Wonderful! - Wonderful! 133: The Self-Care Sedan

Episode Date: May 13, 2020

We had a difficult time getting this recording together, so we decided to do a special episode! Hop in the self-care sedan as we pack it up with all kinds of good, good, seemingly random stuff.Music: "Money Won't Pay" by bo en and Augustus - https://open.spotify.com/album/7n6zRzTrGPIHt0kRvmWoya MaxFunDrive ends on March 29, 2024! Support our show now by becoming a member at maximumfun.org/join.

Hi, this is Rachel McElroy. Oh, hello. This is Griffin McElroy. And this is wonderful. Gonna do a little bit of a different ep. And, you know, it's been a while since we've done a different ep. I feel like we are owed a different ep from time to time. You're so defensive already.

I feel like we deserve a different ep from time to time. What's the justification here? What's the reasoning for this here? I feel like there are certain weeks where Rachel and I have a tough time coming up with good, meaty, beefy, delicious topics. I just got really hungry for like a steak while describing that. There is no shortage of wonderful things,

but sometimes there are wonderful things that aren't 10 minutes worth of wonderful, let's say. Yes, and sometimes also your brain is in a spot that won't really let you think of wonderful things because of just everything that's going on. But you can't really blame that because your brain is also sort of predisposed to them dark thoughts. But guess what? We do have an episode for you this week. And maybe this one's even more, will provide more value to you.

Maybe after last week's episode, you were like, damn, I can't go out and play laser tag right now. But this week, maybe this will be more actionable. What are we doing, hun? So this week, Griffin and I are focusing on the wonderful things that are particularly useful to you right now as someone stuck in your house. I think the way we've described it is a little self-care gift basket.

We're going to put together, or did we say gift box? I guess let's establish that first. Is it a basket? Is it a box? What kind of container are we going to be putting? I've literally organized all of these things thinking of sliding them into a box or a basket? Is it a box? What kind of container are we going to be putting? I've literally organized all of these things thinking of like sliding them into a box or a basket. Are you going to have to sort of edit and twist? A lot of mine don't fit in a basket.

Well, just find a way to kind of get it in a container. Maybe it's not a basket. Maybe it's like a sedan. Maybe it's the trunk. Oh, okay. Maybe it's the trunk of a midsize sedan. Still won't really work for me, but I'll figure it out. It's a self-care sedan trunk that we're putting together for you.

And yeah. What about a bubble? What about a big like dome? What if you were had a dome? It's a self-care biodome. And that's funny because my first thing is actually the movie Biodome. Are we not going to do small wonders? I mean, these are all kind of pretty

small uh if i had something that i was excited about guess what it's going in the fucking sedan it's going in the biodome uh so yeah we just have a bunch of stuff to talk about and let's just do that do you want to start do you want me to crack open i was hoping you would start okay let me just uh those are the keys oh it's empty let me get this spare tire out of here because we don't want this we have a jack back here they're not going to want this in their self-care box my first thing that i have in the self-care sedan is just some celery sticks celery sticks are very important to me right now because wow i didn't know that well then vegetables and produce i now have a sort of new

respect for um there's a lot of stuff that you know it's tougher to find these days and i'm realizing that um and i hate to sing the joni mitchell song every single time but don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you got till it's gone and they paved celery sticks or all vegetables really and put up a parking lot celery sticks one i like the taste of celery so fucking sumi i like it i think it's a good vegetable and i think it's a good vegetable chewing though i like the chewing i like the chewing and i like the chomp and i like the cool snap of it right and on a hot day eating some celery getting getting your chompers into uh one of those like veggie trays on a hot blustery summer day. Getting one of those cools you right off. It's like you're going in a swimming pool,

but in your mouth. And also guess what? I love dips. So soon. I reloaded on hummus, by the way, in case you were concerned, dude.

