Amanda Uhle (on hoarding)

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Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert Experts on Expert.

Today we have Amanda Yulian,

who's a journalist and a non-fiction writer.

She is the executive director and publisher of McSweeney's.

She's been publishing all kinds of very reputable publications.

Fun stuff.

She's a successful writer.

Yes.

But she has an incredible memoir called Destroy This House.

For people who say it a different, some say correct way, memoir.

Great.

That's what I think I said, but clearly I didn't, or you wouldn't be correcting me.

But her story is an incredible one.

Her mother was a hoarder, and her father...

was this incredibly charismatic guy who had fortunes won and lost.

And

it's a riveting

dysfunction.

Yeah.

And it's wild.

It's a wild ride.

And we were really interested in the whole thing, but the hoarding is

pretty horny for hoarding.

Yeah, we like that.

We like to talk about hoarding.

Please enjoy Amanda Yuli.

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Dave Eckers wrote What is the What?

Yes.

Yes.

So I work with Dave and I heard yesterday that you're a fan of What is the What?

I don't know how I didn't know that.

I know Dave Eckers and we got this really cool magazine.

See the lunchbox?

It's a magazine.

I brought you a copy of a McSweeney's issue.

Do you know what McSweeney's is?

So I know McSweeney's, but I don't, right?

So

I know McSweeney's.

You hear McSweeney's.

Do you know McSweeney's?

I didn't, didn't, but I mean, but I know it.

And then I was reading about it.

And you and Dave co-founded that?

Dave is the founder.

Oh, he's the founder.

Yeah.

He started it in 98.

I started working with Dave 20 years ago.

I want to get to that chronologically speaking.

But look how cool that is.

Wait, I need to find out.

Did you bring this?

I brought it, and I brought you author baseball cards, too.

They're totally.

Oh, my God.

You can open it.

The 74th.

issue of McSweeney's because you guys do a quarterly

it has a fun name quarterly timothy mcsweeney's quarterly concern Concern.

I love it.

It's a journal.

It's a journal, so everyone is different.

I think about a year ago we published this one, our 74th.

And

inside there's some

literature, right?

There's new fiction in a paperback, but we did author cards.

And who designed this clever...

That's Art Spiegelman on that one.

We're going to learn a lot today.

I know I'm sorry.

Let's talk.

Please remove this cardboard spacer.

No, I don't do what I'm told.

Oh, my God.

Please get rid of it.

If you can.

Ooh.

yes author trading cards so cute we got some more too over there yeah so we published this last year and people loved the cards so much that we started just printing more so we can collect them all ah i love collecting yeah you've you done tobias wolfe does he have a card i love tobias wolf's books but thank you for reminding me that he does not have a card okay so that's on my list and then the other one you just got me

raymond carver she got me an original

gosh i love raymond carver too signed original press Raymond Carver.

Does he have a Carver?

I'm so sorry.

We have missed both.

I'm going to assume for obvious reasons Bukowski doesn't have a card.

Don't have Bukowski either yet.

Okay.

No, I want to guess.

But wait, I don't necessarily have all of them memorized, so you will catch me at some point.

This is right for the fact.

Yeah.

John Brandon, handsome, tall,

illiterate.

Is one of our favorites.

We've published every one of his novels.

I think we've published seven of John's books.

Oh, really?

He's prolific.

He's prolific

and the greatest.

What does it say about him?

So author stats.

How many pages they've published?

Where are they?

It's so cool.

I love it.

It is.

I love this idea.

I want to steal it for something.

Well, yeah, like we could do this randomly.

Love

it?

No, we almost had her before all fours, but then it didn't work out.

And then she got very busy guys.

She's a busy person.

Yeah.

So we published one of her books, possibly her first book at McSweeney's.

We publish like 10 books a year.

We do this magazine and we have two other magazines and then we have a humor site.

Nice.

A lot of people know us that way.

Through the humor site.

That was so cool.

Do you think that you guys could publish an armchair deck and it's all of our guests?

Oh, yes.

We're coming up to a thousand.

You're just kind of delegating logistical

because you would have to like give her all the guests details.

Well, I'm going to let her find the details.

Oh, yeah.

You just let us do all the work.

But you guys do such a good job.

Why would I?

I try to copy that.

Well, this is adorable.

I really like it.

I hope you like it.

You can throw away the spacer as well.

You can keep it in there or whatever you want to do.

It's a good exercise for me to follow directions, which I'm bad at.

We'll put it up here and we'll display it.

I'm wondering if throughout this interview, I'll remind you of your father at all.

If you will remind me of that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

He was tall, right?

He's very tall.

He played college sports.

He played football for the Florida Gators.

Oh, okay.

and in high school in Miami, he did basketball and football.

He was a big athlete.

He was charismatic.

Very much.

As are you.

Obsessed with the dollar.

As am I.

Money is a big part of the book.

Yeah.

Yeah, very big part of the book.

You know, I couldn't help but think, yeah, if I don't choose this, I'm probably just also this figure that's wandering around Michigan with too big of a personality.

Could have easily gone in this direction, I feel like.

Yeah.

In some ways, my dad could easily have gotten that big break and been someone else.

He was trying things.

We're going to talk about your book, Destroy This House.

I guess the headline description of your book that I read that got me interested in having you on was that your mother was a hoarder.

And I think I have great interest in how that presents itself.

How does it evolve?

What is it like to live with it?

What's the psychology behind it?

That's all very interesting to me.

Okay, your book starts with...

Describe mom and dad when you're born.

They've been together a few years when you're born.

They were together a few years.

They got together, I think, in 75, and I was born in 78.

We're about the same age.

Yeah, I'm three years older than you.

So mom and dad have been together for three years.

What did mom and dad want to do at that point?

That's such a great question, a question I've never even asked myself.

My mom really did want to have a family, but she had started out interested in fashion design, which itself was such an inspired and almost strange choice.

She grew up in a very tiny town in rural Indiana and in 1969 just decided fashion was her thing, applied and got into Pratt in Brooklyn.

And just like went to New York.

Kind of a badass thing to do.

So she's really creative.

By the time I was born, her interest in fashion and clothes was coming out not as her designing and making her own things, but as her shopping kind of

accumulating.

Curating a collection.

Having a lot of fabric that was one day.

going to be something.

Gosh, I can so relate.

It is relatable.

You're right.

There's almost an angst that you're not a designer and that your next best thing is to appreciate it.

Also, just if you're shopping and you see something that you think is beautiful, I was at a store and they were these bandanas and they were so pretty.

And I was like, I don't need this at all.

I don't wear bandanas.

You're not a bandana person.

There's absolutely no reason for me to have this, but I have to check out with these two things in my hand.

I have to have.

These are coming home with me.

Yeah.

And I did think, what is going on that I absolutely have to have these things that I know are useless to me?

And then I did give them to your kids, actually.

Oh, okay.

So now, because they're bandana girls.

Okay.

They are cowboys.

So in that case, I found a way.

But it's a little rush, the shopping.

It's like, oh, this is a thing.

I can buy this and I can be different once I have it or once I buy it.

So I think that that was going on with my mom.

But she was somehow an engineer at IBM.

Oh, before then.

Yes, she was.

This is the most fascinating, I think, because she was quite a rare offering for a female IBM engineer.

Only woman engineer in the state of Indiana.

This is 1974-ish when she got this job.

Didn't work out in fashion school in Brooklyn.

So she came back to Indiana and got this job.

And she was like, I don't want to be a secretary.

I don't want to type.

I want to fix typewriters.

And she learned how to do it.

And she was their person.

There were a lot of men doing that job.

People would stand around and watch her repair these things because it was such a novelty that this woman was so mechanical.

And she had a pager.

I I remember her describing this.

And they would page her around Indianapolis, and she'd go to an office and fix their typewriters.

Wow.

She was doing so well that they moved everyone, right?

IBM moved my mom with her job to West Virginia.

I guess they needed more engineers, maybe more women engineers.

And at that point, mom was the breadwinner, obviously, because daddy at that time was selling books door-to-door.

He had at that time, and this is so wonderful because my book is published by Simon Schuster.

My dad sold Simon Schuster paperbacks at gas stations.

You You know, like in the 70s, they had these spinning racks of books.

Yes.

And my dad would go, and he was so good at talking to people.

He could sell you and me and everyone anything.

And he kept doing that his whole life.

But then you guys got to West Virginia, and this is no slight on West Virginians.

Those carousels at gas stations didn't really exist.

Less so in West Virginia.

Fewer readers of fiction and novels.

At least in 1979.

So he was a football player before you said that.

Yeah, he didn't finish college.

Okay.

So he did some football, did lots of things, dropped out of college.

And at the time he was in Miami, he worked at a nightclub.

He was booking bands.

I haven't counted how many jobs my father had.

My mom did too, but my dad had so many.

I almost think there's a predictable pattern for people who are quite good at things really quickly.

They never get great at anything.

They don't master anything, but they get good enough to get the recognition of that.

And then they get bored really easy and they got to switch it up and go get some more recognition for some other thing.

He was never afraid to try things.

So he would just jump in and he was selling hotel rooms and then he was selling books.

When he ended up in Indianapolis at first, he was totally homeless.

When he and my mom met, he had nowhere to live.

Everything he owned was in a Tom and Cannon shoebox.

And they met at a party and he came home with his shoebox.

And that was

when he left one guy's couch to her.

No.

Is your mom someone who like really wants to take care of people?

Because that's a big thing to take in.

A guy with a shoebox, yeah, come live in, you know, that's a personality, unless he's tall and gregarious and a blast.

And it's literally not even till months later where you realize, oh, wow, he came over and never left.

And now he's still here.

I can see that.

I think he was

like, it was more like that.

This guy's amazing.

He's incredible.

Wait, where was he living before?

And where's the rest of his stuff?

Maybe you're a little deep.

Okay.

Yeah, I think you're channeling my dad.

Now, how does he get into janitorial supplies liquid soap dispensers because he's also like an armchair inventor idea guy always inventing always starting new things so they eventually moved they were in philadelphia which is where i was born and then my dad got this job at johnson wax and this is classic my parents behavior he gets the job in new jersey they start looking for houses they don't like any houses near this town in New Jersey where the place is so they start looking further and further out and they go so far out they're beyond New York City and they're into Long Island.

And so we buy a house that causes my dad to commute through New York City in the morning

and then back out it in the evening.

No one does that.

No.

It's almost like there's something wrong with his frontal lobe at that point.

He's like, I like that.

I want to sleep there and I want to work there and I'm not going to do any of the marketing.

I'm not going to let anything get in the way of that.

And they wanted a bigger house.

So I think that they were like, we don't like the houses right around here and we don't want to live in an apartment.

We want to live in house.

So he got a job there at Johnson Wax.

how does it evolve into his role in sweden part of what he was doing there was selling to institutions selling soap and things and he and another partner they invented some sort of valve for soap so their whole thing was hand soap this is the early 80s and i don't know if you remember i barely do but sometimes you'd go into a public bathroom in the 80s and there'd be like a sliver of bar soap yeah that everybody would have to share the big tub of borax kind of powder and then it had this really rudimentary little valve you would open and it would just dump powder on your hands.

That was also in the middle.

That's another old time thing.

Yeah, yeah.

My dad was part of thinking there's a better way.

He invented this thing and it was like, what if we had liquid soap?

He wasn't the inventor of liquid soap by any means, but he was part of that like, let's make it work for people.

Worked on this valve.

He never wanted to have a job.

He never wanted to work for somebody and be accountable like that.

He wanted to do his own thing.

So he found these Swedish janitorial people that were interested and he sold them the valve.

And then he sold some people in Hong Kong the Valve.

In the 80s, we were doing well on the Valve.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, so they had kind of like overnight riches.

There's no numbers in here.

What do we think your dad was bringing in?

I do have some.

Oh, you do?

And I don't have all the numbers.

One of the things about the book is my dad was such an exaggerator always that what I wanted to do was pin it down.

I wanted to figure out the facts that I could.

So I found out my dad in 1986, he made $265,000.

What?

In 86?

That's a lot of money in 1986.

