WEBVTT
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Have you ever wondered what your life would be like after you've hit your rock bottom?
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Would you try to dig your way out, maybe get back to the surface?
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This week on Unfuck Your Life with Tog Chesterfield, Tog shares their first attempt to try and
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unfuck their life.
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It all started with starters and led to a rather public smell event.
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Welcome to Unfuck Your Life with Tog Chesterfield on 101.7 FM The Grack.
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I'm Tog Chesterfield, a recently unemployed, single, and sober 42-year-old trying to pick
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up the pieces and unfuck my life after I hit rock bottom.
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I'm taking you along as I try new things and attempt to embrace life, no matter what happens
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along the way.
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Unfuck Your Life with Tog Chesterfield.
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So welcome to the show.
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It's now 5.01 PM and I'll be with you here for your commute, or while you prepare your
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dinner, or while you watch your kid play chess at a grade three competition that they're
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definitely going to lose.
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Anyways, I'm your uninvited guest for this evening.
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Tonight I'll be bringing you a behind-the-scenes look at the great sourdough starter incident
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of mine.
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It's all how I'm trying to unfuck my life doing these kinds of things to try to lift
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my life off of rock bottom.
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Because honestly, rock bottom is the worst.
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Rock bottom basically looks like my couch.
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I've owned this couch for 13 years now, I guess.
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I got it at Crate and Barrel because they had one that had some kind of moisture barrier
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in it.
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I saw it advertised and I needed it for a cat I lived with back then, Kevin.
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Kevin whizzed all over everything, so I needed that moisture barrier in my couch because
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it included couches, his whizzing territory.
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I went into Crate and Barrel and I told the nice person in the couch section that I wanted
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something Kevin could pee on.
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And she tilted her head and squinted at me really hard for a while, probably trying to
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tell if I was serious or trying to have a laugh or something.
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She sussed out that I was serious and that Kevin was real, and a cat, you know, Kevin
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wasn't a roommate or something.
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Anyways, then she pointed at one of the couches.
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It was a couch her daughter had bought because she had really small kids and it had that
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moisture barrier, I don't know, drop juice or something on it.
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Yeah, my daughter got this one because she has really small kids and they're really messy.
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I guess it might stop urine too.
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Sold.
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Don't you want to try sitting on it first?
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Oh, okay.
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Still sold.
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So Kevin tore up one end of this couch and christened every cushion right away.
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And then Kevin died a year later.
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But here it is.
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It's handling my second bout with major depression, the one that layers on top of my pretty persistent
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one.
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Um, but this time it's whiz-free, but it's also Kevin-free.
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I love that end of the shredded couch when you can't see it, but I'm pointing at it.
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And I really miss Kevin too.
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My old flattened couch is great though, actually.
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It's real comfortable if you just mash the crushed cushion foam just right.
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It's perfect for depression since the seats are as wide as a twin bed.
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Basically you can sleep all night and then come out here and ruminate all day on the
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thing and barely move a muscle.
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You could pee on it too, but I don't.
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Which is good because I've had to take on another new roommate now that I'm renting
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out my old office to help pay my mortgage because I lost my job and everything.
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Anyways, Lance Dick, who made a guest appearance on last week's show, my old roommate now.
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Lance left after he decided to open a saltine shop, a really fancy one in East Grackleton,
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and he wanted to live a little bit closer to work.
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So now it's Eaton Evergreen.
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Eaton has taken my old office now.
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I should get back to that sourdough story.
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That's what we're all here for, I guess, but, uh, actually we'll be back after the
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break with that story.
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This is Un-Fuck Your Life with Tog Chesterfield.
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So back to the show and how I'm trying to un-fuck my life.
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I'm Tog Chesterfield.
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So in August I took that sourdough workshop.
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I took it online from an amazing sourdough artist called Pastel Pumpernickel.
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Apparently that's her real name and not a foodie stage name or anything.
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She's known as the best sourdough artist for those designs that she puts on the top loaf
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of the bread, making these really, really decorative loaves.
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Something about the texture of the crust and how that texture lends itself to the intricacy
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options for the loaf design.
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But the talent most amazing to me of Pastel's is she seems to have sorted out the best sourdough
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starter recipe for these loaves.
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And I had this grand idea that I could start a business selling sourdough starter.
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It keeps growing, the starter.
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You can feed it scraps.
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Maybe I could make a special sourdough starter and sell it to local bakers is what I thought.
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And I'd work with my hands and that would really help un-fuck my life.
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That was the idea anyways.
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At the workshop, Pastel talked about how beautiful starter can be.
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Every sourdough starter is unique.
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It can be active or sluggish.
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A personality.
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You might even make some beautiful, what I call hooch, which is clear and yellow and
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But Pastel didn't divulge any secrets about her own starter during the workshop, which
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was a shame.
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I was fascinated by the sourdough starter.
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It's alive and it grows from the organisms in the air and your environment.
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You have to get the feeding and temperature and the humidity and water just right.
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The starter is the most fascinating part of a loaf.
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It lives.
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It's alive.
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It has history.
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You can pass it on and you can grow it endlessly.
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It seemed like an excellent thing to grow business around.
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My product just keeps creating itself and it doesn't even take up a ton of space.
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And I needed that space for my new tenants after all.
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And maybe if I do good, I'll be able to take my office space back here in the townhouse.
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So I don't have to be recording the radio show in my kitchen or the bedroom.
