"Is my mom still paying you?" Catch up with Emily and Ashley

Today we chat all things Ashley and Emily. We answer your listener questions like, who is more likely to end up in jail, who handles confrontation better and how we met and fell in love.  

Show Notes:
0:00-2:00 intro and the RUG 
5:00 How we met 
8:00 Who is more organized?
12:00 How we are very different when it comes to emailing
14:00 Who is more likely to go to jail
16:00 How we handle confrontation 
20:00 Are people mad at us?
24:00 Sandwich in the bedroom 
30:00 What we are reading 
32:00 When we had our kids 
35:00 What we love most about one another 

Transcript

final edit for publishing intro and outro 

Speaker 1 

[00.00.01] 

Hi, I'm Emily. I'm Ashley, and this is books with your besties. We are so excited to chat with you. Today. We're going to talk about which one of us is more likely to go to jail, who handles confrontation better, and what we love about one another. We start by chatting about what they found in the rug over on TikTok. See. We're going to find. There's nothing in the rug that the rug was meant for us to finally come together. He was attacking Democrats. There's no Republicans. We all just want to know what's in the rug. I always love it. And I saw a comment that was like, I haven't felt so excited about anything since Tiger King during the pandemic. Did you see the update though? I did, but I didn't want to spoil it for you. If you didn't, I saw it. Okay, but why did the dogs hit it? Was the rug used. And then there's probably a body buried next to the ramp, which is Adley's genius. Note to self if you bury a body, you bury a rolled up rug with like, a bunch of crap in it that has maybe, like a little blood stain on it from, from like a nosebleed type of thing. And then you're like. And then you, you bury that directly, like a few feet away from the body. That way when the dogs hit, they think it was an error or like, no, it's just four feet over to the right. But we we missed it. I didn't watch the first one, though, about what happened with your laptop. When I see I got the first one on my page and I saved it, and then I went back and watched some updates, and then I saved it and did it again. And you reminded me then watched in a while. But the the haunted thing, who knows what that was, I don't know, I saw it on Twitter. Someone was like, have you seen this lady? I mean, the body and the rug. So then I went to TikTok and I'm like, my algorithm should know. That's what I want to see. Mine knows that. I want to see it. I had to go search it out. I just put I'm going to have to take a break because I just put a the oven on because I'm going to cook a Trader Joe's flatbread. It will take 20 minutes, but I have to get up to put it in when the oven beeps. And a Trader Joe's flatbread, also known as frozen pizza but sounds sounds fancier, sounds fancier. Bad for you, but it's. Like gruyere and mushrooms or something fancy like that. I have maybe you can see I have peanut butter on my sweatshirt because I don't know why I do this. I knew the second I was going to talk to our insurance guy, but I ate three minutes before he was calling. So yeah, I'm like trying to eat. And I'm like, I've had all all morning to eat. Why did I wait until 1157? And you waited until we're filming? Yeah. I was like, oh, we sell in five minutes. Time to turn the oven on. Was it just cold for Rosies, Jonathan? Mary had pouring down sideways rain for for her daughter. Oh that's bad. No, it was perfect weather for running like like. And I had gone for a little shorty run, but I was still in my running clothes. And you just stand there, you know? And so it was kind of chilly, so I just got a little bit chilled. So it was nice to take a hot shower and chill out for a few minutes. Yeah, it's awful when you get sweaty and wet and cold. It's like that bone cold that takes forever to come back from. I know, that's why the hot tubs. Amazing. We're getting into hot tub season. Listen, I had absolutely enough of this fall being 140 degrees every day. It's the high. Today is like 80 something. And when you look at our forecast, the high in ten days is 80 something, right? We keep waiting for it to change. And I told you, Ben keeps saying, this is great. I absolutely love this weather. He's like, I don't think it's great for the big picture. Like, why is it still 80 degrees in October? And some friends have tried to say, no, it's always like this here. I'm like, no, it's not. Here we are in like, raincoats, boots. It's by now it's like an absolute disaster. I'm just ready to stop wearing shorts. I mean, it's literally hot every day. Afternoon when I go walk to pick up my kid from school and I am, I have to put on shorts and I'm. I love summer clothes, but I'm like, come on, like eight months of this wardrobe. Let's move along. I'm ready. Let's bookmark this for two months from now when we're both like, I