You're listening to a MoMA Mia podcast. Mama Maya acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters that this podcast is recorded on Hello and welcome to Mamma Mia out Loud and to our Friday show where we take a break from the news cycle and breathe out but not with our mouths open. If we recently ate something with garlic. Today's Friday, October the eleventh, and I'm Meya Friedman.
I'm Jesse Stevens. And guess who where joined by today?
Not Holly, not Holly.
It's me the Esteemed, So we have to say now esteemed Amelia Lester.
It does say in the script not to do that joke anymore, but.
I wrote that, but let's go with her was looking and yet here we are. But on the show today, have you noticed everyone's counseling plans from dinners to meetings? What is behind our inability to commit? Why does it feel so so good? Plus a life changing wardrob pack and some good things to read and watch over your
weekend and a much needed tip for elder millennials. It's our recommendations, and we wrap up the week with our best and Worst, which includes Spooky Season a surprising hangover in the scoop from a long weekend.
But first, in case you missed it, allow me to introduce you to October theory, the reason you might have noticed an energy shift lately. October theory states that the beginning of October is almost like a new year. A viral TikTok video by Chloe von Berkel explains that this is the time when everyone realizes there are only three months left of the year, and there are a lot of things that you meant to do at the beginning that you'd forgotten about.
Because of that, this is a time when a lot of people are going to be making a lot of big life changes and a lot of major LFE decisions, and a lot of just like canon events will be happening for a lot of different people at this time.
But wait, there's more, Because apparently if you go through your camera roll and type in the word October and you examine your parts October's, then big things happen. It's a month of enormous change. So October is also meant to signal something called cuffing season, which means that breakups happen, new relationships are booming, lots happens with work ladies, Are we feeling the vibe shift? There's only eighty one days left of the year.
What is cuffing mean?
I don't know. Something to do with relationships. Oh, I don't know. I was on TikTok.
Well, I've definitely noticed a vibe shift. But my birthday funnily enough not to bring this back to me. But is October one? So my birth actually kicks off new year. Some would say the new year, well just beginning of time really, so what I feel about October? I know very little about horses. I've only ridden them a couple
of times. I once told a guy who invited me to go horse riding that I knew how to ride a horse, and he assumed that because I was Australian he was English, that, of course everyone in Australia knows how to ride a horse. And I was going to pull it off really well. In fact, I thought I did until I tried to get on the horse on the wrong side. But anyone see, yeah, I know who knew that there's a thing with horses when they see home or they sense home or something, they'll run because
it's like I've mangled that. But sometimes horses go out of control when you point them to home. No one knows anything what I feel. What I feel like is October is a horse, and when it sees the end of the year. I feel like October is when the horse sees home, which is the end of the year. We gallop and then it starts running fast. I have a less tortured analogy. How how could you have a less tortured analogy than that?
I find this time of year stressful because you know what time of year it is. It's let's catch up before Christmas? Sh right, Yeah, you're absolutely right, and then you just know that you're not going to see this person for another two years.
The good news is that it's also the time in small talk season when you can start saying, what are your plans for Christmas?
Have you found that there's a renewed like your goals for the year or what you're meant to do? Do you feel like you never kind of no? I can't even ask shit, I forgot my word.
I was going to say. This is usually out loud, to say, what's your word? How's it going, Amelia? What's your word this year? This is a tangent, but go.
On Oh gosh, well, I haven't. I made a big move this year. I moved from the US back to Australia after nearly twenty years away. That's not an answer to the question. It's not. But I've just been trying to survive and set up my electricity billain. Okay, it's not been.
Your word of the year has been utilities, and yours is horses. Apparently you'll run.
We are.
A couple of weeks ago, I was in Melbourne and I I had some time open up suddenly, and I called my friend Sally, friend of the pod out louder het Worth, and I said, you want to have dinner any chance? And she's like, yep, I'll make it work. We made a plan and then I had to cancel
because I had to go back to Sydney. So then I canceled and I'm like, stand down, can't do it, And she said, thank you so much for the gift of a canceled evening, which is so much better than just having a night with no plans to begin with.
Oh absolutely, you know yes.