Yes. Nice. But like Fritos, I've been doing where we don't have a, we didn't have tortilla chips. We did have a very old bag of fritos that i used to eat one of those little guacamole cups i love guacamole i do not like eating old fritos celery is like you can eat a billion of those and you're not going to get that frito gut where you

feel bad because of all the frito based foods that you're eating right so like uh the desire to snack has increased significantly but turns out if you have a fruit or vegetable that is mostly water it's good baby that's like you need as much as you want it's like a it's like a good sort of supporting co-star to the dip because it's like i'm just gonna i'm gonna sit in the back seat i'm gonna let it i'm gonna say stay in the background and let you hummus take the stage and command it. And I'm just going to be back here supporting you. I'm not going to try and, uh, you know, I'm not going to cut you off. I'm not going to interrupt you. I'm not going to

overshadow you. I think celery sticks are bomb ass good. And I like them. And let me just look at that. They barely take up any space. We have so much more room in this sedan. What do you got? You know it. You love it. It's muffins. Muffins. Okay, a lot of folks are talking about bread right now. Everybody's all on bread, right?

Here's the thing about bread. Huge time commitment. And you have to have some yeast. Or you can make your own yeast. Again, time commitment. Make your own yeast? There are folks doing that. Make your, how?

That's what like a starter is. But you gotta have the starter to get the starter, right? Somebody's gotta make that first starter, right? Who made the first yeast? Anyway, sorry. Muffins, okay? No yeast. Hardly any time commitment, all right?

You can store it for a long time. I looked, saw you can store muff for a long time i looked saw you can store muffins at room temperature for five days okay we keep them in the fridge that's a week that's a week right there easy we put we definitely push that sometimes we definitely have some chocolate chip muffins in there that are at least two weeks old that's okay that's okay muffins take like 20 minutes to make or less. No problem. And then it's just like flour, sugar, some baking powder, milk, vegetable oil, egg, and then whatever you want your sweet stuff to be. Yeah.

I have done, I've done applesauce, I've done cinnamon, I've done chocolate chip. Anything you think of banana bread, why not pour that in a muffin tin? You got a little snack size. Don't be so close-minded. Put that in a muffin tin you got a little snack size don't be don't be so close-minded put it in a muffin tin yeah i i i have been all about the muffins we constantly have muffins in our fridge i ensure that uh that is my goal for each week is to create a muffin i mean as long as we're exploring food you know it you knew this was coming at some point hard candy the candy that's hard uh this is this is griffin and i yes we're we're mars and venus over here because i am all about that chocolate yeah you know i want something creamy that i can bite into right that that

scratches my my sweet tooth but in a very chewy way. Right. I mean, I like the chewy. If I had my druthers, I would eat Sour Patch Kids breakfast, lunch, and fucking dinner. Like, yeah. But the problem is that that much raw sugar tonnage entering my system hurts my body so fucking bad. It does. It really does. It really, really does.

Hard candy gives you that flavor, but it dispenses it in a much more time release manner yeah you get that flavor for longer so you know i'm good with a lifesaver i'm good with a jolly rancher i actually have a bag of jolly ranchers in my car which i drove for the first time in a very long time over the weekend and those jolly ranchers in our oven like garage have not fared well um but here's the other thing i've been making hard candy i was wondering if you were to get into this our uh we work with a social media manager named sarah who uh came to one of the shows that we did in florida and brought hard candy and she's like i made this and i was like you can you can make candy uh and so she she hooked me up with a recipe i got a bunch of different flavoring oil adventures to go on don't forget about the molds i got some uh i almost called it a pop stick

our son calls lollipops pop sticks and that's very good but i made some for him and it's like he looks at me like i'm like i'm his hero for the first time and it's wicked easy it's like you made this for me he's very sweet about it but it's like three ingredients and then whatever flavoring and food color you want to add to it and then you just make it and then you have we have so much hard candy and it's fun and it tastes good and it's a hobby oh and the citric acid don't forget about some citric acid i'm still i'm afraid of the citric acid yeah i don't want to burn my tongue or the tongue of my beloved family members i am glad that you brought this here because i feel like i have not found a way to appreciate you enough for the hard candy because i personally