was at sports and I can't feel my face. I hate it so much when. Summer. Yeah. Okay, let's talk about all the things. What are the things we need to talk about? I don't know, and I need to talk to you about insurance, because that was just hilarious. Okay, so tell us about getting and tell me about getting insurance. Don't tell. We can't tell this to our listeners, though, because we don't want them to know we have insurance because then they sue us. So obviously our books and everything here are covered. But when we travel, does that, does that count get retreat when we take all that stuff with us? Does it count? And he said, yes, absolutely. That's a part of the policy. And then then he said, and he gave this example, he goes, do you have banners up or large items? Kind of, you know, we might. And he was like, okay, so if one of them fell, fell on someone and they wanted to sue you, he was like, that's all covered. So if someone were to get injured at our retreat, we now have insurance to cover to cover. I hadn't even thought of that. Like, could that happen? And I said, well, there's like a, you know, hundreds 

of people at a retreat. Someone could get an injury. So that's all covered. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. I feel like we had a good list of topics and now it's so awkward talking to you. There's nothing to say. I'm scrolling back, and I can't get back far enough to see your list. This is the thing. This is like we are so organized that when we planned our podcast, it was a random text a week and a half ago that neither of us saved, right? These are things people want us to talk about. It's just gone. Um, I have cute Instagram questions that people asked us. Okay, none of them are hard. I put up something in, I think it was on the book club page that said, like, if you wanted to ask us anything about book club or friendship, what would you ask us? The first one says, how did you fall in love? How did you fall in love? Ashley with Whitney. Me? How did you fall in love with me? Oh, how did we fall out with each other or not? With our. Not with our husbands. Nobody cares about that. That's a good way to interpret this. We'll see when that's what they mean, right? Yeah. Well, we're not in love like a you're in love with me. I just like you a little bit. My mom was still paying you. I mean, okay, so Ashley and I went to the same college. We were juniors and we knew of each other, but we did not know each other like had never had a conversation. Sometimes we were at the same events or that kind of thing, but we did not know each other. And we had a mutual friend who went on Semester at Sea and convinced both of us very easily about how awesome it seemed to go, and we ended up on the same trip. So knowing that we connected in advance to fly together on that flight, we sat next to each other and it was like instant love. It was. It was instant love. And I remember being so sad when we got back. But I had to go home without you. Yeah. And then we lived in the same apartment complex. Intentionally. Yeah. Not together because you already had a roommate and I already had a roommate. But when we got back to campus, we lived right across the way from each other and hung out all the time. I forgot about that apartment complex. Not. Not that you and I lived there at the same time. I loved that my roommate was crazy. I'm not gonna say her name. She would never listen to this. Don't you remember? Absolute lunatic. Then. God, you lived near me. Do you remember? I can say her name. Oh, yeah. Go ahead. Uh. What? Where? I thought you were talking about Jen. Oh ho ho. I know I did live there with Jen for a while. You're right, Jen, when I lived there. Okay, no. It's like I thought that. What happened? Are you guys on the outs? All the way. I thought you just had a nice conversation with her recently. And now I love Jen. Um. Oh, Jen, listen, let's save this clip for Jen where she can hear me just silent and confused. Jen. It was after Jen when I stayed. You already left. I'm so confused when I stayed because I was getting my masters, so I moved there. Ben technically lived with me, and then I had the crazy roommate with the boyfriend? Yes. Like, now that I read all these books, I'm like, Red Flag City over there. Yeah, and Flag City. So that's how we fell in love and how that's how we fell in love. This good story with it with a twist ending, even for me. Like like I thought we looked. Jen, one thing about it, didn't we spend all our time all together? No, she was crazy. Okay, I missed it. One of our favorite pictures of us all sitting at a table together. And we had the, like, early 2000. Do you remember a tapestry hanging on our wall like, um, yeah. Uh, did we get it at Saturday Market and just hung it up on our wall? I gotta say, too, even though, like, we were party animals, both of us, in our earlier years of college, senior year, we spent most of the year playing dominoes in one of our apartments. 