to think that me and Rachel are more similar than, and you and Nick are similar? Like, oh, yeah. I would agree. Yeah. But is that just because of the dynamic of our relationship, of who we are?

I mean, we started this off by saying that it must be more than a coincidence that we both married women that are used to deal with special needs children. That's not why we picked y'all. Look, if that's just coincidence, it's a hell of a strong correlation. Well, I don't know if it was purposeful or it's just that. she knows how to communicate well with me. Like the way she communicates and she understands how I communicate. You just got a name with the uniform. That's what it hooked you.

Early on when you brought me over to your parents' house to have a fire, and that was the first time I met your friends, they said, oh, good, she's a teacher. They did. Well, see, I wasn't a teacher when we met. I mean, I was in school still. So, and I was just ready to graduate, so I just declared a major. But then I got into biology and all that stuff.

And I don't know. I mean, I've always worked with the public and education and all that, but never in a classroom until the last four years, have I been in a classroom. But, I mean, that's not why it picked you. It was the uniform. No, I think, I think, as. The reason why I liked you, well, okay, it was the uniform.

It was the, for the fourth time, it was the uniform. I have to go back. I have to go, you know, back five years and then, oh, wait, no, back another five years. And then, okay, yeah, no, 21-year-old me was like, damn. Yeah, he's pretty good. Yeah, I think it was beautiful. Yeah, like 511, 180 pounds, clean-shaven, dark, dark, dark. dark dark tan yeah not much else it don't hurt and then I fell in love with you then you

what about you I would say the confidence your confidence he did that that was nice the confidence was nice but Phil was kind of um nerdy well I wasn't even going to say nerdy you're still nerdy you've always been nerdy but you you had a macho attitude that I couldn't stand you you were very I was also you you can still get into that where you're you're kind of like I'm right this is right I don't want to hear any other opposing whatever this is this is how it is and then I have to now I know I have to talk you I have to talk you out of that like okay come on we're gonna we're gonna explore this just a little bit more it's gonna be uncomfortable for you but we're gonna talk you out of this is that the macho or is that the neurodivergence I don't know where like I've already gone through my My whole oot loop in my head made a decision and now I'm trying to act on it. I'm not trying to hear alternative points of view. Like I am in motion to do something. The decision was made.

The train is engaged. We are going now. And I'm still on the landing platform or whatever going, wait, time out. Nope. Get your butt on the train. It's time to move. I didn't buy a ticket for this. You bought a ticket.

I punched it for you. Let's get on the train and go. I've already shown him your ID. You're on. Let's go. No. The comments brought up a good question here. Conflicted if you want someone like him or opposite.

Some more areas of our life are covered. So my personal opinion and like I can't say because like when Gil and I first met like what was what I was most looking for when Gill and I met and these were all the boxes she checked. Like I was very upfront about you are interviewing from Mr. This is Ravale. These are the things that I will not compromise on. They have to be this way. And it's not my way. It's just if this is not what you want, we're wasting yours time to go. That was an actual conversation. It was very straightforward. Like, this is the job you were interviewing for. Well, and from my perspective, like even in my teens, I wasn't, I didn't do casual dating. I didn't do dating for fun. It was always, if we're not compatible with each other, then we're just wasting yours time. And I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. into wasting my time or my effort. So I laid it out for and a lot of what Gilly and I agreed on

up front was like, you know, really basic stuff like monogamy, loyalty, honesty. We both, you know, we both wanted children. We were both very much in the mode of like, till death do a part means something. We're not going into the same. Well, if it works out, it's like, no, no, no, we're going to make it work out because we're making a decision. Yeah. And a lot of the things that we, I wouldn't say disagreed about, but a lot of things that we are so opposite on, it's things that I appreciate about her. Like, she is a much more warm, caring person than I am. It's very difficult for me sometimes to, like, forgive and forget and mend fences. I'm a very vengeful, angry, like, you wrong me, and I will wait to my last breath to get even kind of person. And she's the one that talks me

