[00:00:00]
Quinn: We had to go to an allergy doctor. It took so long to get this appointment.
So complicated. Who you can go to, who you can't. It's changing because mom and dad's union went on strike last year and so this and this. And they're like, Am I gonna miss a pep rally at this allergy appointment?
Welcome to Not Right Now, the podcast about parenting through all of this.
Claire Zulkey: We'll be talking about slash crashing out over topics like
Quinn:Lost Chromebook chargers and lost democracy.
Claire Zulkey: Crying over spilled milk. And also are we drinking dairy anymore?
Quinn: It's not an advice show.
Claire Zulkey: It's a you're not alone, and you're also not crazy for screaming in the shower kind of show.
I'm Claire Zulkey from Evil Witches.
Quinn: And I'm Quinn Emmett from Important Not Important.
Claire Zulkey: You can find details on anything we talk about in the show notes or at our website not right now dot show.
Quinn: Dot show. And if you like what you hear today, please share it with a parent who needs it or who might laugh and tell their kids to be quiet and then drop us a nice little five star review.
Claire Zulkey: And reminder, you can send questions or feedback to questions at not right now dot show.
Claire Zulkey: I'm newly sober including no gummies or anything like that.
Quinn: What does newly sober mean?
Claire Zulkey: Well, I mean the long story or maybe the short story is that I've been a pothead, basically my whole life, on and off. And then I'd say in the last maybe five years or so, maybe fewer than that, been more serious about my attempts to moderate and then most recently been like, moderation is not it.
So, I just was a very, extremely functional pothead. So that makes it hard to come up with reasons to quit especially when you can [00:01:00] work from home, you're not doing brain surgery. You're not driving around a lot. So and then it's legal here also and just yeah getting more real about, Wow, I have no inability to stop before I start getting deeply depressed, and feeling bad about myself.
So, there's a community on Reddit that's actually really helpful called Leaves that is about people in the same boat. And it's just very, it's like validating. Because pop culture tells us that it's not addictive and it's like a gag we learned in DARE that you smoke pot once and you're on the fast track to hell and heroin and selling all your belongings.
So you feel stupid for having a problem with something that many other people don't have a problem with. So the community makes you feel better just being like, you're not alone. And this is, there are some people for whom their brains just, are like that.
But yeah, I'm feeling between being offline sort of and the news and all this, I feel like very, like the well is very dry currently but also that's been part of, I don't know about you, but that's a part of the creative [00:02:00] process, is like you got to feel like shit and like you have no business doing what you do.
Anyway, ask me anything.
Quinn: No, I want to do a whole conversation on coping because I've gone in the other direction. I drank. I'm Irish, which is the world's laziest crutch. I'm like, 17th generation Irish. There's nothing to go on there. I have pivoted to gummies. I was a, I mean, somewhere between a coward in a goody two shoes, I guess, on that.
Not with drinking, clearly. I mean, it's like I could take down a bottle of whiskey while you go to the bathroom. But gummies have been helpful for coping for me, and I don't find at least that those are addicting, which is interesting, because everything else seems to be in my life. So, yeah, no, we should have a whole conversation about that, because, I think half of Etsy is Mom drinks because you cry towels on purpose, which is that it's a thing, a hundred percent.
And we’ve all been there.
Claire Zulkey: Well, I take heart in that I think more people are realizing that at least with [00:03:00] alcohol and this is my experience that like, I think people often think that you have to be an alcoholic or fit a definition for alcoholism or hit rock bottom to have a reason to quit. And I think more people are like, No, I'm going to quit before like I just was like moderation wasn't working.
And I happened to read this book about, it was like the hundred days sober reset, and it just clicked with me that it was like, stop trying to always cut down, like zero is simply easier than always trying to have one or two. Because my favorite thing, especially during the pandemic, was to drink on an empty stomach.
And that always worked out great.
And especially as you get older for me, like I would wake up at four in the morning with spiraling anxiety and self loathing and yelling at myself. And, so I don't miss that.
Quinn: See, If I don't take my gummies, it's very interesting.
It's great. My wife's version of that, [00:04:00] she read Quit Like A Woman, it's apparently an incredible book, which was pretty helpful for her.
Same thing, to be like, instead of every other night, why don't we just not do it anymore? And it's a journey. It's a journey.
Claire Zulkey: Yeah. Well, I think it helps to live in parts of the country where it's normalized to not drink. I don't know, it was just fascinating because here in Evanston, it's not hard to find a lot of good places that sell cool NA drinks and cocktails. But then when I went to Phoenix with my husband's family last year. I would go to a bar and be like, do you have anything? And they'd be like, I think we have an O’Douls in the basement. That's not cold. Or like diet Coke.
That would be it. So, yeah, it's interesting.
Quinn: My wife always tells a story of when she lived in Paris like 15 years ago and she tried to order something. I think it was without ham and they were like, what if we cut it really small and she's like no, that's it's still there. They're like, [00:05:00] I can't really do this for you. Which is its own thing. I just got my alert to sign, the most important thing I do every single week is remember to sign my, now just my two younger children, my middle and my younger, my youngest child up for their before school program. Because their bus doesn't come until 9:15 or something horrific like that. They haven't done the reverse thing, California is in the middle of changing it. So the older kids go later so they get their sleep, but not here. So very quickly when we moved back, we're like, well, that's untenable, like we have lives to live and work to do. Because you don't just jump back into work two seconds after the bus comes. I just stare at a wall and scream to myself.