100%. By that time, we were not trying to impress anyone. We only wanted to be with. We were entering our hermit phase of just wanting to be with the people we wanted to be with. Yes, I just that's almost all I remember about senior year was a lot of playing bones and just trying to survive and get through. The next question will make you laugh because we just went over this. Somebody said, who is more organized? Instantly I was like, not me. Me either. I am, I have systems of organization for certain things. I've had to train Ashley on emails. Oh, we should talk about that. Oh, I don't have any ready, I don't have. We could probably find some really easily I so I am much more organized in that I have system so I don't miss the super critical stuff. But neither one of us write down much. No. That's why again skylight. Would you like to sponsor us? I know I click it every night before I go to bed, and the next day pops up and I'm like, whoa, that's what's happening tomorrow. How did I forget? I know I love my skylight. Same, actually. I need to check it right now. Because what if I'm missing something I don't even know? I haven't looked at it in, like, two hours. I don't know, but I use my my calendar through work. I have a system with emails that I've taught Ashley and trained Ashley to never delete anything because Ashley will delete everything, and then we have no record of anything and someone's like, hey, I sent you my new address and we're like, no, you didn't, because Ashley deleted it. I even go to the extent of deleting it and then going into the deleted and permanently deleting it. Never. So no emails. Now she knows not to delete anything. We keep everything. So we have records of 100% of everything and I. My other rule is you don't read it till you're ready to deal with it, or you remark it as read if you can't deal with it in that moment. I mean, it's unread, so it's always bolded and unread until we take care of the problem. I am very organized when it comes to something I want to do. You want me to plan a 

trip? Done? I can organize the hell out of that trip. Soccer done. I can get you where you need to be, but when it comes to stuff that really matters, Ben and I are still dealing with. And this isn't our fault. This is the person we hired. But 2021, 2022 taxes and our tax. Guys like, can you get this document? And we can't find it. And we're like, how hard would it have been just to have a file that said 2022 and just put
 the paper in there. But we don't do that either around here now. And Ben and I are both bad at it. So it's not. He couldn't find his Social Security card last week. The main piece of information you need for life. Yeah. In terms of our business, we did start a policies and procedures folder, but just two two years into the business by we Emily means she I did, but I didn't even finish it yet. We just have a bad habit of being. We've run for a long time. I think we're getting a lot better. But we run for a long time on the oh oh ish mother method, like, oh, oh crap. I need to refile our LLC. Oh, crap. We've gotta. We've got a deadline we missed. Oh, crap. We have a podcast episode. That's how we. I was like, have you seen that email about the department or for our giant retreat? We have to know that I know, so should I tell them about you and how you email? I think they know some of our listeners are going to be like, yeah, I've gotten those emails before. Do you go for it? Go. Ashley will email. I'll allow it, I'll allow it. Ashley will email everyone like she's known them forever, and maybe they're one of her family members. So like, a publisher will write us and be like, great, how many copies would you like? And Ashley will write back 600 sent from her iPhone. That's it. Then I'm like, Ashley, wait, wait. Back up. Hi, Julie. Thank you so much for inquiring. We would love 600 copies best. Emily and Ashley. That's the difference. That's how we handle the email situation. I have here's a response from you. I literally just pulled it up. Hi, Tanya, it was someone who was wanting to cancel their book of the month membership because she's only moving over to Patreon. She's like, I just want to be on Patreon. Hi Tanya comma. So already ten out of ten. I totally understand. I got that cancelled for you. We would love to see you over on our new Patreon channel. Insert a link. Please let us know if you have any questions or need any further help. Emily. So many nice words in there. Here's one for me because a company owes us money. Lance, should I send you that information, comma? Ash. Yeah. They're not letting ash know. Like, hey. Thank you. Lance. Hi. Good morning. How are you? It's fine most of the time, but it was very funny at the very beginning of our business when we were, like, trying to establish relationships with people and figure out how to do all of this. And I was like, no, no, no, no no no no no. Back that up. So I started being like, why don't you put it in drafts and let me work on it a little bit? But it's also how my a, I just think everybody's my 

