Kelley Frink: Big Medicine, Lemonade Trucks, and Walking the Creek

What if joy is just a thing you have to walk to the creek for? Kelley Frink joins the show to talk about big medicine in the Wyoming wilderness, the lemonade truck that's worth pausing a meeting for, and the parents who named her Kelley because Kelly could also be a boy's name.

We get into the family camping trips that started when her oldest was nine months old (including the Ford Explorer night and the trout in the kiddie pool), the Medicine Bow gas station with the broken vanilla-or-chocolate ice cream machine, and her mother-in-law's phrase for what happens when you're standing on top of a small mountain with no cell service: big medicine. Kelley also opens up about the fan battles in her marriage, why she suspects she's good enough at flint-spotting to actually find an arrowhead, and the day this week she paused a 2 p.m. meeting because the lemonade line was getting long.

It's a conversation about happiness as a thing you find where you are rather than where you're trying to get, why returning to the same place every year does something repeating doesn't, and how the dumb little joys (a card game called Kings in the Corner, an eight-dollar flavored water) are usually the ones doing the actual work.

Plus: the hot air balloon that drew an entire neighborhood out of their houses, why Matt secretly wants to go on Survivor, and a piece of advice about taking the vacation where there's no phones.

Follow us today for some weekly joy.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey, welcome everyone. This is a Fiercer Delight. I am Matt. I am joined today by Kelly. Kelly. Uh differently spelled Kelly.

SPEAKER_01 0:09

EY.

SPEAKER_00 0:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 0:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 0:11

How often does that get spelled wrong?

SPEAKER_01 0:12

All the time.

SPEAKER_00 0:13

Yep. You just roll with it.

SPEAKER_01 0:14

I roll with it.

SPEAKER_00 0:15

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 0:15

Yeah. You know, the story behind that. There's a story. So fun fact. My both of my parents are named Terry.

SPEAKER_00 0:23

Okay. So uh No confusion then.

SPEAKER_01 0:25

No confusion. And they're both spelt exactly the same way.

SPEAKER_00 0:28

I was gonna ask, or they're spelled different, but no. No.

SPEAKER_01 0:31

So it's T-E-R-R-Y. My mom's name is Terry, spelt like a boy, Terry.

SPEAKER_00 0:35

Unconventional female spell, yes, Terry.

SPEAKER_01 0:38

So growing up, everybody thought she was a boy. It um she got put in the boys' dorm at church camp. Like it was a it was a thing for her. And so there, uh my mom's pregnant, gonna have a a baby, decide what are we gonna name this baby? And they pick Kelly and decide to add an EY because Kelly could be a boy's name too.

SPEAKER_00 1:00

They overcompensated.

SPEAKER_01 1:02

They could have picked Sarah or Jessica. Yeah. Or if they were worried about people confusing me for a boy, lots of options.

SPEAKER_00 1:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:11

But instead we hung tight with the with the name that can also be a boy's name.

SPEAKER_00 1:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:17

I don't know. That's why.

SPEAKER_00 1:18

But they added that E, and that's the same.

SPEAKER_01 1:20

They added that E because they thought for sure that means that everybody will know that she's a girl when the E's in there.

SPEAKER_00 1:25

I just wish they would have named you Terry.

unknown 1:27

I know.

SPEAKER_01 1:28

I know.

SPEAKER_00 1:28

Maybe with an I just redeem it and just be like, there we go.

SPEAKER_01 1:31

So funny story is that um I have a younger brother, and when he was born, I was very upset that they would not name him Kelly.

SPEAKER_00 1:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:39

This was a four-year-old version of me. It seemed really logical at the time.

SPEAKER_00 1:43

That would have been awesome if they you both would have been Kelly and then you just would have flipped it and he would have been K-E-L-E-Y as well. Uh-huh. And then he would have gotten placed in the girls' dormant camp. That's correct. Just full circle.

SPEAKER_01 1:53

And it would have been Terry, Terry, and Kelly and Kelly, and it made total sense at the time.

SPEAKER_00 1:57

Still does.

SPEAKER_01 1:58

Uh it yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:59

Missed opportunity.

SPEAKER_01 2:00

Yeah. Well, I kind of appreciate they didn't do that.

SPEAKER_00 2:03

Okay. You never know where we're going. Uh and so that's good. I appreciate that story. It's something I didn't know, probably a lot of people didn't know about you. Um I want to ask you a question, but I'm going to start it with a little bit of a story for framing. Um the story comes from this week. We are driving home from something, all my kids are in the back of the van, and there's a hot air balloon in our neighborhood. And when I say in our neighborhood, it was like skimming the roofs of houses. It was like solo we didn't know what was happening. So we pull the van, and of course, they go nuts, and so does every other kid that lives within a mile radius. It's like just like a hundred kids chasing this hot air balloon through our neighborhood, and then adults are chasing it too, but trying not to look like they're chasing it. Sure. I felt like I'd stepped into a novel. It was like this kid screaming, it was sunny, this beautiful hot air balloon, just and for them it's magic. It just appeared out of nowhere. And it was like one of those moments where I was like out of time and space. It just felt like I was like so present tense, like with my kids and with this adventure. Long way of getting to the question have you had any of those hot air balloon moments where it's just like you snap out of reality for a second and it's like life is just good or right or pristine or whatever. So that's the first big question.

SPEAKER_01 3:15

That is a big question.

SPEAKER_00 3:16

Can you think of any of those?