am not a huge fan of the hard candy so i'm glad you brought it here you don't eat my creation to get the recognition you deserve thank you uh yeah i got i i think maybe i might make some today if henry's nap goes well might make some of that chai tea candy that i uh i'm very very excited about so we'll we'll keep you all updated um but yeah just the general concept also of getting a new hobby is very powerful during these times yeah it's true but you can't put a concept into the sedan but i've slid the hard candy right next to my celery okay so this so this, this is going to be where my, my items will be around the car. Okay. My first one, I'm taking you up to the roof. And I'm saying, why don't

you lay down on top of that car for 10 minutes and get some sun, getting a little bit of sun. This is the thing I do. So I realized something that was going to be mentally healthy for me was to think about this as a long summer vacation and think about it as if I am a 11-year-old and I've just, you know, I've broken for the summer. I had nothing going on. Yeah. And why not just sit outside for 10 minutes,

pretend I'm just catching some rays. Getting some of that good sun D. I've talked about how i love the sun right but here's the thing got it to got it on your fucking bod don't you i have we talked about that before i don't want to oh okay i mean we can talk about it i there was a period of time in our history uh in which tribal tattoos were very popular and the year was 2000 and i was a freshman in college and i wanted to get a tattoo and i thought i want to get something that i'm not going to get tired of and that was the sun so i have a tribal sun on my back it's well it's on your shoulder uh and it's about the size of my palm it's not huge but it's not tiny either it's cute i like it it suggests an uh

a different era yes absolutely hey listen you got out pretty good there's a lot of worse sort of body body mods from that era that you could have ended up with true um yeah so i just i go out for 10 minutes i sound like i'm like full-on sun tanning like i'm at the beach i just go out for 10 minutes it makes me feel like I'm on summer vacay. Yes. Does good things for my D levels. And I would recommend it. I know a lot of people don't have like a backyard right now.

They don't have a big space to really, really stretch out. But just 10 minutes in the sun, I think it's important. And I'd recommend it. Yeah. No more than that. Be smart about it. Yeah. If it was any more than that, I would chide you chide you but you're very you were very uh responsible with

that i get in and out take care of your skin give it just a kiss of the d of the d that sounds awful sounds awful um i have a nintendo switch on here but i feel like that's we've i would be retreading so much ground but it has been like truly truly i cannot imagine what also switches i think are kind of hard to get right now so right but um you know i don't think i think this is a fairly fantastical self-care sedan so okay all right all right but i just like having games on hand i i wish i could say like phone games i used to like play a lot of games on my phone and i've tried out a lot and there's just nothing that's really said unless. Unless you're on that Words with Friends lifestyle that I am on.

I'm not on it. So instead, no, you know what? I'm gonna go ahead and stick with it. I think a video game that you can play anywhere I think

is very valuable. It's something that is something that's beefy. You can really sink some time into something that's online. I have very much enjoyed that aspect of Animal Crossing of getting to like go visit friends

and see their islands and stuff like that. I've been playing an online Final Fantasy game, Final Fantasy XIV, which I used to play a lot of and then fell off. I've been getting back into it because I got a couple of buddies that play it and it's nice to sort of circle back with them and just seeing like i've talked about this before but seeing i think i did an online gaming segment

where just like seeing characters move and knowing that it's like other people moving them is like a very very lightweight but kind of uh cool like uh social response so uh yeah, get with that. Get with that program. Also, I know I have more topics than you. And this episode's going by very, very quickly. And also I missed this on the food segment when we were talking about food. Get yourself a little jar of pre-minced garlic.

Listen, you put garlic in every, I put garlic in everything i put garlic in everything garlic goes in everything with me i love it but mincing it means either a bunch of tedious knife work or it means getting out the slap chop or whatever the uh off-brand slap chop you got me uh first of all that slap chop is dope as hell but it's not very fun to, but it does make mincing garlic very fast. You know what makes it even faster? When someone else already did it for me and put it in a little jar. Yeah.