friend. After I talked to them one time and b my husband will say, as you can probably attest, my brain thinks about things, but I bring people into my conversation halfway through. So when I'm writing somebody back, I'm like, okay, Lance, I'm just going to give you the two pieces of information you need. I'm not going to acknowledge what you said in your message, nor expand in mine. I'm just necessary information. So funny. I get a lot of follow up questions. This. Although you would have been proud of me. Did you see that? They wrote us back and said, we need you to send your bank account information. And I said, I'm not sending it over email before we own this business. I would have blasted all my routing number, my account number, and just straight sent it through Gmail to them. Wait, why do they need that? They have that from us. Yeah. I just saw how like for a direct deposit, there has to be a better way. I'm not emailing you anything. Yeah, we've done, we've done this once before. Already too. Good job Ashley. Good job. Thank you, thank you. Much improved. Much improved. Somebody asked us who's more likely to end up in jail? Me or both of us, by accident or for different reasons. You. You are more likely to end up in jail for some kind of white collar crime because you don't think it through all the way, huh? Oh, well, I thought it was a good idea. I'm like, Ashley, that's embezzlement. Oh my gosh. Um, I am more likely to end up in jail for something probably more serious because I have impulse control problems in the real world, but nothing that hurts another human. You wouldn't do that. But maybe something like, I don't know, I don't think either of us would end up there because we just are both. We know we wouldn't do well. No, and we're just rule followers. I am I'm a rule follower and I am a big believer in society being a good place. But by impulse control it means I'm like, that sounds fun. Let's go do that. And then it's like, maybe not the best choice, but impulse control. I'm going to tell them what you mean. Emily will be like, we woke up and went for a six mile bike ride as a family, and then we went to the lake all day, and then we got home and we were tired, but somebody invited us over to a barbecue. So we went and we didn't get home until midnight. And why am I tired today? I don't think it through. I don't think, yes, you're a yes person and it's one of my favorite things about you. I am a yes person. I like being a yes person. The challenges that I do overextend myself mainly in summer, mostly on summer. I'm doing so much better right now. It's so nice because you don't have time right now between your real job and your children and this book club. Yes. There's no time. Did I tell you, Otis? Those limping? Yeah. So still. But he's not, like, wincing in pain. So we think they said just keep an eye 

on it. Yeah. Just let them shake it off. Shake it off. Otis laying back there because he has no energy. Because he's depressed. Or Otis? No. It's okay. It's raining. Oh it's raining. That's that's the northern. The northern Oregon thing. It's sunny. Sunny here every day. It's rainy and crappy here today. Drying up and becoming a desert town here. Someone said, who handles confrontation better? Emily, I think you handle confrontation well. Only if I decide it's worth involving myself in. Well, here's the thing. You just don't get involved in confrontation. Almost ever. Yes, which is really good. But also sometimes then you're, like, agreeable with people when I'm like, don't agree with that. And you're like, I always detriment. Yes. But you're not a confrontational person. You're better at just being direct. And I have to like, stew on things, right? Don't you think I am more direct than you? Definitely. But in like an efficient, helpful way? Not in a hurtful way. Just. I don't try to be my my friend Donna at work, we were laughing about that because students are afraid of her. And I think my students are not afraid of me at all. That's actually problematic. Her students are afraid of her, and she gets sort of a bad rap sometimes. She says, yeah. I said, well, no, Donna's just really direct because I have another colleague who they were like, well, someone said he's kind of a hothead. I was like, I was like, he's not a hothead. He's just direct and he'll say what needs to be said. And Don is like, oh yeah, we had a bad rap, don't we? Oh yeah. Well, I think you know, the number one piece of feedback my husband would get at work, and this is no secret, is you are you're too direct. And Ben would always say, well, it's not a big circle. Like I'm trying to be efficient and get stuff done and be the type of communicator that gets us from point A to