The Only Child Diaries Podcast
The Only Child Diaries Podcast
The Brochure on our 3rd Anniversary!
This week I'm celebrating three years of the Only Child Diaries podcast, reflecting on the journey and expressing gratitude to listeners across 58 countries worldwide. The podcast has grown into a global community where experiences of being an only child are shared with humor and insight.
• Upcoming interview with Leslie Berlin, a fellow only child with a different background including divorced parents, multiple cousins, and her own children
• Podcast demographics reveal listeners in 58 countries across 6 continents with the US, Mexico, Germany, and Hong Kong having the highest listener counts
• My recent appearance on the Canadian podcast "Lead From Within" with Michele Thomson discussing emotional intelligence
• Personal updates including an emergency vet visit for my diabetic cat Bubbie
• The emotional process of cleaning out a horse stall after 23 years
• A humorous mishap with watering a tangerine tree resulting in using 1,320 gallons of water in one day - OOPS!
Please follow the Only Child Diaries podcast on Apple Podcasts or other platforms, consider rating and writing a review, and share with friends who might enjoy it. Visit Instagram or Facebook pages at Only Child Diaries.
Michele Thomson podcast "Lead from Within" available wherever you get your podcasts! I'm episode 120! https://leadfromwithin.podbean.com/
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Know to self. Be a little bit more careful next time and maybe set a timer. Welcome to the Only Child Diaries podcast. I'm your host, Tracy Wallace. Have you ever felt like you didn't receive the how-to brochure on life, that you didn't get enough guidance about major life issues? So did I. You don't have to be an only child to feel this way. In my podcast, we'll explore some of the best ways to better navigate adulting, while doing so with humor and light. Welcome everyone to the Only Child Diaries podcast.
Tracy:Today, I'm going to talk about my third anniversary. That's right. It's three years in total since I started the Only Child Diaries podcast, and I'm really proud to say that it's quite an accomplishment. I feel like I've done a lot of episodes. I thank you all for listening to all the content that I've created. I've been honored to have as many of you listen from all the places around the globe. It means a lot to me. I've enjoyed sharing my stories with you, and I hope that my stories and my reflections have provided you with well, some comic relief first of all, but also some insight into your own life.
Tracy:Now I want to share some exciting news, and that is that last. Was it last week. Yeah, it was just last week. Sometimes time goes by so fast and sometimes, well, there's so much that happens that it feels like a week is more like a month, right, a week is more like a month right. But last week I finally recorded my interview with my new friend Well, she's not my new friend, but it feels like my new friend Leslie Berlin, who's also an only child. She reached out to me on social media Gosh, it's been a while and she wanted to talk about my podcast, collaborating, being a guest, et cetera, and we had planned to do the interview as soon as last Christmas about, but life kept getting in the way as it often does. Anyway, we finally did the interview and as soon as I can edit it which is going to take me a while to get to then I'll post it, probably sometime in September. So we have that to look forward to and I'm really happy to say that we did that and it's going to be great for you to listen to.
Tracy:Leslie is an only child, but her parents divorced when she was very young and she had the benefit of having many cousins, which I didn't have that in my family. So I think from her perspective, she had more sort of extended family support, so it's a different story from mine. She also has a husband, of course, and two sons. I've never had any children, so she has different stories to share and I think you'll enjoy listening to the interview.
Tracy:Anyway, let's talk about the Only Child Diaries and who's listening and where they're listening from, because I think this is really something that is quite interesting. I know I really get excited when I see the demographics come up on my side Sometime. In the last month or so, we've had many new countries added to our list and, as of this moment, we have 58 countries in total listening to the only child diaries. Of course, most of our listeners are in North America, and that includes the United States, obviously, mexico and some in Canada. The next percentage of listeners are in Europe and then Asia, and then we have some small numbers in South America, africa and Oceania, as it's called on this app, which is Australia, the Australia area. The countries obviously with the most percentage of listeners besides the United States are Mexico, coming in second, and then Germany and now Hong Kong, which has rapidly moved up the list. That's a big surprise to me, but welcome the Netherlands, australia, the United Kingdom and Canada, but we also have a fairly good presence in India.