Yeah.

Oh, that's like a couple million dollars a year.

Yeah, that's wild.

Major.

And based on that, which was the good year.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think other people would say, well, this is an unusually great year.

I'll suck some of this away so that we can live differently and I can keep experimenting and doing wild things.

Okay, so you guys move at that point to Indiana and get a mansion.

Yes, in 1986.

And so you were like eight?

I was eight.

Okay, you were eight.

Thank you.

I'm not really math, so I'm proud of myself.

Really, this was right after I turned eight.

And were you like, yes, I'm in a mansion.

I never thought to think that.

We lost all of our friends when you're a kid.

Those are the important things.

It was kind of cool.

I was like, we'll try it.

When my brother was three and I was eight, so we just sort of went along with it.

It fulfilled for my mom this great thing where she loves shopping.

And so you have to fill the house was 6,800 square feet.

Six and a half bathrooms, six bedrooms.

She got to decorate the whole house.

And then some.

She was buying furniture in North Carolina a lot, paging through these catalogs, dog earing them, circling things.

Then she'd be on the phone, ordering.

She was in it.

We had $265,000 to spend.

We didn't really.

So the house was purchased.

All the stuff in it was purchased.

My dad then was working in Hong Kong a lot, and he just orders an insane amount of Hong Kong furniture in 1986, 87.

And it's shipped.

What would that cost?

Oh, to ship that.

It's got to go across the Pacific, then across the whole country.

Oh, yeah.

So this mansion house and many of our houses after that was this mix of Asian influence, black lacquer, gold trim.

We had little cork dioramas of scenes from agrarian China.

You know, we had that kind of stuff.

And it's mixed with like the Midwest geese with bows on their necks.

Oh, kind of like country 80s.

Kind of East meets West agrarian.

Oh, sort of

sorry.

sounds so chaotic.

It was chaotic.

There's a lot of confusing things happening.

And if I were you, I'm sure I would accredit some things erroneously.

But does mom's shopping raise a flag at this point?

Does it seem odd or do you need to go to a lot of other people's houses to realize that?

Like, what's your own awareness of this?

I would say it seems uncomfortable.

It became a harder and harder place to live and just relax at home because there's stuff everywhere.

Even in this huge house, there's like grocery bags of food that were never unpacked, bags of clothes tucked here, there, and everywhere.

It seemed odder and odder the more I went to other people's houses.

Yeah.

And when I noticed that we never had people in our house.

They were aware enough to know, like, don't come over.

It was shameful to my parents, but we would never speak of it.

It was that kind of shameful, where it was like, you're not going to discuss this.

Would you have a sides with dad ever?

Did dad ever explicitly say, like, just let your mom do this don't give her any grief about it if i express that discomfort that i was feeling as a little kid he would be like we love your mother we had to tolerate it that was our job was to be loving and to not make it a problem what's your explanation for that in my mind a lot of times couples enter into this

tit for tat for vice almost like I'm gonna overlook this thing because I have my own thing that I'd appreciate you overlooking was it that arrangement?

A little bit of that.

I think he was straying here and there

in different ways.

And I don't want to say too much about that because I actually don't have too much proof of that.

And, you know, he was getting us into trouble all the time with money.

He would never pay a bill.

So obviously, he was like, okay, I'm going to look the other way on all this craziness.

Yeah, I'm making our life financially chaotic.

And then I'll do the chaos over here.

And so they were just Bonnie and Clyde of the Midwest.

They did their stuff together and they tolerated each other.

Now, another unique part of your father's personality is is he was also obsessed with Martin Luther and Protestantism and the Lutheran church.

So during this whole period where he's making a ton of money and going to Hong Kong and Sweden, you get to go to Sweden twice.

Went to Sweden twice.

It's a party, like it's on.

But it's a party, but it's like a lot.

So I had a fun childhood in a lot of ways.

It was challenging.

It was uncomfortable.

There were problems that I recognized more and more as I grew up, but we had fun.

We were indulged.

Yeah.

Took Took some trips.

It also makes you think of like what modern young people's bar is for a partner.

This is the reality of what marriage looked like all through my childhood.

The parents were pretty fucked up in their own ways.

We're like, yeah, let's be fucked up together.

No one's really got to be perfect.

That also feels kind of era specific.

Yeah.

Okay, so.

When do things start to fall apart on the liquid soap?

Why does that go awry?

My dad was just optimistic.

He was optimistic about everything he did.

And so his math later in his life, I would see him do this math.

He'd literally get an envelope back of the envelope.

He'd write figures that had no basis in reality.

Like, here's how we're going to do the mortgage.

I think he just thought those valves, which he was at one point using for ice cream, he invented kind of like a flurry-like ice cream drink.

Same technology, but you would put a little flavored syrup in your ice cream.

Oh, wow.

He could build out that valve in a bunch of different veins.

He thought so, and he didn't.

He's also getting ensnared with pyramid schemes and stuff, or does that come after?

Once we moved to the mansion in rural Indiana, it was really clear really quickly that that money that he thought came in really great in 1986 wouldn't be continuing.

He started trying things.

And one of the things he tried was he basically got wrapped up in a multi-level marketing scheme.

What was it called SM?

SMI, Success Motivation Institute.

Sort of Christian business people

cassette tapes to motivate you.

Oh, yeah.

cassette tapes.

Cassette tapes.

And he invested thousands into that.

He lost some money.

I tried to figure out exactly how much.

I have an estimate.

And you found out people in that time that were investing in SMI were losing $10,000 to $20,000 on average.

Lots of money.

We just had an MLM expert on.

So interesting.

It is interesting.

MLMs are known to dupe the people that are part of it.

But I think my dad, who was selling them, he was so all in.

Stars in his eyes.

I remember him telling us this is going to help people have better marriages.

But that's why it's so horrible.

Your dad was preyed upon.

My dad was preyed upon, and so were all the people that he exactly.

It's just this like cascade.

Nobody wins in that one.

Well, that's the complex nature of the MLMs is for many people, it'll have been the best time of their life, even though they lost money because it gave them community

parties.

And so it's complicated.

I remember going with him.

I was probably 10 and he would rent out this hotel conference room in our little town and he'd put a sign up.

We're going to talk motivation.

It was fun for him, you know, and people would come and they would listen to him because he was so charismatic.

Right.

But they didn't end up buying the cassette tapes.

So yeah,

so we just went broke, basically.

We couldn't afford the house and the house started just crumbling around us.

This is a big kind of estate with huge lawn in the back and in the front.

And we never.

were able to afford the mowing.

My dad never mowed the lawn.

There were things they did.

There were things.

So the grass is like up to my waist and the front door is crumbling off.

I don't know how this happened.

Big hole in it.

With plywood over it.

Plywood over it.

It's really funny to think of a mansion neighborhood, but there is a white trash family living in it that's not mowing their grass.

And the people going like, how did this happen?

What are these people doing?

So we were those people.

And it was so funny because our house looked like hell.

I mean, it was so bad toward the end of this time.

And my dad would always pick on me for like leaving my bike in the yard.

And it's like, but wait.

Yeah, the homeowners association was yelling at him about mowing the grass.

Yep.

So, another thing, he was a visionary in a sense.

He was.

He rented out this chunk of a strip mall that was built.

This was his next big breakthrough.

And he realized I'm going to subdivide this into different desks.

And professionals that don't want the overhead of an office space can come in here.

We'll have a common reception.

It's like we work.

It was like a WeWork.

It was like WeWork, but it was 1988.

And he did it, but he couldn't get anyone to come in and rent these desks.

So he gave the lawn service guys free desks so they'd mow this five-foot-tall tall grass and build

a little horse train.

Yeah.

He was a trader.

My dad's most famous barter, and this is going ahead in time, but he bartered for my dental surgery when I was 18.

Please.

Yeah, tell me.

May I tell you about it?

Yes, please.

Yeah.

Actually, no, I don't want you to tell it because we got to learn something great about it.

Okay, okay.

We'll do it that way.

But we'll get there because that's wonderful.

So when you go broke, you then move again.

You moved to Fort Wayne?

There was a Lutheran seminary there.

And so at this point, my dad is like, I'm going to just try what has always been in my heart, which is to be a pastor.

At 46 or something, right?

Yeah.

So do you feel like things are normal or are you like life

chaotic?

Are you bad at them?

What are you in this?

The best word for it is uncomfortable.

Like I just didn't know because when you're a kid, you actually think that the way your household operates is kind of

exactly.

I knew that our house was messy.

And we never used the word hoarding.

Never in my mom's life.

She died 10 years ago.

That word was never used.

It was messy, but it was like, what else is weird about our house?

I didn't really know.

And what about friendships and bringing people to the house or having to make up excuses where you're dealing with all that kind of stuff?

Yeah, we just never had people over.

It was clear that my parents didn't want anybody over.

So I would go to other people's houses.

I mean, we had elaborate systems where like if I was getting, say, picked up for something at school, like another family was picking up.

And nobody had a cell phone, of course.

It's still in the 80s.

I'd have to like go outside and wait.

The door closed behind me because you couldn't risk somebody coming to the door and the door opening and other people seeing what it was like inside.

It was too much, you know, so I knew that.

But did any of your friends say like, can I come over?

And you had to like lie?

Yeah, I would say, well, let's do it at your house or let's do something else.

It would have been so mortifying to me.

When I talk about the hoarding, there were things that were like paper bags of canned goods.

things like that.

It's a little relatable.

Didn't have time to put the groceries away.

But it was so much.

And like our bathrooms had shampoo bottles.

And you can imagine a normal house might have a few extra in the closet.

We would have 48 bottles of shampoo and they'd be on the floor.

It's embarrassing, right?

It just takes over every space.

Took over.

And then there was like the gross aspect, which is that food was part of the thing that my mom was hoarding.

And so it wasn't just canned goods.

She would buy.

chicken and cottage cheese and things like that and leave them out.

And so there was like stinky,

it was tough, you know?

Yeah.

You couldn't bring people over.

Yeah, no.

When you're 12.

What would I do?

I guess I'd be like, I'm putting these in the fridge.

Well, there's no place for

anything.

Yeah, nothing can be put away because every inch of the house has been already occupied.

This is really stressful.

Isn't it so stressful?

It was stressful.

It came out for me in this dream that I started having around the time I was eight-ish.

Around the time we moved to this big mansion, but I had this dream where I would just destroy my whole house.

And that's where the title comes from.

This dream just came back to me over and over and I would have it five or six nights a week.

I had it all planned out.

There's another house that's fine.

My parents cannot be mad at me because I haven't touched this house, but then here's this replica and I could just dump everything out and throw stuff out the window.

Seems very twisted now.

Do you see anything that was correlated for your mother emotionally?

That led to this.

Like why she did it.

Yeah, like there was a period, obviously, maybe you're too young to remember, but was she doing it back in Long Island?

It picked up over the years.

It got worse and worse and worse.

And I think that that's true of most people that struggle with hoarding.

But I remember my dad saying that when he came into her apartment with the shoebox, it looked like maybe she'd been robbed, is what he said, because it was a big mess.

She was always kind of messy.

But she knew where everything was.

Oh, yeah.

And you could never like clean it up because she knew.

She wouldn't want you to move.

She was moved.

Oh, no, you would never.

So there's this weird illusion of control.

Like, I know where everything is, even though no one else does.

And it's a mess, but I have control over it.

Maybe there's a real control element to it.

Of all the isms, it's the one I can't really get there mentally.

With the hoarding?

Yeah, I can with like every other ism almost.

I'm an addict.

I understand that.

I can easily imagine being addicted to any number of things because I know what it's like to be addicted.

I have stolen.

I've been a criminal.

There's a lot of things I can comprehend, but that whole mindset I can't even find purchase in.

I feel like it's the same because it's self-destructive.

You know, you shouldn't, right?

When you're talking about those behaviors, right?

You're not supposed to do that and you shouldn't, but you still do it.

And I feel like my mom she knew every time she went to Kohl's, bought a bunch of stuff, or Joanne Fabrics or Kroger.

I mean, all the places that she would go and just amass all this stuff we didn't need.