point B without much friction. And I'm sorry if that doesn't feel warm and fuzzy to you, right? I do try to balance that warm and fuzzy in. I think I am warm and fuzzy. That's why my students aren't afraid of me. I'm too warm and fuzzy. I'm like, oh, you're pregnant? Sure, you can have totally different assignments. I don't know, you're super warm and fuzzy and you're I know when I introduce you to someone, they're going to feel warm and happy because that's just the vibe that you give off. But if somebody messes with you, you have no problem calling them on it. I will be direct. I don't mind being direct. And here's the thing is, people know how I feel about them. Yes, because I'm honest. I do like most people, but I, I don't I'm not I don't try to be fake. I just am not good at it. No, it is the great quality to have. If someone has done something wrong to me, I'm not going to pretend like we're so awesome. Most of the time, I'm never going to be unkind. I'll always be polite or civil, but I'm not going to go give them a hug and pretend like we're besties. I think we both live by the rule. Also, who's rule is this? Somebody said it, but I sit with it and have to decide, is this going to matter to me ten years from now? Is this going to matter to me a month from now? Is this going to matter to me a week from now? And if I can take a minute and think that person that just said something or acted in a hurtful way, if I know, like they're going through something or I don't know, I feel like I know this other person at their core and I don't think that was hurtful. And then I just move on. If I just reacted, I'm not a I'm not direct like you. I'm more reactionary. It would cause issues in my life. Yes, I get hurt too. And I do to, you know, walk back the directness thing. I don't ask, but I do think that people are mad at me. So like our book club members even sometimes. Yeah. I haven't seen Preston. I guess he mad at me, right? There's a meme that's for us that literally says no one's mad at you. I speak everyday, sometimes I'm like, Is Emily mad at me? I'm like, no, she would have told me she was. I know sometimes he'll apologize to me for things that I'm like, go away. Right now I'm in the middle of watching TV. We do have people in our lives though, and I can just say it here. I don't care if she hears it. My sister could be mad at me and I couldn't, I wouldn't know, oh no, of course people are going to be mad at you. That's part of life, right? You're upset with people. Sometimes. They're upset with you sometimes. And we need to try really hard not to take it so personally, because it's okay to be reactive to other people's behavior. And all we can do is our best to not harm others, right? I don't want to harm anyone. I don't want to make anyone upset or that's why it matters so much to both of us. Do you ever feel like you have imposter syndrome? Where? I'm going to give a weird example. It's like when you go to the airport and you're going through security and you're like, oh my God, what if I do have a machete? Or what if I do have £5 of cocaine? Like I get nervous every time, like, what if I have something and I feel that way in my life sometimes where I think, what if they find this thing out about me, they're not going to want to be my friend. And then I'm like, oh, there is no thing. Take it or leave it, for I am who I am. There are no. We talked about this the other day like there's no thing that's going to combust my friendships. But every now and then, don't you think, oh, wait, they're going to discover they they do not like me, you know, these are the two. You know, I'm going to do something that's going to make them not like me. I'm. They're going to get a behavior out of me where I am reactive or I'm direct, and then they're not going to want anything to do with me again. And that's my own fault and something I have to live with. Does that happen a lot? No. Is it possible? Yes. Are there people who don't like me? Definitely. Yeah. Not you. Me? I'm like, yeah. You're like, I 

hear from them every day. I'm. Well, there are people that come into your lives for short seasons, and it doesn't always mean just because you're not close with someone anymore that you had a big falling out. Sometimes people are there for a reason and then you just both move on. Yeah. And too, sometimes it's what you're doing in your life. I think we both need to develop a thicker skin around some of those things. Oh, I apologized yesterday to one of our members who literally texted. She was texting to say thank you for starting Patreon. I am obsessed with it. I love being a part of this community. And the first thing I said to her, Emily, was, I'm sorry you had to pay for it. And then I justified it. I'm like, when I tell you we spend like seven hours a day on this. I'm not. There's not a bone in my body. That's kidding. But she's like, oh my gosh. And I was just