Claire Zulkey: Well you might be up for like three hours by then.
Quinn: Oh yeah, which it's so funny you say that because like today was their first full day back after break. And after all the ice storm, which around here, it's like we got a quarter of an inch.
And it's so funny because I have [00:06:00] a sinus infection and woke up late and so I missed my older kid going to school and I was like, oh, that's such a bummer. Twelve hours ago, I would have paid a million dollars for someone to take my children.
Easily. Just name whatever it is.
And then I was like, oh, I'm so sad I didn't see him this morning. And it's like what the fuck?
Claire Zulkey: I always wonder if dads are more sentimental like that. My husband's always, he's just more like that. He's more like constantly sad. He took our son away for a weekend. Cause he's like, he's not going to talk to me for too long. And I don't know, I think, I mean I certainly feel that way and I was just looking at a drawing my kid did for me when he was like three and I was like, oh, but also I'm like, I don't have time for sentimentality.
I got to empty the dishwasher.
Quinn: Well, yeah, I mean, yeah that's part of it. And then I empty the dishwasher. Or I don't, they're supposed to empty it, which goes so so. But yeah, it's chaos. Anyways, we've made this whole list of things we want to talk about. [00:07:00] it's been a pretty brutal few days for a lot of folks.
I don't know when this will come out, but the fires in Los Angeles started, so it's 72 hours ago, something like that. Where we lived for, I was there for 14 years. My wife was there for 20 something years. So a lot of friends there. She was there when it started. We got her out of there. It's been crazy. And I thought about, obviously a lot of people and a lot of families are affected, but also, obviously around the world constantly, Tibetan earthquakes last week, Palestine all the time, families lose their homes, and it might not even be a home, just like their latest shelter, all of the time and if you haven't ever been in that situation or been homeless or been close to it right, you aren't faced that often with the question of like, what would I take with me? Besides the recommended go bag stuff, which I [00:08:00] got a whole list of that stuff. That's pretty straightforward, right? And I know you said you guys play the game in the car the other day. Like lightning question, forget emergency supplies. What are you taking with you? Cause you guys don't live in an area where it's, you're not getting a hurricane. You're hopefully not getting fires. You're probably not getting earthquakes up there. You guys are getting drought, floods, that kind of shit.
Claire Zulkey: We've had tornadoes.
Quinn: Sure, that counts.
Claire Zulkey: We've had frozen, we've had extreme cold. So we've had frozen pipes.
Quinn: But it's not we gotta bail right now type of stuff usually. I mean, tornadoes can be that.
Claire Zulkey: Yeah, they go by quickly.
No, yeah, I was playing that game. I would bring, obviously the kids and the dog food, my medication, kids medication, particularly the ADHD medication. I have a pillow, like a comfort pillow. I think there's a lot of adults are coming out in later life, admitting that they have like comfort items.
Quinn: Oh, I took my wife's pregnancy pillow 15 years ago and never gave it back.
Claire Zulkey: Yeah, I brought my pillow with me when I gave birth both times. I've been reading this book about World [00:09:00] War II which made me think about jewelry. Not like I have tons of fine jewels, but it seems like it would be prudent to bring any jewelry I have, not just partially for sentimental value, but also it'd be worthwhile.
Laptop, phone, charger. The kids said they would bring their stuffies and maybe a pack of Uno cards. Honestly, if we were going really quickly socks, underwear. Yeah, I have a friend who was like, I saw on Instagram was like, take your phone and document everything in your house.
So that could have insurance to place it. And it's well, so many things here. I'm looking at things that are just really sentimental value. Like an old rotary phone. I don't need that. Obviously my grandma's antique typewriter.
Quinn: Aside from all that shit. What like if you had to grab one sentimental thing?
Claire Zulkey: Yeah. My pillow, I think my pillow. Yeah, that would be it. And maybe my, I have this Omega watch. My parents gave me when I was 21 years old and that would be, that's a sentimental item from my past, but also I could sell that if [00:10:00] I had to, I think, and the dog.
Quinn: Ah I like it, thinking ahead. Yep. Yep.
Claire Zulkey: Yeah. Yeah, well, for when the shit goes down, you gotta sew, every woman knows you gotta sew your jewelry into your clothing so that not only will the bad guys not find it when they shoot you, it will hopefully protect you and you won't die right away.
So, that's what, yeah. How about you?
Quinn: I don't know. It's such a funny thing because I went, so when we were in L.A. and we lived sort of in the Fryman Canyon area, it's like Laurel Canyon, hippie area, and we were up in proper Laurel Canyon forever, and by the way that's what went up last night, part of it, and that's a real, you're not getting out of there, if there's not a lot of time story, because it's the tiniest roads, there's no real zoning up there, it's a clusterfuck.
But I definitely went like full prepper, especially once the kids showed up where I was like, all right, we have our plans. I did the pictures like once a year. I had my dumb alerts pop up and be like, it's time to recatalog all your shit. I had redundant hard drives on redundant hard drives backed up every [00:11:00] week.