And I know people are gonna say like, oh, when it's fresh, I know, I know, I know, I know. But when it's in the jar, I don't have to do it. And I can just kind of do a little boop. I don't even have to get a spoon in that. I've stopped using a spoon and dipping the spoon in and getting some of that. I just open the jar and just do a little likeop. I don't even have to get a spoon in that. I've stopped using a spoon and dipping the spoon in and getting some of that. I just open the jar and just do a little like splash of it right into whatever I'm cooking.

And then I go on with my day. And it makes cooking so much fucking faster. It's like, yeah, I know I could make my own raisins if I let those grapes dry out. But sometimes you just want to buy raisins. Sometimes you do want to buy raisins. I will say uncut like a big bulb of garlic that keeps forever and i appreciate that i buy some rosemary to like season my uh sous vide projects with that shit lasts like six minutes and then it's like toast and then it's like putting old pine i got a secret though

a lot of our neighbors have rosemary in their front yard are you plundering our no i'm not i'm not but i could but you very easily could yeah so uh i'm gonna here's the problem i don't necessarily want to put this jar of pre-cut garlic in the sedan well you keep it closed i gotta keep it very closed very tight and i'm gonna wrap it in like foam because if like we hit a curb or something and the thing shatters it's going to ruin the rest of the items in the self-care sedan um hey can i open up the passenger side door of the sedan and holler at you to steal you away yes i know that was a long one i saw this thing online that was like um whatever the number one song was on your 12th birthday is like your official theme song for

life and i saw some people post some like posting uh you can do it you can type in uh your birthday and then the the you know the year and then uh number one song and i'll show you people were posting up some fucking bricks wait you're supposed to be 12 yes your 12th birthday uh people were posting up some fucking bricks and i was getting real real worried but then i checked mine and it was no scrubs by tlc and i was like this is we can work with this we can work with this if this is my entrance music into the wrestling ring then we can do, we can work with this. We can work with this. If this is my entrance music into the wrestling ring, then we can do this. We can work with it.

What'd you get? Oh, mine was the sign by Ace of Base. Oh, yes, that is so appropriate for you, I feel like. I do love Ace of Base. You do. I feel like I've heard you karaoke that song or something before. I feel like, or it used to like

come up in our we had like a 90s playlist that we used to play for henry all the time and it would it would show up in it a lot and you were always very enthusiastic about it fuck yeah we scored so big man it could have been like uh sex and candy by marcy playgrounders i cannot believe i remembered the name of that fucking band i feel like everybody remembers the name of that band specifically because of that song yeah i guess so anyway i'm rolling down the window my passenger side yeah yeah i got you to steal you away okay Can I read a Jumbotron for you? Yes, you can. This message is for Steven.

It is from Mal. Peanut, I adore you. Thank you for loving me and loving me and loving me again. You're the bestest and my beanie, and I cannot wait to spend the rest of my life with you. Sorry one of my Animal Crossing villagers shares your nickname. Let's make quesadillas sometime.

Love, Mal. Which villager do you think it is? Do you think it's like, what's a bat? Who wouldn't you want to share? I mean, Peanut. Isn't there a Peanut? Oh, yeah.

I think there actually is. Yeah, that's what's happening here. Do you know about, this is a complete Animal Crossing tangent, but there's a villager named Raymond who is the cat that has the two different color eyes. You got him like very, very early on. Are you aware of how horny sort of the internet is for this animal? No, I mean, he's very dapper.

It's not appropriate for this podcast. Remind me to circle back when we're done recording, he's he's very dapper what this is it's not appropriate for this podcast let's remind me to circle back when we're done recording but the internet very badly is uh very very attracted to this rabbit uh here it or rabbit is a cat i was showing my own sort of uh i was thinking a lola bunny anyway uh here's another one that was sent in by uh ke. Or no, it's for Keister. It's from Sarah who says, Dear Keister, I can't believe we have been in wedded bliss for five years now.

I'm so lucky that you found me in that anime group seven years ago and told me about your lucky Halo underwear. I can't wait for many more years of late night Hogwarts runs, Stardew farming, Pokemon catching, and reading daddy hugs to baby B.