off the ledge. It's like every everything that we are similar on, it's things that we had to be similar on to make a relationship work. And everything we're opposite in, it's either something that complements my strengths or it's something that accounts for my weaknesses. So I guess to a guy that comments point, like, you want both? You want a person who if, if Gilling and I were exactly similar than I feel like our weaknesses would compound each other. They definitely can. Core values the same. I think it's more important than personality similarities. 200%. Yeah. I think that's actually what's missing. And like this is this is something I kind of grouse younger couples and young men about all the time. But I'm like, you know, before you get too

concerned with how cute she looks in or out of her clothes, you probably ought to spend a little bit more in time talking about are you two compatible like do y'all want the same things out of life do you like it doesn't have to be we have the same goals but are you both willing to compromise those goals to find a middle point you can both live with it's I don't know to me like I look at I look at a marriage as a partnership and partnerships in business don't work if both parties don't have somewhat similar goals and i just feel like like there's way too much dating without that forethought if that makes sense oh absolutely are you scrunching your face up in what i'm saying or or a comment you're trying to read i'm trying to understand well i'm trying to yes the the comment um sometimes he comments

stuff just to get a rise out of us i will warn you now guy the comments is comment section he's like i'm like Well, maybe let's not date ever. Well, he's kind of 50-50 with really well-fought-out questions and just abject open-face trolling. The minute I saw Machiavellianism, I figured it goes in that latter category. Okay. Yeah. You know, Phil, you mentioned that the vengeful streak. I think where you and I get that same thing is that I and maybe correct me if I'm wrong,

I don't think you act in a malicious way towards others without intention and forethought. Is that correct? Like, I would say you're not accidentally malicious. No. No. That's not right, Nick. So, no. No.

I'm sorry. I have to takeups. Well, but I'm not. No, no, no. Like, when he does it, it's done with intention. There are times when I am unintentionally thoughtless and say something stupid. Oh, sure. and hurtful.

That's just being human. That's human. But, no, if I'm going to go the step of, like, being truly... I'm going out of my way to make your day a problem. If I'm truly, like, being mean-spirited and malicious, usually it's fully intentional. It is... And I try to explain this to Gilling years ago, and I still don't know if, like, my explanation makes sense to her.

But, like, I try to explain to her, I'm like, you have to understand that if I'm going to really go out of my way to try to get even with somebody, it's not a, oh, this anger's just been boiling inside of me and I finally lost control of this like no no no I don't lose my temper I let go of it I reach a point where I'm like today's the day to be the entire problem and up like your grandfather's wake where I screamed at your entire family cursed every last one of them shook my finger in their face like completely from their perspective probably look like I was going completely off the rails but from my perspective it was all these years I've held my temper. I've played nice. I've been

the bigger person. And tonight is the perfect night to throw salt in their wound. Because there's already a fight, there's already screaming and yelling. Everybody's embarrassed. Everybody's feelings are hurt. Tonight's the night to remind them that Ravalais, we have that ability to

pick the perfect moment to stick salt in the wound. He's never been more attractive to me than that night, by the way. Surprised I didn't get to get on the way home. Hey, you know, he defended you. Yes. That's important.

Yeah. You should defend your spouse. But the reason I bring it up, Phil, is because I think that you and I can get caught up at times in that a lot of people are malicious unintentionally or not thinking through the consequences of what they're saying or doing. And you and I see it as that was an intentional attack. I am now on the defensive. I do not like that. and so I'm going to respond that way. Be nice.

Use nice words. Exactly. And I don't. That was the teacher voice. It was. I get that some days on my way before I leave the house for work. Be nice today. Nope.

Yesterday when I was getting out of the truck. Yes. I got teacher voiced. Uh-huh. What did he do? Well, our neighbors next door. Our idiots. We've got one of those.

Our early 20s, mid-20s, still live at home, and they like to party almost every night. And so we live on a cul-de-sac. It's almost like none of our neighbors know how to use their driveway. So everyone parks in the street of the cul-de-sac, and usually there's, like, room for one or two cars in every one of their driveways. And so we came home the other night. We had my sister was coming over because we're... going through my parents' house and there was nowhere for them to park. And our driveway was blocked.