And it made me think of a story that was hugely popular this week on Mamma Mia called the Rise of the last minute cancelor and why all your friends are doing it. It's a piece written for Mamma Maya by Beck Day, and she wrote, bailing on plans was once a guilty, whispered confession that has now swelled into a roaring declaration of self care. The joy of canceled plans is an intoxicating elixa, and our generation is drunk
on it. She also talks about how in twenty twenty a person called Maddie Kahan wrote this tweet that went viral, and the tweet was the app is called You're Canceled. When you've made plans and you wish you could cancel, you go into the app and press a little button. If the other person presses theirs too, congratulations, confetti explodes and your plans are canceled. If you press yours but the other person doesn't, your plans remain intact and they
never find out that you wanted to cancel. And that pitch, which was actually just sort of made up, has since become an actual app, unfortunately not available in Australia yet. I went to the app store and looked for it. It got hundreds of thousands of likes and it was retweeted thousands of times. I want to ask about cancelation, Amelia, Are you a councelor? No?
And I want to push back a little bit against the idea that we're all secret counselors and suggests that for people who have little kids, we don't like canceling because we hired a babysitter three weeks ago. That's so there's a certain group that does not want to cancel. And when you canceled on me recently for dinner, let's just say I started a voodoo doll.
Hah. Can I just say you canceled on me that same arrangement two weeks before for reasons because of your little kids. So I think the common denominator is little kids now very selfish ruin your life.
There is something interesting there, right, because there are some plans that feel less sticky, right, that feel like they're not really set in stone. I kind of had a last minute Sunday night, grand final go to the pub thing with a friend and it got to Sunday vo and I just couldn't stand up right. I was so tired after being away on the long weekend. Ended up canceling. He was relieved. It was great that's so true. It's
like easy into the diary, easy out of the day. Yes, Whereas I've had instances lately where I have had a really big week, really long day at home with lunar. Maybe things have been hard, and that Friday night seven o'clock thing is emotionally very very important to me, like if I'm feeling really lonely, which you can when you're at home with a little kid. Yeah, You've looked forward to it all week, and it would break me if they canceled. And a few times I've wondered if it's
appropriate to kind of go, can't cancel this one? Like this one here is actually really important because we are so flexible with plans, and I find that things are canceled more than ever before. I find it with meetings at work. I walk into work sometimes and you know you're twelve o'clock's done, and this is everything feels kind.
Of fluid, way moreluid.
Which I think is maybe a COVID hangover. I still think that people are more fluid than before COVID.
I don't think it's COVID as much. I think it's technology, because before you'd make a plan and then you had to keep it because you had no way of contacting the other person really like you could call them at home, but if they have left already. Now you can sort of cancel up until an hour before and people do do.
You think that's appropriate now before? Because I've really had it. I've probably had the shower you just.
Invoked for me a muscle memory of when I was a teenager sitting on the steps of Sydney town Hall waiting for friends and just assuming that they would show up because we discussed this on our landlines a couple of days earlier and there was just no ability to cancel. Technology has made it easier to cancel than ever before. But Mia, do you secretly like cancel plans or is this your stick?
Like? Oh, I love it more than you love that, because I think what Sale said was exactly right. There's something about being given time back for me. I feel so happy when someone cancels on me, even though I know if they don't and we actually do the thing, I love it. Not to say I wasn't happy when you canceled on me because I'd mentally prepared. I was wearing the outfit that I wanted to be wearing. I wasn't angry at you, but I was disappointed.
Yeah, it depends on the season. There are seasons when like you're in a season right now where you're really busy with wor where you get a lot of social stimulation from work, and this is maybe the tensions when you or your mates are in a different season where it's like really really important for you. I once had a mate from Mother's group and I had had a really rough night or whatever, and Will meant to meet up and I just messaged her last minute and I went, look,
she's got a running nose. I just don't think I can do it. And I could tell by her response how much they'd been looking forward to it, and I thought, you might have actually not seen another adult for weeks. We're in that stage where it's like this was the thing that was getting you through, that you could sit with someone and kind of and anyway, we ended up just doing it. I was just like, you know what, she's not one hundred percent I'm going to talk around
the PRAM. We're going to do it. Like I could tell from that response, do you know.
I think a big problem with cancelation for me is my morning self will write checks that my evening self or afternoon self can't cash. So I've had to make a thing because in the morning, I'm my most energetic, my most optimistic. If I've gone for if I've done exercise, I'll be feeling very energized and loving towards the world. I want to see people. But by the afternoon, let alone the next week, that'll all be gone and I'll be like, oh no.
There was an article that I read recently called the Mainstreaming of Lusidom by a substact called Tell the Bees, and she writes about how somehow one of the main hobbies that has been accepted by the masses is staying home, laying in bed, scrolling on your phone, and watching television. And she reflected that every viral meme is about canceling plans, Netflix, introversion and hating small talk, like that's.
Pretty much become like a cool brand.