We had nowhere to store.

She definitely knew.

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Was she sad?

Did she have like a sadness around her?

What was her personality?

I think that sadness was at the core of this.

You know, I think she felt bad about herself in some way.

This was a way to not feel so bad, but she didn't act sad.

Okay, interesting.

So she too, around this Fort Wayne time, she

decides she wants to become a nurse.

She does.

Reinventing themselves constantly.

Yes.

So all of it to me is kind of eccentric and a bit charming and a colorful childhood.

When they start both leaving to go to night school and you're 10 and your brother's five and they're driving into the city at night and you're gone for a long time, I start to think, well,

no, they're kind of neglectful.

Yeah.

You know, like they're both so consumed with their own thing.

Again, I'm looking from the outside, just making judgments, I guess, but it also seems like they had some weird fun dance where like they were both living their own lives.

Yeah, they did their own thing.

Don't you think a little bit this was the era?

Parents did not dote on their kids the way I feel like I'm doting on mine it was very different and it was like you're kind of on your own my mom used to take me i wonder if you think this is neglectful but when i was maybe 11 she would take me to the library during summer days just because i didn't have anything else so she just dropped me off with like four quarters because vending machine i could get something i'd be there for like seven eight hours yeah just kind of unimaginable for us right it doesn't seem like something i would do right but i mean it was the library i mean you know it wasn't the worst thing but i think it might have felt standard or felt okay.

Okay, now, just quick on Fort Wayne.

Did you ever go to Sturgis, Michigan?

Yeah, my husband's from Coldwater.

Oh, he is.

Yeah.

Oh, I know Coldwater well.

You do?

My grandparents owned a little roadside motel in Sturgis, and I spent a lot of summers there, and then I did tasseled corn in the summer.

Oh, did tasseling corn.

That's

yeah.

I've never done it, but it was a big deal.

All the places I lived.

All the boys kind of had to do it, right?

Yeah.

There were only a couple gals on our picking crew, and they were tough gales.

let's just i bet they were yeah yeah that's tough work it's really hard work it's brutal i know that area really well so we lived in fort wayne and then my husband was growing up in cold water yeah where dan severance from the ufc fighter

famous people from cold water also the actor you're now obsessed with from girls oh adam driver i think adam driver is from cold water or kalamazoo one of the two yeah love kalamazoo all right so you were in fort wayne for five years yes okay now what's interesting too is i want you to tell me a lot about this because this feels very unique, which is even though he wasn't yet a pastor, he would call you guys pastor kids and pastor wife.

And then the teachers would even call you PK.

It's a subculture.

Yeah, tell me about PK.

PK is pastor's kids.

So I'm, I guess, 11 when we moved.

And, you know, we had a whole childhood where we were just like the kid of an entrepreneur, a business person, whatever my mom was.

PK is like this group when your parent, most cases, in this case, my father, is going into the clergy.

You're different.

In Fort Wayne, there were many PKs because there was this seminary.

So there were lots of Lutheran pastors in training.

Lots of them were kind of midlife or had kids.

Did the teachers give you like preferential treatment?

I would say a little preferential treatment and a little higher expectation.

It was like, oh, you're a PK.

How could you?

You wouldn't be doing that at recess as a PK.

It was a little judgment.

It felt like I suddenly was different.

I got this label like, oh, you're part of these people.

You know, we wear the gold cross around our necks.

And it wasn't that we were not Lutheran before because we were, but it was like suddenly we were a clergy family.

Yeah, you were handed an identity.

Yeah.

And, you know, when you're in middle school, that's a big thing to figure out.

And again, not to judge your father too harshly, but to me, it also looks like, okay, so he wanted status as a rich guy.

That's a way to get status in this country, get money.

When that was taken, it was like, he kind of figured out another way to have status, but without that requirement.

I agree.

He was doing that for sure.

And I will say this thing about my dad, he fumbled a lot.

Like he tried things.

He didn't quite work out all through his career.

And when he hit on this, I think it was the most genuine and the most real thing in his whole life.

He really did love it.

He really loved it.

And there's a way you can sort of tell the story about this is that my parents went bankrupt in the late 80s.

And then my dad was like, got nothing else to do.

I'm going to be a Lutheran pastor.

They'll take me in.

Like, that's a story.

I believe it.

It's true.

There's also a story that this was in his heart his whole life and it was the best thing for him i don't think there was anything fake about that part of his life and career yeah really he was good at it okay so this now takes you up to michigan yes

And do you know that the rest of Michigan that we called Taylor, Taylor Tucky?

Of course.

That was one of the first terms that I learned when we moved to Taylor, Tucky.

Yes.

Monica looks like she doesn't know what that is.

And it's kind of mean mean to Kentucky because Kentucky is a nice place.

Absolutely.

And my whole family's from there and I love Kentucky.

But alas, we were young and we did call Taylor Taylor-Tucky.

Does that make sense to you, Monica?

No.

If you're in Michigan, you're calling something Kentucky.

You're shitting on it.

Oh, okay.

And like

the area was called Taylor?

The little town.

And it was part of a group of little towns called Downriver.

Got it.

So you arrive there and dad gets a post as a pastor at a church.

You get church housing.

Nothing my dad loved more than a free house.

Yeah.

And he was in a standoff with the church because he said they owned it, so I'm not doing any repairs.

So again, this place, the window was broken in the kitchen.

And you had no money.

No.

We lived in that house with a broken kitchen window.

Big hole in it.

I used to say it's a hole the size of a slice of pizza, like that big of a hole for like years.

Yeah.

And with the AC blasting, didn't care because he wasn't paying the electric bill, I presume.

No, he was paying the electric bill.

Oh, he was.

Or sometimes he was.

Sometimes he wasn't.

They didn't connect things and and consequences.

The fact that these two in their 40s completely change courses and your mom becomes an RN and your dad becomes a pastor.

She's been so many things, an engineer, a fashion designer,

a nurse.

And so she starts working around the clock.

And now this is interesting because it doesn't seem like it was this way before.

This is when they completely split their finances.

Right.

So mom has her own bank account at a different bank than dad.

Yes.

They've divvied up who's paying for what.

In their own chaotic way.

The line is very interesting about who pays for what who was paying for what anything that was like a shopping thing my mom did clothes food that was all my mom but anything that was a bill the electric bill or anything like that the car insurance my father was paying and why did they decide to do this just because they were like fighting about money i think it's because my mom got a job being a nurse is a fairly well-paid job especially compared to the other jobs that they had had and so i think my mom was kind of protective of her money and wanted to be able to spend her money And she was at this point making more than dad.

Yeah.

Oh, no.

She told me the pin for her bank account and I was never to tell anyone, especially dad.

That's a weird dynamic.

Yeah, it is.

Yeah.

You were making money, you were working and dad was like borrowing money off you for pizza.

Sometimes he was always borrowing money.

Raw.

Because I worked at the coffee house.

It was very 90s.

I worked at Java Joe's and Wyandotte.

I was making money and I was saving it up because I wanted a car.

I got a big Chevy Impala around that time.

And, you know, I had to pay for my gas and I had to pay for all my shows I was going to at St.

Andrews and wherever.

So that was my money.

But yeah, my dad needed it sometimes.

Last thing I want to flag about high school is that we share this in common.

We both outwardly hated friends.

Oh, my God.

Friends the show.

Yeah, the show.

And we had never seen it.

How many get out of here?

And we had never seen it.

Yeah.

It just wasn't for me.

It was very clear in the 90s it wasn't for me.

Monica's favorite show ever is friends.

It like defined my life.

However, you watched it in reruns, right?

No, by the time I caught up, it was probably because it started in 94.

So I would have been.

Oh, it ran forever.

I forgot about that.

Yeah, 10 years.

So by the end, I was definitely watching it as it aired.

Okay.

Happiness.

Yeah.

She got to school and everyone was talking about it.

Of course.

It was the best show.

And it was like the next day because everyone watched it.

I think it was like Thursday night.

So Fridays, it was everybody had to talk about it and just for fun i found this funny your mother is saying stuff to you pretty regularly like listen hand jobs are crucial you cannot leave a boy with

this

yeah this is so grassy i think it's very telling of she also was cool i guess she's not afraid to talk to you No, cool is an interesting well when you have a dad that's a pastor and you think about growing up as a PK, I'm thinking of very sheltered, afraid of sex, puritanical.

Mom's saying, no, you got to give hand jobs.

That's interesting.

But again, that's like what to me feels chaotic.

That's a through line here.

Everything's chaotic.

Like, there's this, and then there's this, and it's all meshed together.

That's complicated for a kid to grow up in.

Oh, yeah.

There were rules, but they were so weird that I had to figure them out all the time because remaining a virgin was a big deal.

You had to do that in my house.

Like, that was not in a good place.

But unlimited hand jobs.

Completely fine.

And, you know, but it was like, there was this thing in my mom about pleasing men.

It's of her era.

You can't be unpopular.

You can't risk getting turned down.

She was very concerned you weren't dating.

I wasn't dating really in high school.

Not to say anything about the boys I went to high school with, but I wasn't seeing quite what I wanted.

And I felt like I was, you know, into books and I was into music and super into weird clothes.

Like I loved the Value Village was my place where I was buying vintage things.

I'm still wearing vintage things into my 40s, but I was like wearing kind of old man clothes.

Hence was the look for gals in the punk rock scene in Detroit.

Yeah, I like that.

I think you were also trying to like get through high school so I can leave this.

I did just want to leave.

I couldn't bring boys over.

Yeah.

No.

Although the mom brought a boy over blindly from church for a date for her.

I was dropped off at his house.

Oh, you're dropped off at his house.

Because of the thing about you can't go in our house.

Right.

And he took me for root beer, which I didn't like then and don't like now.

Yeah,

it was tough.

Yeah.

I liked it A and W.

I wasn't dating that much and it was really stressful for my mom, especially.

Oh no.

Was anyone going to like her?

They thought I was a feminist and that was really weird.

I mean, it was a feminist.

It wasn't really weird, but that's what I was.

My dad was into Rush Limbaugh.

He was worried I was a feminazi, you know?

Yeah.

Wow.

It was just troubling for them.

They were always seeking to be.

conventional normal americans like on tv kind of family that's just what they wanted and i was not what they wanted what did they want for you they wanted me to be a little more prim and wear a little nicer clothes and maybe watch friends and maybe be a little bit more of a conventional teenage girl and have like a boyfriend that I held hands with.

And hopefully he was on a team of some kind.

But how could you possibly be that?

Coming from that environment.

Yes, yeah.

Like there's literally no way

there's no way.

There's no way you could have done that.

It was literally not that.

It was really clear.

You know, I felt like it was disappointing my parents.

Did they say what they wanted you to do professionally?

This sounds so mean, but I think they wanted me to get married and have some kids.

I think that they wouldn't have felt really good just saying that.

They would have said, you can do whatever you want for four years,

two and a half or three years until you find a man.

That was very clear.

She also got you a vibrator for Christmas.

She did.

This is so confusing.

This is so nice.

And then come chat with me if you need to know how to use it.

I was in high school.

And I think I was 17.

I barely knew what it was, to be honest with you.

And my brother is 12 and my dad.

And they open this thing.

And I'm like, oh.

I mean, it was just horrifying.

Why?

They were just inappropriate.

Yeah.

They really were.

They didn't have.

I don't know why, because they were so obsessed with being conventional, but they didn't catch on to boundaries and some of the normal things that you would hope in your parents.

It's almost like they're aliens trying to be human.

Trying to act American.

And they couldn't do it, but they were trying.

And growing up in that sounds so hard.

Yes, it was hard.

It was also kind of fun.

I hope that it feels to readers not oppressive.

It feels fun and colorful.

Dad's likable as hell, right?

We're kind of listing this stuff, but he's not fulfilling these roles because he's not really fun and probably.

charismatic and likable.

Weirdly, I have many good memories of my parents, both of them, individually and together.

I, you know, have some other ones too.

And it got harder as they got older and as some of their financial problems got worse, their health problems.

they took care of their health about the way they took care of their money, which is they didn't.

Yeah, so you go away to college.