One at my house, one at my office. I mean, it's just fucking ridiculous. My wife just glazes over whenever I talk about this shit. But I was like, I just want to be semi prepared. But besides we had the list on the fridge, if anyone was staying in our house, here's where we go, this is what we do, and all that shit. I think it's a funny thing now for me to answer that, because now we're more in a hurricane zone. Which is interesting, because you get like a few days notice with those, which is interesting. And, fire damage is obviously often, at least in this wildfire sense, more complete. Hurricanes aren't great though because you get water damage. That's really the thing now with climate. It's so much wetter. And so it's a shit show. But I'm, it's funny, we're living back in the house I grew up in. And so I've definitely got more like family sentimental stuff around.
So that complicates the question a bit. [00:12:00] I don't really know. Yeah. Here's the thing I struggle with is I've been trying to get rid of everything in my life for a good five years now. Right. And I think part of that is I think about, I think we've got three or four friends who've lost their houses so far in the past couple days. And it's so horrible, and at the same time, how many jokes have I made? Have you ever used the 1 800 GOT JUNK service?
Claire Zulkey: Something similar. I paid for some, hippy dippy recycling guy to come do it cause he'll recycle the mattress.
Quinn: Sure.
Claire Zulkey: So I do it even dumber.
Quinn: Yeah. No it's great, but it's funny how many times especially after we moved and getting rid of everything and all this, but as the kids have gotten older, too and just broken old furniture we’ve been holding on to, the guys will be in our attic, and they're like, alright, what are we taking?
And I had made a pile, but there's such a part of me that wanted to be like, Here's what's gonna happen. I'm gonna leave for half an hour. And I want you to do a reverse supermarket sweep. And take as [00:13:00] much as you can. Don't tell me what it is.
I don't care. I don't wanna know. And just take as much. And it's easy to make those jokes and be frustrated and wanna Marie Kondo everything.
But then, sometimes you do have to choose. Right?
Claire Zulkey: Well, it's interesting because the thought experiment is, are we gonna be evacuating to a place where you can buy things you need to replace? Like I was thinking if we were going to be in a shelter, like someone on Witches talked about their parents were now at some conference center.
I would bring sleep masks for instance and maybe our guitar, because that would help us pass the time. Our guitar is not special. It's not like an antique. It's not a fancy guitar, but at least that would kill some time. But if the shit hits the fan like the guitar, I don't care, light it on fire, and then the photo albums, it probably doesn't seem like part of my personality but I do make a photo album every year.
It's like the one present for the grandparents because they don't need anything and so the kids love looking at that, but it lives in the cloud so I could just [00:14:00] allegedly go back on, whatever, Tiny Prints and go and order them again. So those will live on so it's a weird thought experiment. It's funny a friend of mine lives in New Orleans and they evacuated to Biloxi or something like that.
And my friend said that they got emergency packets and she received Bomba socks in her packet. I was like, oh like it was, I was like the system works. I buy them because of you.
Quinn: It’s actually a thing. Right. Right. Right. Those are sisters of my socks.
Claire Zulkey: Yeah, exactly.
Quinn: What would your children handle best about having to bail quickly and what would they handle most poorly, either immediately or as time went on?
Claire Zulkey: The younger one, the thing that would give me a lot of fear would be the ADHD medication. Although it's not, I mean, compared to, I'm sure other kids it's just like, when you mentioned traveling, I just want to hear more about traveling without the meds.
Cause for us, it's like a non-starter.
Quinn: The answer is we FedExed it to a friend who came and met us three days [00:15:00] later.
Claire Zulkey: Good. I was thinking if that was me, I would have had, we've had our prescription transferred to another town when we ran out because it was like, I remember we first started meds for him. We were debating should we go off on the weekends or not? And I felt, this is back in an earlier era when we were debating the pluses and minuses of medication and the moral aspects and should we not do it on the weekends?
And a friend mentioned our son has interpersonal challenges when he's not on medication. And I was like, that's the same with our son too. So, I mean, they can be scared. Like they are, they're not super anxious kids, but like when we have tornado drills, they get, not tornado drills, but like when we've had warnings, I mean, it is scary.
The sirens go off and the phone beeps and then we go in the basement and that's the only time that the dog comes down with us, that's the only time we watch local news and they get anxious and that's the one time I would say the go bag actually was worthwhile. It was that I pulled it out and I showed them everything in it and what it does and you know I have no, it's like [00:16:00] really, I don't really want to be a prepper, I'd rather die. Just kill me in the first wave like let's not pretend, but in that case I'm like finally this was the value is the peace of mind and pretending that you have some control and that's where it paid off. But I'm grateful that they are, this is so basic, they are functioning children who could walk and pack their own bags and carry things and they have empathy I think, so I would just be thankful that they have like I mean, I don't want to be like no sense of humor about it, but you know, I have friends whose kids are like make a wish kids, and so we don't have to make hard decisions per se.
And so I'm thankful for that, I'm thankful that they can pee standing up. I'm thankful, just things like that, right? So they'd be fine. They would be all right. I was talking to a friend of mine, they did evacuate, three kids, two dogs, they're in a hotel.
And she said the older one is a little worried and the [00:17:00] younger two are blissfully just happy in the disgusting hotel pool. And I was like, a little worried is awesome. I mean, like for a kid, for a 10 year old or a nine year old that's amazing. I mean, that's appropriate and that's normal.
You should be a little worried, but on the other hand, I know kids who are so anxious about life that they can't go to school without throwing up.
I don't know. That's not a very interesting answer.