Yeah yeah, And she made this interesting comparison to sort of twenty years ago, the sex and city girls were always partying, they were always out and engaged with lots of different people. And if you were someone who didn't have friends and you didn't really leave your house, then you weren't aspirational, you were weird, and now it's almost
the opposite. So when Charlie XCX threw this you brat summer out, the internet got kind of weird about it because they were like, don't force me partying, Like almost like she wasn't one of them. Because the I guess the dominant Internet culture is that you don't want to leave your house, probably because the people who have left the house aren't on the Internet.
Yeah, I agree. I also think that the other thing that technology has done is given us a lot of social nourishment through our phone. Now it's not the same as seeing people, but once upon a time, if you wanted to socialize, you had to leave your house by definition. Now you can do a whole lot of socializing. Admittedly it's a different kind. But even though you and I haven't had dinner for a while, we're still very connected because we message all day every day, and so you
can stay in touch with people in that way. But there's also the politics of canceled plans, because if you're with a group and one person cancels, does the plan go ahead or do you all agree to redo it? And my view is that if the person who canceled is then responsible for making the event happen because they fucked it. I don't know, Like, if you've got a group of people, I know we've talked about this before and one cancels, what do you do.
I also want to put forward that with different friendships, you have a bank account of cancelation crate. Agree, And speaking as someone who's trying to make new friends because I just moved here, I've realized that having made a plan with a new friend, you cannot.
You've got to earn a cancelation.
You've got to earn it. And certain friendships can withstand it. And I actually think jokes aside as absolutely can here because we know we're just always going to meet each other on WhatsApp. But there are other friendships where you're aware that your cancelation credits are either low or non existence, and that happens sometimes, particularly with new friends.
I reckon I've had friendships end or friendships really fizzle out because I used my canceled.
Yeah, then you just become the flake.
Then you become someone who's flaking and unreliable, which are absolutely and.
For someone who's shopping for a new friend, they need to see that you're reliable.
Yeah, exactly right.
It's interesting because it's not just friendship groups that are bailing on commitments, it's also the job market. Forbes released a piece titled job Ghosting, Why employer's ghost candidates during
the interview process. It talks about how job ghosting refers to the practice as suddenly ceasing all communication with a candidate in the hope that the applicant will get the hint that they're no longer being considered for the position, as opposed to the human resource professional or hiring manager simply telling them that they're out of the running.
That is so bad.
It's so rude.
It's so so rude. And it's also like you better not want to ever hire that person, because if in six months or twelve months a position comes up in that person would have been perfect, well, then you've really burned them.
Sometimes it'll go the other way as well. I've been in situations where I've had conversations with people about jobs and they've been like yeah, yeah, yeah, nay, just ghoest you.
Yeah.
So it's this idea that being unreliable is not something that people are worried about being seen as do you think.
Yeah, I wonder if it's like again a post COVID thing. I mean, I can't imagine why employers think that that's okay. I remember whenever I've been applying for a job, I've always received word about what happened. And when I've been hiring for a job, I always try and reach out to people. Now they will sometimes come back to me and they will say why didn't I get the job? And I don't find it helpful to go into detail at that point. It's not my job to be their
career coach, and I sort of draw a line. But I think it's very what do you say?
Literally? What do you say?
I just say there are a lot of competitive candidates and just shut it down. But I think it's very important to be clear.
When you just don't get the call anymore. I feel I know the word is overused, but I feel triggered because I feel like I'm being romantically ghosted.
I feel that the rules of to bring it back to cancelation. When you cancel a plan, the onus is on you to then reinstate the plan, which makes me realize, have we got a dinner in the diary?
Baby?
Do you believe that cancel them.
It's Friday, so we want to help set up your weekend with our best recommendations. May I you can go first. Please.
My recommendation is very is the word prosaic, which is what basic small? What does prosaic mean?
I didn't think that's what like very very every day?
Yes, that's what.
It's actually quite good.
Correctly use the word, even though I couldn't define it. I did a guest episode on Nothing to Wear, our fashion podcast with Lee Campbell this week, and we were talking about Lee's travel tips. She's just come back from overseas. She's got the most extraordinary travel tips, and one of the things that she told me about were hanger extenders. They're these little things that are like, I don't know, they're the size of your thumb, a little plastic thing.
