Hi. This is Laura Vandercamp. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist, and speaker. And this is Sarah Hartunger. I'm a mother of three, a practicing physician and blogger. On the side, we are two working parents who love our careers and our families. Welcome to best of both worlds. Here we talk about how real women manage work, family, and time for fun, from figuring out childcare to mapping out long term career goals. We want you to get the most out of life. Welcome to best of both worlds. This is Laura. This is episode two hundred and eighty seven, airing at the very end of January twenty twenty three. In this episode, we are going to talk about the concept of upgrading. First, we're going to talk about the things we have chosen not to upgrade in our lives. Then we'll talk about some things that we have upgraded. And then we're going to talk about some little problems in life that we have committed to fixing, little pebbles in the shoe, giving ourselves a life upgrade, if not exactly a flying first class or anything like that. Which, by the way, Sarah, have you ever unexpectedly gotten like upgraded on a flight. I have only flown first class once in my life. It was like, not even a long flight, and I was using miles, and I noticed that the number of miles I had to use to get first class, like wasn't that bad. And I was like, you know what, I'm gonna fly from like Durham to Fort Lauderdale in style and I used like thirty thousand American Airlines miles or something, and it was pretty fun. That's the only time ever I think, actually, I have just just achieved gold status with American Airlines, mostly because I have a credit card through them, so maybe there'll be upgrades in my future, but it's never actually happened to me before. Yeah, yeah, that's a so humorously. Like when we're flying as a family, so my husband has, you know, his status on the various airlines, and so we'll be flying with the family, we all have our economy class tickets as we do, and they'll always page him. They'll be like paging Michael Conway, like come to the front. It's like, so he'll automatically get upgraded every time there's an open seat. Who won't take then because he's like I would be really not happy to have him me with all the kids and him up there. But yeah, I once got unexpectedly downgraded. That was fun. And we had used miles for me to fly over to Europe, and like we were saying, for whatever reason, it hadn't been that many more miles to go in business class, and I was like, well, great, I'll get to sleep, I'll like, you know, live flat. And then all of a sudden, my online ticket like it disappears, you know this sometimes happens, and you're like, wait, wait, what's going on? And I get there and they had taken away my seat because they had switched the plane, which seems to happen to me more than once because anyway, but this was many years ago, and yeah, I was trying to sort it out, like what happened. They had switched plane, so there were fewer seats and so they people who had used miles are of course not as valuable as people who had paid cash for those seats. So I wound up in the back. But fortunately we got our miles back at least. But anyway, downgraded, downgraded anyway, So we're first talking about the things in this concept of upgrade, like the things we have not upgraded in life, because there's a great many things that you really like don't necessarily have to and among them, Sarah and I are both pretty content with our cars as they are like, what are you driving these days? Sarah? Yeah, so we My husband is driving a twenty eleven Prius. I think he may win some kind of award at the hospital for the oldest doctor car. Flashy exactly. It still works. It used to be mine, so it's rather dinged up. Sorry, but it runs great. It really has been. I think we had to spend a lot of money to replace the battery because that's what happens to Prius's ultimately, but we decided to do it. So now we're like, all right, we're committed to like several more years of twenty eleven Prius, and I am driving a twenty seventeen. Oh my gosh, what is it hybrid? It's the Toyota right, the Highlander Highlander, Highlighter Highlander Hybrid. I've been in this car. I love that car. To me, that is like highly luxurious and I'm hoping it gives us another decade or so. So yeah, Toyota Family. Well, that's so crazy that you have, like the twenty eleven Prius. That's what I was because one thing I've been like kind of worried about buying an electric cars. I feel like the technology will change like very quickly with those with like the but clearly yours is still running and you're still working with it. Yeah, I mean it's a hybrid, not like again like we do ultimately like in a few years, probably want to get a plug in vehicle, probably just another Toyota because we're brand loyal at this point, but they're good cars. It was like the Maden is amazing. So yeah, I mean I will say I did get my car cleaned as per my twenty twenty three goals. Okay, my husband actually got my car clean. Yeah, whatever goal got checked off, it got done. I felt like in a big upgrade. Yeah, sometimes you don't need to buy a whole new car. You could just have somebody vacuum it. Yeah, you get your car like detailed that you know, somebody goes in and cleans everything. We did that once for the van, and it looked like an entirely different car afterwards. I totally agree. Yeah, it feels like you you're driving a new one off the lot. Yeah, I'm still driving my twenty eleven Accura MDX. It's got a few issues, but you know, it's like our personalities, right, you know, you get comfortable with your issues over time, and like, you know, seems like why did you tread change certain things like that? Although probably I will wind up with a new car in the next year because this one is going to become Jasper's car that he can then drive to and from school so that people do not constantly have to be driving to get him and bring him and stuff. So you know, I welcome ideas from people of what I should get. My priority is probably reliability. Like