like, why was my impulse to say I'm sorry you had to pay for it? No, we would never expect anyone else to provide all kinds of services for no pay. But when it's yourself, you just. I just get insecure about it. My husband asked today. I say my husband Ben, he he goes, am I ever going to be allowed in our bedroom again? Because it's where I film. I was like, I don't think so. I'm just always filming or editing. Not you're not allowed to is what it is, I think. Unless unless you have to say I told Mary about your husband and his sandwich. Oh my gosh. Okay, let me know how. No food in the bedroom last night. My husband bless his heart. He went to tennis. Grown up tennis camp. He has. He goes to tennis like twice a week right now. It's awesome. It's like called cardio tennis. And he comes home so sweaty and overheated. But I. I went with the kids after Rosie's soccer. I was like, I went and got them food. I didn't get you anything because I didn't know if it would last long enough because he gets home a lot later. So he stopped at the sandwich shop and he came home and I was already in bed because I like to get in bed at like eight with my children. And we were all reading, and he came into the bedroom with his meat sandwich and sat and ate it next to me. And I tell you, three bites in, I was like, bro, the smell of that sandwich, you had to bring that in here. He did. He did say when he got up, he did say, I want to go downstairs and heat up some fish and bring it back. I was like, oh, he was just joking. But I was like, you're dead to me. I was like, When Rosie gets out of the shower and comes out here and smells that she's eight, I was like, you're, that's it, you're a goner. She's gonna kill you. She's way more sensitive than me. Then I had to open the window. But I was like, how is this? How is this happening? This is marriage. He just wants to be right by you. Although I will say, you know, when Ben used to travel a lot for work, all rules were off in my house. Because you're just in survival mode when you're not used to solo parenting. And it's when the kids were more little and I would just let Durham eat whenever just. I didn't care as long as he wasn't bothering me. And Ben got home from a trip one night, crawled in bed and Durham would always sleep on his side and Ben. Ben rolls over and gets out of bed and he goes, are these Triscuits? Do I have Triscuits? In my head? It's been eating them. And you know how they get out there. Like the grown up Nature Valley bars is genius. I don't care, I don't even care where my kids eat. Now, I am not one of those who is willing to be like, everybody sits in one spot to have the perfect. I'm like, eat wherever you want, okay? But it was like 8:30 p.m. and I was in my pajamas. I brushed my teeth. I was like, I think I have to brush my teeth because it feels like I just had some turkey and cold cuts. Why did you come up here? Why can't you eat at a table? But. Okay, listen, I have to back up this whole story. You're gonna have to delete the whole thing. Because here's the thing is, I'm the one that never wants to eat at a table, and Steve always does. So I really have no room to talk, no matter what. When I eat, I want to sit somewhere comfortable. I wanna sit on the couch, and he gets so mad at me. Can you not model good behavior for the kids? I'm like, I cannot. No, I stand and eat most of the time because I'm like watching a show on a laptop, walking around, eating at the same time. I know we we sometimes have family dinner. We've been really out of the habit lately just because with sports it's so hard. I know we should do that more, but we spend a lot of time together as a family. We do every night. We all read in one room together and like have a little conversations and we get we get plenty of family time. The kids are like, can we watch an episode of The Great British Baking Show while we eat? And I'm always a sucker to be like, yes, oh, I my, my house shouldn't be on a special of what not to do. My kids will each prop up an iPad or something and just stare at it while they eat at the island, and I'm like, I don't care, just eat. Be away from me. That's all I care about. Yes, let's have our food and everybody be peaceful. I enjoy my meal. One time a day, I'd like to sit and have a meal by myself and read my book or whatever. Speaking of which, I know you didn't get your pizza. No. It's okay. I haven't put it in. It's a flatbread, actually. It says on the box your flat bread. No, no, listen, I have to tell you about my book. So I'm reading Red River road, our book of the month. I like it a lot so far, so I'm really excited to read. And the comments we've gotten so far from folks who finished it already, which they're such quick readers since it's only the fourth of the month, but they loved it. Oh good. Yeah, I loved The Safe Place by Anna Down, so I'm excited about reading this one, this Red River road by her, but I just finished a book set in a snowy setting. Remember? I saw you at it. Here's what happened. The beginning was great because I 