Quinn: No, it's good. When COVID was really going down, let's say like late 2020, how old were your kids at that point?
Claire Zulkey: Preschool and second grade.
Quinn: So leave preschool out of it. Two of mine, I think were still in preschool. When they were like, well, there's a million people dead now in the U.S., which was probably an understatement. I don't know if we were at a million yet at that point, but close to it. Did you tell the second grader about that kind of number? Did you let them know how bad it was?
Claire Zulkey: Yeah, I mean, but also, I feel like we've learned a lot about how our mental health and control, what we can control for our mental health, how that affects the [00:18:00] kids. I was drinking then, my husband, he still is a drinker, but he was on the more extreme end of anxiety.
Like washing the groceries down. He didn't let us order in food for three months or something like that. Like we had a lot of fights and we were extremely stressed out, constantly checking the news. So like our younger son, actually the preschooler, his one way of I think getting control and this is pre ADHD diagnosis, was that he would refuse to wash his hands or it'd be like a big pain in the ass to wash his hands.
Quinn: The one thing.
Claire Zulkey: Yeah, the one thing. And so we'd be like, people are dying. And so, they were not too worried, but they also were definitely not getting our best selves, and I think, God forbid there's another disaster again, but I think we would be a lot more under control about maintaining our own, parenting is so much harder when you are so stressed out, and the kids always respond to it.
Quinn: They notice the like the [00:19:00] smallest deviation, like I had a sinus infection this week and they responded to me, they were like, well, these are the last days of dad, and I was like does it seem that bad but also are you ready to get rid of me? Like I'm not sure but yeah they noticed so fast.
Claire Zulkey: Yeah, so I guess like in retrospect, sorry, the kids were, they were troopers though. They were like, they pivoted to the e-learning. They had a teacher who was very magical, the second grader anyway, and she was really positive about it and really fun. And so he rolled with it. So he was a good guy.
I think that's kind of older kid energy as well, but kids are pretty astoundingly resilient, I think, when the shit hits the fan, but I don't want to find out for sure. Yeah, I mean, I was, we were comparing the evacuations to COVID just yesterday because I was like, at least during COVID we were at home, right?
And we still had some kind of semblance of school, so there was some idea of routine. And I just think about my friends who have [00:20:00] kids and there is no school and there's no e-learning because the teachers are evacuated too. And like, where's the school district? I don't know. I mean, I know this is like such a low priority, like when people have lost everything, but I'm like, what are you doing all day?
Like literally that's why I was like, my kids were mentioning taking books. And on the one hand, books are dead weight. On the other hand.
Quinn: What the fuck else are they gonna do?
Claire Zulkey: Yeah, he'll reread the same Far Side book over and over again.
Quinn: It’s perfect. Yeah.
Claire Zulkey: Far Side ages in an interesting way sometimes. But anyway so yeah, I mean, if you can carry your own books, let's bring the books for sure.
That's why I mentioned Uno, something like that.
Quinn: No, a hundred percent. It is. You're right. It's different. COVID is so weird and so hard to explain to kids because you can't see it, right? And you didn’t want to show them pictures of Central Park becoming a morgue. But they can see this. They can go outside. I remember when we'd have fires in LA and they were little and you could just see the smoke and I'd be like, this isn't great. We can't breathe this, et cetera, et cetera.
But it's a different [00:21:00] thing, when it's when you’ve got to leave and then you’ve got to deal with can we go back, have you guys moved? Have you ever moved with the kids?
Claire Zulkey: Only, we moved when I was pregnant with our second one. We moved from a townhouse in Chicago to this house here. And it wasn't, I mean, it was unpleasant for me just because I was having a harder pregnancy at the time, but, we were moving back to my hometown and we moved to a house, that I always think when we sell this house, we'll tell people like we got through this pandemic because of this house, anyway, so nothing traumatic, nothing, our kid doesn't remember our old house.
So, what was it like with you guys when you moved from California?
Quinn: It was interesting because we came to Virginia in late June, 2020, just to get some more space for them. And we wanted to be near my mom and make sure we're helping with her and all that. We were very lucky, but then we just stayed here for a year and did remote school here and all this, and we had always kind of talked outside very loosely about if we [00:22:00] would ever make the move, but it was always like, later, and this, and it's a funny thing, because again growing up here and now, it's a pretty heavily military area. Check in every box of the armed forces, and it's great, there's some really wonderful people, but what's really interesting, and I remembered, and I guess I'd kind of forgotten about is, a third of each of my kids classes leaves every year in a new class, and new parts come in. Because every two, two and a half years, these kids move. And it's really interesting because for most of these kids, they're just born into it. All they know is they move every two years, right? It's not that big of a surprise. And clearly there's pros and cons to that, but that's the life. That's the deal. But it's one thing, to explain to kids as they grew up that they have to move for that and that's, Hey, this is our life and here's the deal, and it's going to be these places and maybe get to go to Germany or some shit, if you're in the army or whatever, air force, it's another thing to move because of mom and dad's work or whatever it is or to be close to family, which is kind of what we did, we were just eventually, [00:23:00] well, kind of ties into this, we moved to be closer to family, but also, so our house in Fryman Canyon, this was 20, 20, 2021. had never had a fire, right? We paid our bills, et cetera, et cetera.