I've been looking at all those lists of like what are the cars that don't cause problems? I have zero desire to have a fancy car that breaks ever, But yeah, it's we're driving our twenty fourteen Toyota Siena as well, which longtime listeners know. I went on a whole tirade about our attempts to replace this car, which this van, which have not come to anything. We had some nice listeners suggest various things, among them car buying services. My husband has now been looking into car buying services. Talk to some people. They are also telling him, yeah, we can't get you a toyotas. Yeah, like you want to buy anything else, we'll help you with that, but we cannot get you a Toyota Santa. So we're still working on it. There is a blogger I follow that I think has been trying to buy a electric Rev four for two years. Ye, so yeah, there's certain cars, hot tickets why we can't get a Toyota Santa. So the Toyota Corporation hopefully makes some more of those other things have not upgraded. So jeans, I literally like downgraded my jeans perch like so for years that you know, I was. I went through this period of time when I had done like Nordstrom Trunk or whatever that I was trying to buy like nicer jeans, and so I got a couple like ag and mother and seven for all mankind jeans. Then I realized, like everything still falls apart like after a certain amount of time, and so then I was looking for a boot cuttish type gene because I'm still like, you know, it's always nineteen ninety six for me, and that's fine. They're back in so you're bad. Yeah, we wait long enough. It's all good. And then you know, I was like, Okay, well Amazon has like Lee brand boot cut, and I'll just try them out because they were like a quarter of the price of these Nordstrum jeans and they're fine. I like them, And so you can buy like three pairs for less than you would have bought for that. You know, everything still falls apart, but it's because everything falls apart in the same amount of time. So I am totally happy with that, similar to the way that you have now downgraded your shoe collection, right, Yeah, it's very interesting. I identified as someone who like bought a lot of shoes in my maybe twenties and thirties, like it was just something fun to shop for. I would go to like Colhan and buy a couple, and it's like, when I thought about it, I was like, huh, maybe since I got an allowance, it's just fallen to the bottom of the priority pile. And I also discovered a couple of brands that seem to last seemingly forever. Camper in particular. I have like a pair of Campers that I've been wearing for probably six more or more years now, and they're not even terribly falling apart. I added one other pair of campers that were on sale to that, and like, those are my two work shoes. I have a pair of Birkenstocks from three years ago that I just wear all summer. Like, I just like don't really want to buy shoes. The only shoes I want to buy are overpriced speed super running shoes. Yeah, yeah, you're super shoes because you wore those when you ran there five k right, and I ran to read your say, but I did feel like they were a little bit helpful. So which, by the way, for anyone who didn't read this on the blog, Sarah won her age group. Okay, Like, as I said, this reflects far more on You don't have to tell people that they're only twenty people in the race. You won your age group. It was funny. Yes I won my age group. But yeah, you could have not. I mean, there could have been one other forty year old woman and then you wouldn't have run it. I don't know, true, there you go. Yeah, so super shoes I will spend out on, but like work shoes, I'm I'm gonna, you know, go for a decade for some of these pairs. That is, it was totally cool when you can do that. I love when there's like reasonably priced stuff that actually lasts, let's speaking of not necessarily lasting. We are also Ikea furniture friends. My family, my husband, and some of my children went on an Ikea expedition over the past weekend. They are on a hunt for desks for the kids' rooms, well aware that the desks may not last forever, but they will probably last for a couple of years while the kids need them, and then we can, you know, do whatever we need to with them after that point. But yeah, he was really excited that he was going to be able to buy like four desks for our house for the price of what like one desk costs in a normal furniture store. So that was a very exciting thing to not need to upgrade. We're big fans. I mean, our house is akia is still my go to furniture store. I recognize that, Like certain people may be like, oh, but shouldn't you have like outgrown that, And I'm like, I will never outgrow it. And I we have a couch. It's like more than it's older than Annabelle. It's going strong. It's leather doesn't even look that bad. I mean I love a Kia. It's the best. It's the best. Yeah, Yeah, I'm really glad we didn't upgrade our old couch because that's now the one that's in the room with the dog. Let's just say, if anyone's pondering bringing a pet into your life, just the furniture may not ever be the same. Again, people find many of other upsides with pets, but you know, the furniture condition may may not be something that's going to improve as a result of having said pet. Yeah, I have. I downgraded my shampoo as well. I'm just now using whatever the giant purple bottle is from Costco because my husband and I just use the same thing and it seems fine. I just don't care. And then longtime listeners also know that I am dyeing my own hair and have been doing so for years, have resisted all urges to upgrade that to a salon sort of thing. However, I have noticed several gray strands inevitable as one ages it's going to happen, and I'm not sure if my normal approach will work with the grays. They might, they might, but I don't know for sure, so I'll have to report back in the next, you know, six months of hair coloring. Whether I think it's a lost cause and I will have to upgrade that or not. This is off topic, but I think I've come to the decision I'm just not going