Tracy:Now the Russian Federation, which I assume means Russia, philippines, france, israel, new Zealand, france, israel, new Zealand, spain, ireland, the Ukraine. Welcome. Ukraine, indonesia, greece, nigeria, krakow, ethiopia, French Guiana, singapore, slovenia, cyprus, pakistan, denmark, dominican Republic, malaysia, kenya, hungary, zambia, brazil, aruba, benin, paraguay, montenegro, thailand, and this one I'm probably going to say wrong, because I'm not sure I've ever heard of it before Sekeles, it's S-E-Y-C-H-E-L-L-E-S. I'm going to show my ignorance on that one Zimbabwe, poland, which is kind of exciting to me because I'm mostly Polish on my mother's side, turkey, krakistan, I think that's how we say it Guyana, the Congo, slovakia, united Arab Emiratis, honduras, iran, sweden and, last but not least, gambia.
Tracy:It reads like a wonderful travelogue, doesn't it? In terms of cities. It's also broken down in cities. We have 602 cities with Los Angeles, and I'm not going to read all 600, so don't panic, but Los Angeles is the highest percentage. Then my own hometown here of Glendale, california, burbank, california, ensenada, baja California. So there you go, and the fifth highest is Frankfurt, which is in Germany. So welcome everyone to listening, and I'm so proud to have as much of an international cross-section as we have, and I just think that that's really exciting because I know, for me the world is. The world is small, right, the world is smaller when we all come together and we share our thoughts and feelings.
Tracy:Now, one thing that I learned I don't know if you guys all listened to the interview that I did on another podcast, and that was a Canadian one, with Michele Thomson, and I was very excited to do that. The podcast is called Lead From Within and that just came out in early August. So if you haven't listened to that, please go ahead and find her. She's on Apple Podcasts, but she's also on different platforms Lead From Within with Michele Thomson and that was my first interview with someone else and I really enjoyed doing it and sharing my thoughts on emotional intelligence with Michelle. She's really a great host and what I learned from her is that because I left a review on Apple podcasts for her, because I do really enjoy her podcast and I listen to it as much as I can there's so many podcasts now that I really enjoy listening to. But she said that she can't see reviews if they're not from Canadian listeners, which I didn't realize. So perhaps that's true for me If there's people that leave reviews that are outside of the US. Perhaps I can't see them either, I'm not sure. I guess I have to look into that. But anyway, interesting point. So I really appreciate your support and I really appreciate your listenership. And please, if there's any uh comments or suggestions or thoughts that you have about the only child diaries, I'd be more than happy to listen to your suggestions or comments or ideas about future episodes. I really would, and I've reached out to other people for interviews. There are a couple of folks that have asked to be a guest on the Only Child Diaries and I think most of it is just figuring out scheduling. I think one of the more challenging parts of scheduling is when people are in different time zones. There's one gal that's a comedian that's back in New York and it's a little bit harder for me to accommodate an interview if it's. You know, let's say they're morning people and that I'm three hours behind them. So, cause I'm not a morning person but having to fit into a schedule, it's really hard for me also to schedule ahead too far because I'm never really sure.
Tracy:For last week and my cat, my beloved cat, bobby, who is my heart and soul, he started throwing up while I was recording on the tape because I edited that out. But my dear boy. So I was monitoring him and taking care of him and dealing with all that and he wasn't getting any better and so I had to take him to the emergency vet and he checked out fine. They were a little confused about why he was so sick to his stomach. Since he's diabetic, it's always a worry that he's in some sort of emergency diabetic state, that something's happening with his blood sugar or something, because I know that's what happens to my husband when he's really sick to his stomach. But anyway, he checked out fine, but they sent him home with me. He had to be sedated because he was not a compliant patient he hardly ever is a compliant patient and so they sent him home and he was very sedated and I let him out of the carrier and his legs were just all spread out and he was splayed and he was, you know, not sure it was like drunk cat, drunk kitty. So I didn't sleep very well that night watching him and taking care of him because we got back pretty late. He's better now, but he had.