We put a photo in the out Louder's newsletter this week. But what it means is that you can, if you've got limited hanging space in your wardrobe, and who doesn't, you can hang your clothes like vertically, get down so each hanger can hang off the hanger above it. Yes, you just get them from Amazon. They're super cheap. She also says she uses them. She takes them traveling. Ok, why you take them traveling? But she said she uses
it for planning outfits. That might not be something that you two do, but I do it all the time, and I do it on my floor, and the problem with that is that my dog come and lie on it or sometimes shit on it quite literally, So better I hang it up and it sort of layers them in a little line, which I think is really cool. Anyway, hanger extenders who knew.
My recommendation is a really uninspired one because it is a book that Holly has already recommended. It is called French Braid. I loved it. Not a single thing happens, and that is why I am going to throw to a Milia who has enough recommendations to sustain a small tripe.
Just wait for a second. I think I read that after Holly recommended it. Yeah, is this the one where she moves into There's no spoiler alerts because she's a married woman in her forties or fifties or maybe even sixties, and she gets like a studio.
And yeah, so basically she has this family and it's I love books that span generations. I just find them very satisfying. So like it begins and she gets married and she has these kids, and then when her last kid moves out, she basically goes to this garage where to paint. She's not a very good painter, but she just refuses to care for anyone or anything. And then someone tries to give her a cat at one point, and she and she's just like, I don't want to look after a cat.
She quite quits her not just her marriage, but her family, really her responsibility. She quite quits.
It's a really.
Gentle It's a gentle book, isn't it. But it's good.
Analysis of motherhood and family.
And connection burden.
Yeah, I really really enjoyed it, Amelia, What have you been watching, reading doing?
Okay? I just wanted to run with this opportunity to recommend a bunch of things. I'm gonna start with Ana Garten's memoir. Now do you even know who Anna Garten is?
I keep hearing about Ana Garten and I don't know.
I never get a name.
Aina Garten confused with Ara Glass, who is the host of this American Life podcast. But they're different people.
So Ana Garten I knew nothing about her. I just knew that my husband loves cooking her roast chicken recipe, and that she has a famously good marriage. Everyone talks about her marriage. She's a guy named Jeffrey's American. She's an American cookbook writer. I should have left.
But like Julia Child, or like Nigella Lawson, or like.
Sort of somewhere in between, Like she's got the kind of Julia Child's old school approach, but she does have the sort of like sexiness of a Nigella, So she's sort of she's in her seventies. But people kept talking about her memoir that's just come out. It's called b When the Luck Happens, which is a great title. I think I just thought i'd start listening to it on
a road trip this past weekend. She reads it. She has a lovely voice, and as it happens, the book is a lot about her marriage and about what makes real good partnership. Jeffrey, her husband, is always sort of popping in on her Food Network show. She talks about how much she enjoys her recipes. So everyone knows about Jeffrey, and the book is very much about the pull and push involved when two ambitious people get married or get together.
So they got married in nineteen sixty eight, and there's some tough moments for their marriage, and she's pretty honest about all of that. Jeffrey, he's a professor. What I didn't expect to get out of this is that it's a masterclass in how to make big, risky life decisions. Because at thirty Aina quit this really important job at
the White House. She worked on nuclear policy, and her husband also worked in Washington, DC on government stuff, and then she opened a gourmet food shop in New York called The Barefoot Contessa, which you may have.
Yes, I've heard of that. I think that was made into a TV.
She was made into a TV show and she's a whole brand empire now. But at the time that was a really impulsive and wild choice, and I loved hearing her sort of thinking through that really crazy choice at the age of thirty and how you think about making a big leap in your life. She talks about Jeffrey's advice as being do what you love. If you love it, you'll be very good at it. So that's a kind of heartwarming read.
Oh I love that.
What is not heartwarming but really interesting. Have you watched Australian's Story, the three part series about Lochlan Murdock.
Everyone has told me I need to love this so good.
My hairdresser told me that it's literally all anyone wants to talk about me.
Really, everyone sort of likes the idea of a soap opera and the reality is really not that we actually are a very close family.
I love my brothers, I love my sisters.
We're normal family.
We just have a bit of a spotlight on.
I think that all of Murdoch's children, their stories are about proving themselves to their father. Lachlan's story is the happiest story. All Lachlan had to do to prove himself to his father was to be Lachlin, to be adoring, to see the world the same way Rupert did. That was Lachlan's face in the Hall in the Succession Fate.
So obviously we all know who Rupert Murdock is, but I love following his personal life.
I always have.
For instance, my personal Roman Empire is the fact that when Rupert Murdoch broke up with Jerry Hall, as you remember, it happened so suddenly and so out of the blue that she had to call her ex Mick Jagger to help her pack up and leave Rupert's mansion because he said get out.
Oh well I didn't know that.