to ever dye my hair. I think my hair would be really hard to color match, and it seems like a sound a trajectory not to be super early gray. So I definitely have like a few but I'm just kind of like, I think I'll just like let it mix in with my hair because I spend a lot of money and time, well not really time, but money straightening it. I just I just don't want to add like another like thing. Yeah. So yeah, well then I mean it's perfectly fine. Yeah, I mean it's I think it's sometimes if people are, you know, on the youngish side, when they start going gray, then they particularly want to not have that. But yeah, I mean for those of us crossing this age, it does eventually start to happen to everyone. And then you've got one of your your sunglasses, right, that's another Yes, I downgraded my sunglasses fairly dramatically. I wore Chanel sunglasses that I like, I don't know, I had moved to South Florida and I noticed everybody had these beautiful designer sunglasses, and I was like, I need some too, So I went to Nordstrom. I actually had a gift card. I bought these lovely Chanel sung glasses. They were great, they fit my face nicely. I wore them to death. I am not somebody who treats any of my possessions with any degree of care. Like you might think that would be because I'm talking about things lasting, but like I am very hard on stuff, and I'm just like, it's stuff. Whatever, it's designed to be used. So by the end of those six years they were covered in scratches and like whatever. They were just you know, I use them, and I just didn't feel like replacing them with something fancy. Like again, I didn't want to use my allans for that. I wanted to use it for other things. I had been influenced by some podcast ads to purchase some gooder sunglasses, which are like running sunglasses, and I'm like, these are fun. They're twenty five dollars, they still block the sun, and they fit my face really comfortably. And after you wear sunglasses for six years and they start to fall apart, you don't realize like how they don't fit anymore. So I was actually like, this is a major upgrade, but a downgrade for me. Collash, that's great. I'm gonna have to try those out. I don't have a pair of sunglasses I'm particularly fond of at the moment, so maybe that would be a good one to try since, as you said, twenty five dollars, it's worth trying out. You can see how it goes. And then just a you know, before we go to our commercial breakcre just a quick public service announcement that if anyone is pondering upgrading and I'm putting in quotes any of their financial products, as in, you know, going for anything that's sold as being fancy whatever, you know funds and all that. No, just buy index funds. This is something people do not need to upgrade in quotes, because it's not an upgrade. You want something with low expense ratios, non fancy, buy and hold all you need. Well, this could be certainly be a whole episode exactly not the topic of our podcast. But yeah, like anything you read tells you that nobody, everybody claims to know how to beat the market, and nobody actually does nobody does. Just buy the market. Just buy the market. It's all good, all right. Well, we're going to take a quick break and we'll be right back. Well we are back talking about upgrading things we didn't upgrade, which the first segment here, and now we're gonna be talking about things that we are upgrading. So, Sarah, you are a huge fan of your various Apple products. Those were allowance worthy then, right, they were allowance worthy, and my allowance was used to purchase them. Yes. Absolutely. I feel almost like bad, like I'm like, we're not sponsored by Apple. I owe them nothing. But I have to say I fought both of these purchases for significant amounts of time, and when I bought them, I was like, oh my god, they're so They're just good. And one is my AirPods, which I use all the time for I have the AirPod Pros because I think I've talked about the AirPods like fall out of my ears. With the pros fit fine. I could run with them, I could do chores with them around the house. They like sync with my phone. They're just like great. I love them. And then a little more than a year ago, I decided to buy an Apple Watch and you know, people told me like, oh, yeah, you'll use your phone less because you have your watch, and I was like, really, I think that's actually true. I love being able to like get text or even answer the phone quickly on my watch when I'm home. I love the fact that we have the security thing at work called Duo where if we order certain controlled substances, we have to authenticate, and I can do that on my watch from the room i'm in with the patient instead of running back and like finding my phone because I don't want to be bringing my phone around. There are like so many things that I've found helpful and it's actually decent as a running watch. I know Garman Diehards might be sad. I mean, I had a Garment for years and I love Garment. I love the company, I love their stuff. But I think Apple Watch has gotten pretty accurate. And now their workout program allows you to program custom workouts, just like Garman. So I love this thing. Huge upgrade, and I guess I have the series seven, which is not the newest it's like the last one. But yeah, both have made my life better. I have not gone down the Apple Watch route yet. I don't know, like you I'm not sure I really see that it would work like what I need it for, but maybe I'll be surprised someday. I did. However, finally this summer get the new MacBook Pro. So I'm recording on this now because a couple of things precipitated it. My old MacBook, which I had had for six seven years, was no longer going to be able to run Squadcast with the amount of sort of memory it took that you know, with like and Zoom. It was having trouble with Zoom. I was going to have to upgrade browsers in order to use these things. The new browsers weren't really that great with it either. It's just there were many things that were pushing me toward it was time. It was time, But I'm still using it. I