It's Raining Gifts or Lucy the Wonder Dog

In this episode, we talk about Lucy the Wonder Dog, Matt's constant companion, who brings him a ton of comfort when the anxiety gets bad. We also discuss how Matt's journaling with a work colleague helps him work through issues related to his diagnosis and other life events. We talk about the importance of a positive attitude and Matt reads a couple of entries from his journal. 

Check www.oldmanlunch.org for more details on us, Alzheimer's, and the podcast.

Bluesky: @oldmanlunch.bsky.social
Instagram: @oldm.lunch

Transcript

Mark Vallet: Hello, everyone. This is Mark Vallet, Matt Allen and Brad Nilles with Old Man Lunch, a podcast about Alzheimer's and old friends. We're coming to you from our studio in Eagle, Colorado, which also serves as my dining room. 2023, Matt was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's at the age of 54, and our goal is to record his progression through the disease for as long as we can, while also making some great memories and having some fun. 

This is episode three. It's raining gifts already. 

Hopefully this should be the last episode that cuts from one section to the next with my crazy whoosing fire sound effect, which my wife absolutely hates. I am hoping that from now on we will be a bit more organized and will be able to stay on track with a straightforward recording. 

Matt, Brad and I are headed to Moab this week with some old friends from Dubuque, so we will hopefully record some of our old stories while wandering around a national park. Now let's get to that first fireball whoosh transition since my wife loves it so much, I made a super long one. Enjoy. Honey, I love you. 

 As usual, I will be reading some Alzheimer's statistics at the beginning of this episode. These stats are from the Alzheimer's Association 2024 Facts and Figures Executive Summary Sheet and this time they deal mainly with caregiving issues.

Caregiving usually falls to family members, is often unpaid, and can take a major toll on the caregiver and their own family. There seems to be a critical shortage of trained caregivers. In fact, there are currently 20 U.S. states that have been named dementia neurology deserts, which means there are fewer than ten neurologists per 10,000 people with dementia. 

This all seems crazy to me. According to a 2022 report, there are an estimated 57 million people in the world living with Alzheimer's or another form of dementia, and this number is expected to climb to 152 million people worldwide by 2050. 

Caregiving is massively important and will become even more so as the number of people diagnosed with this horrific disease continues to grow. 

When I was back in Dubuque over Christmas, I learned that a friend of ours is waiting on an Alzheimer's diagnosis for her sister, who is actually younger than Matt. Much of the caregiving is falling to her as she has had to take over her sister's medical appointments, checkbook and will eventually have to become her guardian.

Caregiving is one subject that I would like to highlight as we move forward. Here are a couple of caregiving-related statistics:

• In 2023, 11.4 million caregivers provided nearly 18.4 billion hours of unpaid care, a contribution to the nation valued at $346.6 billion. 
• The total lifetime costs of care for someone with dementia is estimated at almost $400,000, with 70% of those costs being borne by family caregivers in the form of unpaid caregiving and out-of-pocket expenses. 
• 60% of caregivers of people with Alzheimer's or other dementia were employed in the past year. However, many of these caregivers had to make major changes to their work schedules because of caregiving responsibilities. 57% said they had to go in late, leave early or take time off, and 16% had to take a leave of absence. 

In this episode, we talk about Lucy, the Wonder dog who is Matt's constant companion and brings him tons of comfort when the anxiety gets bad. 

We also discuss how Matt’s journaling with a work colleague helps him work through issues related to his diagnosis and other life events. We talked about the importance of a positive attitude and Matt reads a couple of entries from his journal. 

 Mark Vallet: So the other thing you're talking about is like so hiking with Lucy and maybe you talk about Lucy a little bit, like where you got Lucy and, you know, and how yeah, what comfort she is. 

Matt Allen: Lucy is I mean, you know, probably equal to the comfort that I get from Laia and my kids in some ways, and maybe even more so. And sometimes when I say this Laia is like, Oh, come on. 

But the truth is, is that she spends every fucking day with me very closely, almost all the time. She’s got her own kind of anxiety here in there too, like she's, you know, she's crazy about food and she can get really anxious if she can smell something and she can't find it, that kind of stuff. So, we have some similarities to it. She's pretty high strung in a lot of ways, anxious, etc.. But yeah, I'm walking and hiking a heck of a lot more because I'm not working as much. You know, I used to work a steady 38, 40 hours a week and now it's somewhere like 20 to 23, sometimes 17, you know, like less, much less. 