Well you know what Mick had to do. He had to come and remove all the CCTV cameras and de security it.
Wow.
Yes, because he knows a few things about that.
Yeah, right, So is dumb question? Is Lachlan the heir?
Yes, so Lachlan's the favorite son and he's going to inherit Rupert's media empire, so he's he's from me, that's from secession. The problem is that Lachlan's siblings, Elizabeth and James, appear to hate both Lachlan and this plan, so they are currently has many siblings.
He's also got an older sister, Prue, by Rupert's first marriage, and two younger sisters by Wendy Deng. Yes, but they're not part of the trust, so it was essentially left to the four eldest Murdoch children. When he got divorced from Lachlan, James and Elizabeth's mother, Anna Murdoch, she made sure that the trust gave all four of them, including Prue, who is a stepdaughter, an equal share, and when the new ones came along, they don't get voting rights. They
get a share, but they don't get voting rights. And so what's interesting now is after he's just married for the fifth time at the age of ninety three, there's been a court case going on recently where Rupert Murdoch has argued that only Lachlan should get to decide what happens to the company and not the others, because he says that the others, who are famously less conservative than Lachlan, who's said to be more right wing than Rupert, that
they'll destroy Fox News because they might either take it further to the left or make it more moderate, or make it, I don't know, stop saying the things that it does. And so he's essentially gone to court to argue that three of his children are incapable of running the business and will lose all the value of the company, and that Lachlan has to be the only one and so the three elder than the united in fighting. It's Lachlan and Rupert against the other three siblings.
It's Extrame's what the Australian story is about.
The end part of it is, Yeah, that's kind of runs all the way through, and that court case hasn't been decided yet, but it's with the backdrop of all of that, and James Packer speaks about Lachlan and there's like old interview footage of Lachlan. I've taken over your recommendation.
No, it's great. James Tracker was a highlight for me because Lachlan doesn't speak, but he and James are closed and you have to assume that he gave the green light to it. James comes across as very vulnerable, honest about their failed business ventures together.
So that's on IVIEWBCA iView if you want to watch that.
It's three parts. It's so fascinating. Okay, the next one is more prosaic. It's a recommendation for all my elder millennials out there. This term was coined, of course, by comedian Eliza Schlessinger. I can never I like your stand up. She does good stand up. Yeah, and she, like me, was born in the early to mid eighties. Okay, So for all of us who meet that criteria, I have some bad news, which is scientists have discovered that as your face ages, you lose contrast. Did you know this?
I did know this because I'm a gen X and my eyebrows disappeared. Have you seen my drivers?
What do you mean by you lose contract?
So your lips, eyes, and your eyebrows get paler, and then surrounding skin gets darker, and so the result is just a wash of pale.
What about your nipples, Well, you could put some lippy on them. I suppose this is why makeup wasn't so lavier changes color. There you go, Friday, it's another recommendation.
Make tap was invented to make us literally look younger by adding color to our face. So applying this logic, I gave my brows some love for the first time in many years, and I got a brow tint. And I'd always been scared of them because I do have pale features, and I thought I'd look like John Howard.
Yeah, but I don't think that I do. You joine it all? So we have someone who comes into them a mer office pretty often these days, because there's so many people who want to get their brows done, and everyone gets their brows done, and it's such a used to happen in the kitchen, and so to be sitting there with their brows done, yea, I do right at home? Yeah, what a chemist kit.
I would say it's particularly good about your eyebrows, Amelia, is that what you have gone for is a cooler home and it really suits your features. So when mine has gone wrong is they've they've done quite a warm blonde and it almost can go a little bit orange or something that doesn't work. And now they do a little And when I do it at home, I do a brown, and I do just a little bit of black and it cools the hole.
So that's a very good point. I think you could go a little darker. Yeah, I do. And as you know what else I've been doing. I've got a product that I bought I think two faces. It's called fluff and hold. It's like a because I have never done the laminating thing that feels I think it's over so but you can sort of brush them up. Yeah, I've had to do a lot more eyebrown maintenance as I've got older. I did think about having like tattooing yep or something, or a transfer.
I'm not quite ready.
I can't be bothered a transplant. Yeah, you can have a transplant.
Wow. The Wonders of Modern Science. Final recommendation only murders in the building.
Or only murders in the building. I'm Charles Hay.
What the hell didn't Savage? You can just splice that onto the Charles Hay.
Yeah, I'll get out the splicer Hollywood studio.
I wanted to make a movie of our podcast.
The script is amazing.
Oliver flits around the room, accepted genarian Peter Pan or a male tinker Bell.