mean, I haven't just really now two laptops, and I've started using the new one for certain things, but I haven't migrated all the stuff from the old one because I mean, it does still work, So I don't know somewhat of an upgrade. Longtime listeners know, I did upgrade my makeup this year. We had a session with style Space and learning about how to do makeup, and so I went from drugstore stuff to Elia mostly and I'm happy to have done so. In another past podcast shout out, I was on Bestlaid Plants, Sarah's other show, and she matched me with a upgraded planner, right, Sarah, this is this is something you do? Yes? Oh yeah, that was really really fun. I haven't done that with anybody for a while. So it was a great session. And you wanted something with your days on one side and like a lot of list based on the other side, and so I steered you towards the Whitney English Week on one page. And it seems like it was a success because you ended up rebuying it a year later. I did. I did so instead of going back to my notebook from Target when I was done with one year of the Whitney English Planner, which was an upgrade, you know, to get a fancy planner versus a notebook from Target. I did in fact re buy it for the next school year because it's a July start calendar. And yeah, still using it works works for me. I'm happy with it. So yay, have upgraded my planner as a result of having Sarah in my life. Yay. Well, I upgraded my scrubs. I means awesome, after many, many years of seeing my residence for the most part walking around in these cute, well fitted scrubs that seem flattering. And they were all by this brand Figs, which honestly, I've heard bad things about their advertising and I don't know, but listen, they looked really good and I was like, you know, I could also purchase Figs, and I did, and I love them. I like I wear them when I'm on call, and I wear them on Fridays, which means I only have two days where I have to put on real clothes for work, which is exactly kind of my sweet spot. I am happy to get dressed up on Mondays and Wednesdays because it feels rare enough, and the rest of the time I wear one of two sets of Figs. I've gotten so many compliments on these scrubs. I get far more compliments on the scrubs that I used to get on anything I ever wore otherwise, so that should tell me something. So comfortable, So what's the culture on scrubs? I mean, when do people wear scrubs versus not wearing scrubs. I don't think the pandemic greatly altered that culture. So residents seem to be allowed to wear scrubs. I don't know, I'm gonna get like a lot of hate. Like I feel like there's a lot of controversy. It depends on the culture of where you are. Like when I was at Duke back in the day, like you could not wear scrubs at certain times. They were very strict and in fact, like certain residents would wear like short white coat. Like there's a whole mythology and like hierarchy to all this kind of stuff. But I feel like with the pandemic, a lot of people who I never saw in scrubs were like, I'm wearing scrubs because it's just cleaner and like, you know, I don't know, more hygienic, and we've got a mask of shield all. I mean, I don't wear shield anymore, but you know, we're covered in other stuff. Why are we like wearing a dress? You know, it just didn't make sense, And so post pandemic, I think a lot of people were like, hmm, scrubs are great. Put them in the wash. They look fairly professional. I mean, honestly, if where I worked offered like logoed scrubs with the you know that were figs or whatever and the hospital I'd be happy to wear that as like a kind of uniform. And yeah, so I feel like that shifted. I think there's certain professions where scrubs are less tolerated, and I also know there's different and interesting data on what patient preferences are and that very much can depend on the gender of the provider, it can depend on the specialty. But in pediatric endochronology, I feel like I can wear the scrubs because I'm really just trying to look friendly to the kids and professional enough. And yeah, it seems like it's worked out, okay, And they're cute because they're like cut right, like they're not just like you. Yeah, correct. They actually come in sizes that like fit women, okay, which is amazing because yes, old school scrubs are just like these boxy, baggy well, because I assumed you're wearing scrubs because you might get messy, right like that you're yeah, but I don't, I mean, I know, like, so, yeah, I guess that's what I'm trying to is it's mostly specialties that would be in it's something where mess might happen in the course of year caring for people. Yeah, I feel like that's where it like started, and then you know, other nurses and other stuff and other specialties, like it just became diregard to like to see people wearing scrubs, and I think that's kind of just that's it's spread. But you're right, there's no like functional reason that I neet to be wearing Okay, I mean, every once in a while some kid will like sneeze all over me or something that can happen at home too. That's true. That's true, And you're not wearing scrubs at home though. That's an idea. You know, if somebody's got to children going through let's say a stomach bug, maybe just wearing scrubs for the week might be might be a wise move. So I have decided to upgrade my strength training. So we had a lot of feedback at our Goals episode, people sending me various ideas. I had mentioned that I wanted to make strength training a more regular part of my exercise. Is you know, I get older. I got I keep talking about getting older on this episode. Anyway, It's on my mind for whatever reason. But I was having some lower back pain that I thought maybe strength training would help with, and you know, so I wanted to to do that more regularly. And I don't have trouble sticking with stuff, but it needs to be motivational for me, and I hadn't found any strength training regimen that I actually found motivational to stick with. But I decided to hire a virtual trainer. So we've had our first session and that went really