Yeah.

When you get out of that house, is that like a rum springer for you?

Do you remember just being so delighted?

So I went to a Lutheran college in Chicago because that was a path.

It was easy for them to see where I was going.

And Chicago was far enough from our Detroit suburbs home that it just felt new.

And I really say to this moment, my college was the city of Chicago.

I just was out.

I felt like school was pretty pretty easy and I just did whatever I had to for school.

You know, a lot of the Lutheran kids at the school were doing pretty boring weekend stuff.

They'd take their sleeping bags and watch a movie in the gym kind of a thing.

And I was out in the city and I just was only there.

to sleep.

It was great.

I learned so much from the art museums, from all the cafes in Chicago.

Wicker Park was where I went most of the time.

It was beautiful time in my life.

It's very independent.

I just felt so different.

Are you very neat?

I'm pretty neat, but I'm not extreme, actually.

People often have been asking me if I've gone to like a Marie Kondo sort of situation.

No, I have a lot of stuff.

I have a lot of books at home.

I love, you know, vintage clothes.

I have my stuff.

My husband's a big record collector.

We have a lot of records at home.

Way more maybe than I'm even comfortable with, but I don't live in a Spartan way.

But that comfort thing is what I'm focused on.

I was so uncomfortable at home as a kid.

You couldn't sit on a couch because it was full of stuff.

But you described trying to eat like Thanksgiving dinner in the house and it's like almost impossible.

There's food on the floor.

Under the dining room table, it's like stacked with plastic bags full of things my mom bought at Target.

So you don't even have room for your legs.

So I do not live like that at all.

Anything approaching that kind of like unputaway stuff is pretty uncomfortable for me.

Yeah.

I just got the idea for a retail store if you guys want to be partners on it.

Here's how it works.

It's like a Target.

You go and you do all your shopping.

You pay for it.

And then on the way out, they say, Would you like this to ship this to your house so you don't have to carry it home?

And you go, Yes.

And you hand it all to them.

Okay.

And then they refund 95% of it.

Oh, and then it just goes back on the shelves.

Thank you.

And then that person gets that delight of picking the things out, paying for it, because it doesn't sound like she wants any of it.

Yeah, she's getting home and not even pulling it out of the bag, just shoving the bag under the table.

Yeah, the bags were fine.

Clearly, the thing, the event she was after was the purchasing of it.

Why don't we build a little center for people?

They're still lie when they say we'll ship it to your house?

Yeah, but they say it's so politely and invitingly and you're excited to deal with it going to your car, you go for it and people just can shop all day long.

I don't know if that's going to work.

I think they like knowing it's there.

Maybe not unpacking it or whatever, but the stuff I got is here.

I think so much of it because I have a little bit of this where if I'm starting to feel anxious or my life is feeling out of control, I will look around my space and figure out how to buy something or arrange something.

So I have control over my life.

I have control over my space.

So I think it's like I have it here.

I feel safe that this is here.

I don't need to unpack it, but it's here.

I do need it here.

Yeah.

So I don't know about your store.

Okay.

You're not going to invest.

Angel Investor.

I need to know the percentage of boarders in America before I go to angel investors.

I bet it's worse than you think.

Not maybe to the level that my mom was doing it, but I think a number of people have this sort of tendency to accumulate.

Okay, so you get out of college and you become a writer.

Kind of.

I was interested in writing always, but I kind of wasn't sure that it was a career.

How do you make money as a writer?

Like I didn't know about that.

And I went into art.

I went into other things.

I worked at a women's college in Milwaukee where I moved.

Lots of Midwest cities.

Then I did a number of other things and kind of nonprofits, but I was interested in books and writing forever.

How did you meet Dave Edgars?

So in about 2005, I started at 826, Michigan.

826 is this network of youth writing centers that Dave founded with Nineveh Calgari.

It started at 826 Valencia Street in San Francisco, and that's why it has the name 826.

By the time I got involved, there were probably eight youth writing centers, free programs, tutoring and writing.

Open to all kids.

That's awesome.

And it really relies on this model of adult volunteers being involved.

So that's really what the organization is.

Adults in the community want to give back.

826 kind of finds a spot for them and runs these programs.

And it's beautiful.

That program publishes youth writing too.

So you can come in and have your writing in a book.

So I got involved in that.

And that's how I met Dave.

Okay, so who got sick first, your mom or your dad?

Well, they were both ill in different ways, but my dad was sicker first.

He had two terrible events.

He had a nervous breakdown, basically, when he was in the pulpit preaching.

In the middle of preaching?

In the middle of a Sunday service.

He just said, I can't do this anymore.

And he turned around and he left.

And my mom picked him up and they drove around and he basically had a real mental health event.

Looking back on it, just if I were to analyze it at all, I think it was all the years of the exaggerations and the not quite doing things on the level.

And it just kind of caught up with him.

in some way.

Just all that stress.

You can imagine all the stress that he must have been under.

Yeah, do you think it was like a bottom for an alcoholic where he kind of maybe admitted, oh my God, I'm full of shit.

And here I am standing in front of all these people.

Sunday morning, everyone's looking at me for the answers.

I don't have the answers.

Did he ever return?

In a way.

So he did other things.

He took on a little church in the Pontiac area.

Oh, sure.

So we moved around a little bit more.

I was out of the house by then, but they moved to Pontiac and he had a small church that was just starting there.

That also was kind of tough.

He was different then.

And then started being a Lutheran counselor.

So he went back to school again when he was in his 60s.

This is so much like the New York City commute story.

He decided to get his other degree in counseling in Windsor, Ontario, which, you know, you just go right across the bridge, no big deal.

But it was, you know, an international commute.

Oh my God.

He was always doing the same things.

Yeah,

the patterns.

So all of that was transpiring.

And then unfortunately, he had a terrible stroke a few years after that.

So those last years of his life were really hard.

He was pretty much in a wheelchair at that point.

And they were financially pretty rough.

Oh, yeah.

They weren't paying their bills in the 70s and they just like kept doing that.

So by 2007, big trouble.

I sometimes marvel at the amount of stress people who live like that with debt nonstop, what it's like, or are they able to compartmentalize it in a way that doesn't affect them?

But yeah, my dad, too, he owed everyone money and filed bankruptcy a few times.

And he was in this house that he couldn't afford.

And it was like, how long could he he stay there before they kicked him out?

And I just thought like, how are you enjoying any of this?

This would just be so stressful for me.

So stressful.

It affected their health a lot, just their physical and their mental health.

And explain how your mom was always ready to die.

I mean, she would never stop talking about it.

And I don't think she was suicidal, but she became a hospice nurse eventually in her nursing career.

And really, I mean, what a noble thing, right?

Being a hospice nurse is an incredible service to everyone.

So she got into it.

If I can just be so crass, she just felt like it was such a special thing being able to shepherd people into their next life and care for people and care for families that way.

So she just thought it was a very noble thing.

She like looked up to people who were in this death and dying business.

It's about comfort, which is such a beautiful thing, right?

It's really, I mean, I'm a fan of hospice too.

But yeah, for my mom, I think she was so stressed and tired herself, exhausted from these lives that they lived that she was kind of looking forward to the moment where her whole life would be about that kind of comfort.

So she had cancer?

My mom had kidney disease.

My dad ended up having cancer too.

So my dad had the stroke and then lots of other problems and developed skin cancer because he grew up in Miami, no sunblock in those 40s and 50s when he was growing up.

Yeah.

When she was getting towards the end, you were now consumed with

the bigger issue was having to deal with everything that she was leaving behind than the actual death.

Since I was eight, I was worried about the stuff in our house, right?

Like this dream I had and this incredible kind of oppressive force of all that stuff.

I thought about it when I was a kid.

Oh my God, who's going to deal with all this?

And even like when I moved to Chicago, some part of me, I remember thinking, oh, I'll live in another state.

And then whatever happens to them and their stuff, like maybe it's not my problem.

Like that was always in my life.

I was worried about whose responsibility it might be when they passed.

And you have a younger brother.

He's five years younger.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So what happened when she passed?

What was that process like?

I wasn't eager for her to pass exactly, but I was so stressed about all the stuff to do and all the undoing of all these things that they had.

They had this apartment in Milford, actually.

Oh, that's where I grew up.

I think it's not named in the book.

And that's where these storage units were of theirs, which is at the end of the book.

So they had this stuffed apartment and they had two full storage units of stuff.

When I knew it was the very end of her life, I had to hire some people to help me clean out the apartment.

It was not in any way something that I could physically or mentally handle.

It was so much and it was so gross.

You're kind of like, I just want to fucking light this thing.

Oh, fuck.

Oh, yeah.

I feel guilty now, but not terribly guilty.

So yeah, my dad, he was not a hoarder and yet he hoarded some stuff.

And as he got more broke, his obsession with that kind of intensified.

But he had the downstairs of this house and the woman who owned it, her house was getting foreclosed on and she just left to another state.

When he died, I was like, I'm just going to leave everything.

I'm just going to pretend it's not my issue.

And the house itself is going to get repossessed.

I don't know.

So I just didn't deal with it.

You didn't do anything.

I went in there and I was like, do I want anything?

I took his sobriety coins and that was it.

And then my brother came a few days later.

Maybe he took some stuff.

But all in all, I was really overwhelmed.

It's so overwhelming.

It's so overwhelming and it's dirty and it's gross.

I have this moment where I'm like, oh, yeah, stuff.

No one's here to care about this anymore.

So it's now has zero value.

And just the realization, like, oh, you add the value to these objects.

Yeah.

I don't know.

It's a very profound moment, I think, to stand in someone's house who's died and you realize all this crap they cared about.

And what does it mean at the end?

It means so little.

Yeah.

In my mom's case, she had been hinting for a while that she had hidden money in her stuff.

So it was a little treasure hunt that I went on.

And I did find quite a bit of cash.

Oh, you did.

This was like her savings account because all of her accounts were always overdrawn.

But I did find about $4,000

that she squirreled away and did from your dad.

She'd been hiding it for a long time.

Oh, my God.

So I hired some folks, and they usually do crime scenes, the crime scene people

to clean up.

When the whole episode, because they they die what within a year and a half of each about a year and a half yeah so when that whole chapter's closed and then you have a child how does it reframe how you looked at them process that whole experience what has it done i will say their whole lives i was 37 when my mom died and she died second that whole time i didn't know what to make of them.

I knew certain things.

I knew they were just exceptional people, like really unusual in some really good ways and some really troubling ones.

You know, I didn't know what to make of it.

They said and did some things that were really hurtful to me, both really actively and passively just by who they were.

But I did love them and I know they loved me.

I mean, that's absolutely the clearest thing to me ever.

But I didn't really know what to make of them.

And so for me, some time passed, they've been gone 10 years now, my dad longer than that.

I kind of wanted to know what really happened with my parents.

My dad was lying about everything always, and they were so mysterious.

So I, years later, decided to kind of investigate them and just look at them like a journalist would.

Yeah.

It makes me think of like when you're in elementary school and there's a kid next to you.

You just have no clue what environment he or she's in.

We don't know anything about how people have grown up.

Their experience on earth could be so different from ours.

What about their parents?

We were estranged from them.

You are both.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We had a brief period in Indiana where we were connected with my mom's mom and her stepdad.

We lived there for three years, or three rich years.

We were only really rich for one of those three years, but we were pretending to be rich for the last two.

So her mom, my grandma, was kind of around.

She was older.

She was beginning to fail at that point.

And actually my mom...

I always find this so devastating, but my mom found out that her mom died because she got a news clipping in the mail maybe two months after her mom died.

That's how she found out.

That's how she found out.

Which is a really stark difference between the end of my mom's life.

And I mean, I was in it.

And that's the whole end of the book is this process of figuring out what to do with her stuff and what to do with my life and how things end for her.

So they were just really estranged from their families.

Yeah, it also makes you think.

People are way weirder than you know.

Oh, my parents say that all the time.

I'd be like, why can't we have something like this?

They'd always just be like, you have no idea what's going on in people's homes.

You see this thing, but you have no idea.