But in a relatively for Los Angeles, like wooded area. I think our property insurance was like $1500, $2000 a year. The house was 2,100 square feet, one story. And after the 2018, 2019 fires, where everything kind of looked like Mordor which was about four or five miles from us. I remember getting a letter in the mail, in the actual mail it said, Hey, your home insurance policy is canceled for fire exposure. And I was like, okay, that's super fucking annoying. And I called this, our insurance broker, she's great. And she was like, I know I've gotten 50 of these calls today. She said, hold on. Cause basically, all the [00:24:00] insurance companies ended up, this is really before I got into this kind of work, the insurance companies are all freaking out.
The governor's going to put a moratorium down and say they can't cancel for fire insurance. We have to figure this out. Because clearly, I mean, five years later this is kind of the future. We have to figure out how to deal with this.
So he did. And a week later, I get a letter in the mail and it says, Actually, we're canceling because of earthquake exposure.
And you're like, fuck you guys.
Claire Zulkey: Oh, ok. It's not funny.
Quinn: No, it was. I was like, fair game, but fuck you. So, all right, great. Gotta go find a new policy. And it was twice as expensive as the last one. So, okay, fine. One year later. Letter in the mail. Hey, whatever the fucking current company was, good news. We're not canceling your policy. We're pulling out of California entirely.
And so you got to find a new one. Called the insurance broker and keep in mind like at that point, for really the first time in 10 years, we had pretty reliable income, paid our bills. No, no problems this [00:25:00] and this. We got turned down by the next nine insurers in order of quality and so finally got a new policy because you have to have one, you can't be on the hook for that much money unless you're obscenely wealthy, which is a whole different thing about what's going on right now. Just, you can't be, that's the whole part of getting a mortgage, right? And so basically the end game was, and this is your answer to part of the reason we moved besides Hey, let's go be near grandma, was our policy over the course of that journey went from about $1,500 to $30,000. But that was like best case scenario. So like this week, a lot of the places that burned, especially in, they call it the Palisades fires, the biggest, well, Eaton fire is pretty big right now, but the Palisades fires are huge. And they called it that because it started in this neighborhood, the Palisades, which was a little village for a long time.
It is now extremely, well, until four days ago, it was an extremely wealthy sort of conclave with kind of like Laurel Canyon, like little huts scattered throughout [00:26:00] with people who never left, hippies that have been there for 80 years. But it's so dry. And it's so cut off that this is a big part, literally just months ago, where State Farm and other companies have started being like, we're out, we can't do it. And this is despite, when I was informally sort of part of this long project between state legislators and insurance companies going, okay, and this is what they're dealing with in Florida and other places as well for hurricane stuff going, insurance companies have to be able to stay in business. So they do have to charge you an appropriate rate for your exposure, but number two is they didn't let them at least in California for fire, forget the fact that with all the rain, 95 percent of California mortgages don't have flood insurance. 95%. You're not allowed to use catastrophic modeling. Basically, you could only model insurance rates based on the past, not in the future, which is unfortunate because that's where we're going.
But they said, if you guys are allowed to use these rates, you're not going to, either it's going to be completely [00:27:00] unaffordable or you're going to pull out everywhere. And the reinsurance markets who back the insurance companies were like, listen, guys, this is getting hazy to back these companies, like we got to figure this out.
They have to be able to pull out of some places. And so what's called the California Fare Plan got involved, which is insurer of last resort and Florida has about 400 different versions of these. It's a clusterfuck. And it's basically been this conversation, battle, agreement, desperate thing in these places that are very exposed to say, we really need you to stay, but we understand for you to stay, you have to be able to charge certain things and you just can't be exposed to certain things.
And so a lot of these places just don't offer it. And there's some really wealthy folks who've said, Maybe I'll just try going without it.
And we'll be the statistic where we escape and a lot of times it works out because these things are relatively anomalies and until they're not right.
And that's this normalization of it a little bit, [00:28:00] not in a, the way we normalize bad shit, like we normalize COVID deaths, this normalization of someone had this ridiculous, but pertinent quote I saw online, I have no idea who to attribute to, which is like climate change is going to be this thing that's viewed through other people's phones until you're the one who's videotaping it, right? And that was very lightly our version with the insurance thing, but that's how it is just in general with affordability of homes, period, in the U.S., whether you own or rent, right? 2024 was the biggest jump in homelessness for families and kids in 25 years or something like that, for a bucket load of reasons, from inflation, to affordability, to all these, the fact that we don't build new housing, all this. And I just have been thinking about that so much over the past 24 hours because, it's one thing to have to say, We gotta move because mom and dad have to work. We wanna be near family. We don't like this weather anymore. It's another thing to say, or our house burned down, you can see we can't [00:29:00] go back there.
Hopefully we can stay in the same city, but maybe not. We gotta go stay with family for a while. That's an easier discussion, because your children can see they can't go back. It's also much harder, because their house is gone. Good luck dealing with that. But on the other hand, in this sort of, we're going to have to start to have some hard discussions about places we can live and places we can't anymore.
What we call adaptation in the climate sense. It's really hard to describe to kids, we can't live here anymore, or maybe your family's lived here for a long time because the sea is coming, or because homes are uninsurable.
Claire Zulkey: Or there's no water, Phoenix is the new.
Quinn: Right, yeah, 100%, fastest growing part of the U.S. for the past 20 years.
It's really, yeah, I don't know. It's really hard. It's really hard to describe. But it is something we're all going to have to get better at and talking to kids about anything without them tuning out is really hard.