well. So we're going to keep going for the you know your future, doing this once a week or so virtually, and I'm pretty excited about it. I bought a bunch of resistance bands and like an exercise ball and all that. I have my spot up in the movie room where I have an open space that I can do it. And yeah, so we'll see. I think this will make it. I mean clearly, if you have a trainer meeting with you, you're going to do it at least the times that you're meeting with the trainer. So that should help establish it least slightly more regularly. And that's the kind of thing that people know, but I had never done before. So now I've upgraded to that. And this is live virtual training, so not like you just get prescribed to work out, but somebody's on the other end of a watching you from a distance. The gentleman face times me and we converse that way. Love it, yes, so that I'm excited to hear how that goes and whether you're able to stick with it, because I'm proud of you. It's awesome. Yeah. Yeah, And Sarah, one thing that you might be taking to the gym as your as your final upgrade, my final upgrade. Actually, I have no plans to take this to the gym. I want to take it to work. You guys know that I talked about like headaches and hydration and how that might play into that, and so I finally decided. People were like, you don't understand. I know it's very basic and very instagram and whatever, but I bought a Stanley water bottle, and all of a sudden, I just wanted to drink so much more. So I finally succom what why is it? Why would a Stanley make you want to dam mean, I'll have to report back. There is like a straw mechanism and it keeps the water nice and cold, So maybe there's just something about like the ease it with I don't know, but anyway, I decided maybe it's just more like the trainer, Like if I have the bottom and I've bought the bottle for this purpose and I've committed, then I'm going to like drain the bottle when I'm at work. So I got the thirty ounce tumbler and public service announcement, do not buy this on Amazon because somehow they must be like in demand or something certain colors, because the prices are like jacked up on Amazon. And then if you actually go to the website of Stanley, which is that the brand I was influenced to choose, they're much more reasonable. So I ordered directly from the company. It said, it shipped, it's on its way. I've upgraded my hydration vessel and I'm very excited. Yay. Yeah. Well, so those are just a few things we are electing consciously to upgrade. There's some also things in our life that we recognize are not working. So the phrase I we'd used and i'd heard like pebble in your shoe, Like if you have something that's constantly a source of irritation, like getting the pebble out of your shoe is a major life upgrade and so we'll throw out there as an idea that if anyone can identify any of these pebbles in your shoes that you think you need to change, use this as a nudge to do it. So both of us, Sarah and I, we record a lot of podcasts. You might think we have fancy podcasts recording spaces. You would be wrong. Where are you recording from, Sarah? I am in my closet, Yeah, with the door closed, which audio wise is decent. Comfort wise is bad because you're like, sit are you? You're on a chair though, right, but you're okay. It's actually my husband's bedside table that every time I need to record I have to drag it into the closet. He has pointed out that I have dinged it, as I said, not easy on anything, and like banged it against the wall. So that wasn't very nice. And this isn't even a Nikia table. It's wes elm. You guys like that is for us, Like anyway, you're using the fancy table here, but you're hauling it back and forth and I'm going to a move every week exactly. I plug in the laptop and like if that wasn't bad enough, like, Okay, yes, I am sitting and that's great. But because it's a bedside table and now of this, my legs don't actually fit under it, so I have to like swish my legs sideways. I sit in this weird, twisted way, and I'm probably like straining my back in terrible formats, and sometimes my microphone falls off the table and messes up my recording and there's nowhere to put my notes. So I don't know. I think I could actually shove a bigger akia desk. This was my husband's suggestion, and he's going to listen to this and say, hey, you got so mad when I suggested that, because I did, I was like, I don't want a big desk in my closet. But I think he's right as he is about all things related to spatial things, and I think that would greatly help my ergonomics because this room from a sound standpoint is actually decent, so I might as well continue to use the space. Yeah. Yeah, closets are great for recording. By the way, if anyone's thinking of starting a podcast, you know, I can tell this quality is different in So I'm in a closet in my office and it got this great wallpaper on the Sarah can see it. You guys can't see it because you're listening to it. But the wallpaper was here from the previous owner, and I was like, oh, that's interesting. You know, it's kind of cool. Got it's like a bookcase. It looks like real books, only they're fake books. Because it's wallpaper. It turns out to be rather pricey wallpaper, which I never would have done on my own. But now it's here, So now I'm like, well, I got to take care of it. Anyway. I'm in this closet. However, I am sitting on the floor, so because I know when we moved here a year ago, I was like, well, I got to get set up right away. Like I had deadlines, I had things I had to record. It was like, you know, we moved and then like I had to get a ad in like two days later and said, Okay, I'm gonna just shove everything in the closet. I'll figure it out. I've got, you know, a cushion, I'll just sit on that and set up my stuff on this, you know, beIN it's like a filing cabinet type thing that I sit on. Tubbet and it was fine and was probably going to be fine for a week, and then I have not changed it. So I am still sitting on the floor, which has occasionally been because I've also given virtual