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But after the workshop, I was inspired.
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What if I incorporated some flavors or some kind of essence into the starter?
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Maybe lavender or patchouli would make a loaf worthy of a student of pastel pumpernickel.
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I looked some of the things up that you can feed it and you can do that to add nutrition
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or flavor.
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Things that wouldn't kill the starter.
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Things like figs or potatoes or even beans.
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I started feeding my test starters with a bunch of different add-ins, ideas I found from
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the internet, of course.
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I figured out the perfect amounts on the perfect feeding schedule.
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And eventually, I created a sourdough starter that turns out had a pretty unique smell after
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adding those lima beans.
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Beans I recently got from bulk bins, 20% off your first purchase if you mention me, TOG.
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I let the starter do all of that fermentation and I thought the scent was rather unique.
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Very decorative smell-wise.
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But the smell kind of took over my townhouse.
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Hell, I couldn't even smell Kevin's pee on my couch anymore.
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I always got a whiff of it when I sunk into a cushion because it, well, I found out that
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that moisture barrier didn't really work too well.
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But now the townhouse, it was all lima bean.
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Turned out, fermentation from the starter, it smelled a lot like Kevin's whiz, actually,
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after it got at those lima beans.
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But my starter, it made the best loaf.
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I even went around and got a loaf from Buttertub Bakery and a loaf from the place across the
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street that they compete with, Butterside Up.
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I discovered that the loaves I made with my starter were just as good as theirs, I thought.
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So I started sending out some samples to Buttertub and Butterside Up and I also made a small
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website to sell the starter locally.
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I sent the starter around using Grackle Run, which is the town's food delivery service
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here, as most of you probably know.
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And that's when the smell event started.
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I first heard about it on WBOT 1230 AM, actually.
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Tonight's top story, Grackle Run's newest delivery specialist reports that his car has
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been taken over by the smell of what local smell experts suggest might be cat urine.
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More after the break.
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Yeah, I knew that smell.
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I knew it really well.
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And that was the same kid who picked up my first batch of starters.
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But a ton of new orders started pouring in from the bakeries and I started to deliver
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them myself in my Ford Transit.
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I think the bakers didn't really complain on their end because of the superior loaves
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that they were producing with my starter and they got into some kind of weird competition
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with each other across the street to see who could make or sell the best loaves.
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The bakeries kept ordering because of the loaf quality, but eventually they learned that
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if the customer left their loaf out too long at home, the loaf would start to smell, well,
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like Kevin's whiz.
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And this started to lead to some very critical Facebook posts and call-ins to WBOT 1230 AM
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about, well, about urine smelling bread.
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Turns out that the Grackle Run kid with the smelly car, well, he was using his dad's,
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the town mayor's, 93 Toyota Supra to make the deliveries.
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And that smell lingered in the back and it reminded him of his recently passed cat, Flapjack.
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And that's why he banned selling my starter within the town limits.
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Oh, it's time for the weather.
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Get ready for the weather.
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Tonight's weather for your drive at five with Un-Fuck Your Life is brought to you by Dawn's
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Dodge Neon dealership on the I-47.
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Tonight Grackleton is expecting an irregular pattern from the West that is going to push
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bands of rain across Grackleton West.
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So if you're in Grackleton West, grab your umbrellas.
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And that's it for the weather on your drive at five from Dawn's Dodge Neon on the I-47.
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Turn south after the rest stop at the Neon Dodge Neon sign.
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Oh, I know that one.
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You just learned all about the weather.
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Driving.
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Driving.
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Driving in the car.
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Un-Fuck Your Life with Todd Chesterfield.
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So making that smelly starter was my first pivot back from rock bottom.
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My first attempt to really make a go at life after everything fell apart.
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It got me off the couch, got me experimenting.
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It got me being creative again.
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It got me feeling creative again.
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It also got me in the kitchen for the first time in a long time.
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I literally started from scratch with a loaf from scratch.
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And the whole thing, it fell flat or I was catching some bad luck or whatever.
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But I tried at least.
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The first thing I tried in a really long time.
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And after the potato incident, I sure needed a reminder that I still had a restart in me.
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Some creativity left in me and I could be useful for something.
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Even if that something smelled like heaven.
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Excuse me.
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Hi, Todd.
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It's Eaton.
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Yeah.
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No, I remember.
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Oh, cool.
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Anyways, I just have a quick question.
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Sorry to bother you here.
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I was just wondering, you said that I should take half the fridge.
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I was just wondering if you meant that I take the top half, the top two shelves or the bottom
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two shelves or the left half.
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I don't know how many inches it is or the right half.
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Yeah, I said left, right half.
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Or, yeah, if you meant the top.
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And I was just wondering, it's full of potatoes.
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What do you want?
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Do you want me to move the potatoes somewhere?
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Yeah, I'll be down in a second.
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I'll move them for you.
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I'm just finishing the radio show.
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Oh, thank you.
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I have it.
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Have a good show.
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Have a good show.
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Anyway, yeah, so I guess that's it for this week's Un-Fuck Your Life with Tog Chesterfield
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here on 101.7 FM The Grat.
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Stay tuned for Canning Corner at 6 for how to preserve small plums.
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You have been listening to Un-Fuck Your Life with Tog Chesterfield, a Stereo Forest production.
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This episode was written, directed, edited, produced, and all voices were by Jen DeHaan.
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You can find all show notes and sign up to get notified about new episodes on StereoForest.com.