So, I have a lot of time and space. I'm happy to live in Boulder, Colorado, where there's shit, tons of hikes just about everywhere at my door. So, it doesn't take I don't need to really go that far to even just get up in the middle of nowhere. And I have to say that that's where I feel the absolute best. I'm moving, you know, I'm getting exercise and energy and I'm by myself. I mean, with Lucy, we don't talk because, well, actually, we probably do talk, but she doesn't talk back much. So, yeah, I do talk to her all the time and she responds with her eyes. 

When I go, like when I grab her leash, she all of a sudden just jumps up, you know, She knows she's like she heads for the door. But so that relationship is primary, one of my primary relationships at this point. And she offers a lot of solace. You know she sleeps still in our bed with us every night and usually like wrapped up somewhere in the bed which is nice. 

Um, so the hiking. The skiing, like I've been skiing a couple, two times, three times a week here and there. And I mean, it can't always do that. And I have to say that Laia is sometimes like, did you go skiing again today? 

I've been going to Eldora because it's close and it's takes me 45 minutes or an hour to get up there super easy ski for two or 3 hours, come back down. So that has also you know these are the benefits to a certain degree of having an Alzheimer's diagnosis. I sure as hell wouldn't be doing that if I didn't. 

Mark Vallet: That's true. Does she know that skiing brings you comfort, like, every time? Matt Allen: Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. She totally. And sometimes, understandably, she still like you went like three times. You know. You know, I said, Well, that's better than sitting around at home feeling morose. 

Mark Vallet: That's right and the exercise is supposed to help, so I just throw that back in her face. 

 Matt Allen: She's not harsh about it. 

Mark Vallet: I know. I was kidding.

Matt Allen: I mean, she works like 60 hours a week always. So, when she comes home and we compare our days, you know, and I say she's like, So what did you do? I said, Do you want to really know what I did? 

Mark Vallet: I went skiing and then I forgot to do all the chores you told me to do. So that's where it's at.

Matt Allen: Exactly. That's right. Well, and I would say because you just brought that up, I mean, I am the house husband. Yeah, I do everything in the house. I clean the dishes. I'm even more, like, specific than Laia is. I mean, she's a very clean person, but I'll, like, go and crisp the bed and fucking make sure that all the dishes are washed and clean. And so she always comes home to her like, I am a fucking great housewife. 

Mark Vallet: I’m not. All right, why don’t you talk about how you got Lucy? 

Matt Allen: And so I worked with a client whose name I won't say, but let's just call him Joey. And Joey had at some period in the time that I was working with him, I think I worked with him for a total of three years, something like that. And in the first year he got a dog named Lucy and he got her from the ASPCA, the vet place in in Boulder. 

This was a team where he had probably six or seven clinicians working with him. He had a lot of psychosis and having a really hard time, getting a dog was part of his hopes to be able to balance things out, which it did. 

In some ways, Lucy helped him to really calm down, but after about a year and a half or two years, he ended up going back to San Luis Obispo where he had lived. I was his psychotherapist at that time. And I remember the conversation. He said, well, you know, I am going to go, but I'm not sure what I want to do with Lucy. And I said immediately, right back to him, I know exactly what you're going to do with Lucy. 

He said, what and I said, I'll take her. He said, really? Yeah, because I was already in love with her, honestly. Like she's you know, she's just so focused, well on food primarily, but she ties me now to food. Food is first and then me, which is very, very close. So, we have a we have a very, very, very good relationship. And I think I don't know you know, I can't say that Lucy is helping to slow down the progression of my disease, but I think Lucy is helping me slow down the progression of the disease. 

Mark Vallet: I think if she makes you more comfortable and also I think she gets you out of the house to exercise. 

Matt Allen: Oh, totally. Yeah. 

Mark Vallet: Yeah. I think there's a lot of benefits of just having an emotional companion in some ways, you know? 

Matt Allen: No, absolutely. Yeah. And like I said, she's my sidecar. She goes pretty much everywhere I go. I don't go to church anymore. So probably I wouldn't take her if I went to church. She goes to work and if I go grocery shop and she sits in the car, you know, she's basically with me almost every day, all day. 

So constant companion. And I think she provides like a like a warm blanket for me all the time. Sometimes I'll forget, like I'll go to work and I'll get to work and I get out of the car and I'm like, Oh fuck, where is Lucy? And I don't know if she's like, lshe can just kind of like, go up and around the stairs. And I have already forgotten in my short-term memory whether I took her from home or didn't take her from home. 