love the whole setup of any kind of setting like that. And it was a good idea. It was like two. The ex wife and the new wife who had been in the mistress of the husband going to the same retreat because it was the grandmother's birthday, and she kept saying things about it was maybe going to be her last. So like they were concerned that she was dying and they were like, I'll suck it up for the weekend. And then like, the teenage kids went. Okay, here's the premise. Let me just semi spoiler, but I don't care. It's not that far in. The police show up and they're like, there was a hit and run. Somebody was hit and killed or hit and then maybe they die or something, um, by a car. And they were hit hard enough that they went over the hood and then the person reversed over that. Okay. And the cops are like, where were you during this time? And they were like, well, driving in, you know what they didn't do? Look at anybody's car. I was like, this is too big of a hole for me. This is too stupid. I can't take it like I cannot. I don't understand how we are going through three quarters of this book now, being like, who could have hit someone? And they don't say the identity of who was hit. And I hated it. I was in the middle. Nothing happened. Nothing happened in 65% of the book in the middle. I was like skimming pages at some point, like it was just these inane chapters about the relationship between these people. Yeah, we got it. It's established nobody cares who did it end up being. Oh, and and I think it was, you know, I skimmed the end. The end is that it was that intolerable for me at some point it was the, the main lady and she had run over and killed her like scary, abusive ex-boyfriend. But why not introduce the scary, abusive ex-boyfriend and all the things that he had done? They introduced that he had been at this lodge. They're in a vacation lodge, right? And the key change she'd given him shows up at the lodge in like chapter two. But then they just. I got nervous for a minute thinking about that. Nick was here, but I just tried to push it out of my mind. What? Okay. Well, she had hit and killed Nick. Okay, that would have been all really interesting if you had gone through a story, a tale of Nick and all of the progression of their relationship and how things have had gone. And we would have thought that Nick was the villain. That was also maybe not. He didn't run, maybe found someone dead another way. I don't know the whole thing like somebody else dead. And it it would have been better. Maybe. I want to chat with the author. I just I'm really upset. And let me tell you why. You never. Is it okay for you to mess up a snowy clothes? That. All of them have to be perfect. They're all perfect. I'm glad you read one that made you mad. Yeah. It's disappointing. And then I think the grandma also killed somebody else. And. Yeah, let's just. It was just not my favorite. Don't read it. Skip it. Oh, I'm not going to. I need to get Red River road. And then I'm super excited about the Jason McCulloch because I loved hidden pictures. Me too. So we have that in the last one at the wedding for next month. Those should come. They get shipped mid-month this month, and then two of our Patreon besties just picked for us to read. Not a sound by Heather gun Cough, which, just to bring up Preston again, was one of Preston's favorite of hers. Right? Oh you're right. And we get to talk with her about it when we're done. Yeah, I'm excited to talk to her, and we should see, because I know a handful of our members previously were trying to read some of her books, so probably have read it, and I'd love to get them in on our conversations about it over there. Someone who's coming to retreat sent me a picture, and she ordered one book for each author. Like coming up. Like I want to make sure I read one per author and she picked good ones. I think Perfect Child was to listen to Barry one. I was going to tell her like, no, not if it's saving Noah. Don't do that. No. And and that's perfect. And she can get them signed by each one. And just for those of you who don't know, we have a retreat that's open to anyone. We have not very many tickets left, but a few. Um, it's February 1st in Scottsdale, Arizona, and we have five by the glorious authors coming to speak on a panel and sign books and hang out with us. And it's Lucinda Berry, Geneva Rose, Heather Gooden, Cough Crowder and Stacey Willingham. Massive, incredible authors dropped the her stage didn't Stacy just dropped that she has a new book or she's working on a book. I saw the title. I'm so excited about it. It comes out in summer of 2025, so it won't be ready before retreat. So she'll be doing a book tour in summertime, so we will talk about. But her three books that she has published are all