Anyways.
Claire Zulkey: No, I think, I mean, just you talking about checking out nine different insurance companies, just yesterday,[00:30:00] I was at the eye doctor and they were throwing out all these different plans for me. And I was like, I wish, I miss being a kid when I could just go stare at all the different frames and have some other grownup figure out this part.
Cause I'm like, I don't, I really want to be like, I don't know. Come on. Like, why are you? And the idea of first of all, speaking English well enough, having the time, having the attention span and understanding to compare, to seek out these insurance companies. Like I wrote an article about finding pet insurance a couple of years ago and it was like the SATs for me.
Cause I was like, you start talking about insurance and I'm out instantly, and I'm like, I shouldn't be allowed to be a parent. Like that should, they should make you take a test to make sure you understand these kinds of things. So to have to explain that to your kid, just navigate it period, is a privilege.
Quinn: Yeah, I mean, a third of the people that, so Medicaid has expanded over the past 20 years because of Obamacare, and [00:31:00] it's been on the states to take this free money from the federal government, and I think there's 9 or 10 states that still haven't, because they're like, fuck the liberals which is insane. And so, of course, the quality of life and life expectancy is way down in those places. But, here were these COVID benefits that made Expanded Medicaid to cover many more people and they've started to expire and there were people who still qualified who didn't before who could have remained on it and a third of them, something like six or seven million people lost it simply because of paperwork. They didn't understand it or they didn't get it done on time or they didn't check the box correctly. And like you're saying as my wife says all the time, like she went to Stanford, she's got two degrees, she's like, if I don't understand this, if I can't fucking do this, then we have a problem.
Claire Zulkey: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You better. I mean, just us, we pay for our own insurance because we work for ourselves and my dad, he's the emeritus general counsel for a big law firm. And that is a lot of what supports us is just that [00:32:00] basis, just trying to find a new GP because mine was retired was just the tiniest bit of entering that morass and confusion of it.
And I was joking, I was like, well, I see why people murder now over this, like that is the frustration. And it makes me, you always, I don't know, I always laugh like thinking about people who are libertarians who are like the cut types who think they know better and it's like, Well, how do you like your firefighters? I think we all saw -
Quinn: The motherfucker who posted yeah, go fuck yourself.
Claire Zulkey: Anyone know a private firefighter? Yeah, I've got a bunch of water here. I've been saving, like, how much do you want for it? And yeah, there's a man, I have a friend, a woman I used to be friends with, I will say, and her husband works in reinsurance and I don't know, I still don't know what he does.
He's like in the mortgage market. And I know that they bought a mansion and they lived somewhere else while they completely gutted this mansion and renovated it. And I'm like, I need to, I really want to know what this money is coming from. I don't think it's good. I don't think anyone makes good money, like money, but [00:33:00] I'm too stupid to understand, so that's probably why he makes the money.
Quinn: Well, they bank on that. Yeah, fully. No, it's so true. Again, I think I made this point last time about my kid having to pick up dog poop and being like, Adults never do chores! And you're like… That's it. It's just chores. And it just, the more you pull the string of how complex it is, the more you discover how complex it is and how it's armed against you again, even when you're white and you have some means and you got healthy kids. It's crazy. And then, and again, you like, I'm like jealous of them when they say this and I'm infuriated at them when they say this but I'm also so thankful that they live in this bubble when I'm, you know, like we had to go to an allergy doctor. It took so long to get this appointment.
So complicated. Who you can go to, who you can't. It's changing because mom and dad's union went on strike last year and so this and this. And they're like, am I gonna miss a pep rally at this allergy appointment? [00:34:00] And you're like, That's it. That's as far as it goes for them. Holy fuck. And you're like hold on to that as long as you can. But also yeah, we’re going to this fucking appointment. Like are you kidding me?
Claire Zulkey: Yeah. No, I, yeah, my parents would be, I remember as a kid, like out of left field, like they'd kind of swoop in and be like, you're so spoiled, and I'd be like, I didn't even know what I was doing, but you know, I have a file folder over here about my parents, like our immigration process from Poland a couple of generations back.
And my dad was this attorney, but he also, he was second generation. Dad's last name was Wilkowski. They changed it. My dad worked as a garbage man and dug ditches, and then, so my son is noting that all of his friends go skiing, and he doesn't. And I'm like, I wanted to be like I just read this article about Lake Tahoe about how they need to just stop letting people come basically for several years. And I don't know. And then in the meantime, and I didn't even appreciate this. I'm still realizing my privilege as I get older and I'm being less demonstrative about it because it’s not 2021 anymore. And nobody needs to hear it, but I heard like the [00:35:00] ultimate, like being rich is not needing to check your bank account before you go to the grocery store.
And I am like, we're rich, like period full stop, and our kids don't know that cause they don't need to know that. But at the same time, I'm like, stop fucking complaining that you don't go skiing or you don't have a phone. You don't have an electric scooter. Like you have a house, you have a bed like when we talk about our storms and the cold and things like that, I'm like, remember the people in the tents next to Lakeshore Drive? Aren't you glad that we have a basement, that we have a roof, that we have this house that's been here for a hundred years, we've been here where trees fell on our house, and it was still standing so, take comfort in it, I'm not trying to make you feel bad, but try to feel safe about it.