And my husband, I saw steam come out of his ears and his, he saw red and I knew it. And he's cussing up and down in the truck. And I put my hand on his laugh. I was like, calm down. We can handle this. Like, it's okay. Teach your voice. We're going like, just calm down.

Calm down. Snatch cables for everyone. So he jumps out of the car. And so this is my thing with Phil. He acts like that when he's in front of me. Like there's been times where he's had to go across the street. So the party happens this way next door, you know, behind us. And then across the street is just a bunch of idiots that don't know how to drive.

And they're the ones that are always hitting our mailbox. Back into my mailbox three times. Same family. It's not like the mailboxes are migratory. Apparently they're in the same place. Since the 90s. Apparently that one's made by the Romulins because it has a cloaking device on it. So I was so scared.

Phil, he stormed out of his house. I have 911 dialed on my phone because I just know. I know that these trashy people are going to pull a gun on him when he gets there. Well, he's already got his gun and I just know that there's going to be something. He goes over there and it's. My money's on, Phil. I would snatch their trinky at the front of their neck. I was in the door.

Kathy, I've had this conversation with you before, and I'm like, who the hell is this guy? Like, where did that guy come from? The guy who left this house was ready to rip necks apart. And, and if I had been greeted with attitude, ripping necks apart was still on the menu. But when I, when I'm greeted with, hey, Mr. Rappellay, I'm like, okay, we can have a reasonable conversation now and you can move your crap out of my way. but if I'm greeted with idiot teenagers or 20-somethings or 30-somethings or just idiots in general then you throat punching might be back on the menu

and then the girl came out who was blocking our driveway with an attitude and I I lost my shit I was the one who was like oh no honey no no no this isn't how this works you're blocking my driveway lose the attitude I was I was very upset Lose the attitude or lose the bumper. Your choice. Snatch that hair right off the top of your head and you will never park on this cold sack again.

I just have to keep reminding myself that I still do have a valve stem removal tool sitting in my toolbox for my days at a tire shop. And I'm not above taking all four somebody's valve cores and leaving them just sitting on the pavement. I keep one in my truck. I'm not saying I would ever do it on the internet in front of a. thousand witnesses, you know, with statute of limitations and all that. I'm just saying that hypothetically, it's not the hard to take your bowel cores out and you ain't going to be able to air that back up afterwards. Well, see, and I'm, I'm always, I'm always so afraid of, like, Phil's reaction, not towards me or anything like that, but, like, I, I'm afraid that

he's really going to get pissed enough and snatch somebody. And snatch somebody. But it's really me. It's really me who it doesn't take much to just dig down into the Howl's jeans that I have where, you know, everybody yelled at everybody and hands were thrown all the time. It doesn't take much for me to do that. So maybe Phil should talk to me and the teacher voice of Calm Down, babe. That doesn't work. No, that just makes it worse. That's like trying to put a campfire out with gas every time. That just makes it worse.

Yeah. Yeah. The worst words a man can utter to an angry wife. is calm down. 10 out of 10. Oh, I have 100% done that. I've done that a bunch. Well, here's a story.

Well, that's because I don't realize how mad you are usually. I was eight, eight months pregnant, eight or nine months pregnant. Well, that's not a good call. We had moved into this house. And we were still kind of setting up things. I was still working. And I remember we got up that morning. And I don't know what was said, but Phil looked at me.

He goes, well, aren't you being a little bitch this morning? Y'all, those oranges on the counter, they flew so fast out of my hand towards his head. Orange juice everywhere. And then he looks at me, he goes, now you got to clean that up. And I turned around and walked out. I was so mad. I don't remember what we were fighting about, but it feels like you probably started it. Probably.

I probably deserved it. He didn't call me a bitch. He said, aren't you being bitchy or something like that? No, I said, aren't you being a little hormonal? No, you said bitch. I remember bitch. Did I say bitch or did you hear bitch?

I don't. I blacked out. Did I stay it or did you hear it? Because we've gone through this before where I've said something. You've heard something completely different. Like when I said, babe, we really can't afford Mexican food tonight. You said, I know you don't love me anymore, that kind of thing. You wanted divorce.