Well, especially in this case where he was certainly a trusted pastor who you would go to for advice and now your wisdom teeth, you didn't have any insurance.

You need to get your wisdom teeth out.

My dad, in our Detroit suburbs days, he made friends with a dentist who he would like play golf with.

I think the dentist needed some like counseling help or something, popped into my dad's church.

They strike up a friendship.

The dentist offers to pay my dad for the counseling, and my dad says, Well, I'll trade you.

How about I come get my teeth cleaned, and we'll just do it that way.

So, this was this kind of goofy

dentist that my dad was friends with, and it was unusual.

My dad really didn't have friends that much.

So, many people looked up to him, but he was never a peer socially with people.

This guy, he was, and it was a couple years.

My dad and my brother were getting their teeth cleaned,

basic dental stuff.

And then, when I was 18, I was about to go to college and I needed my wisdom teeth out.

And my dad arranged it for free with this guy.

And long story, he messed up.

He wasn't an oral surgeon, he was an oral dentist.

He was just a dentist.

Oh, God.

Yeah.

He sewed her cheek to her gums.

Oh, that sort of happened to me.

Not my cheek, but the back two were kind of connected.

Oh, no.

It could only open my mouth so you could sew your gums together.

Like, yeah.

The top gum to the bottom.

Yeah.

Did that hurt?

I remember being like, why can't I open my mouth yet?

It's been a lot of days.

And so I went back in and they cut it.

Maybe my parents also bargered.

Yeah, no, it hurt a lot as a kid.

I was like, I've never had my wisdom teeth out.

Maybe it just hurts a lot.

And my dad was so sweet.

I have these memories because I was taking quite a bit of Vicodin because it kept hurting and I couldn't eat.

It was problematic.

And my dad was just sitting with me.

He kept offering to make me cream of wheat.

He was so nice.

I was a mess.

And we went in, and the nurses were like, oh my God.

Your whole mouth sewn, Pierre.

I'm impressed that you don't hate them.

You know, hate isn't the word.

I know that's like a really mean, harsh thing to say, but people are mad at their parents for a lot less.

I know that.

I have been very unhappy with them many times and in many ways.

Time has passed.

Well, this is what I was wondering when I asked how having a kid impacted this.

So my dad died 13 years ago.

And I feel like over those 13 years, I've A, come to fully accept who he was in a way that I never did.

I see him as a human.

He ceased being this role of my dad, and I see him as a human.

Then I start to see like all these wonderful things about him.

Now I just have this kind of deep sadness that I can't

just be around him in full acceptance of him, no expectations of what he's supposed to be, and just maybe enjoy him.

And then I can't.

So that's been my interesting kind of journey with it.

I'm totally at peace with my parents, although I'm not really interested in hanging with them.

I was trying to think about, how do I say this?

I spent my time with them and it was the time that it was, but I'm totally at peace.

I'm not angry.

The word hate, it's just not there.

I just don't feel that.

They did what they did.

I think they did their best.

I think their best is wild.

It's very few others best.

Well, it's just beautifully written.

Destroy this house in the 26th.

It'll be out.

Great.

I hope everyone checks it out.

Thank you.

It's a very, very honest and beautiful story i think you should feel quite proud of it thanks for letting me talk about it with you too absolutely thanks for coming

stay tuned for more armchair expert

if you dare

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Stay tuned for the fact fact check.

It's Red and Party Day.

You have powder?

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, right around here.

Cocaine.

I just did a ton of cocaine.

Three grams.

$180.

You forgot how to do it.

It's been a while.

21 years next week.

And

I've forgotten how.

21 years.

Wow, 21 years, that's a long time.

That's too long.

Ironically, that's when people can start drinking.

That is ironic.

So, yeah, 21 years since I've done Coke, and I just got it all over my face because I don't know what I'm doing.

Yeah, exactly.

For the listener and viewer, I put powder on my face before these now that we're on video.

It's shocking.

And I came in and I was pretty much covered in powder.

Yeah, white powder.

But I wasn't scared.

Yeah.

Yeah.

i wasn't scared at all have you been crying no does it also look like i was crying yeah

wow i'm a real mess i thought i was doing great i worked out just had a fun chat on the phone oh maybe maybe your workout caused you to cry a little so do i look puffy or my eyes look irritated they just look a little red

but in a sad way like you cried oh no no no i didn't cry today

yeah although i could have cried this morning oh maybe you did and and you forgot they're doing an insane instruction construction project in front of the house

like a city it's so annoying tearing up side sidewalks and drilling into the the pavement and the house is shaking uh-huh starting at about 6 37 a.m start shaking to the degree i'm shocked it hasn't shut off the gas yet because the gas has an earthquake uh emergency shutoff valve on it it's gone off before whiskey's going berserk.

He does not understand.

It's a construction project.

He thinks the house is going to fall down and that.

Whiskey the dog with three legs.

Whiskey the dog with three eggs.

So he, you know, he already, he's got his whole routine on trying to meditate and trying to journal.

And he, he barks till I put him on the bed.

That's normally okay.

And then I put him on the bed and then he chills.

But now his move is I put him on the bed.

He's on there for 20 seconds.

There's an earthquake.

He jumps off.

He runs in a circle.

Then he comes back to the bed and starts barking.

I pick him up I put him back on he stays for 12 seconds and this was going on I mean this was this was madness it was madness and you wanted to cry I well you know what I thought

and it's a testament to pause when agitated as they say in the program yeah PWA actually I'm still I'm not sure where this is I'm like I'm I'm moving downstairs It's time.

Forever.

Because the girls are also coming in and out of the bedroom to do.

They love using our bathroom.

I don't know why.

They have a beautiful bathroom.

They will not use it.

oh boy okay and every time so at some point I had to put whiskey in the hallway I couldn't do anything yeah and then every time they come in I'm trying to shut the door they don't shut the door whiskey's back you do the whole circle and then

I at some point I was like I gotta I'm moving downstairs into the downstairs bedroom okay that's where you're gonna be where I live now okay

TBD

the pause when agitated was I was gonna announce that which is I'm glad I didn't announce that.

Cause also now, a couple hours later, I don't feel as resolute about moving downstairs.

Okay.

And I was like, good thing I didn't announce that.

That could have caused everyone to, you know, okay, so actually girls were mad at me, you know, because I'm like, sounds like

I really nailed it.

That I was crying.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And then I did cocaine in response.

Yeah.

I think I

am very intuitive.

I know I am very intuitive.

What if I tried to call?

Like, obviously, I would have no clue where to get that drug anymore.

What if I

called

the dealer from 21 years ago?

I was like, hey, hey, remember?

Oh, my God.

And then that person was like, hey, man, obviously I don't still do this.

I would have been in prison or quit.

Or dead.

You're supposed to delete that from your phone, right?

Yeah, I don't even know.

Yeah.

That was also like 25 phones ago.

Yeah, that's true.

Please don't do cocaine this weekend because it's my birthday weekend has started.

Yeah, I'm not

ever going to do cocaine again.

But just like, especially not this weekend.

Maybe on my deathbed.

No.

No.

You won't even have, you won't even be able to.

You'll have to have my family put it in my nose.

Is that how you want to

spend it?

No, you want to spend it

touching everyone and holding everyone's hands.

I'll still be doing that.

You won't be present.

I will be ultra present.

No,

no.

Fine.

I can't tell you what to do on your deathbed.

I'm just asking you not to do it this weekend.

Oh, I'm not going to.

No.

Won't do it.

My birthday look has started.

Why does your hair look so nice?

Wow.

That was a great setup.

Okay.

I wasn't sure.

You know,

well, sometimes we talk about products, sometimes we don't, whatever.

But I use Rose hair products.

They're incredible hair products.

R-O-Z.

Okay.

Okay.

They really are.

Shampoo conditioner.

There's oil and a lubricant.

I use it too.

You do?

As a conditioner.

Great conditioner.

I have to use a Save Your Hair shampoo.

Right.

Of course.

But then with the conditioner, I do ROZ.

Yeah.

It's a great brand

owned by Mara Rozak, who is a celebrity hairstylist.

She does Emma Stone and lots of amazing people.

And she's the sweetest lady.

Oh, perfect.

Anyway,

i love that hairline and then they sent me they did a collab with the great and incredible clothing company but they did this collab where they made a hair

a towel a hair towel a hair towel that you know you you know how you like yeah turn your head down you wrap your hair and you you pull it up yeah but it's a mix it's like terry cloth mixed with like um microphone sweatshirt material oh okay And

it like sticks itself in this little strap and whatever.

It's comfortable.

And when I use that thing, my hair looks so good the next day.

So do you sleep in it?

No, I just keep it on for post-shower for an hour.

Uh-huh, for as long until bed.

And then I go to bed.

And then you wake up and you're back in there herbalescent.

And I'm a mermaid.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It looks great.

Thank you.

So shout out to all those products.

Yeah, and folks.

I sure hope you're getting paid on the side.

I'm not.

I am really not.

I would love to.

If they're going to do a campaign, I think I'd be a great candidate.

I have experience with herbalescence, how I got my start.

And they're thriving.

You know, I was at Mahjong with, I guess I'll throw them under the bus, Anthony and Rachel, and I forget who else was there.

My Mahjong set is beautiful as we can.

Yeah, yeah.

I would have guessed that.

People who play Mahjong will understand this.

The winds have mermaids on them, which is why I was drawn to this in the first place.

I'm very drawn to mermaids, even though I don't like the sea.

This part, that part we don't talk about.

So I was.

You like when they come to shore.

Yeah, when they're sitting on their rock.

But

I

said

that the herbal essence

commercial.

God, how did I phrase it?

I should check with Anthony, but I think I said, like,

that's the best thing that's ever happened to me.

And he could not.

He was like, no.

Why did you, why do you say claim that?

Because.

Did you get your SAG card or something from it?

I don't remember.

I might have already had it.

I don't remember about that, but I got paid double scale.

Okay.

At that time, that is.

So for people who don't know, scale is the lowest amount you can get paid on a project.

Negotiated by the union.

SAG, yes.

It's the lowest you can get paid.

And most commercials, you get paid scale.

Yep.

And

this commercial was double scale.

It was un because you were in swimwear.

Why was it double?

I don't know why.

Oh, wow.

But, I mean, it was a really grueling shoot, so maybe.

But

it was double scale.

Partial nudity.

It was partial nude.

And

you had to swim.

And I like

lied.

So stunt pay, maybe?

I lied.

Well,

and then it was really bad when I had to do it, like, I couldn't really do it.

Really?

Yeah, like I could, but you didn't look elegant, I didn't look good, you didn't look like a mermaid, yeah, and I couldn't get under deep enough.

So, anyway, look more like a chimpanzee trying to swim, yeah, yeah, yeah, or like dog, you know, the dogs.

Well, they can swim pretty good, yeah, but that's how I kind of am.

Like, I'm like a half above water, doggy paddle.

So, anyway, um, it was a huge commercial to get

every girl auditioned for that commercial.

Confidence builder.

It was a huge confidence builder.

And I

like I can be in a pretty, I could be in a commercial with pretty people being a mermaid.

It wasn't even about pretty people.

It was just like, I just got validation that I can be here.

Yes.

It was the first, it was my first real commercial.

National commercial.

National commercial.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And

everyone auditioned.

So, of course, when I first got there, it was like, oh oh, my God, I'm never getting this.

And then when I did, it was just like beautiful confirmation that I belonged.

Yeah.

And it was enough.

It was enough to keep me in the game.

Yep.

So I think that's the best thing that ever happened to me.

But Anthony did not like that.

He didn't like that.

And I thought he would like it because that's.

I mean, and similarly, punked is the best thing that ever happened to me.

Right.

I started the entire thing without that commercial.

You would say that's a bigger deal than my commercial.

But I couldn't book commercials.

So punked was my herbal essence.

I booked two commercials in eight years.

I know, but for him, he'd be like, punct is you're showing your real talent.

Okay.

So are you.

Now I'm doing, now I'm having to be him.

Yeah.

And this is the commercial that I got my ring.

Right.

My special ring that did lose us the election, but that's okay.

But now it's back.