excellent. Liquor in the dark is in my top ten. I feel like I always say that, but flicker in the dark is one of my favorite books of all time, and then All the Dangerous Things was absolutely phenomenal and and only if you're lucky with different. But I still really enjoyed it. And when we interviewed her, she said that it was intentionally different. Like, she's like, it's the type of book I wanted to write. I just kind of wanted to go. Which makes me think maybe her next one is going back to more of the other. I love, I love, love her as an author. I just think we just lucked out. We just have the best people coming and they all have kind of different strengths. I'm reading everything that I can get my hands on by all of them before retreat. Same idea. I'm going to be that person that's like, I've read everything you've written. No, you can only sign one. But also here. Here you go. Well, I don't think. I don't think we'll, uh, take their time to sign our books. No, I suppose not. We'll facilitate them signing yours. Everyone else's. Uh, one last question that I thought was cute. People asked if we had kids at the 

same time, and then I couldn't remember. I had Hunter, obviously, and I was single. Yeah, I even met my husband when you had Hunter. I can't believe you had children. After seeing what it was like through my experience with Hunter, I know no one really can tell you what your what to expect, I guess. No, but then I was trying to remember we were pregnant with Durham and Nolan at the same time. Yeah. And when I came to see you, you knew I was pregnant, right? Yes. But you didn't know that I was pregnant. Told me. And you had the little ultrasound in the car, and you showed it to me? Yes. Because you flew in to visit me, and you were, I don't know, maybe 4 or 5 months pregnant. You must have been five months, probably. And I was only. I was brand new because I told you early, but I was brand new pregnant with Nolan. Because. Oh, yeah. They're like three months apart. You're like three months. Yes. You're right. So you were newly pregnant? Yeah. And so that's how I told you. So that was your youngest. And my oldest are three months apart. And, um, and then I had a second two and a half years after my first. So we have sort of similar age kids, but but our youngest are same in spirit. Yes. And our, our eldest. Yeah. And every time we leave, Durham cries. He's like, Nolan is my best friend. I'm like, you've hung out in person with Nolan five times. I know, they're so cute. Like he's my best friend. And you know what? No. You know what uh, Nolan said the other day is that he's glad that Durham lives far away because. And his other friend Quinn and Ryland, his cousin, who are all the same age as him, he's like, I'm glad they live far away because it's the best thing ever. Then when I get to see them, it's the most exciting thing I get that. Isn't that cute? That's really cute. It would be problematic if they lived close together. Oh, you and I, instead of hanging out enjoying ourselves and constantly be like, what did they do? I. We probably get to hang out less if we actually live close to one another, because our kids will be, I don't know, I can't figure out why, but I think it would be worse. Yeah, it's good. We're good because we do get to see each other a fair amount. We just make time. We just have to make it on purpose. Okay, the last thing somebody said, and I want to ask this because I want to answer it because I'm selfish like that. I'm more selfish, you guys. What's your favorite thing about the other person? And oh, do you want me to go first? Because I prepared? Well, it's a really hard question, actually. Yeah, you're prepared, but I like so many things about you. How do I encapsulate my favorite thing in one thing? I know there's not one favorite thing at all, but I already told you the other day that it's how you show up all the time, no matter what frame of life or mind I'm in. Like, even if, you know, I'm gonna call her and I know she's going to be either sad or like a grumpy asshole or whatever, I'm still going to just call, and you have the ability to show up even when you probably don't want to, and you just always do. What's so nice? You know what my favorite thing is about you? Actually, my favorite thing is that you, the way that you love me, you love so unconditionally. It's not unique to just me. You just really, truly, deeply love the people that you love. It's very special. Big love. Big love it is. And that's why I'm going to go to jail for stalking my best friend for 22 years. I don't know how many times I can walk you. It's just. Just nice. God, I like surprise. I'm here and. Oh, no, I didn't. Huh? I thought I had a restraining order. Back away. Well, that's a wrap. That's it. That's all you get to know about us for this week? Thanks for listening. For more content, find us on Patreon at the Creepy Book Club. Happy reading!