So the good news is that on my phone I have find my and she's got a collar with a with an air tag so I can just go, Oh, fuck. Okay. I guess I left her at home and then I just run back and because it's, you know, 3- 4 minutes from my work, pick her up and come back to work. So that's been super, super helpful because my anxiety spikes, obviously, if I'm like, where the fuck is Lucy, you know. 

Mark Vallet: I would imagine. Do you use air airtags or anything else? 

Matt Allen: I use Airtags for my wallet, I use Airtags for my keys and I use Airtags for Lucy. So those. Which are they are super helpful. Oh my God. Yeah. 

Mark Vallet: Yeah. I would imagine you lose your wallet and keys. 

Matt Allen: I don't anymore because of that. Yeah. Sometimes I'm in the house and, like, where the fuck is my wallet? And then I may have forgotten that I can look at my phone. 

 Mark Vallet: Seriously. Can you remember? It has an airtag. 

Matt Allen: I mean, there's like a panic space and it's like, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. And then if you know, then I'm like, Okay. Oh, right, right, right. Okay. Where's my where's my fucking phone? Sometimes I can't find my phone. 

Brad Niles: Can you set reminders. Check your phone. A list every day of stuff?

Matt Allen: Yeah. I mean, I usually can recognize that if I need to find that I need to know where my phone is. And usually it's in my pocket. But even sometimes, you know, I'll get out of the car, go into work, and I'm like, you know, I'm checking. And it's like, fuck. And I go back to the car now. I left it plugged in, you know, whatever, or, or it's not there. And then I'm like, Fuck. 

Mark Vallet: Do they ever wear a white like a like an Apple Watch? Like, would you ever wear one of those? Because that I think you can you also have find me on that. And then it's always on your wrist. I just, I don't really wear watches so I don't think I could do it.

Matt Allen: I don't really wear a watch either. 

Mark Vallet: Jack finds it useful in some cases. Well, we can get a hold of him at school because he always forgets his phone. He doesn't really it doesn't plug it in. It's always dead. Or he just forgets it. So the watch has been sort of helpful for that, like if I'm coming to pick him up and I’m late or I'm in a different car than he's expecting and I can text him and but half the time he doesn't look at that. 

Matt Allen: So and yes, ladies and gentlemen, I just want you to know that the Apple Watch is highly regarded. 

Mark Vallet: And if anybody at Apple would like to get a hold of us as a sponsorship, call or email. 

Anyway, So then the one other thing you were saying that has been helping is writing in that you've been working on with a coworker. 

Matt Allen: That's right. 

Mark Vallet: And writing on a weekly basis. So if you want to talk about that and then we're going to read a little bit of it. 

 Matt Allen: Yeah. So I don't know for how long we've been doing it now, but we started on January 1st, 2024 and wherever we are now, so almost a year. 

So yeah, almost a year that, that we have been doing this together and this is with my good friend and also coworker and we also used to be the director of the organization that I work for and I don't know, at some point we were in a meeting or something and they asked me if I'm still writing journals and I said, Yeah, here and there. 

They suggested that why don't we just do that once a week? Let's meet, let's find a time. And we've had to navigate the time a couple at times, like changing it because of our schedules. But we have been very, very steady. And so basically each week we get together and sit down and have some coffee and tea. They usually provide some kind of food, you know? 

And we just kind of write. And AM has been writing about things entirely different than dementia because they don't experience that, so they'll read what they have written and then I'll read out. We both read out loud to each other and then that's like about an hour or so and it's been really, really helpful. Honestly, it's I think just to put a shout out that if you're going to write in a journal or whatever, it's much easier to do if you've got somebody else doing it with you. 

Mark Vallet: Yeah, I think that's a good way to keep you on life partner, to sort of forces you to do it on a regular basis. 

Matt Allen: Exactly. Yeah. If it was left up to me, I think I probably would still be writing, but not nearly as frequently.

Mark Vallet: And does it help to read it to her like, does that. Yeah. Make you feel a little better? 

Matt Allen: You know yes it does, although they would say them, not her. 

Mark Vallet: Oh, yeah. 

Brad Nilles: Is it emotional?

Matt Allen: No, but it's just that's, that's the pronoun it's, it's now that they are they not she, Brad Nilles: No, I mean when you're reading to her. 

Mark Vallet: Them or they. 

Matt Allen: You can tell that this is old man lunch because we're really not quite in 

Mark Vallet: I know, the pronoun thing gets me sometimes. They does. 

Matt Allen: But I'll tell you what just talking with a they don't care if somebody makes a mistake as long as. 