It's back.

So, yeah, he didn't like that at all, but I stand by it.

Yeah, I'll co-sign on that.

I might not be here if it wasn't for that.

Yeah.

So I have to

move back to.

I might have.

I might have been like, I, this, I can't.

Yeah.

It's so grueling.

Yeah, yeah.

Um, so thank you, herbalescence.

Herbalescence.

I think, but sometimes

that's the confusion.

Uh, anyway, my birthday looks started.

I was able to turn left out of my apartment today.

Okay, can you not always do that?

Very rare.

Really?

Yeah, because it's, I live off of a very

populous.

Why don't you just wait for the light to turn on?

No, because I get stressed.

I get stressed about that.

That's what I do when I have to turn left or everything.

I just wait for that light to turn.

And then I turn into the left turn lane, which is always open.

And then I go to the thing and I bang a left and then I bang a right on, frankly.

Yeah, I know, but I

in the morning at this time,

it's pretty heavy traffic.

There's a buildup.

And even when, even,

listen, I do this every day.

So sometimes I'm able to turn left because I'm catching it at the exact right moment.

Right.

And mostly I don't.

I can't.

But today I did.

And it was a good sign.

Yeah.

Good birthday, Juju.

Yeah.

And you got a present.

Do you want to dare open it?

Yeah.

So somebody sent a present.

To TT.

Yes, to me via Carly.

Yeah.

And I haven't opened it yet, so I have no idea what it is.

But Carly opens the things first, and she texted and said.

It's not a bomb.

Yeah, yeah.

She said, someone sent you a really cool gift.

I think you'll want it.

Oh, yeah.

So I'm going to open it.

Put it on that, that.

There we go.

And now you can open it presentation style.

Now, it has a feeling.

Do you know when I would see people at CPK, I was required to say, would you like to sit in front of our exhibition style kitchen?

You said that.

i had to i'm shocked i had to say are you familiar with the menu i had to say what my favorite app was you know there was a whole playbook what was your favorite app

um

the spinach artichoke dip duh duh yeah

it was before i was calorie conscious yeah oh spinach artichoked

there's nothing better okay

hi monica we're We're big fans of the pod at Heritage Gear and thought you like one of our UGA

bags.

Go Bulldogs.

Oh, my Lord.

All our best Dan and Brian.

Oh, my God.

Dan, Brian, Brian.

Whoa.

Whoa, this feels couture.

It does.

Is this an Atelier?

What luxury?

Oh, wow.

Oh, what a good beach bag for you.

This is beautiful.

You're always at the beach.

I love that.

I can't keep you away from mermaids.

Yeah.

Okay, this is beautiful.

Thank you, Dan and Brian.

Oh, my my goodness.

Lovely bag.

Really well-constructed leather.

We've got like a nice soft.

You might be able to wrap your hair in that at night.

Looks like it's kind of the material you were describing.

Wow, how cool.

This is great.

That is wonderful.

Thank you.

How sweet.

Yes, that's really a nice gift.

Now every time someone says like

roll tide or whatever.

You can hit them with that bag.

You should fill that bag with bars of soap and marbles

so it really packs a wall up when you connect wow oh my god this is the row wow

oh great segue okay i read in comments someone wanted me to tell you that the row has a playlist did you already know this of course how did you know this i've never how'd you know what i was gonna say because so many people have been telling you yeah and i don't mean to be this girl don't go any further i'm gonna i'm gonna

you guys you think i don't know i mean i also like that people are looking out for me.

That's so sweet.

But I got multiple texts.

You get offended that people think you're not in the know.

No, but I feel, I feel

conflicted because I want to just be like, oh my gosh, thanks.

But also, the truth is I've known about these playlists for years.

What kind of music's on the playlist?

All kinds.

It is vibey.

It's a good playlist.

But I've known about this for quite a long time because I get emails.

From the row?

Yeah.

Okay, Okay, because you're all dialed in with their circulars.

For some reason, this did like hit all of a sudden.

I don't know if it was on TikTok or something

where everyone was texting about this on the same day.

So they must have

their marketing on this.

Right.

Yeah, that makes sense.

Which is interesting.

It's in the Zeitgeist.

Speaking of the Row, let's talk about Halloween.

Oh, okay.

So you, we were at the Richardsons for Eric's birthday.

You and the birthday, happy birthday.

It's my birthday now.

So, okay.

And so you were in the sauna.

What do we say for girls?

Like, boys have sausage party.

I know.

Clam something.

Clam bake.

Ew,

no.

That's disgusting.

Is that a thing or did we just make that up?

Because that's pretty funny.

I feel like I saw it on a TV show recently where they were talking about that.

Oh, my God.

That's disgusting.

Was it a sausage party or a clam bake?

Oh, I really like clam bake.

I'm going to, I think I'm going to try to incorporate that more often.

Okay, great.

Um, so the girls were talking about Halloween, yeah.

And as you said, I think you brought this up the other day, but I think we are kind of moving forward.

I'm pretty sure

the pun costumes, yeah, which puns isn't, it's like it's a mashup.

Okay, yeah, that's a better description.

So, you have a linking word, exactly, like a linked concept, Burt Reynolds rap.

Yeah,

which is great.

So, I've decided decided I'm gonna be the row, row, row your boat.

Okay.

So I'll be

an opportunity to shop

and then I'll carry some sort of ore or have a boat around me.

Okay.

That sounds very cumbersome.

Why?

Like, are you going to take this on the

on the hayride and then for trick-or-treating or just at the house for the pre-party?

I mean, I'll probably need to carry

a kayak around you or something.

Maybe I'll just go ore.

Okay, great.

Yeah.

That's great.

But I'm excited.

Yeah.

I'm excited to go shopping.

What are you going to do?

I was trying to make up one with Ferrari so that I had an excuse to buy a Ferrari leaf.

You can.

Ferrari Leaf.

Ferrariana.

Ariana.

Ferrariana.

Or Ferrariana Grande.

Oh, my God.

Ferrariana Grande.

Now I'm into the concept.

Because I like Ariana Grande

a lot.

And I like Ferraris even more.

I understand.

But I would never own one.

But you need a big one, a grande one.

Oh,

well.

That's right.

So the SUVs that they've made, well, then I SUV, the FF.

I'm not going to bore you with the bigger Ferraris.

Thank you.

This is my birthday.

Yeah, yeah.

Oh, you could even do,

there's a lot because you could do a Grande coffee cup.

Ferrariana.

Oh, but you leave Ferrari out of it.

Just stick with Ariana.

Grande latte.

Ariana Grande Latte.

Ferrariana, Grande Latte is like you'd have to wear a blonde wig.

Three things going.

Yeah.

Blonde wig, like some Ferrari.

You're in like a Ferrari F1 costume or whatever.

Yeah.

Costume, you know, uniform.

What do they call it?

Race suit.

Okay.

Yeah.

Blonde hair, and then you're holding a grande coffee cup.

That's great.

That's right.

How do I do Ariana?

It's the blonde hair, or I'll be singing Wicked the whole night, maybe.

Both.

Yeah, both of that.

Okay.

I guess we found mine.

So that's great.

rob

you got one of those who do you want to be i don't have one what do you want to be yours will be so easy because you have so many bands you like yeah that's true i mean no one will know what his is

because he and he refuses to like a band that anyone knows i think people are not going to know a lot of them we're going to have to wear tags

okay okay all right but isn't the fun of it staring at someone trying to figure out what it is but what i'm saying is rob won't he's gonna pick a band like

phoebe bridgers

Phoebe Bridgers.

I love, everyone knows Phoebe Bridgers.

That's a great one.

Phoebe Bridges over Madison County.

But it's Bridgers.

Phoebe Bridgerton.

Oh, I have another update.

Okay, great.

You're on fire.

Because yesterday, well, I guess it was two days ago.

You were struggling.

I know, and I actually have an update on that too.

Okay.

I think I

am wrong.

I think I was wrong.

I think I was further along in my PMS than I anticipated.

I think I am about to start my period,

which you, you did.

I mansplained to you.

Unfortunately, sometimes us men are right.

No, no, sometimes we are.

Listen, we're going to get it right every now and then.

This is what happens.

Okay.

I actually was

some days late last month.

Oh, and then you reset your thing, but it's, it adhered to the previous rhythm.

So I think so.

I mean, the backward shirt, the hurting back, the every, I won't add some of the other symptoms you shared with me.

My stomach hurts.

You thought you had that hannas.

Well, I felt like I should have it, but I wasn't.

Right.

Which is cramps, which is pretty telltale signs.

Straightforward cramps.

Yeah, so I think

it's coming, which I am worried because I've got this pool party.

Yeah, but you can go to a pool party on your no one wants to have a pool party on their period.

They don't?

No, it sucks because you're like bloated and you have to wear a tampon or a period underwear, but I'll probably wear a tampon.

Now we might wear a tampon at a pool party, yeah.

There's a lot of things going my way right now.

No, they're not.

There are.

You're making everything so.

Like we had a fight that you swear you don't ever wear a tampon.

At the pool?

I do.

Just hold on.

So you never had a tampon.

And now you're on a tampon.

Now your period's actually here.

Stop using the word never.

That's not fair or accurate.

You recently told me there's a comedy no longer like that I didn't like.

Things are really, things are really going my way this week.

And I'm not even pushing.

I'm just like gently hanging out.

And I do admire your integrity for reporting these.

It's admirable.

You were incentivized to just keep this period thing a secret for me.

Yeah, I was.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So I admire you.

I brought that to you.

And I agree, you were right about it.

But maybe.

We'll see when the period comes.

Okay.

But also, you're not right about the tampon.

TBP.

You are not right about that.

If I am in a pool situation and I'm on my period, I have to wear a tampon.

Okay.

I've never said otherwise.

You were right about another

person too, but I'm going to leave it as a child.

Okay, we'll leave it.

Okay.

now

I'm just going to humbly now take, I'm not going to glow, and I'm going to just say thank you for your integrity.

And it's really, it's really brave and admirable.

Thank you.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

You guys are talking about Ike Baron Holtz?

Yeah,

Rob.

Ike Baronholtz.

He didn't want to say that the greatest.

I was just on the phone talking about Ike Barenholtz.

He's the best.

Seconds before I walked in here.

We just love him so much.

She's talking to Joy.

Joy's going to Burning Man.

Oh,

yes.

And she was talking all about it.

Second time.

Okay.

She's a burner.

I wouldn't know.

Yes.

And she was breaking it down for me.

I'm like, yeah, fuck it.

I think you got to experience that thing before you leave Fland Earth for sure.

I'm good.

You're good.

Yeah.

But I'm happy for Joy.

Joy's.

You know, me, I want to dance and watch a fire and the art and the people.

Maybe I'll get an electric bicycle.

And oh, man, maybe I'll paint myself.

Oh, wow.

That's fun.

You should go with her.

I'm putting it on my, I said I'm this is my 2026 New Year resolution.

It's Labor Day is the problem.

Oh.

Like, I got half a mind to just go

now, but we're going to Nashville for Labor Day.

Yeah, you can't go.

You can't do it.

So it's going to have to be a 2026 resolution.

Speaking of Nashville, I'm all over the place.

Yeah.

I was at Cara

the other day.

And a very nice man came up to me.

He's in a band that plays there sometimes.

He's introduced himself before.

He's very, very nice, and he's an armchairy.

Okay.

Oh, this was on Wednesday because it was the day that Nancy Siegel, the twin expert, came out.

Yeah.

This is when you were struggling too.

It was two Wednesdays ago.

No, this was.

And he came up and he was like, twin expert.

Oh, my God.

Like, he loved it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

He was talking about that.

And then he said, this is not, I don't want you to get defensive.

Okay.

Okay.

Probably go to now.

I know some negatives coming.

No, it was like, it was a compliment.

No one's ever said, like, I don't want you to get defensive.

She said, you're hot.

A compliment's never following.

I hope you don't get.

I know.

I'm just, you're right.

It's not, it wasn't a negative towards you.

It was a positive towards me.

Oh, wow, that's not negative towards me.

Well, you're involved.