speeches from here. And then there was one sort of sad situation where I had to stand up for something and people are like, wait, you're on the floor. You know you have discussed having back pain, and there could be some correlations yours a week sitting on a cushion on the floor. I don't know, well, you know, I I thought that. I mean, because there's some cultures that sit, do you know, sit on cushions on floors for various things, and I don't I don't know that they are plagued with more back pain than others. And in many cases maybe they are not. I don't, you know, because you have to have a certain amount of how much hunching over your microsp that is true doing, and because I'm trying to turn toward the microphone, there's there's a certain angle that's you're not like sitting upright in a meditating posture. No, I am not meditating, and you know, on my nice cushion on the floor, I'm just kind of hunched over the microphone. So pebbles in our shoes. You guys can hold us to this, Sarah. What's our timeline? When are we both going to get actual furniture for our recording studios? Well? Mine is really low bar because I have the desk like in the next room. It's just a matter of dragging in here, so I can be done by next month. But I mean you might have to actually buy stuff. So all right, well I'm doing I recommend Akia Akia. Well that's where we're getting the other desks from. So maybe I'll just get whatever my daughter is getting and put it in here. Okay, one month, let's do it. All right, we're going to pebbles in our shoe. That's going to be done. Speaking of which, also my mattress. When when's the last time you bought a new mattress, Sarah? Not that long ago. We have a Casper mattress that we got. It was in our Trenton Avenue house. I think so's it's actually not that old. I think we got rid of our old one when we moved from Miami Beach too. I don't live on that street anymore, by the way, guys, so you can have fun going to it as as much as you want. Sorry, our house that used to be around the block for my current how so yeah, ours is like maybe four years old something like that. It's great. It was inexpensive. And how old is your mattress? Us twelve years so I want to say, yeah, it's about time. It's about time. So that's uh yeah, if nothing else, like rotating it would be a good seating might be great. Yeah, and then you know, can have some of the benefits of having a new mattress without actually getting one. Another thing we need to pebble in the shoe. I have been slowly cleaning out the living room. We have the family room, which is where the dog is, and I just you know, that's kind of his space. The living room is gonna be where we could like hang out and read or whatever. But it had all these boxes in it. And even worse, it doesn't have overhead lighting in it, so we need lamps, and we have a couple, but only a couple, so it's like dark and you know, when it gets dark at four point thirty pm here in the winter, it's like the room is pretty much unusable after that point. So that room is the next project, pebble in the shoe, get some lamps, get some lamps. Get some lamps so it can be used. Well, I've got most of the box is cleared out. Now it will be a great room as soon as I can actually see anything in it. Well, I need to replace some of my highlighters, which really, I mean if every day you go to use your planner and your favorite like gray highlighter is just like a little too I don't know, like too mushy and like your lines are not good and you're into planning, like you could just get a new like gray highlighter. So that is like the definition of a pebble, because it's like, so it's three dollars like I can get, and it's annoying you every day, it's annoying me every day. All right, we're going to do that. And another thing, I'm want to get my big kids an alarm clock because I'm tired of waking them up. I don't know if that's really a pebble. It seems more like complicated than that, But I don't know. It's like a small thing that maybe would drastically alter our mornings. We'll see, or they might just ignore it and then yeah, see my children have alarms, but I feel like it might not always work, and so then the whole morning is off and I'm going to be dealing with it anyway, so I tend to go check that they're which means I can't sleep later anyway. Yeah, Unfortunately, I've heard good things about the ones that like light up and then make the room like really light. I don't know. I think it's worth trying because it's a fairly low, like sunk cost if it doesn't work out, and if it does work out like amazing, because I'm just well, it's also just a life skill, right that you know, to figure out what time you need to wake up and set an alarm for it, like the independence. Yes, yeah, and I don't think like I'm not going to do it. For Genevieve, I don't feel like I don't feel the poll, but for the big kids, I just feel like it's time. Yeah. Now, I would love to have a slightly different morning routine, but as it is, this is what it is that I need to wake up and make sure everyone is moving, including sometimes my husband who has a profound ability to sleep through his alarm if he's tired, So a little nudging there, like, sweetie, the alarm's going off, are you planning to get app Oh he'll actually just like it'll be ringing, and he's just like, yeah, I can sometimes be ringing. It was I don't know, I guess if you're tired. So you do you do subscribe and save the uh we're talking about one of our pebbles in the show is running out of things. Yeah, we do subscribe and save through Amazon, and I have like a I'm pretty good about, like I have a note in my planner every towards the end of the month to be like audit your thing and make sure you don't get like all that because I have more stuff on it than we actually want to get and if I don't do it, i'll get so but yes, there are certain things that like I should add to that because we almost run out of coffee, and you never want to run out of coffee. I mean that's like the worst. And then I had to buy like bad Walgreens cough. Anyway, so