I did this public ramble for everyone. Patrons are also getting a bonus ramble for patrons only that's all about my experience of being a first time mom who'd never even babysat a baby without the mom more than a room away. Cody's Blog Post Estimating the Air Speed Velocity of An Unladen Swallow Humor in the Time of Coronavirus Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/twomomsdaydrinking)...
Warning: If your ovaries explode at the sound of a happy new baby, you're gonna wanna grab a towel before starting this episode, and be prepared to clean that shit up afterward. Because oh my GAWD. Baby sounds abound in this episode. Love love love. Okay. Now, on with the show. Brittany Ion had her first child, a boy called Thane, in September of 2019. And she's loving it. I tried to find something that Brittany doesn't like about motherhood. I tried hard . Like, I pushed. Hard, I pushed. I came...
A little bonus ramble on generational cohorts from The Silent Generation through Millennials, The Great Gatsby, Reality Bites, and fun facts about Ben Stiller. Here's a link to the study I referenced toward the end of the episode, and I was right the first time, it was published in April of 2019. Here's a link to the Reality Bites trailer, which I sincerely hope you're only visiting on your way to (ideally) rent Reality Bites. On VHS. And a VHS player, probably. Unless you're a hoarder. Because ...
Emily Wachter has been providing mental health services to children and families for over then years, and switched to exclusively providing Early Intervention services a few years ago. Like Shanell (Episode 12), Emily is another person who specializes in development and behavior, but she works primarily with rural kids, and kids are only eligible for her services from birth to age three. Emily is also very different from Shanell in a lot of ways, so her perspective on parenting - both her person...
Someone accused me today of sounding like I'm figuring out audio editing, and of being a very good interviewer. I'd like to publicly dispute that charge. I'm literally learning audio as I go. I'm teaching myself a brand new skill. And that's important for you to know. Because I'll bet you want to learn something yourself, or are interested in something but aren't sure how to start. Gather 'round, kids. I'm going to tell you some important shit: you don't have to know what you're doing to start d...
In this episode, Behavior Specialist and School Psychologist Shanell Daman discusses her struggle with infertility and miscarriage, the cognitive dissonance that comes with being a child psychologist whose son has been in therapy for a couple of years now, and the ongoing struggle of managing dual relationships with other moms. Shanell is my very best friend in the whole world, and you've heard me talking about her on numerous episodes. We had our first children - my twins and her son - within t...
This is just a little ramble I did tonight about the story of my grandfather's death, and how I came to collect the story formally. You can hear part two of the audio that made me want to tell the story orally at Gaelfore Audios on YouTube. You can read the column I wrote, containing the story of my grandfather's death, here . The photo for this bonus content's cover art is of my grandfather at work, at Ellwood National Forge. Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/twomomsdaydrinking)...
Frank Williams is freaking awesome. Frank moved to Warren, Pa., in 2018 and shortly afterward I met him when I was a reporter for the local newspaper. I had no idea Frank would become one of my good friends, that his wife Ashley would become my soul sister/hetero lifemate, nor that our kids would love each other. But all of those things are true. Frank and his family experienced two house fires, nearly a year to the day apart. He's also biracial, and raising biracial kids in a very - air quotes ...
This is the transition between the formal interview I did for Episode 11, which just went live on Patreon tonight, and the bonus material for that episode that will be released to patrons only within a day or so. If you're diggin' the show so far, or wanna hear Frank's episode on surviving two house fires in two years and raising biracial kids in a culturally traditional small town, or if you'd just like to get your fresh episodes a week fresher, visit Patreon and consider becoming a Patron for ...
Quick things to be aware of: 1. As soon as his interview starts to fade in, after the intro, there are two things going on that might bother you if you've got sensory sensitivities. There was a fire in the fireplace so there's some audible crackling, and I included audio of Aaron opening a can of Guinness, because I liked what it added to the atmosphere, but you may want to just turn it down until about fifty seconds in. It happens again about 1/3 of the way through the interview again. So just ...
So I wanted to go through and do some updates to Mandie's episode and I had planned to have this episode out earlier than this but at least it's here now. In part II of Episode 8, Mandie talks about starting a support group for special needs parents in her local area. Her group, Heroes, has also hosted three sensory-sensitive events for kids and families in Warren in the past year. Mandie talks through the process of recognizing a need in her community, developing programs to meet that need, the...
Right up front: the ending is rough, I was super stuffed up so I was doing a lot of mouth breathing, and the most important part: YOU CAN HEAR MY ROOSTER CROWING AT 2:25. Okay, this is a really long episode, and I don't know exactly what, if anything to cut because I had fun listening to it all. That being said, I have some bonus content from as far back as Mary Hetrick that needs to be mixed and uploaded, and I'm going to be doing a ramble here in the next week or so. So we'll see. This was a s...