So

he said, I want to thank you for defending Los Angeles so much.

Oh, yeah.

And I was like, oh, that's nice.

I wonder if people start throwing eggs at me in Los Angeles now that I've been vocally.

Yeah, you've been really hard on it for no reason whatsoever.

And he was like, look,

I get it, but he's from Texas

and he's a musician.

So he's like spent a lot of time in Nashville.

And he was like, it's great.

He was like, but I like.

He likes it here.

This place is special.

Yeah.

And

hugely special.

Yeah.

My issues with it, this is a very special, wonderful city.

I'd argue it's in the top five cities in America, but we're very densely populated.

Driving around is a beatdown.

The place is burning down.

It has its challenges.

And I've just enjoyed kind of.

When we say the place is burning down, like that unfortunately feels like you weren't saying that when that was happening, but now you're saying it because you spent time somewhere else.

Like you were actually you hated when people were saying that you were like people are overreacting and saying like the air or the this like oh, yeah, but that.

No, no, no.

No, yes.

I wasn't like all spun out about it.

But I'm saying we have fires every year.

Yeah, we have.

Bel air catches on fire every year.

It's a stressful place.

There, you know, that's also a reality.

I love it here.

I mean, the same can be said about anyone in the hurricane zones.

That's what I mean.

There's just things happening everywhere.

No, you're not going to live anywhere without.

When I was in Georgia last, there was an earthquake.

I know.

You do?

I already talked about it.

Yeah, you told me.

Anyway, so, um, yeah.

No, I love Los Angeles.

Okay.

I'm just, he was, he was happy to have his city defended.

Yeah.

And I was happy to do it.

Yeah,

good for both of you.

Yeah.

Anywho.

And I love it here.

Good.

I'm glad to hear that.

Yeah.

Now, back to the city.

Oh, my Kenyan.

It's not a bad place.

Yeah, it's far preferable to so many places.

Yeah, lots of dreams.

And also, I really liked being in nature with less people and less traffic and people more concerned about their families than their careers.

That was fun.

I enjoyed that.

Yeah, I understand.

Okay, now my story.

I feel like

maybe

my cleaner, who is my CEO, who I love deeply, lady,

she might think I'm like a drug addict.

Because of your GLP-1?

Yeah.

I have the same thought with, I have the same thought.

Because the needle, I collect the needles in a water bottle.

Yes, yes.

And then she has to see this collection of needles.

Yeah.

She probably thinks you're diabetic.

Oh.

Yeah.

No, I think she thinks so.

The percentage of diabetics is much higher than the percentage of junkies.

But now they have things for diabetes you can like hook on to yourself and stuff.

The pump, yeah.

Yeah, the pump.

And she,

she is probably in a moral dilemma.

Because she's like, I care about Monica.

And she's falling into this like very dark place this drug addled place and yeah she's sick but she pays me well and if i address this she might stop now you find yourself at the crossroads a lot of representatives do in this town which is they have a client who is a cash cow and they're killing themselves yeah

not well you don't find yourself lady finds herself in this situation yeah And she'll probably not bring it up like most represents.

Don't bring it up.

I don't blame her.

I have a funny, I won't name any names, so I don't think I'm throwing anyone in the bus, but my business manager, who's like really my favorite person.

Yeah, yeah, I've just been with him for 30 or whatever it's been, 23 years or something.

I love him.

But he was a part of an intervention a long time ago.

He was?

Yes, with a client that he shared with a lot of different people, an agent.

I was on you.

No, no, no.

Oh, okay.

No, I came to him about to be sober for good, yeah.

Anyways, it was an intervention with like the manager, the lawyer, the agent,

and the business manager.

And they all said, You got to go to uh treatment or we're all gonna fire you.

And then, um, the actor didn't go to treatment, and he was the only one.

Oh, he did, yes, yes, yes.

I love him so much.

This is is so funny.

I wish that person had gone back

after sobriety.

Yeah.

Yeah.

If they got so because the business manager deserves that.

He did the right thing.

Yeah, he did the right thing.

He's, I love him.

Yeah, me too.

Okay.

So I'm not doing heroin.

No, and if she doesn't listen, but

I hope it gets back to her.

Okay.

I'm DVA's stories.

Just what a bounce back.

I just am happy to be here.

Let's do some facts.

Okay.

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert.

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Facts.

What a story.

What a story.

Sometimes we have people on

who just have incredible stories.

They've just lived lives that are that seem extreme, but I think a lot of people can actually relate to them.

Yeah, I think as we discussed in the episode, everyone's got a lot more going on than you think.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, it kind of reminded me a tiny bit of Jeanette McCurdy's memoir.

Oh my God.

Great book.

Great book.

Kill my mom.

I want to kill my mom.

No, I wish my mom was dead.

I think it's what it's called.

I think they're doing a show.

Oh, they are.

Mm-hmm.

And I think Jennifer Aniston is producing it, if I'm correct.

Okay.

Yep, really cool.

I'm glad my mom died.

I'm glad my mom died.

Anyway, this is sort of similar to that.

So she gave us a really cool present.

It was a lunch box, which is

this, a version of the magazine.

They put out a quarterly magazine, but it always is a little different and cool.

And one of them was a lunch box.

Yes.

And then it had author cards in it.

Yeah.

Like playing cards, collectible playing cards.

I wanted to go through some.

Now you pick which one.

Do you want?

I want one of those chrome ones.

Okay, chrome.

Yeah, chrome.

It says collect them all, and I'm inclined to.

Of course.

You love collecting.

I love collecting.

You're.

Ding, ding, ding.

Yeah.

I was going to say in the episode, the only thing that prevents you from being a hoarder is you are good at throwing stuff away or giving stuff away.

I am very good at throwing stuff away.

Man, at the rate you collect things, you could get buried really quick.

I also have great

aesthetic.

I have a great design aesthetic, and I think that inhibits

you have five bureaus.

What do you call them?

Armoirs.

That's

why I live in a tiny apartment and have need storage.

It's a lot of armoires for a one-bedroom apartment.

Actually, when I posted the pictures of Monica,

not architectural digest.

Monica was in architectural digest.

Her apartment's so cute, it made it to architectural digest.

That's not what happened, but there are some really beautiful pictures of my apartment that are on my Instagram if you want to check it out.

If you want to see how Monica lives.

Some people said, like, I expected more armoires.

So

it looks like it could take even a couple more.

I guess so.

I wouldn't mind seeing that.

Okay, let's see who we have.

Oh, W.E.B.

Du Bois.

I know him.

Yeah.

Famous black writer.

Yep, exactly.

This is so cute.

It has the awards.

It has the titles and the years.

It has

page average.

Wow.

There's a Joan Didian.

I like this one.

Joan Didian.

Page average 236.3.

cool

Dennis Johnson I'm gonna read a hundred oh

oh boy

Kurt Vonnegut

slaughterhouse who did we have on

Chuck Chuck Palanak yeah

I wonder if he's in here we should okay we should go through these who we've had on and have a little board where we pin those exactly yeah that's a good idea Okay, so far we haven't had any.

No.

Oops.

Great.

Anyway, those are cool.

Kurt Vonnegut.

You know,

we both get asked this a bunch, and I never have a good answer for it, which is like, who would you want to interview alive or dead?

And Kurt Vonnegut is.

He's definitely one of them.

He's one of the funkiest motherfuckers to ever live.

Wow, that's surprising.

I've never heard you speak of him.

Did you read Slaughterhouse 5?

I think in school.

He's 84.

He's still with us.

He is?

Yeah.

No, he died in 2007.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Okay.

He was 84.

But he was 84.

He's been 84 for 18 years.

You want to have him over JD Salinger?

Probably.

I mean, I have such reverie for Salinger and Catcher in the Rye.

But Vonnegut is like almost like a Hunter S.

Thompson figure.

He's like, he has this alter ego, alter ego, Kilgore Trout, who's in all these books.

And there's all these weird, it's very trippy.

He's just so creative.

He's like,

like he is on acid as his homeostasis is like on acid trip.

But what would you ask him?

I just think he'd be so colorful as a character

and interesting and playful.

Yeah.

He's a rascal.

Right.

Yeah.

Well, he'd be in that.

Once we do the ghost podcast, we can try to get him.

Oh, we have a medium come in and try to communicate with.

Yeah.

Okay.

Who is the inventor of liquid soap?

William Shepard.

My uncle William.

No, because it's spelled S-H-E-P-P-H-A-R-D.

That's before we dropped the P and the H

because so many people would come over and ask us for liquid soap.

They thought we had an unlimited supply being related to Matthew.

Williams.

William.

His full name is William Matthew Shepard.

It's actually Matthew William Shepard, but he went by William.

Anyways,

you don't need to look further into that.

Oh, that's a ding, ding, ding.

So we're watching Friday Night Lights last night.

We're really getting close to the end.

We're in season five.

I'm a little panicked.

I am.

And Coach Taylor, Eric Taylor, is the character's name, played by Kyle Chandler.

Kyle Chandler.

Child Candler.

And boy, Lincoln was quick on the draw, man.

He was wearing a hat in a scene.

He took his hat off, and then they're talking.

Then he goes and puts his baseball hat back on.

She's like, go back.

His real initials are in

baseball cap.

Oh, cool.

So we went frame by frame, and sure enough, you look inside here, and it's

KMC.

That's what made me think it was Michaels.

We're assuming his middle name's Michael.

Wow.

It was a good gift.

Yeah, that's great.

Okay.

That was in 1865.

What was soap?

Liquid soap 1865.

Okay.

It says, Wallace's invention was a significant step.

It wasn't until later that liquid soap became a widely used product for domestic purposes.

Until Mr.

Yuli invented a valve that could dispense the liquid soap.

It helped.

I'm split on liquid soap.

Like when I'm in a bathroom at a hotel, I want the bar of soap.

I want to wash my hands with a bar of soap.

And when I get in the thing, I don't like shower gel.

I don't like shower gel.

I feel like it's so wasteful.

Like I put like three ounces to clean my asshole because I'm thinking about how much I always put so much on my hand before I clean my asshole.

So I'm like, yeah, we need a lot.

And then afterwards, I'm like, I just used like a tenth of a bottle.

off.

For shower gel?

Yeah.

Or for bar.

No, the bar, you can't take a tenth of it off.

You got to rub your.

Do you rub, do you put the bar off?

You've already talked about it.

Whatever.

You want to keep shaming me for this?

No.

Okay.

You think it's disgusting?

Listen to me.

Do you use a washcloth?

Listen to me.

Do you put it directly on the butt?

Here's what I do.

And this is true.

I take a bunch of sudsy lather.

on your hands.

On my hands.

I take the bar of soap and I get so much soap on it.

I put it back on the holder.

Yes.

Then I wash my butthole.

Yeah.

Then I rinse it.

Right.

Then I take the bar.

Now I've gotten like.

I do that.

Oh, you do?

Okay, great.

Yeah, I do that.

Okay, great.

I thought you were in very judgmental that I put the bar on my hands.

No, no, no.

Okay.

Okay.

But yes,

there is one round first with just the hands

and the suds, and then the bar goes in.

The liquid shower gel, I agree, is not for me.

If I forget my bar soap, if I'm like at a hotel or something, I'm pissed because they normally have a shower gel

option.

And I don't, it's like, it's also slimy, like it's not coming off.

It doesn't suds as much as a bar.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But for hand washing.

Unless we get a sponsor that's a liquid, then I'll say it's great.

No, for hand washing, I'm liquid.

Oh.

Even though actually currently at my house, it's a bar, but it's because the bar is really cute.

It's in a circle shape.

Okay.

So that's why you're using it because it's a cute shape.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I like a thing that I'm rubbing,

you know,

a solid chunk.

But what you don't like is something that you guys, that you guys have in your bath, in your downstairs bathroom, but I also have it too.

Hate it.

You shouldn't say you hate it because what if they sponsor it?

And we both have it.

And like, I think it's cool.

Okay.

I almost give it as a white elephant.

It's a soap that's like a bar soap, but it has these like mountains.

It looks like a candle that has been carved out on top to have a bunch of dish shapes in it.