Quinn: Right. It's such a fine line and it's really hard when you're like 10 percent tired to not be demonstrative about it. It's funny cause per our discussion at the beginning about drinking and all that stuff, I stopped, what year is it? 20, it's fucking 2025.
Claire Zulkey: This is a hard year to adjust to.
Quinn: I'm trying to do the math. I don't know. Let's say two plus years [00:36:00] ago. Mostly because, getting old. I remember waking up one morning and being like, God, a little hungover, and realizing I hadn't actually drank the night before, and I was like, oh no, this is just how I feel, it's like, well fuck this, I can't, we had three kids under three, like at one point my wife left to go make her TV show for six months in Vancouver, coming back for 12 hours every weekend, and it was amazing, we were so proud of her, but I had a three, four, five year old at home, and I was like, I can't also do this with one arm behind my back, which is a cocktail every night, even with just one. It was a nightmare. And meanwhile, of course, I was still relatively young enough that part of me was like, Oh, when you were in college, you'd have 12 of these just to be able to leave the house at night.
Also not great. But, I'm glad I just eventually, again, just stopped, not out of any particular thing, more than just, I was like, I need to have my fullest faculties in the morning here and period. And also, there was enough in my family life, drinking and arguing that I'm not going to bring that to my kids. I'm a dick enough [00:37:00] as it is, because I got into this work and it's very easy to bring it home and be on a demonstrative high horse all the time.
The homelessness report presented to Congress two weeks ago or something like that. It's like the biggest increase in forever. And then my kids who are great again, caveat Evil Witches, don't have to say it, but they'll be like, Which peanut butter is in this sandwich again?
And I'm like, listen motherfucker. Like, it's that kind of shit that sets me off. Where I do go on the tirades. And they're like, oh my god, he's doing the thing again.
Claire Zulkey: Yeah. Well, that's when you start thinking about hoping for grandkids so that you're like, I hope I look forward to you finally getting this so that you can start going off on your own kids. And then I get to just be the fun parent that I always wanted to be and only show up and give you all my energy and all my love and then disappear.
Quinn: And then fucking bail. Right. No, it seems easy, and yeah, and you don't want to like skip past it all, and they're great the next minute, but again it [00:38:00] is those things where I'm just like, if you had any idea what I dealt with today, you wouldn't be asking which particular peanut butter.
Claire Zulkey: Yeah. No, I think about that a lot. Cause I'm like, I've been feeling, I feel guilty, even though I try not to, just about how, I don't know, not fun or not pleasant, or just, I don't know, just very there I've been and I try to remember that is actually the best gift you can give your kid is just being consistently there and showing up and doing the grind, and they won't appreciate it probably now.
Every once in a while, they will be like, thank you for making dinner or whatever the hell very rarely, but sometimes and yeah, it's again, I feel like you always hear older people saying this and then all of a sudden It's you where you're like, oh, how can I be so tired and boring and yet also still remember so deeply like these little indignant moments and heartbreak moments from high school and college and that is so far gone, but also that was a part of me and I wish I had a phrase that was, like, [00:39:00] end with poignant wrap up comment here. I'm always searching for it. I don't have it.
Quinn: Well, it doesn't exist. It's funny. I again, I had to have a bit of a reckoning with myself and my wife had it with me. I remember again, getting into this work, never having really been too faced with any of those kinds of challenges, health wise, homelessness, this or that, climate wise, whatever it might have been. But when you really start to get into it, you realize how tough it can be. And I remember at one point she came home and I was like hiding under a blanket. She's like, listen, if you're gonna do this shit, you gotta figure out how to pull it together. Also you can't just be asshole dad. And so I wrote down these, my little productivity system, which is a little insane, which is fine.
I just moved to a new software for the first time in 10 years and I'm excited and terrified. I wrote these little rules down for myself and they're not, of course, the only ones. But I try to read them in the morning so that I'm not shitty dad for the 45 minutes or two and a half hours before their [00:40:00] bus comes when I'm immediately thinking about what I gotta do. Or at night. And the ones I have written down are, of course you'll appreciate it. It says three guiding rules and then there's four of them. It says whenever possible connect with others and my kids and partner. With enthusiasm strive to create fun and delight for them. Three, this is really, I guess, lean into each moment and encounter expecting magic and four show up.
And four is the one we talk about all the time. And I'll read these and then immediately yell at them about their breakfast because, but I'm like, if I didn't read them, would I have yelled at them more? I don't know, but I made these for a reason and made it a repeating thing each morning is the first thing that shows up. And I'm still just like, goddamn, I barely got through it. And again like, we're not gonna lose our house anytime soon. That's just to get through the day. And so, I don't know, man.
Claire Zulkey: It's funny cause my husband's always mad that the kids are grouchy and they're [00:41:00] taciturn, at the end of the day when he picks them up and he sees the little preschoolers running out and they’re like, mommy, and I'm, I don't know, I guess I just accept it.
Cause I sort of feel the same way as we're all in transition. We're all kind of grouchy. We're all sort of thinking about how there's just kind of a grinding, boring night ahead. And I remember we have a list somewhere of like ways to get your kid to talk about the end of the school day.
And I'm like. Let's just all be whatever. And stop expecting the best of us during our least best time, and sometimes I'm like, am I defeatist? Have I just quit or am I just realistic? So do you jazz them up and get juiced up and get them talking at the end of the day?