I do not walk that way again. This is one that I have heard so much about and I haven't watched it yet, so no, okay, so everyone loves it.
I'm glad that you mentioned that, because when I heard the premise, I thought the same thing. The premise is that these two seventy something comedians Martin Short Steve Martin act in a show about a true crime podcast moment Dick. Yeah, and it just felt really silly. But the best way you can describe it is it's kind of like putting on your coziest, warmest orange jumper, okay, and sort of sipping a hot chop. It's polar fleece. It's polar fleece
in a show. It's really cozy. It's set in a New York apartment building where it's always the autumn and the new season has Paul Rudd and Eva Longoria in it, and this will be interesting. There's an on screen romance between Martin Short and Meryl Streep and I don't know if you've seen the.
Picks, something's going on there and he's.
Going on in real life between those two.
Yeap mark my words, they are together.
Disney So links to all of our recommendations. Are you signed up to Muma mer out Loud the newsletter because you can get our recos there and more than that, there's so much in that newsletter and it's free, so that's a little treat for the weekend. There will be a link in the show notes to get that.
One unlimited out loud access. We drop episodes every Tuesday and Thursday exclusively for Muma Maya subscribers. Follow the link in the show notes to get us in your ears five days a week. And a huge thank you to all our current subscribers.
Now it's time for our best Worst of the week, which is the part of the show where we share a little more from our personal lives. Jesse, I'd like you to go first. What is your worst of the week?
My worst was day one of our long weekend holiday so we went to the coast. I don't know if it was up or down, but it was alonger road and we ended up.
At the coast near the beach.
Near the beach, Luca went up a day early, and then I went with Luna. Now I have a spreadsheet with or do you have this, Amelia for when you go away with the like with all the things.
About of haphazard notes up here?
Yeah, okay, so I have an actual spreadsheet.
Why does it need to be in a spreadsheet form?
Because I need to make it green when I've packed it, and I need it not to disappear because all my other do you really just have a list, because then I would either cross it off or and then I would lose it. But I need to use it again and again every time we go away.
Oh I see, you know what I mean. I get it.
So I've got my spreadsheet of Luna sings.
And have you ever seen this organized side of you before?
It's because I have that mind issue where I can't visualize things. We've talked about it.
On that do you know she's got that Amelia new out louder Is to the show. Jesse is different in her brain and if you say, imagine Luna. She can't picture face, do you?
Okay? So if I say to you, Amelia, can you see an apple in your mind's eye? Can you see an apple?
Yeah?
Okay, I can't. So this is why I can't.
What do you see?
Nothing? The word apple?
When I say Luna, what do you see?
I can't see Luna's face. I know memory wise what her features and stuff are. Tonight I had to come to work and I had to pack an outfit for tonight because I have another event. It killed me because I can't see.
The Oh that's why dressed is hard for you.
It's called a fantasia.
And did you get it like diagnosed?
No, it is something that I read about once. Ande's like, oh my god, I have that just clear have it? No, she doesn't.
But can I just ask what's your number one thing that you're terrified that you'll forget? Because for me, it used to be a white noise machine.
For me, it's a dummy because she wouldn't sleep, like she needs a dummy to go to sleep, and so it's just all of those little things, or like we had a little portable high chair. What do you do if you don't have a high chair for a fifteen month old. So the car filled to the brim. We get there, we unpack everything, and Luna is shitty. She doesn't want to be there. She's whinging, she winges at meal times, she has to be held all the time. Terrible, terrible mood. And you start going as a te thing.
Is she constipated?
Is she?
And then you go, there's been all this effort and we're there with a bunch of friends.
Oh that's awful, and this is yeah. Everyone's like, oh, maybe it's and you're just like, I just need to deal with it. It's worse if I have to also talk about it. Do you know?
I have this weird thing where I don't like to socialize with my children because I can't multitask making sure and solving their problems and having a good conversation.
I was very unsatisfying the one time that we socialized with your children, I didn't like it. They're very cute.
It's really really hard because you also then have Luna can be very shy, so she gets shy around people, and then I feel guilty that she's not anywhere. It's hard. So day one total ride off and I just went all right, So this long weekend's going to be a slog It's going to be one of those holidays we look back on and go that was no fun. The next day we woke up and I had an angel. She was an absolute angel. This was my best is.
She woke up a completely different baby. She had her book which Grandma Maya gave her is called This is the Houlor, and it is a Jewish book and she walks around reading it constantly. Can I just say my defense some context literature.