Tracy:But he had kind of an episode yesterday and it's just really hard on both of us the cat and me to take him in, and also the ER vet that was treating him was not. I could tell that she was not very familiar with diabetic issues. Because of some of the things that she said to me and some of the questions that she asked, or some of the, she was a little bit judgy. She was very judgy about his eating habits and so and the insulin delivery that he gets and I wanted to say something but I didn't because it wouldn't have really helped the situation. All I needed to know was if he got fluids and he got anti-nausea meds and if he was okay if he got his blood work done and if he was okay if he got his blood work done and all that. So he did and he checked out, fine. But I think he just goes through these periods of time when, especially in the summer, when he has these issues. Yeah, we went through it last summer, so I'm always close to home with him.
Tracy:We also went again this weekend. We went to finish cleaning out the stall locker for my horse who passed away. I'm finally giving up the stall and, oh my gosh, the dust, the level of dust pulling out this stuff was absolutely ridiculous. I look like a big dust ball All these things that I had collected over 23 years, pulling them out covered in inches of dust. But had to get through it and we did it and so thank goodness. And it's just hard, it's hard to let go sometimes, but I'm working through that and I feel better this time than I did. We went two weeks ago to start the process. I mistakenly thought we would be able to get through it in one night. That wasn't going to happen. Anyway, trying to clean up the stuff that we got and give some of it away, that's where I'm at.
Tracy:Oh, and let me just let me just give you an update on my tangerine tree. I um talked to you last week about the arborist visit and she had suggested watering it on a weekly basis, so I put the hose in there after she left. I put the hose about eight to 10 feet away from the base of the tree because she said that's where the roots would catch the water. I let the hose trickle for probably about five or six hours and everything was good. And I know the city that I live in is a little bit nervous about water usage and I've gotten texts before from them, but I was fine.
Tracy:So this week I did it again and it was it's because it's been really hot and very humid, and so I was, you know, following her orders, directions on the tree, put the hose out there, I think maybe I know I did I put the hose out there and I ran the water probably a little too strong, and I also forgot about it, and it ran out there for probably 12 hours. 12 hours, oh dear, I am the weakest link. So I did go out there after a while and I turned the water down, the volume of the water down, but probably not enough. So the next morning I got a text from the city saying that they suspected that we had a leak. And I knew that we probably didn't have a leak anywhere on the property, but I clicked the link and it told me how much water we had used the day before.
Tracy:And oh, it seems kind of unbelievable, but I used 1,320 gallons of water, yeah, and if you looked at the spot where the hose was, it's next to the big bird of paradise thing. There's some weeds there not a lot of weeds, but there's some weeds and there must be some sort of like what do they call it Like a hollow leg. When you're so hungry you eat. There's a hollow leg. There must be some sort of hollow spot there. I don't know where all that water could have gone.
Tracy:I told my husband about it. He goes, well, that's not true. And I said, well, it must be true because they registered on the meter, I mean. And he goes, well, we're not going to have to pay for that, are we? I said, well, yes, we are, but live and learn right. First world problems. I did look up how much an average pool takes, because I was getting kind of concerned, and that's probably about 10,000 to 20,000 gallons of water. So I'm not there. Maybe this is like a small wading pool. So, note to self, be a little bit more careful next time and maybe set a timer after four or five hours to go out and turn it off so you don't get any more nasty messages from the city, right, yikes. But maybe it just all evaporated, I don't know. Anyway, that's my story.
Tracy:So thank you again for listening to the Only Child Diaries podcast. I'm humbled and appreciate your support so very much. Next week, well, we're going to tackle another topic together. I hope you'll join me. If you like this episode. Please follow the Only Child Diaries podcast on Apple Podcasts or other platforms you might listen on and consider rating Only Child Diaries and writing a review. It helps others to find us. Please share it with a friend. You think might like it as well. Visit my Instagram page Only Child Diaries or Facebook Only Child Diaries Podcast. Thanks for listening. I'm Tracy Wallace and these are the Only Child Diaries.