Quinn: No, I mean it's really, what you're basically talking about is like expectation setting, which we've really tried to reconcile with over the past few years for a variety of important and timely reasons, is communication and expectation setting for each of us and all of us as a large machine and with the grandmas who, again, our cheat code is we've both [00:42:00] grandmas down the street.
It's ridiculous. But, there just has to, those things have to go part and parcel but again, and I'm batting 50 percent on it at best, but that, am I being defeatist or am I just recognizing like these guys probably gave their best earlier today, like I'm not going to get it, you know, there's some self awareness there, right?
Because you're asking them to like revisit when they got off the bus and they're like, I'm done, you know, or I just want to go home and read my book or whatever it is. And it's a funny thing, because I can say that now, but then they're going to come home in, what, three hours? How was school? Fine.
And I'm going to be like, Motherfucker, you gotta give me more than fine.
And it's literally what we're saying, which is, they're like who needs to know that? Like, fine, alright, let me tell you about fucking art class.
Claire Zulkey: Think about your own day. What are you going to sell them? Well, I recorded a podcast and I did some laundry and I did the same workout I always [00:43:00] did.
And I thought about how I should probably quit my newsletter because I have nothing good to say. And I blow dried my hair for the first time in 2025, like they don't care.
And that's not interesting.
Quinn: Right. And they're also like, that's so sad. And you're like, yeah, no, I'm aware of that. And that's every day. That's a good day.
That's a good, that's a win. So yeah, I don't know. I don't want to say I like try to jazz them up. I'm the dickhead who starts like dimming the lights in our house at five 30 at night because I'm like, everyone's got to get ready for bed.
And they're like, what? We have swim practice that doesn't start for two hours. What are you doing? I'm like, well, I'm ready. I want a little bit, but I do try to, yeah, you're right. Like I try to recognize it. I mean, again, like I take a gummy before I come home so that it hits halfway through dinner so that I'm not a dick for the whole dinner again, there's both self awareness, which I guess I need to extend to them more. But again, there's also like the middle schooler, who he'll say, how's school? [00:44:00] Fine. What'd you do? I don't know. Not much. And then he is pretty open and articulate when you're like, you just seem like you got something on your mind. He's like everything. It's middle school. Everything is on my mind and an existential crisis all the time.
And I will say, I don't yearn for that. I do remember that and did not deal with it well at all.
Claire Zulkey: Yeah, no, it's a shitty time and that's why I'm like you and I guess I know that you can't dig them out of it. And also, maybe it's another topic or same topic, but like my kid is, again, he's a little bit online. But it could be a lot worse. I feel like he's probably not getting as much FOMO, as much bullying as much, I mean, they do get sometimes from us, I think I'm gonna, I started writing in my head a piece about what are you frantically warning your kids about now. And so we were telling the boys about, Oh, we're talking about the Cybertruck blowing up, because Cybertrucks are, we always point them out on the road.
Cybertrucks are like the new punch buggies. P. S. I don't allow punch buggy in the car, because I'm so sick of them arguing over who saw it first, and so it's not allowed.
Quinn: It’s so o fun until it's definitely not, and you're like, No, this game's terrible.
Claire Zulkey: Yeah, sometimes I'll hear one of them say, nevermind, mom's here and I know what, they're talking about. I'm like, thank you. But anyway, so we're talking with the Cybertruck guy and how he had this manifesto, I don't know if you saw anything about, about, return to masculinity. And so I started saying, I was like warning them about control of women and control of women's bodies.
And then I started talking about Andrew Tate and then my husband's like and [00:46:00] your friends who started Prime. And they're the same. And I'm like, I don't know if they're exactly the same. And then my, the seventh graders like rolling his eyes and he's like, why are you going off about this again?
And I'm like, I don't know. Like we just start to unspool basically. And then I'm like, I don't send pictures of your penis to anyone. And he's like, why would I ever do that?
Quinn: What? Are we starting? We just wanted to play Punch Buggy. What the fuck, mom?
Holy shit. No, but it's both like you, it's cliche these stages that are like expected and needed where you're supposed to explain these things to them as they're exposed to them like, Oh wait, like you were talking about the DARE, you know, like that got under our skin and Roblox seems fine until it's a fucking nightmare.
And the kids are just like, I'm just trying to play a block game. And you're like, it's not, they're going to take you. And they're like, fuck. And you're like, look, here's the one statistic. And you want to do that, but you're also like, when else are you going to do it except at night [00:47:00] when you have five minutes with them and they're trying to unwind and you're trying to unwind, and your like here let me ruin it for you.
Claire Zulkey: It's like our son was like making a video with his friend about, they were making fun of streamers and they're like, yo, click here for sub, like doing it for the subs and they're just having a good time. But then my husband and I immediately fast forward to kids getting red pilled.
Because like you click on some ad about, weightlifting or whatever. And then before you know it, you're, you know, uh,
Quinn: Andrew Tate.
Claire Zulkey: Yeah, you are Andrew Tate. You are sex trafficking. And so, yeah, and my son's for some reason, don't enjoy that. They don't appreciate the wisdom. I mean, remind me to tell you my N word story for another day,
[00:48:00] just in terms of when you think you've told your kid explicitly what not to do, because as a woke parent, you're like, this is the kind of kid I'm going to raise.
And then they're like, Oh, you want me to do exactly the thing that you told me not to do?