Just tell me you wanted divorce. No. Tacos is a serious business. Yeah, so is poverty. We don't eat out much anymore at all, though. And we're still married. That was, I remember that. That's though, so Phil, that kind of back to what you were talking about, Nick.

He, a lot of what he does, there is no emotion tied to it. Like, he's just matter of fact, I'm going to tell you what it is. And here it is. Like, the emotion is just not. there. He has learned that he has to slide the emotion in, at least with me. Like, he's, he's got to at least show that he's thought about and, um, considered, considered emotion when he, he brings stuff up with me. But, um, I don't remember where I was going with that. I mean, kind of my, my problem and like, y'all tell me this sounds even remotely familiar to y'all,

but like my experience growing up was always that if I made a decision, like in the heat of the moment emotionally, I felt like it always screwed me over later. Or like, even if I made the right decision, I made for the wrong reasons. So I worked really hard as a young man, as a teenager, to like be able to divorce my emotions from my decision making and just try to make rational, coherent, thought out decisions. And then I met a very emotional woman and had to introduce emotions back in a little bit. But even to this day, I'm still very much like if I make a decision I'm not making it with regard to like

oh I'm angry or I'm sad or I'm nervous or I'm worried or I'm anxious it's like no this is this is the right decision to make because it gives me the greatest chance of the outcomes I want I've thought through the next like 10 moves you know in this chess game of life and this is the right decision to make and that's the one we're going to make

and we just have to deal with the emotions that are preventing us from making the smart decision here I was very fortunate in the role models that I had growing up that they saw that reactive impulse in me at a very young age and they had the same thing when they were that age. My grandfather's on both sides and they were able to talk me through through showing me how to do it and telling me how to do it how to not react like that and how to intentionally go through. life. But I don't know that it got to a point where I didn't consider emotion, because I probably because I didn't sort of develop it myself, maybe. What do you mean by that? So way, it's kind of hard to explain. I don't know. I don't know if I can actually. like the the emotion emotional consideration does still enter my thought process but it's not it's not super important but it is still there

does it enter with regards to rachel oh yeah but everyone else it's just most other people yeah no i can i can just flatline with most other people even when i'm incredibly angry um because i know that anger will just be destructive and because I've managed I learned how to compartmentalize that at a pretty young age I think that really helped my dog is getting antsy yeah I was about saying I saw her peeking out

yeah she's upset because she didn't get couch cuddles yeah I don't know about your guys' dog that you had but our dogs have always been incredibly habit forming if you do something three days in a row

this is now first forever. No, Trixie wasn't like that. Trixie was also very emotional. She didn't care if we did something three days, you know, at the same, you know, every time at the, whatever, for three days in a row. She just didn't, she just wanted to be around mama. It didn't matter what happened, where I went, what I was doing. She was a mama's girl. Yeah, Jeff, their emotional reaction is unimportant, says Jeff, their emotional reaction often gets in the way, I feel like.

I can see that. There's emotional reaction. Not necessarily yours, but like when, like that lady I had a problem with in Menards. Okay. I was in Menards one day. This lady was in the way.

I asked her to move. She didn't move. I got her attention and then asked her to move. And I used the phrase, can you move? I need to get some pipe nipples. And she No, I said I need to get to the pipe nipples.

Oh, okay. Because that's what the short pieces of black threaded steel pipe are called pipe nipples. She took that as an attempt at sexual harassment somehow in a fucking hardware store. And she blew up at me and I'm like, this is wildly inappropriate of you. I'm now just going to move your. mobility scooter out of my way because you're being unreasonable and I don't have the time for this. I understand academically that those people get caught up in the emotions that they're getting caught up in, but I don't have as much patience for it because I can control my emotional

reactions and stay in a mostly professional polite fashion. So I don't have a lot of tolerance for people in public they can't. So do you, have you ever done that before? I see you looking at me. Have you ever done that in front of Rachel before? Yeah, not intentionally. And how do you feel, Rachel? I'm embarrassed.

Thank you. Thank you. It's a difference in how we were raised, though. And I don't think that's a problem. I think it's great that you are more comfortable with that than I am, or more capable with that stuff than I am. With emotions. Yeah, and dealing with people that are in an emotional state.