Love your butt, Sarah b love your butt sarah love your butt i don't know if that was declarative or if it was you know what i mean like i'm your butt and it this is from me oh oh shit okay so there's three ways to read this one is love your butt, Sarah. Or it's love your butt. Or it's love your butt. Oh, I didn't even think of it that way. It's like instructional. You're right. Love your butt. What's that called?

There's declarative, interrogative. What's it called when you make a comment? Imperative? Imperative. Yeah, I think that's it. Wow, we're freaking smart. Aren't we? Strange smart. Luckily! Strange planets.

Curious technology. And a fantastic vision of the distant future. Featuring Martin Starr. So we're going on day 14. Shuttle still hasn't come. Aparna Nancherla. The security system provides you

with emotional security. You do the rest. Echo Kellum. Can you disconnect me or not? Hurry Kondabolu. I'm staying. From Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Jeffrey McGivern. Could you please Cindy Lauper's girls just want to have fun? It's The Outer Reach. Stories from Beyond. Now available for free at MaximumFun.org or anywhere you listen. Oh, this sedan's got a lot more room in it.

And also right next to it is somebody laying out in the sun, which we're going to have to- On the roof. On the roof. We're going to have to cram them into this sedan somehow. But what you got next? Okay. I am asking you to climb in the back seat oh go

yes i'm i am there absolutely fall asleep oh and have good dreams here's the thing here's the thing i have no control over that here's the thing though okay last night i had a dream where me and my best friend sarah were at a bar together And I woke up and I thought, how nice that I can still have dreams where I can go out and do things with people I care about. So here's what I'm saying. I want you to really treasure those dreams and where possible, you know, try and create an environment

where you can have those dreams. So I was reading about dreams, right? And during non-REM sleep sleep your brain slows down but when you enter rem that's where your brain becomes as active as it is when you're awake so here's the thing right you gotta get you gotta get that rem that rem happens towards the end of your sleep cycle right and there's just nothing better than having those dreams where you see those people that you don't get to see anymore and you get to spend time with them and you get to do fun things out in the world i really treasure those dreams now and i know i can't make myself have them but it's nice to wake up and be like oh i

got to do this fun thing with my friend how cool is that to add to that i would say if you are having like myself extremely vivid bad dreams all the time during this quarantine do yourself a favor and google it like why the fuck am i having such bad bad dreams uh or why the fuck am i so sleepy all the time during all this and because you're gonna find a lot of articles of uh actual smart scientist people explaining why you are responding to the uh global trauma that we are all experiencing right now and how that's perfectly normal. Reading stuff like that makes me feel a lot better. Yeah, that's true.

Knowing that there's a reason for it. I have, let's see, what else am I gonna tuck in there? Because you've just tucked dreams in there and it doesn't leave a lot of room. Okay, let's hit you with this. Scents. Now is the time to start getting into scents. Scents. Scentess. Smells. Good smells. let's hit you with this sense now is the time to start getting into scent scents scentus smells good smells yeah uh not uh my olfactory sense is one i neglect uh i would say uh more than more

than my other ones uh but this has been the period where i'm like you know what i'm making hard candy i'm trying to change i want something positive to take out all this nastiness and so this is the time when i'm like what if i start smelling good starting today this far no further i'm not going to provide free advertising for the brand that i have decided to go with but i have a very nice little container of a solid sort of like wax cologne that i do a little dabba there a little dabba there a little yabba dabba dabba right there on my wrists. And then I go about my day. And a lot of the time, you know, it's just, I guess, for Rachel and it's for myself too. I like sitting, I've never thought about scent that way. That's true. I like sitting on my computer and catching a whiff of something and

be like, hmm, something smells quite handsome. And it's me. I do this at night before I go to bed. I usually put on a nice lotion. You always smell so good in bed. And it's real pleasing to me. So yeah, I agree with you. I think in addition to new hobbies, some sort of new routine is very cool right now because for one thing, it gives you a nice way