Right.

And no wicks on it.

No wick, right?

But it's like

soap.

It's a big base of soap with these weird shapes cut into the top.

Yeah.

And you're supposed to just rub your hands on it.

Yeah.

And wash your hands.

And I hate it because A, you're dripping the stuff over as you do it.

Then it gets wet.

If you go in there and someone just did it, it feels gross to touch that wet thing.

It's a pass.

If you live by yourself, maybe it's fine.

Right.

I agree that, okay, so I

like it.

I think it's cool and cool looking,

but I do have skepticism that it's clean.

Right.

Like, I don't,

I worry, even though soap is self-cleaning.

Yeah.

Also, you just, you get this big trail between the sink and that thing.

I've never noticed that.

Well, if you, like, when we have company over and I go in there, I'm like, look at this fucking, there's like soap drizzles all over it.

This thing sucks.

And that's what I say.

Okay.

Then I go, I hate it.

But what's the difference between

the bar being wet, though?

The same, if it's a bar soap, if it's wet because somebody just used it, it's wet because somebody just used it.

But here's what I tell myself: like, when I use the soap, I also then rinse the bar of soap off so it doesn't have a bunch of suds all over it when I put it there.

Oh, I don't.

But there's no way to grab, you're not going to grab that whole base and rinse off everyone's gauntlet with just touching it.

Whereas the bar of soap, I do think people naturally just rinse it off when they're done to put it back.

Really?

I do.

No, okay, so I'm pulling it.

And you put a big sudsy bar on the thing.

You know, that would make a mess.

Oh, yeah.

I put it back and then I rinse my hands.

You rinse your hands with the soap?

Yeah, like before I put it back.

I would never put a big bubbly bar of soap down on the rack.

Oh, it dries just fine.

Yeah.

I can see that the bubbles popped.

And yeah, I want it smooth.

Okay.

Okay.

How much is 200?

So $265,000 in 1986 is what today?

I said $2 million.

It's $776,487.

It's less than I thought.

Yeah, yeah.

So there's that.

Does hoarding get worse over time?

Yeah.

It does.

It does.

Hoarding disorder is an ongoing difficulty throwing away or parting with possessions because you believe that you need to save them.

Obviously, we already know that.

You may experience distress at the thought of getting rid of the items.

You gradually keep or gather a huge number of items regardless of their actual value.

Ranges from mild to severe.

Okay, first symptoms of hoarding disorder often appear during the teenage to early adult years.

You may get and save too many items, gradually build up clutter in living spaces, and have difficulty getting rid of things.

As you grow older,

you may continue getting and holding on to things that you may never use and don't have space for by middle age the clutter can become overwhelming as symptoms become more severe and increasingly difficult to treat i just wonder for someone who suffers from this when they leave their completely packed house and there's like no room for do you have bags all over the floor

Do you say as you're walking out the door, where am I going to put this stuff?

Or you don't, you've blocked that completely out.

You compartmentalize.

You go, I'm just, I need to go get the thing.

That's all I'm thinking about.

I guess that's me and drugs.

Like, right, I just got to go get those drugs, and then everything else will sort itself out.

Yeah.

So, this is you feel emotionally connected to items that remind you of happier times or represent beloved people or pets.

That's sad.

I know.

You feel safe and comforted when surrounded by things.

You don't want to waste anything.

That's a way I'm not a hoarder.

I'm fine with waste.

You believe these items are unique or that you'll need them at some point in the future.

It's a hard disease.

I have a lot of sympathy.

It's funny, too, how all these diseases do bring everyone to the same place.

Interestingly, it's just like different mechanisms to get to total isolation.

Like every addict will tell you

you start by relapsing at a bar with friends, and maybe you get coke, but ultimately you'll be in your closet smoking crack on day three all by yourself.

And then you will not want to see anyone.

And that's all you'll want to do.

And this thing, like, even if you started a social, you could never host anyone.

You're embarrassed by where you live.

It's easier to not have friends.

I know.

Yeah.

It's heartbreaking.

Okay.

I looked at percentage of people who have it in America.

2% to 6% of Americans are estimated to have hoarding disorder, according to the Mayo Clinic, trusted brand.

Mayo.

Do you think they were called Mayo Clinic before the product mayonnaise existed?

Let's see when mayonnaise was invented.

Okay, mayonnaise is thought to have been invented in 1756.

That's going to be before the Mayo Clinic.

Yeah, okay.

Mayo Clinic,

1889.

Still early.

Yeah.

Okay, but we got 100 years difference.

Although, I want to go back to Mayo,

because maybe like.

Mayo Nays.

That's a weird name.

That's got to be French.

With the most common origin story linking it to a French victory celebration in Menorca, Spain during the Seven Years' War.

French forces captured Port Mahon.

Port Mayjon,

and lacking cream for a celebratory sauce, a chef reportedly substituted oil and eggs, creating mejolmnes.

Mahalnes.

Mejolnes.

Mahalnes.

So, wow.

Okay, great.

Great.

Unexpected fact.

Great, unexpected fact.

And that concludes the facts.

Okay.

That's a lot of people.

Two to six percent.

I know.

So on the low end, we're saying

30 divided by five, six million people.

And on the high end,

18 million people.

That's a lot.

That's a lot.

But it does show.

The scale is wide of

intensity of disease.

I know.

It's hard to like where you draw the line.

Yeah.

I mean, like, I'm in people's apartments.

I'm like, there's too much stuff in here.

Right.

But that,

like, stuff they don't need.

If your items can't fit in cabinets or cupboards and they have to be out in the living space, that's too much stuff.

Just technically, that's too much stuff for your place.

For your place, but not for your living.

Like you could have a teeny, tiny place in New York and it just won't fit anything, but you still need stuff.

But like Brian and I had a rule, right?

We lived together for, I don't know, nine years in that one-bedroom apartment.

And we had a rule, which is like, if you're going to go buy a garment, any kind of clothing item and you're going to put it in that closet, you have to pull something out.

Like it's a one-in, one-out.

Yeah, that's it.

Because there's no, weren't we going to put fucking clothes on the floor?

Armoire.

There was no room in our spot for an armoire.

Okay, then you put them on the floor.

Yeah, and that's when you're technically you have more stuff than you can handle.

Interesting.

You don't like that.

I don't know if I agree.

I got a munch on that.

Okay.

But like you don't buy too much food to fit in your fridge because it has to go in your fridge.

Or pantry.

Well, no, if it's the fridge items that need refrigeration.

That's true.

You can't just buy it and leave it on your counter.

It's got to go in the fridge.

And you have to have that same policy about everything.

Like the clothes got to go in where they hold the clothes and the toiletries got to go where that holds.

I buy a bottle of water.

I'm not really supposed to, but I do.

You buy what?

Bottled water.

Okay.

I feel badly about that, but I do do it.

You're a bad person.

Yeah.

And I will buy a bunch.

I get big ones.

Exhibit A.

Can you show it to the camera?

Oh, I think everyone can see this.

It's not an extreme photo of me, but if you'd show it.

and

they're big and so i get like five cases cases and that's not fitting anywhere so i have to put it in the laundry room but your laundry room is fine that's a that's your shed you have a shed off your kitchen where your hot water heater is it's not like anyone's going to be hanging out next to your hot water heater right that's fine okay living space you can't stack if you need to stack up five cases of water in your living room i'm sorry but you're gonna have to get one case at a time.

No, that's not efficient

shit stacked.

Why?

It's water?

This is an episode about hoarding.

You don't understand why you keep saying

things stacked up.

No, so there is a difference here.

Hoarding is...

items that aren't used, aren't going to be used.

It's like, in the future, I may need this.

I'm going to have it.

Or I feel safe if it's here.

Having to go every two days to get water is not efficient for anyone's life.

First of all, you're forgetting I know you.

You barely drink water.

You are not drinking a case of water every two days.

Okay, let's start there.

Secondly,

surplus is part of hoarding.

That's what her, her bathroom, her shower was full of 50 shampoo bottles.

I know.

So it is part of it.

The stockpiling is massive.

50 is different than like, also, that's different.

Shampoo bottles, you do take a while to get through.

So yes, you can do one at a time or two.

Also, you're someone who has a

lot of surplus.

Yes, but I stockpile within the confines of my storage space.

I don't exceed that.

That has to be a rule.

That feels interesting and tricky, though, because it's like your space is big, so you're allowed to have surplus.

But if your space is small, you don't.

Yes, I lived in a small space and I couldn't have 15 extra toothpastes, but now I can.

The rule is you have to live within the limits of your environment.

It's good policy, Monica.

I don't know why you're pushing against it.

I am pushing against it because I don't know that I think it's fair that

like you, the reason you have a surplus is because it makes you feel safe.

It makes you feel safe to have that.

That's literally the exact same thing as a hoarder.

They just don't have a big house.

No, no, here's the line.

It's so clear.

I would have also felt safe to have more of those products when I lived in a one-bedroom apartment, but I could not because I live by the premise, I can't have shit stacked up in my living space.

So I played by the exact rule I'm still playing by.

No, I know, but I'm saying by definition,

hoarding, what we just read is it makes people feel safe to have those items.

So that's like part of

the psychology behind hoarding.

So if that person has just a toothpaste on the ground because they feel safe, I can't be like, well, that's bad, but yours isn't bad because you have the big house.

Do you see the confliction?

If I had only lived in a big house and I had this premise, yes, I would be hypocritical.

But I lived for a decade in a one-bedroom apartment and I live by the policy I'm suggesting.

But I guess my point.

So I've already proven that I walked the walk.

You, but why, why can't now, like, you're like, I feel safe having these.

toothpaste and you see this other guy who has toothpaste on his floor just like four

and and why can't you just be like yeah he feels safer that's fine because he has products invading his living space and that's that's where it becomes

all hoarders it's he's having you over though so he's not embarrassed he should be if he's got tooth toothpaste laying all over his living room floor he should be I'm sorry that should be something that oh my god the judgment wow

yeah you gotta sorry you can't spend more than you make there's some rules you can't spend more than you make,

you can't buy more shit than your place can hold.

That's not no, you can't, yes, then your place can hold is different than in this corner.

I have stuff stacked to you, that's bad, but to somebody else, that's not bad.

That's just the way they're doing their life, like they have stuff stacked.

Well, let me be honest, it's happening in my bedroom, and I hate it, but I hate it.

You understand?

There's like stuff,

yeah, you're

and I don't like it.

That's fine.

You don't have, also, you don't have to like it, but I think, I think it's, it would be, I'd be surprised.

I'm surprised to hear that you're so judgmental of people who like have a stacked area of extra stuff because they don't have a closet for it, but they like having extra stuff.

I understand with the what.

Amanda's mom having chickens out rotting and stuff.

Obviously, that's not good.

But listen, you can have a principle and not be judgmental of people who don't apply to the principle.

Well, you are.

This is Marcus Aurelius.

This is be hard on yourself and forgiving of others.

And I subscribe to that.

So for me, I'm just saying, as an ethic, I can't have more stuff than I can put away.

I can't spend more money than I make.

I hear about you, but you said they should be embarrassed.

Okay.

What I should say is I'd be embarrassed.

Okay, great.

Yeah, that's fine.

Yeah.

And yeah.

I'd be very embarrassed if I had toothpaste and sundries stacked up all over my living room.

What about just a corner?

But if someone else says, I don't actually care because I don't live there.

That's exactly my point.

Like, we are not living there.

And I might not want to be in there because it's like we're on this spectrum.

So yeah, you would admit you don't want to sit in a...

in a living room where you have to clear the couch off to sit down.

Yeah, and there's chicken under the thing.

Yeah.

So great.

And we can work backwards from there.

And there's probably a lot of, I don't want to be in a place with stacks of newspapers everywhere.

It feels dirty and gross.

I personally don't want to be in there.

Okay.

If someone loves living with all those newspapers and kitty litter all over, who cares?

That's for them.

Yeah, that's for them.

Yeah.

Yeah, but I don't enjoy that.

I understand.

Yeah.

Yeah.

All right.

Right.

Well, that's it.

I love you.

Love you.

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