Because I don't. I can't. So the last time I remember that happening, we were at the grocery store. And there was this woman who, you know, yes, she was in the way. Her buggy was in the way. She was checking out. She, you know, we were trying to get past her. And Phil was already pissed off.

Like, we already have, like, when we go grocery shopping together, I have to get have filled the the pep talk the pep talk we're going to get in there we're going to do this quickly we're not going to run people over with the buggy and we are going to be kind special needs children you are not you are not going to snap at me because i want to look at something that's not on the list or consider something that's not on the list like every time we go shopping that is that is the conversation so we are going to going to check out. Obviously, the shopping trip didn't go as planned. He was, he was pissed by the time we got to the register. And he, like, tells this woman, excuse me, and she didn't answer,

excuse me, we need to get through. Well, Lord, if it wasn't one of my parents who did not, who turned around with her, one of my students, and I'm like, oh my God, I am, I'm so sorry. And I looked at the little girl, I was like, hey, how's your summer? Okay, Mr. Revel. But hear me out. Misses you guys so much. So hear me out. It's Aldi, right?

It's self-checkouts. And there's self-checkouts over here. Fairly narrow lanes. Self-checkouts over here. But there is more than sufficient space for a buggy and a buggy and room down the middle for people to get through, right? But that doesn't work when there's a full buggy width between where your buggy is and where you're putting the groceries.

And she's... That's not even efficient. Why would you do that? And she's standing in between the buggy and the place she has put the groceries just like back and forth. I know. And no sense of I am screwing over all my fellow man who cannot get around me and holding her by from getting to the other three self-checkouts that are unattended because no one else will ask this knucklehead to please move. That's like how I feel about people that have conversations in the middle of the aisle of the store. Oh, Jesus Christ.

This is not a fucking social club. Okay. If you want to socialize, step outside in the parking lot and get away from the rest of it. Thank you. I'm trying to get things done to get out of here. I do. The whole parking lot. But you four people have to have a 20-minute conversation in the middle of the grocery store.

Directly in front of whatever I'm trying to get to. So I know that I know when I see that that it's not going to be pretty. So I usually walk off to go get something else. Oh, is that why you walk like a zigzag pattern through the store instead of going in the aisles? order? No, but it also depends on where we're at and what store we're at because I have seen students or parents out at the store. Sometimes I'm zigzagging to avoid them because we don't want to talk to them. We don't want to see them. Or I didn't dress appropriately. We're working down the yard. Nick says we have to go to Menards to get something. Oh yeah. But you're going to be

in Menards like two and a half minutes top. Yes, but the conversation, that's where I see the parents. The conversation between parents and teachers in the wild are never just, hey, how's it going? I hope you're having a great weekend. It always wants to talk about Little Tommy's behavior and why didn't you put the grades in yet? And I saw your comment on his remark card. And it's like, it's Saturday. Saturday, I don't want to look at you or talk to you about Little Tommy.

These aren't office hours. Exactly. Do you want me to bail you out of this conversations next time? No, no. No. Because I could always smack you in the butt and say, get back to work. We got to get these groceries out of here. No, no, because, no.

We could make it a real short conversation. No, because then the kids go back to school, and then they're like, I saw Mrs. Sown-so-it, Menards, or whatever. Yeah. And to all of the parents out there, we know more about your business. business that you know about your business. I don't. So don't approach us in public. I don't want to, I don't want to give them something to go back and talk about. Because as far as they're concerned, I eat, live, sleep at school. And that's it. I don't live outside of school. I think some of the

teachers, I think some of the students definitely think that like you're basically like a semi sentient mushroom and you just kind of sprout up out of the floor of your classroom and you go away at the end of the day once they get over the pure shock of seeing us in the wild then they want to talk to us you exist you're a real person i swear i left you at school on friday miss rabbley what are you doing here to be fair you do i i do remember having that conversation as a kid though with with my parents like Huh. They go other places. Well, because what do you think about when you're a kid? Where are your grandparents whenever you see them? They're at their house or they're at your house. Your parents, they're at your house or they're with you. It's, I think it's a bit of a shock to the kids when they