to kind of mark the time a little bit more because time has uh become so abstract and strange and and you got to tame it like a fucking wild abstract bronco and having routines like this i feel like are very helpful so get in this get into make it find a way to make yourself smell a different way it's fun it is fun i've been burning more candles too i've been like i i just looked over i've gone through my trash can was full of empty candles because i've just been really rocking them um along those lines of new hobbies uh and and we're not the only ones doing this i know both griffin and i are doing this. I know both Griffin and I are doing this, but skincare. Skincare. Here's the thing. I was lucky enough. I have had maybe two or three facials in my entire life, and I happened to have one right before quarantine. And I found out some guidance

on the skincare. And it's kind of changed things for me a little bit. First of all, I was exfoliating too much. Oh, my God. You are not supposed to exfoliate as much as I was exfoliating. There would be days where you would just be a skeleton. There would be days where you would come to bed and be like, I want a kiss. And I'd be like, no, you're a spooky skeleton. I was told to exfoliate like once or twice a week tops.

No, but you look like a muscly. You look like one of those like muscle statues that they have at schools to teach you where your muscles are okay i was confused about where you were going with that you didn't you did give me a statue i think statue is what threw me i think most people wouldn't call them a statue i forget what a mannequin a mannequin is usually a scary muscle mannequin that's what you were to me uh do that do some do do a mask do a mask maybe once a week. Moisturize regularly. Wash your face every day.

That wasn't even something I was doing. I wasn't even washing my face every day. But you were exfoliating? How's that possible? So instead of washing, I was exfoliating often. Whoa. I know. I know. I thought, like, why clean the skin when you can just remove it?

I know. I thought like, why clean the skin when you can just remove it? That's all Nicolas Cage cleans his face. So yeah, so I think, I mean, you've got time, you're looking to create a new routine. This is obviously one that's good for you. So you know, it doesn't feel like, let's say you're somebody like me, and you're very practical. You think I only want to do things that are good for me and useful. This is one of them. Yeah. I would also like to put in the trunk,

the mindset of you can also do things that aren't good and useful. That makes you just happy. This is going to take some work on my part. I, it became the, my creation of hard candy was very difficult for Rachel to understand. It was difficult for me. It was,

I remember we had a conversation about like, yeah, I just ordered stuff to make candy. And you were like, I don't understand how that's going to benefit me and Henry and our family. And I had to be like, oh no, it's just, I would like to make hard candy. Okay, here's the thing.

This is probably common for a lot of people. I am entered into a survival mindset where I think like, all right, what is this gonna do for the family? How is this going to get us forward? Like, what is this doing to make sure that all of us, you know, can thrive as a unit? And Griffin was like, hey, this is just something I want to do for me. And I was like, huh.

Oh, yeah. Okay. That's probably good, too. Yeah. Although now I can sort of write it off on my taxes because Henry has eaten at least two of the pop sticks. So I'm in the clear sort of justification-wise. What do I got? Oh, speaking of our little beautiful angel, I'm going to talk about one of his toys that I always snatch up and play with. For hours on end, I am talking about magnet tiles.

Magnet tiles are so good. These are little geometric shapes. They are squares magnet tiles are so good these are little geometric shapes they are squares they are triangles they are different kinds of triangles different colors different colors everything is different colors and they're plastic and inside of them on the edges of these shapes they have magnets and so you just snap them together and folks it is hypnotic it is so soothing to just take six squares and make a fucking cube out of them and then you put some triangles on it and then what's that it's a house yeah and then you make a few of those and now it's a castle but then you build like a robot torso and put it all together and now it's like a

robot made out of houses and they're pretty big too so it's not like a lego where no there's hundreds of them and they're all over your floor you know these are chunky enough that you don't lose sight of them uh They're very smooth. And you can, when you make them into 3D geometric shapes, you can put stuff inside of them. Yeah. Like Batman. And now it's like this crystalline robot has captured Batman. And there's so much narrative stuff to play with there.

I have a new hack where I realize, hey, it's a magnet. We can stick this to the fridge. And then we made little apartments for our little action figures on the fridge it was real fun and then we did we acted out whole like plays like very short one-act plays where the riddler was in a romantic relationship with the penguin um but you know things were getting very tense between the two i don't want to spoil it but things were getting very tense between the two of them don't want to spoil it, but things were getting very tense between the two of them. And then Henry walked up and did do a big smash and our play and our whole set fell apart.