I could work on curating that subscribe and save a little bit more, probably removing some things that I keep, you know, deferring and adding some things that we do not like to run out of. Yeah, we've had some interesting problems with inventory management lately. So we ran out of paper towels. That was a moment which we seem I think what happened is there are certain things that we always have so much of because then we buy them from Costco, and so it feels like, you know, we always have one hundred paper towel rolls stuffed at a closet somewhere. Not literally they wouldn't fit, but you know, like a dozen extra ones, you know, one of those giant packs like stuffed in somewhere and Ketchup, Like we buy that three pack of giant Ketchup. So it feels like that's like a year's where that you would never run out of Ketchup, right, No, And we ran out of Ketchup. And so we had several very unhappy children who had gone to make like a hot dog, we'd gone to make themselves some chicken nuggets, and like there was no Ketchup, and like, you know, they're forced to just like use mustard in nothing else, and it was just tragic in all sorts of ways, and you know, they wound up. I don't know one child like squirreled away like packets of ketchup from a restaurant, then just to make sure that they were there. We got some like the next day, but it had been very I don't know. I haven't figured that out. Normally it doesn't happen because there's they're purchased in such huge quantities, and yet we seem to be running out of certain things faster. So we'll figure that out. I don't know. I don't want to put too much mental energy into it, because it's not the worst tragedy in the world to run out of paper towels or ketchup. So yeah, ketchup. It must be a common thing because I feel like we I think kids just eat way more than well, I think they use a lot of ketchup, and I can doubt like, and I'm doing the dishes afterwards there's like still like a puddle of ketchup, and well, okay, clearly you're not managing the inventory here either, because you like put way more on than you are actually going to use. So I don't know. Moving anyway, that was the upgrade section going to our our weekly question, So did you want to read it? Sure? Okay, you read this anonymously though, make sure of course, of course, Okay, that's why I called the company x y Z big tech. Come on, yes, exactly, My company, a big tech company, just announced that we're moving from tracking time off and vacation to an unli limitted sort of system. We still have two weeks worth of holistic health time aka sick and mental health, but otherwise no vacation gets tracked anymore. Just have to ask your manager and take it. I don't know what to do with this. I feel like I've gotten to a point where I had a crewed five weeks of vacation a year, and it felt glorious to have all those days. And I take almost all my vacation each year. Now I feel weird about taking five plus weeks off just because it's not earned. You know, how would you advise handling this? FYI, I'm twenty years into my career and not a manager. I don't want to take less time. Yeah, yeah, so yeah. This is a lot of We wanted to talk about this because a lot of companies have been experimenting with this sort of unlimited vacation time, and the cynic in me would point out that there are some upsides in exactly what our listener is writing in about. Many people do not take more vacation. They take less vacation when it is unlimited, because there's no sense that it is yours right that you have a certain number of days that you are entitled to. It's unlimited, but you have to justify each day, and so you know you're asking your manager, which means you you know it's all. There's also a sense of when you earn it, companies often have to then pay it out when you leave. If it is unlimited, it's not being tracked and it is not an entitlement right, and so they don't have to have it on the books. There's just all sorts of reasons that while it sounds really cool and progressive, in many cases it winds up not being nearly as much. So. But anyway, we're talking about how you can take your vacation when there isn't like a certain number of days that you are entitled to. And one thing you can do is that if you do have children, many people are kind of accepting of the idea that you would take days off around the times they would be out of school. And so I know in my family because my husband doesn't have a certain number of vacation days either. We often take a week or so around Christmas, because you know, Christmas to New Year's is kind of a freebie anyway. We usually take Spring break off whatever the kids have off for spring break, so that's a week, and then it winds up being two weeks in the summer somewhere, so off and around the fourth and then maybe sometime in August, and if you add up random other days, you can wind up with about five weeks away from work without it seeming like you're taking even random stuff off. That those are times that just generally seem pretty justifiable because the kids are off of school, and so you know, you could definitely do that. But I think also just for her own mental accounting, she knows she hasn't had thirty days in this old twenty five days in this old system, so she might say, well, the spirit of this new rule is that it's supposed to be more progressive, that you take whatever you need. I need what I had earned in the past, which is twenty five days, and I'm going to track it myself to make sure that I take the same twenty five days that I was entitled to in the past. I'm not cheating anyone out of anything. This is what I had. I haven't become less senior at this company, so I'm going to go with that as the baseline. I really really like that. I also think, like, I mean, it may vary based on the industry, but if you're able to plan ahead and you're mostly using holidays, like, yeah, who's going to be Like what manager is going to say no when you're like I need Chris when it's January and you're like, I'm going to be off for next Christmas, you know what