Mark Vallet: You're trying, my nephew says to it's like, you know, as long as you're not blatantly misgendering me to be an asshole. I understand that, you know, mistakes happen.

Matt Allen: And I'm going to keep reminding you. Yeah. So to help. Yeah, no, etc.. 

Mark Vallet: And that makes sense. But anyway, so it does help and doesn't do you get emotional when you read it back to her? I mean them. 

Matt Allen: You can bleep. You should just bleep it. BLEEP Yeah, I think it's been very, very, very helpful. And honestly, like I feel since we started doing that together that I don't know, it's, you know, it's only once a week. So, it's not like I still go into pockets of depression and feeling like shit, but looking forward to this. And then also it's really helping me to actually have, you know, a record. You know of my experience. 

Mark Vallet: Yeah, because I mean, we read some of it last night and to non-recording microphones. Yeah, I thought it was great you know that I think the, the writing is fantastic, and I think we should probably edit that into a book at some point. Keep doing that every day. 

Mark Vallet: I'm going to definitely. I mean every day, every week and you know, just keep up through the whole progress and then, you know, that's like a journal of things that, you could edit down into some kind of book. 

Matt Allen: I mean, well, unless it's in the in the very last ones, it's just like gibberish. Oh, dinosaur. Noises. I saw a demon today coming out of the sewer. 

I mean, I don't know what that's going to look like. I mean, there's also something that's really, I don't know what I mean. Everybody's going to die. We know that. And everybody's mind is going to fail at some point. But I wonder what it's really like when you're when you're gone. Like when, your mind has kind of passed. So, I'm not looking forward to that. And I'm not saying that anybody should look forward to it. But there's something that there, some wonder that I have like how will I feel when I can't really grok anything anymore? 

Well, you know, in the Buddhist tradition, there's a sense of that. Well, we don't know what enlightenment is, but maybe enlightenment is just when you, like, go all the way to the other side where you're suddenly just kind of like a flash bulb and you're not really worried or anxious. Now, I think most people who get dementia are worried and anxious, but would it be possible to get to a place where I, I didn't really have the ability to communicate in the same way, but that I was still okay. Maybe that's possible. 

Mark Vallet: Maybe. I don't know. But I guess we'll find out. 

Matt Allen: We will find out. It's not likely, but. But I'm toying with that with the idea of that, that this process may result in something unusually good. 

Mark Vallet: Well, I hope so. We'll see. 

Matt Allen: Well, let's look at it right now. Even right now, this process is resulting in something that's really good. We are here together and we're talking to each other in an intimate way that we probably wouldn't have done. 

Mark Vallet: That's true. I agree with that. 

Matt Allen: It's already you know, it's already raining gifts in a certain way. 

Mark Vallet: Well, that's true. Yeah, that's true. Well, why don't we read some of your journal. Do you remember which ones you read last night? Because I think there was some at the beginning and then we read the last two. One was about Lucy, and then the last one was more about withdrawing from crowds a little bit. But I think you read like the first one. 

Matt Allen: So the title was Noble Silence Above the Clouds. That's the title for the whole thing. A Year of Writing with AM. 

OK- here we go…the intention here is for this to be my journal for the next year- a daily contemplation about mind and memory and heart and aspiration.  Walking a few days with my beautiful wife, Laia and Lucy the wonder dog I had something of an epiphany- maybe it had to do with the majestic bald eagle that posed for us atop a towering light pole on the trail we were on- or maybe I have been growing toward the feeling that rose and then left my body through speech. 

I said to Laia: I have come to a decision- one I did not recognize or see until this morning- which is that I have a choice about my illness and my diagnosis of early onset Alzheimer’s disease.  That I can make a choice to “not get sick”, to not continue the drive down the road of further debilitation and confusion and to “remember” frequently that I can make this choice. 

Does it sound a little crazy- yes! Will it “work” in slowing or lessening the effects of my sickness? Will it lead to a better outcome? Are these important questions, yes!  Do I have the power or ability to manifest health despite the lurking fear and anxiety of an eventual disintegration of my mind?  The answer is yes, I do!  Can it, could it, will it be as easy as that?  Yes.

Am I already out of my mind? Maybe. Do I care?  Not a bit.  Now- don’t get me wrong… I will die eventually- or maybe tomorrow when the landing gear of the distant airliner crossing over my vector dislodges the internal bolt that for days has vibrated until completely free and falls on my head like a falling star as I walk my beloved Lucy. 

So, at least for today: to summarize: I have made my choice to not get sick and I’m sticking with it.