He's still at that age where his greatest delight is to destroy things that you have made. This is not, I'm not joking. Whenever the magnet tiles come out, that's my meditation. That's my chill moment. Maybe to a fault because henry will be like hey i do have action figures over here i'm like daddy's almost done building

henry's like i don't want to play with that and i understand that you are playing with that but i would like you to play with me right um yeah magnet tiles man so chill let me toss those in there oh no they landed next to the switch and the magnets erased all my games. Is that a thing? I always worry about that. Like if I have a magnet in my purse and I have my credit cards, am I in trouble? With your credit cards?

Yeah, I think so, right? How strong does the magnet have to be? I need to do some research on this. I mean, if you took like that neodymium magnet that's like always in my room for some reason so I can get little screws out of the shag carpeting, that's a rip. That's a rip on whatever tech you've got on you. But yeah, I don't know.

I think a magnetol, you might be okay. Okay. This one is going to be a little tricky. I'm asking you to bring your laptop into the car. That works. I can fit that. Okay. Okay. Because I am recommending something that we have started doing thanks to our very dear friends, which is

a weekly happy hour. Yes. This, I was skeptical, right? Because I don't love Zoom. I don't love the WebEx. I find it difficult to talk to one or two people in that kind of setting. But with our weekly happy hour with our friends, we've got sometimes like up to like 12 people in there. And we're all playing a game together on our phone, like a Jackbox game. You know, we're all like playing with our Zoom backgrounds. You know, we're all looking at each other's beards. And I feel like this is fun.

And I'm so grateful to have that consistent time on my calendar where I know I will see everybody. Yeah, it's it is it is invaluable. It is genuinely I get emotional thinking about it because like, I feel like that's the kind of stuff I am going to remember from this period. Or I fucking hope it's the thing that I remember from this period. It's just such a delight. Like the even the like the mechanics of it, the way like somebody will pop up on your screen.

You're just so delighted. And then everyone's like, Norm! Yeah. When they pop in. Yeah. We don't have a friend named Norm, but that was an example. Yeah. I have here, and I can slide this in, the complete works of Hayao Miyazaki, or really

just any studio ghibli flick that you are feeling any kind of feel-good anime that you want to slot in there go for it um but i'm talking like specifically like spirited away i'm talking totoro i'm talking howl's moving castle the soundtracks on those are so good tracks on those uh henry is very into kiki's delivery service uh and that's so good and transportative i think those those movies sort of yeah are designed to be very transportative and that is i love being transported these days it's transportative that's a word okay i use it a lot so i've made it a word through brute force at this point uh and if you've seen those movies or you don't feel like watching those movies,

you have another way to get away with the, with the Hayao Miyazaki collection. And that is the Studio Ghibli Museum, which has been a fairly like clandestine place. It is in Japan. You have to like buy tickets to it, like well in advance to actually get in. And then it's this like actual little town that is

sort of modeled after studio ghibli movies so it is just beautiful and uh mysterious and very cool but they don't let you take any pictures or anything so like there's an element of actual mystery to it but they have just started doing like youtube video tours of it and the videos are fairly short but again like it is for me because i didn't get to go the couple times we've been to japan like it is the um the the first time i've gotten to see all the stuff in there and it's so fucking cool it's so cool and good god i love those movies okay with this one i'm asking you to fold down the back seats make a little space for yourself okay no that's good because i can lay out in the sun there now too well it

could will you be in the car so that wouldn't be ideal i'm talking about like one of those vans where you can fold down the seats and be in your car okay good yes uh because i'm asking you to do a youtube workout okay uh here here's the thing with the fitness right uh So I was real into the walks for a while. Weather doesn't always make that possible. And not everybody has the equipment, let's say. Yeah. I found YouTube workouts to be just kind of an endless source.

Because here's the thing. Yeah, there's 30-minute workouts. But you know what? There's also 10-minute workouts. Yeah. And there's 20-minute workouts. 20 is the sweet spot. There's yoga. There's cardio But you know what? There's also 10-minute workouts. Yeah. And there's 20-minute workouts. 20 is the sweet spot. There's yoga.