About this is a horler. I didn't buy it. We were at a live there was a bookstore in Bondai, and next to it was like a pile of books that they were giving away, and there was a book called This is the Horla and Harla is a special bread that you have on a Friday night at your butt if you're Jewish and you want to. We sort of do that sometimes, and so we just thought it was a funny book to give her. And she's never
put it down, fixate on certain things. She we just kind of gave it to you as a bit of a joke, and she's insided.
The gate one Theror book she has thrown herself into her due daism more than anyone else in that family. But anyway, so she had the best. It was one of those days where she loved the rock pools and like the sun was out, and I just went, this is some sort of metaphor for parenting that like the worst day where you just go, I don't know how much more of that I can handle. The next day you wake up and you just like reasons and both were for no reason and can't be explained.
I think Miat once said to me that babies have this hardwired, like evolutionary instinct. They know exactly how far they can push you before you'll throw them all out away.
And then pull back.
Yeah, you're like, I can't have you wake up one more.
It's a hard wired to survive and if they think they've pushed you too far, they dial it down.
My worst of the week is I went out. I've been out for a couple of dinners this week, and at one of them it was a restaurant where they fill your glass up. And my nickname at school, not that I drank at school, but if I had drunk at school, my nickname would have been Cadbury because I was a glass and a half.
Yeah right, Yeah, clearly this is non.
Sponsored content because there's a glass and a half of milk in any So I'm a lightweight and that hasn't changed. I'm still a lightweight. So mostly I drink. If I'm drinking, it will be one glass usually and that's it. If it's a big night, I'll have two glasses. But two glasses is my absolute limit. But because glasses were filled up, it was quite a fancy restaurant.
I don't like that.
I can't keep my I mean, I wasn't driving, luckily.
Yeah, if you're driving, it's a nightmare.
I wasn't driving, And you know how sometimes just alcohol hits different. So I didn't feel drunk at all, and I couldn't keep tracking. The wine tasted drilling, and I had a lovely night. But then the next morning I woke up with just such a headache. Do I hangovers get worse as you get older.
I heard Zoe Foster Blake talking about this recently, and she said it's a perimenopause thing that apparently your tolerance for alcohol changes with your hormones or something.
Anyway, have a Frida egg the next morning? How to deal with it.
I can't remember just at all.
You know, there is some research to suggest that a coal can, a coke does the job.
Oh, so many brands I couldn't have had a know.
How long I have wanted Coca Cola to sponsor my life and they won't. Coca color and Cadbury would be your aun And where are they?
Good point?
We give them too much free advertising.
My best of the week was also a dinner which I had with some old friends that I made at my first job, which happened to beat Cleo Magazine. I mean it wasn't my first job. I was at Woolli's but didn't make many friends there. But at Cleo I was there for five years, and a lot of the women that I worked with there it was a kind of a heyday for Cleo in the very early nineties, including Lisa Wilkinson, Paula Joy, Deborah Thomas, nicoleb and Ithen.
They have remained really close friends over all of those years, and that would have been Oh god, that's thirty years ago, and so we haven't seen each other for ages and ages and ages, and a lot's happened to all of us, both good and bad. Over the years, and so we organized a dinner that nobody canceled.
Yeah, that was one you wouldn't care.
No, that was one that you really wouldn't cancel, Like it wouldn't have occurred to me, and you know all that stuff about I feel good when people cancel, not something like this, something like this is really special. So it was just lovely and it made me really think about I know there's a lot discussed about working from home and not working from home and how so many people like it, particularly young people, and I just really
feel that they're missing out on a lot. I just made some of the most incredible friends from working in an office and people that you would never otherwise meet or get to know. And they're not all friends for life. Sometimes they're just you know, a reason, a season, a lifetime. But there's something about all being in it together that's
just very very bonding and reminiscing about those years. And it's no accident that we started this new group chat and been talking about the nineties Vogue documentary and all of that stuff that we lived through together. It was just really nice to catch up. Amelia. What was your worst of the week?
So my worst is just a little thing, but it kind of rankled at me. It took me a long time to get back into exercise after I had two kids in quick succession, and then there was the pandemic.
What's the age gap?
Our two years? But then I discovered polarates. Now there is nothing more boring than someone talking about polarates, so I'm not going to do that. I want to talk about one particular moment with an instructor that I tried out, who was otherwise very lovely and knowledgeable, but it was a moment I found really jarring and which I think sort of speaks to how we should not be talking about our bodies. So she was talking me through a movement.