And then this is in quotes, I don’t know why:

“Seeing illness as a blessing- a path to greater clarity and compassion.”

Two sides of the same coin- the sick one and caregiver

The wisdom of no escape- from AM and Karen

Mark Vallet: What’s with the bolt falling out of the plane.  

Matt Allen: I’m talking about the randomness. 

Mark Vallet: I know I was just kidding. No, and that could happen. But I mean, do you really think you can slow it down or stop it with. 

 Matt Allen: I don't know if I can, but I know that it's much better to think that I can, than to think that I can't. So who knows? If you know, who knows if there's any measure that that will make any difference whatsoever. But I sure as fuck know that if I'm like lamenting and going into depression, it's not going to get fucking better. 

Mark Vallet: I know, I think a positive attitude makes a huge difference for people. That's why I always think if I get one, I'll die the next day because I'm just so negative about everything. I will literally be dead tomorrow is what I would think as soon as, before I had this colonoscopy I was sort of convinced that I had colon cancer and I assumed that I would be dead before Christmas. So, I go immediately to the worst case. So, I do think that that's an excellent attitude and a great way to look at it. I wish I could do that. Yeah. All right. Well, let's read another one. 

Matt Allen: You bet. 

Mark Vallet: And all of these I'm going to put some of this on the website as a blog post. The website is www.oldmanlunch.org. 

Okay, so this is from January 4th, 2024, and titled Settling Into (or trying to get used to) my general confusion. 

I am sitting at home right now with Naia. I’m on the floor in the living room and she’s lying on the couch behind me partially wrapped in a blanket. I have a small heater on the lowest setting keeping my feet and legs toasty.  It’s good when she’s present- she seems to wake me up with her clarity and her openness and her straightforward approach to being. The sun is trying to burn through or to the haze and the cold outside and the light in the room oscillates back and forth like my mood. At times I feel forsaken- or wronged, or damned, or pitiful, or angry about my diagnosis, at other times I wonder if my sickness is a blessing.  And am I sick? Yes, I do have this diagnosis that portends loss and eventual annihilation- but is this any different than what I have already known since I inhaled the notion of the truth of impermanence, of death? Has anything changed or shifted since this diagnosis arrived?

And do I have a choice about getting sick” or “not getting sick”?  conventional science and health care would say no-we do not have a choice- but I am not so sure.

Mark Vallet: Well, again, I think the positive attitude trying to push it off right? 

Matt Allen: I don't know. I mean, probably, you know, from an internal perspective or from a body perspective, it probably wouldn't have that much effect. But I think the mind also has all kinds of control in this area. 

Mark Vallet: I hope all this just delays it longer and longer. 

Matt Allen: Slows it down. 

Mark Vallet: It slows it down until they can get to a point where they have some kind of pill that really slows it down. I would hope maybe they could get it to where, you know, you're getting closer to like 20 years is normal.

Matt Allen:  Instead of 8 years from diagnosis to death. 

Mark Vallet: Uh, all right. Do you want to read? Uh, I don't know. There's another one out there. If you want to go to the bottom. Where is Lucy?

Brad Nilles: She's upstairs sleeping. 

Mark Vallet: That’s’ what Sophie does, too. She goes upstairs and lays on our bed all fucking day. Sometimes the door closes because she just pushes it open and it hits her dog bed then and then bounces back and closes. And then she's trapped in there. Later I am like where the fuck is the dog? 

Matt Allen: All right, I read this one. Okay. January 8th, 2024

Holy Shite- my mind!  How smooth it can be and how turbulent the flow can become in moments of uncertainty. Sitting at my computer almost always causes a semi-panic attack.  It seems that the medium somehow short circuits my linear thinking and I find myself hopping from one lily pad to the next, falling headlong into the murky water, flailing, or drowning until I get the sense to unplug.  And here I am, again, writing within the murk of the madness as if I cannot make the connection between cause and result?  It would be funny if it wasn’t so debilitating. And yet I continue. Perhaps I am hoping to find my way out of the darkness by plunging headlong without a light- running through the rhythms of the uncontained trails without a headlamp. I am not lost, but I am hard to find. Simultaneously, Laia works and Naia skis and Lucy snores and all is calm and bright. Goodnight.  Wait…how about a poem?

Well washed wandering

Blank stares, empty mind. 

Orientation doesn’t mean you’re heading East. 

And the fork in the road may lead you back to where you never were.

Caution doesn’t help, the highway signs have been vandalized,

And the fast-approaching curve shows a no parking sign.