There's cardio. There's dance. There's Pilates. There's barre. There's a lot out there. And here's the thing. Some of them have weights. We had a, for a while, before I did the work to find our weights and bring it upstairs,

I was using a five-pound container of hand soap as my weight. Yeah, I remember that. My friends and I set up this little spreadsheet where we can like track our fitness. And our goal was just to do 70 minutes in seven days. So you know, that could be just like two workouts, or that can be 10 minutes a day. But we like put our little times on there. And it's kind of like a nice way to hold each other accountable and also to set a very reasonable goal that you can very easily exceed is satisfying. That's Supernatural. I've been playing a VR workout game called Supernatural that I talked about on Besties. And Justin's playing it also.

And there's like a weekly scoreboard that shows like how many points you've earned that week and staying on top of that has been a real a very important thing to me in my life uh and it's it's I feel it's for me it's not even a health thing necessarily like I just kind of feel better on days when I do it. Like I feel like I have more energy to tackle whatever Henry has to throw at us that particular day. It's a very tangible thing you can accomplish. You know, like a lot of us are doing things every day that don't feel especially satisfying, but to have like a thing that you did that's quantifiable,

that makes you feel good is nice. Yep. I think I might actually, oh, I have getting into puzzles here find a puzzle something that can occupy you and i'm not even talking about puzzle puzzles like it could be so rachel and i have been watching survivor this season has been the last season was fucking miserable the last season made us both want to stop watching the show they uh they they fucked up in in a lot of ways uh both sort of uh as a television product and as

an ethical sort of thing uh we did give this next season the one we're on now at a second chance and it's been fucking real good it's like all the superstars it's all the superstars together and it's good it's good play it's good stuff but anyway uh they do a lot of slide puzzles on there and i i kept talking about how like i think i'd do pretty well at this show until it came time for me to do a slide puzzle and i would absolutely shit the bed at that point because i don't know how to do a slide puzzle so i've been learning how to do slide puzzles oh good there's a fairly formulaic way to do it so just when i have a little bit of time on my hands solve a slide puzzle justin's big into rubik's

cubes these days anything that you can just sort of occupy your hands with. Yeah. It's good. That's a pretty good sedan. Yeah. It's weirdly, there's like one little corner where there's some hard candy and celery just kind of rattling around and a little jar of pre-cut garlic. And then there's a human being laying down and sleeping and dreaming in the sun for 10

minutes. Yeah. It's a weird car. It's a weirdly shaped car. It it's a weird car it's a weirdly shaped car it's like a tetromino in a way like there's it's an l-shaped vehicle um but you know there's no wrong way to do this thing we call life these days that's not true there's wicked a lot of wrong ways to do it get smart be about it. But take care of yourself with this incredible sedan Rachel and I have created.

Yeah. Just thinking about all these little things together in a car is kind of a nice way to like, you know, give yourself some calm.

Yeah. But don't steal the, don't, please don't steal the car. This is honor system. Thank you to Bowen and Augustus for the use of our theme song Money Won't Pay.

You can find a link to that in the episode description. And thank you to Maximum Fun for having us on the network. Yeah, Maximum Fun hosts are doing a lot of work right now to produce a lot of great content every week. And so if you go to MaximumFun.org, you can see a lot of that content and learn about a lot of people out there in the community. They're doing good things.

Yeah, there's a new one called The Outer Reach, which is a short, limited engagement storytelling podcast about it's like a space sci-fi story that is very, very cool. You probably have heard a promo for it on this show or another. But yeah, check that one out. I think we have done what we usually do for the outro bit for the span of the entire episode so i think in lieu of just our usual sort of outro you know message of suggestion of things to do to make you feel better maybe i'll just put the whole episode in again right now i like that and people will tune in and be like hell yeah it's like an hour and a half long episode of wonderful and now you've realized why but we can do it we can run the whole thing in reverse. Bye. MaximumFun.org

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