until they really get that idea through their head. I mean, like my middle schoolers when I see them. It's not as much of a shock. Especially like my seventh graders, they want to just hang out in the store and it's like, no, no, I'll see you Monday. I love you dearly. I got enough of you this week. I need a break. But I've had five-year-olds come in and say, my mommy had diarrhea this four. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. My mommy's wearing a diaper today. I know more about their divorces. I know more about their fights. I know more about their religious views. Who they voted for? Why they voted for that person? Oh, man. The story we could tell you about parents and families. Parents, if you engage in recreational drug use, I promise you your kids talk about it. Yeah. They smell like it. I can't tell

you how many times I've opened the door in Carline and got a contact high because mom smoked a joint on the way to school. And little... Or open up their backpack. Yes. And it's like, oh. Yeah. I think me and Nick both fought over this comment.

We drove at the bottom at the same time. Hey, kids are honest. They are. They are. They are. And they don't know what is supposed to be a family secret and what's not supposed to be a family secret. And that's mostly, I think, because they trust and, you know, they feel comfortable with their teachers.

So they just want to open up and tell you all the things that they know. Everything. And it's usually everything. And, you know, yeah. It's usually too much. So it is 9 o'clock. Let's round this out with one last question so that I don't keep them there until their dogs needs therapy. Or are you out so late that you don't get enough sleep for work tomorrow?

Yes, because I have to go to work tomorrow. Sorry, babe. I don't have to go to work. You could have my. minus 40, Gillian. Oh, I'll go to work. You can choose that or going to work. I'll go to work.

I shouldn't complain. We don't have students tomorrow because it's parent teacher conference day. So all four people, what's the secret to a successful marriage? Divine success your own way. What's the secret? Like if you had to give 20-something-year-old you advice, or if you had to give yourself advice when you very first stepped into this marriage, what advice would you say, like, this is, this is the secret sauce this is the this is the christ chalice this is what makes it all work don't you can't

start with married a cute guy in uniform go ahead but i wonder if we have the same one go for it no you say it nope you got to go first you said you had it i would say communication that's a good one yeah i i agree with that uh the one that popped into my head was when you do have disagreements or you do a fight or arguments or whatever you got to not look at it as you versus your partner. It needs to be you and your partner versus the problem, whatever the problem is. That could be health related. That could be shit going wrong, breaking down the house.

That could be somebody, you know, ran something through a door or something stupid. Somebody made a bad choice. It's got to be you two versus the problem. That goes with what I was thinking was you're on the same team. Remember, you're on the same team. You have to root for each other, too. 100%. Mm-hmm.

Oh, absolutely. I'm going to be the contrarian here. Of course. The secret to a happy marriage, to a successful marriage, is to choose your battles. The thing I always tell people is, is like, this is my own personal ooteloup in my head whenever I see storm clouds on the horizon between me and my spouse. I always ask myself if the thing we're about to fight over is worth her being mad at me for the rest of the day. and if the answer is no then it's probably a small enough issue

I just shouldn't make an issue of it like you know she wants to go to go eat Mexican instead of going out to eat steak I don't care that much we'll go do whatever you want you know like don't make a fight where there doesn't need to be one

and if at any point in time the answer is yes like I am prepared to suffer through my wife being pissed at me for a couple of days because this is so important I can't just let this slide

we have to, we have to compromise on it. At that point, like, the potential consequence of her being upset with me, it's less, it's less of a factor than me, me allowing a decision that I can't live with. Does that make sense? Yeah, because that's only going to make the problem worse in the long term. Yeah. But that's, that's the advice I give to, I mean, that's the advice I came around to really, or in this relationship, is the advice I give it to other people is, if it is not worth fighting over,

don't. I think like, I know we're trying to get out of here, but the biggest thing I think in our relationship, the whole 21 years has been, I am so overly emotional when it comes, like when I get, when we get to the point where we're having a fight or whatever, my emotions are so raw. And I'm looking for that emotion from you, but you're just, like we said earlier, you're just not that. And that's okay.