Slow it down, round it goes, here is where you are if you still are.

Mark Vallet: Yeah, that's a good. I never know what to say. This thing is just going to kill me. 

Okay. I think the last ones were the last two. There was one specifically about Lucy, and then the last one you had written up here maybe or maybe the day before you came up or I don't remember. 

Brad Niles: Yeah. Friday. 

Matt Allen: An ode to Lucy. Yeah. You want to hear that? 

Mark Vallet: Yeah. Let's put that in, that was a good one. And I mean, Lucy is obviously a massive comfort. I mean, you know, and I think that people I think everybody has to find their own coping mechanisms probably with this. You know, a pet is probably, you know, as long as it's the right pet, I'm sure adopting a fucking puppy, that's nuts and, running around would cause more anxiety. 

But you know, an older dog that someone, I wonder if they have emotional support dogs for. 

Matt Allen: Alzheimer's, I think they do. They do. They train. They do. Yeah. 

Mark Vallet: I mean, that would make sense 

Okay. So, this is 11/5 2024, which also happens to be election Day. An ode to Lucy. 

 Oh, my pedigreed Boddhisatva, let me count the ways that I love and respect and need you:

You, yes you- have been my faithful companion through thick and thin for the last 10 years- 

(if that’s actually how long it has been- cuz how would I know, considering my current flipsy flopsy mind running like a wild river through a canyon).

You have determination for love more than any I know, and you have helped me to trust the world in the way of kindness and gentleness and forgiveness through your deep peace and your indefatigable loyalty.

Our solo hikes together engender peace and flow and ease and motion and restoration and offer me an opening to trusting this battered world- and so, my best friend- I offer this short ode to you!

Lucy baby, cookie bird, chicken hawk, monkey girl, kid, donkey-kid-and all other appellations that you embody express your gracious quirkiness and your deep loyalty to love. You know when to rest and when to run, and when to chase, and when to sleep, and when to wake and when to sleep and how to make the day just the day and the night just the night.

You have been and continue to be my teacher in love without boundary and this is one of the best gifts I have ever been given.

kI ki so so! Ashe la gyal lo! Woocyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!!

Mark Vallet: Good one. And what was the last bit there? That was a Buddhist thing. 

Matt Allen: That's a good thing. Yeah. Kiki So? So she, like, yellow is kind of like Go Team.

Mark Vallet: Okay, well, I think we covered a lot of what we covered last night. I'm fucking just so sorry about that. I can't believe I did that. I'm going to be much more careful now. 

Matt Allen: Oh, that's okay. Like I said, you know, it's probably catching. Tomorrow Brad is going to be like, what the fuck did we do yesterday. 

Brad Nilles: A lot of this stuff that we did this morning, it's the same stuff that we did last night. 

Mark Vallet: So that's good. I think that I think we got a lot of it. Yeah. I just I feel bad that I did that, but we'll get it straightened, I learned something, at least. And now Matt and I are going over to Copper to go skiing, and Brad is going to go home and sit in a hot tub or something. 

Matt Allen: That sounds like a fine idea. 

Mark Vallet: I should probably explain what that was all about. Last night we recorded much of what you just heard. But when Matt and I went out to smoke mid recording, I forgot to stop the recording. However, I thought I had stopped it. So, when we came back in, I hit the button thinking it was turning the recorder on, when in fact it was turning it off. We then continued to talk into this thing for an hour before I realized the mistake. We rerecorded some of it this morning. So that is what you heard? I've learned a lesson, and we will certainly be more careful in the future. As I often say, keep coming back. We can only get better. 

So that is it for episode three. As mentioned, we are headed to Moab today actually with some old friends from Dubuque. I will try to do some recording on our trip and hopefully turn it into an episode complete with fire washing transitions. Till next time. This is Mark Vallet, Matt Allen and Brad Nilles with Old Man Lunch. 

Matt Allen: I grew up in a house with my dad who was like, totally, totally neurotic about everything goes back where it needs to go. If you don't put it back where it needs to go, then I would find it like messed up in my bed, like he would I would have made my bed in the morning and if I had left shit out, he would just fuck up the whole bed. 

Mark Vallet: I do that too. I take laundry baskets that are nice folded laundry, and I dump it on their fucking bed because it's been sitting on the goddamn floor for three weeks or Yes, I will take the crap that they left on the floor and throw it into their bed because they have to put it away. Have to do something about it. 

Matt Allen: Right? Yeah, exactly. 

Mark Vallet: So good for your dad.