I mean, Like, there's probably nothing that they're going to say, Oh, no, we need you urgently, because it's far enough away that everyone should be able to plan for it. And so I would block out with your minimum number as a baseline. I would plan your year out in advance. Probably you had been doing that before when you had a certain number of days to work with because you didn't want to go over your set number of days. And then I would also say, if you are productive and you're keeping an eye on whatever metrics are being looked at, and you're doing well, and you feel like you could take some extra days or some more flexible days or like maybe you're going to work from somewhere beautiful and like not work the full day, Like well, hey, this new policy allows you to do that. So I think you know, within reason, and again, if you're doing well in the company, which knowing this person, they're doing amazing, that you should allow yourself to have minimum what we were doing before, and then be kind and maybe a little bit of bonus if you can hack it. So sounds can we support you taking all of your vaca? We support you taking all of your vacation. Yeah, this is just a mental thing. You know that you just because the policy is new doesn't mean that you need to change your mindset around any of it. And again, you know, not saying that anyone who is gunning for management should change how they would think about it either, but particularly since she said she wasn't necessarily doing that, I think you can very much have it viewed as like these are my days. I'm entitled to that. I an individual contributor and can do it as I wish. All right, So our love of the week mine is actually thinking of this a pebble in the shoe kind of thing, which is using warm water to wash my face. So I really dislike washing my face at night. I shower in the morning, by the way, so washing my face in the morning, I just washed my face in the shower, and I was like, well, why does that not strike me as like terrible and tragic that I'm having to wash my face in the shower. It's not I don't resist that, whereas doing it at the sink at night always just feels like I don't want to do it, like I have to talk myself into it every single time. And I realized that one of the issues is that at night I was just splashing cold water on my face, and clearly in the shower you've got warm water. So like, well, turns out most sinks do, in fact have warm water. I don't know about these are one of these things you don't know, like how do other human beings interact with sinks. But I always just like would grab the right handle, right, the cold one, pull it and not even touch the hot one on a two handle sink, right like if I'm washing my hands in public, you know, and I would sink. I would always just do the cold So that was just a habit. I always just grab the right and the I'm like, well, clearly I have hot water in this think, so I could do both handles and get nice warm water wash my face with that, and I don't enjoy it, but it's not quite as terrible as being splashed in the face with cold water. Okay. The reason I'm laughing while I was coughing, but then I was laughing is because I don't know if it's documented in our podcast archives or if it was a one off conversation we had. But I have given you that tip. I totally you got it. I was like, do you use cold water? Because I figured out that if you make your water warm, it's like way more pleasant. So cold water gives you like a vage old reaction, like there are actually people who have heart a rhythm as triggered by like cold water in your face, and it's a terrible feeling and it is much more pleasant. So I have to laugh. That is so funny. If there was some way of AI scraping at GPT thing to search our search our archives, wind did start. It also may have just been me like saying it to you right stubborn is Laura that she wasn't listening, But that is so funny, Well, mine is a very redundant one because talked about them already kind of but Camper brand shoes if you have not tried them, there are some stores. They also have an online shop. They're fairly reasonably priced. They I found them just so comfortable. They're European sizes you have to know, like you know if you're like thirty six, thirty seven whatever, And they seem to last for a very long time. So that's my recommendation. And do they have a variety of different shoes or is it mostly all? I mean, what's their kind of towards Like they have some really unusual shoes and then some more normal shoes. I'll say, but they have sandals, they have boots, they have like more dressy shoes. I currently am wearing this one pair that I got a couple of years ago that I'm gonna wear for another decade. It has heels of two different colors. And like my patients and the parents they like, like, I always get positive comments about that. I mean, they're different, but they're and they're heels that are comfortable to spend a day at work in correct. I mean they sell flats as well. But since I'd usually tend to like to wear at least like a two inch heel. I grab it towards like wedge heels or comfortable heels, and they're super super comfortable. Okay, good to know. Good to know. I've been looking for some more wedge heel type things that would add to the height without making me hate walking as well. Well, this has been best of both worlds. Our topic has been upgrades. Things we have not upgraded in our lives, things we have, and things we are now committing to. So you guys need to hold us to getting desks in our recording spaces so we are no longer sitting hunched over our microphones, and that we will be happy people sitting on nice chairs at desks within a month. All Right, We're gonna do it. This has been best of both worlds. We'll be back next week with more and making work and life fit together. Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram, and you can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. This has been the best of both worlds podcasts. Please join us next time. For more on making work and life work together,