But you, it usually takes time for me to like get the emotion out for me to get my emotion out for you to be like, oh, I get it. I need to respond this way. Does that make sense? Also worth pointing out that sometimes what makes the fights worse is that she says things. And my brain has this really interesting way of like cataloging. things where like words have meanings. So she'll say something in a fight and I will like

pursue that like it's a rational train of thought and then she'll say something that seems to contradict it and then I'm like time out, wait a second. You just said this, now you're saying this and these two things don't go together which makes it the fight ten times worse because I'm trying thankfully she does not do that.

But sometimes with our emotions we don't, you can't explain. I get that. But that's what you say though. You You make it very clear that you cannot currently explain it. Yeah. And that makes it so much easier for me. Well, and what we learned, too, like years and years ago was I learned that I sometimes

have to preface things. So, like, I have to tell, Phil, I am not looking for you to fix this. This is me venting. I just need a sounding board. Like, this is not, I'm not upset with you, but I've got to get this off my chest. I just need you to listen. Just listen. Talking about communication, you've also gotten into the end of the face within the last

couple of years where like when you have like one of those wild, awful wall ideas you haven't fully thought through it. You'll actually preface that as I haven't really thought this all through yet, but I just want to kind of like throw the spaghetti on the fridge see if it sticks. Because my way of doing things is that when I come to Gilling with an idea, like I have thought about the idea, I've considered how to do it, I planned it out, like I am no longer coming to you to talk through how to do this, I'm coming to you for a final sign-off because I've already figured out the whole plan. I have blueprints in the new bathroom. Yeah, exactly.

So when she throws that out to me, like, I'm immediately like looking for all those things I do and she doesn't have them and that's frustrating for me because I'm like, how could you propose this thing? You haven't even thought it all the way through, but that's the problem. Is you and I don't work the same way. We don't think the same way. Like that's that I I agree wholeheartedly about how important communication is, but like learning your other spouse's communication style is so freaking important because like and that can take a long time. Long time. Yeah. It can. It can take a long time. A decade and a half for us. Probably. Well, I mean, I was, I'm not a good test subject. I, I, I, you've also changed so much

since we met. I'm still the same grumpy old man that I always was. That's true. That's true. Gilling to the state jokes that I was eight years old with a briefcase and a 10-year plan. Because I just... Well, but I've always been a really serious person. And I think that that's been, I think that's been the hardest thing for the two of us to marry together is like to marry together our completely opposite personalities. Because you were so type B and you were so just freewheeling, decide on the spur of the moment. Friday afternoon you want to go to the beach and you were and I am so

structured, rational, plan everything. I don't like doing things spur of the moment. I like to plan. We used to fight every time we go on vacation because I wanted to like plan the weekend out. And that would drive her nuts because there was no spontaneity and I'm like

spontaneity scares the shit out of me. I don't want spontaneity. I want to plan things. I cannot have backup routes to spontaneity. Yes. But that's, that, that has been the, the evacuation plan for spontaneity does not exist. That's a problem.

The evacuation route for spontaneity is going to be messy and I don't like messy. That's one thing that works really well for us is we're both planners. We both like to have, at the very least, a rough outline of what's going to go on. And so that makes that kind of easy. I know, well, we did have a hard time communicating it first. Oh, yeah. We had a lot of. Of course we would. I mean, I think any, regardless of if you're in a romantic relationship or not, any two people trying to connect their lives together, whether that's living with your best friend or living with your significant other, there's going to be disagreements. I think that's inevitable. Yeah. It's how you manage them. That's important. Yeah. I mean, quite frankly, you know, my brother-in-law, who we knowing your 25 years were best friends. Like, he and I fight like kids sometimes. And we don't do any.

the same way and usually us working together on something devolves into like either I have to consciously take a step back to let him run it or I just like push him out of the way and say just get the hell out of him way just let me take care of it because like Ross oh like think about the bathroom remodel yeah where he he he he wanted love I love my brother-in-law of death truly do like a brother but he wanted to very pedantically like plan how he was going to extricate the tub from where it was the old tub that had to come out in pieces to get it out of this space. And after listening to him like war gaming to himself for about five minutes, I literally said, give me the saws, all, move.