Mandie Englert is raising two sons from her first marriage, and has custody of a third son that she's raised since he was three months old alongside her ex-fiance...until her ex-fiance fell into a cycle of addiction, recovery, and relapse. "I was with * through one-and-a-half relapses," said Mandie at the start of her interview. She goes on to describe how she got herself out of an abusive marriage with *'s help, and how their relationship felt bifurcated. Read the full show notes here! Support ...
Faye Smith worries about the examples she's setting for her sons - ages 9, 10, and 14. Faye is working on her Master's degree in Psychology and hopes to one day open a 24-hour peer support agency in Warren, Pa. But she also gets irritated, and has a hard time hiding her frustrations from her sons. She worries, she says, that they're taking in all of her bad habits and not enough of her good ones. But as she reveals throughout our conversation, Faye is setting some great examples for her sons as ...
For those of you with sensitivity to cussing, this is probably not going to be the bonus content for you. Fair warning. Every interview is a little different, but sometimes I get a subject whose personality is just perfectly matched with mine and Faye was one. In this clip, Faye shares probably the best family story I've gotten so far, about her son pooping on the neighbor's lawn and how she didn't take his reaction laying down but, rather, parlayed the interaction into an opportunity to threate...
Editing audio for Episode 8, with Mandie Englert, who talks about leaving an abusive marriage, trying to love the man she intended to marry through his drug addiction, and raising three special needs kids (one adopted). During the mixing session I came up with this spectacular little teaser clip and couldn't help but share it with you early. Be sure to tune in for Episode 8, which will revolve around the loss that comes with incarceration. But, for now, let this whet your whistles. She's saying ...
During the week before I did this interview, a mom messaged me on Facebook. We’d worked together at the factory where I was working when I got married, and then pregnant, and then fired. “I’m not happy,” she said to me, going on to explain that while she had a degree in teaching, she wasn’t feeling fulfilled as an elementary school teacher. She enjoyed it, she said, but it wasn’t her passion, and that lack of passion was manifesting as a distinct sense of ennui in her life. She and I did a bit o...
Early in the project I was talking through my ideas with my kids. They don’t know a lot about content creation or marketing, but they’re pretty honest and they tell me what they really think. They asked if they could be on an episode and I thought, of course! It’s a parenting podcast, but one with a broad interest in parenting as an enormous concept. And, while we focus mostly on moms, we’re bringing other demographics – dads, grandmas, non-parents, foster/adoptive parents – into the mix as well...
In this bonus clip, which represents the type of extra content patrons of Two Moms Day Drinking receive weekly, Destiny Greenawalt discusses the counterintuitive fact that breastfeeding is difficult, for mothers and for babies. She also describes how she donated over 18,000 ounces of breastmilk to mothers and babies in need across the state of Pennsylvania. Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/twomomsdaydrinking)
Destiny Greenawalt had her first child eight years ago. That was three years after she started the job that she’s had for the past decade. Destiny’s job is entry-level. If it’s not minimum wage – which in the state of Pennsylvania is set at the Federal Minimum Wage of $7.25 per hour – it’s pretty damn close. The United States set that minimum wage in 2009 and Pennsylvania is one of 21 states – less than half of the states in the nation – that mirrors the federal numbers. According to an article ...
Kerry Abbott’s story is like a lot of women’s stories when it comes to abuse. But Kerry did something really cool that I wish I’d been able to do, and something that I think made the difference for her. “I knew, at some point, I was going to be able to get out of this.” Kerry lived nearly 20 years with a man who would push her off their porch, hit her in places where the marks he left wouldn’t be seen, and leave her stranded in their rural home, which she hadn’t wanted to move into, without a ca...
Emily Eggleston is the mother to two sons, Owen (9) and Eli (7). She’s the wife of Warren County Commissioner Jeff Eggleston. She homeschools. She’s a stay-at-home mom. She runs a Facebook group to foster relationships between local families whose children have special needs. And, she’s an alcoholic. Twelve years into sobriety, Emily sits down with me to talk about her addiction, her rock bottom, and her gradual but life-changing recovery from alcohol abuse. In the first episode of Two Moms Day ...
In this episode, I go through my own story, and give the background that is the genesis of this project. My husband’s arrest wrecked me, and I spent way too long trying to turn that story into a book-length nonfiction project, which never got off the ground. I realized, finally, that the story of my trauma was only the genesis of a larger project, and not an independent project in and of itself. I wanted to find a crossroads between creative nonfiction and journalism. I wanted to gather first-pe...