She asked me to turn to the mirror to look at how I was doing it, and she prefaced it with something like, now I'm going to ask you to do something that I know we women hate to do, which is look at yourself in the mirror. And I was immediately kind of pulled out of this moment where I felt good about my body and what it was doing and accomplishing, and instead I felt like I was being told that I had to feel bad about the way I look.
That speaks volumes about her, doesn't it.
Yeah, because it's not how I feel. I mean, not that I love looking myself in the mirror, but I certainly don't hate it. And I just this is why, whenever I hear conversations where people are talking about diets or how they don't like some part of themselves, my little active resistance is trying not to participate in that and just do not even listen to it. And I resented the fact that I was in a situation where I couldn't really do that.
Yeah, oh yeah, because she sort of was in a power position over you in a way. Yeah, she's the instructor, so she says, look in the mirror. You can't say hey, exactly. Yeah, oh that's interesting.
I grappled with the idea of mentioning it to the owner of the studio, and I think that was what you suggested to me. I ultimately decided not to because I didn't want to seem like I was daubing her in or anything. But it just meant that, Yeah, I didn't want her to be fired, to be clear, Sorry, but it.
Was more just she wouldn't have even been aware that that was a thing, probably, and she would probably have been mortified exactly to realize what she'd been projecting onto you. She just internalized all those feelings.
And it's getting so much better. But I completely agree that in most classes that I'm in, something slips through. Now it's all about summer yep, and it's all about swimsuits and go arms.
That's another one I heard recently.
You know who I find often of the worst the male instructors. The male instructors will say something about you know, you'll be doing a glued exercise and will be something about your bikini, and I'm like, that is just simply not why I'm here, and it sort of undermines the entire It really irks me. And I felt the same, like maybe I should say something as I leave, because I.
Know this sounds like a shameless plug, which it is. But that's why we develop move the app, because it's like so much of exercise culture is about feel the burn and burning the calories and you can have dessert tonight if you do this, or you know you ate that cookie, you better work, har and we just wanted, you know, exercise that was completely free of that. It's not even body shaming, although sometimes it is, but even just body consciousness, you're doing it for.
Different You want body neutrality when you're working out, and you want to decenter that male gaze. So that was a little bit of a downer. But the best is I want to say something controversial. I have noticed since moving here that Halloween gets a really bad rap.
It does people.
Complain about it being American. Well, I'm here to tell you that sometimes Americans have good ideas. It is my favorite holiday for many years in the US. And here's why. It is non religious. You have almost no emotional physical labor required as a parent. You basically just need to buy some fun sized chocolate bars. You don't need to cook an elaborate meal. You don't need to worry about costumes. The costumes are easy though you can put a sheet
on someone. It's really not about the costumes. I find that more. It's like the older kids and maybe the young adults who get really into the costumes. But little kids honestly don't care if you just put a sheet on them and call them a ghost. And I think, what's really much on them?
Anyway? It's going to stand in the corner from quiet for a bit.
What I think is missing from the Halloween discussion here is that it's a community building exercise. The idea is that kids walk around the neighborhood and you talk to people who open their doors and give your kids lollies or chocolates, and you get to know them a little bit. And the kids are really excited because there's that little bit of fear in the mix as well. So what I did this weekend that was just really joyous is we went to Kmart and we stocked up big on
some Halloween decorations. I got a tombstone that said I need a coffin.
Break love it, Love It.
Got a rat with glowing red eyes which I put outside our apartment, which I bet the people trying to sell their apartment upstairs are going to love that.
It's kind of early to be getting into the Halloween.
It's never too I thought it was like a.
Week or two in advance.
I agree with the mayor it fields early, but America's.
Actually My son literally said to me, is this not too early? And I said, you're six, you know nothing.
It's Australian deep inside. That is all we have time for today because we've got to go out and buy our Halloween decorations. You weird.
I'm going to address Luner up and I saw an idea on Instagram which was to dress her as moodng.
That's really so good. I love moved bouncy Pork. A big thank you to all of you the out louders for listening to today's show. If anyone still is, we'll be back in your ears next week. But also before we go, a big thank you to our team, Executive producer Ruth Devine, who loves it when plans are canceled and has zero shame about doing it herself. Senior producer Emmeline Gazillas, who hates letting people down, so we'll only commit if she's one hundred percent sure about the plan.
And our audio producer is Leah Porges, who's secretly relieved when she gets canceled on, as well as our social media producer Isabelle Dolphin, who says yes to everything, but if she's not living it, calls in sick.
Bye bye.
Shout out to any Mum and Maya subscribers listening. If you love the show and we want to support us as well, subscribing to MOMMYA is the very best way to do so there is a link in the episode description.