And it was out in 45 seconds in two pieces. Yeah. That's demo, though. Yes, but demo doesn't require a five minute, but demo doesn't require a 10-year plan. It requires a saws-all and a large, angry friend. and at the very a cursory knowledge of where the plumbing and electrical is ideal the electrical was on the airside of the room the plumbing was way over there we were good good because that can

that can get expensive at a real hurry well we they'd already ripped out half a wall so we could see the plumbing it was it was all good anyway nice so yeah i don't know what exactly we were planning on for this show or than to bring our spouses on and just BS but No one gave us any... We only had a couple questions, and I think we answered all of those. I think so. We did get one that you did not answer yet, Phil. If it was about a tent, the answer is no.

It's about the sequel to your book. Gileon's writing a book. Is she going to finish her first book before you finish your sequel? She hasn't even started that book. She has notes. I have chapters and notes for chapters and notes for notes. I'm just waiting on her. She's waiting on the statute of limitations to run out and some people to pass away.

That is a fair reason. The names have been changed to protect the innocent in my book. I don't know. Like I have stutter started that Dagam sequel like three times. I wrote 75% of it and then abandoned it. I don't know. Every time someone brings up the sequel to American Insurgent, I get frustrated with. myself because like I pounded the first book out in like less than two months which

was a breakneck pace to write a book and shortly after that my entire career changed tracks and I'm just in a I'm in a place work wise where like I come home those days exhausted or frustrated or just so burnout that put it just this way Dr. Scary guy I went from a job where I spent like nine hours of day with headphones in my ears doing financial calculations, blasting heavy metal usually, which is not as light work for me. And I would come home like awake and alert, ready to do something else like because it wasn't a lot of like people and people exhaust me.

My current job is probably 80% project meetings, working with, working in teams. It's like it's challenging and I like the work. But it is 100% more exhausting than what I used to for a living. So it's just one of those things where, like, by the time I come home from work, I mean, Gillian has seen me more often than not, hit that front door and literally sighed as soon as I walk through the door. Because I'm just, Jesus Christ, I'm done every day. So finding available bandwidth and energy to, like, to write is challenging. If I were in a different, if I change career tracks again,

might might totally pick it up and you know have that bandwidth but it was literally like as as that book was being published was when my work life turn upside down which is also why I didn't do as much like marketing and everything as I wanted because things were already going to 11 at that point anyway it was good to see y'all yeah yeah looking forward to seeing you again in Kentucky that'll be a lot of the fuck. Yeah. So for anybody that does know where we're talking about, the annual patron trip next, no, not next. Now it's this year. This coming summer is going to be Kentucky. If you're on Patreon, I did leave a post with all that information. The annual patron, the matter of fact, summer camp, it's rumtabrung, you make your own arrangements, you come out, hang out. There's no classes. There's no weirdos. I mean, there's weird. but there's no weird stuff. But it's... Lots of dogs.

Lots of dogs. But it really is just a family camping trip. And I encourage people to bring their spouses and their kids. And we just spend a week together hanging out, getting to know each other, goofing off. It's a fun time. It is fun. Our kids have all grown up together. Our dogs have grown up together.

There's now one couple dating from two of the families. There is an MOF couple now. Did you all know about that? Mm-hmm. Yeah. I heard. I heard one of them went to visit the other out of state. Yes. For homecoming, I think.

Yeah. That's cute. Sweet. Good for them. Fun part is everybody knows everybody else's parents. So like, everybody knew both, the young man knew exactly what he was getting into. Yeah. Yeah.

That's good. All right. I guess we'll go ahead and punt. this one out the door. It's like 9.15 over here, which means I think it's 10.15 where you are? No, you are an hour. Same time zone. We're due north of you. Andrew's to the right of me.

Geography was not my thing, obviously. But it is getting late, even though only one of us has to go to school tomorrow. I'm out of here. Nice. Thanks for joining us. Come back another time. and if y'all want us to drag the spouses on again, it requires harassment.

I don't mind. I don't mind coming back on. Does Rachel mind coming back on? Good. I don't mind. Awesome. All right. Talk to our in the week.

Bye, everybody. Take care of each other. Take care of yourselves. See you next time. Bye.