SPEAKER_01 3:17

When you say, um uh when you say that, I think about we go to uh we go to Wyoming almost every summer and um we camp and kind of in the middle of nowhere, and there have been moments for me where I'm standing in a spot on top of a hill. We we like to hike out there too, so we'll hike up these little they're not really mountains, they're small mountains.

SPEAKER_00 3:40

Oh, go with mountains. Big hills. It sounds better. Well you scale mountains. We scale mountains. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 3:45

Um and there's been moments up there where it's just the only thing that you can't see anything in any direction other than just um nature and there's no other people. And I think I've I've probably had some of those moments out there.

SPEAKER_00 4:01

What does it feel like? Can you describe it even? I couldn't really describe the HUD air balloon thing.

SPEAKER_01 4:06

I tried, but uh my mother-in-law causes calls it big medicine.

SPEAKER_00 4:12

Whoa, I like that.

SPEAKER_01 4:14

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 4:14

That's why we do this, because I'm a I'm gonna keep that. I love it. So big medicine, what does she mean by it?

SPEAKER_01 4:19

I think just I think you I think it's just this peace, maybe? Peace combined with stillness, combined with the ability, there's no self-service out there either. And so you are just you just be. You're just completely present. There's nothing to distract you from anything else that's happening. And there's not a lot of um planned activities. You you don't have to be places at certain times. You don't have um commitments that you've made to do certain things while you're there. And so uh just I think maybe that freedom and that peace and that ability to kind of slow down and breathe, I think that's her, I think that's why she calls it big medicine.

SPEAKER_00 5:03

Aaron Powell Do your kids take the medicine? So uh uh tell me the ages of your kids and then when they're out there, is it a sell to be like, hey, we're going to a place with no video games or no friends or whatever? Do they get stilled by some of those moments or is it are they still too young or how does that work?

SPEAKER_01 5:19

Uh so my kids are 15, 12, and nine, two boys and a girl, and they absolutely love Wyoming. Yeah. They pick when we we used to um kind of alternate a Wyoming trip with a beach trip, Wyoming trip with a beach trip. And anymore when we ask them what they want to do, they say, I want to go to Wyoming. So it's special for them too. And it's kind of a really incredible way to make family memories too. Uh just that consistent sort of trip. And there's nothing I I'm not trying to pull anybody off of a device or a phone or a movie. They can't. And so that just that creative play and um it's it's it's a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_00 6:06

Yeah, I think that's you said it like the the recurrence. I vacationed with my family in the same spot for 30 years, and then other people would come to the same. It was like a like a conference site sort of thing, and it was right on in between two lakes. But the same people would show up and you get to know them from all over the country, and then at like 30, I was 30, we just stopped because everyone's going there and then never been back, and then it's been about a decade, and my family's going back this summer. Oh, yeah. Like my family. And so I was like, I have all these expectations of what you're talking about, but also I'm trying to lower those because it might not be our spot. But if it is our spot, I'm like, oh, to repeat this with because it's exactly what you're talking about. Something like you get in the rhythm and you can't even explain why it's a hot air balloon thing. You can't even explain why it does the thing for you or for your people, but it just does.

SPEAKER_01 6:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:55

And finding that's like so precious.

SPEAKER_01 6:57

It's really hard. We have a um the the last gas station that we stop at is in this little tiny town in Wyoming called Medicine Bow, Wyoming.

SPEAKER_00 7:06

Medicine Bow, and you're doing big medicine.

SPEAKER_01 7:08

This is well, you know, I never made that connection before, Matt, but yep. Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 7:12

It's Cosmos talking to you.

SPEAKER_01 7:13

And there's a gas station there. Um and they have a single serve, well, they used to have a single serve ice cream machine in this gas station. It was either vanilla or chocolate because it's just one handle. That's it.

SPEAKER_00 7:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:27

And so the whole drive to Wyoming, the big question is Is it vanilla or chocolate? You don't know. Um it's been broken the past couple years, so that's a bummer, but uh it's things like that that that uh I think they'll remember. They'll remember um trying to guess whether the ice cream flavor in Medicine Bow, Wyoming, is gonna be vanilla or chocolate for a long time.

SPEAKER_00 7:52

Yep. Ours is up in Michigan, and there was an ice cream shop on site, and everyone would go to the ice cream shop at like seven o'clock and they do like talent shows or just hang out. I mean, it's just the cacophony of voices and families eating ice cream. I don't even like ice cream, but I have so much nostalgia around ice cream because of that. One of my sisters got engaged in that ice cream shop, and and so now my kids, we're already talking about hey, there's I don't even know if there still is one. I hope so because they're all talking about like they have an ice cream of the week, and then they all have like 17 different varieties, and I'm explaining them all and they're getting excited. But maybe part of it is like nature, part of it is unplugging, and part of it is ice cream. Yeah, yeah, it all like the these simple things and kind of being with your people. Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_01 8:34

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 8:35

Yep. And like, yeah, in the sense of I think for you as a parent, for me as a parent, seeing your people becoming the people they're gonna be.

SPEAKER_01 8:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:45

Like you get these environments, and it's almost like it slows down from year to year, probably you going back, you see the changes in your teenager. Or it's like, whoa, I remember, wow, he's really learning courage, or I don't know, stillness, or whatever the things are.

SPEAKER_01 8:58

Well, my oldest is 15, and the first time we took him, he was nine months old.

SPEAKER_00 9:02

Wow. That's okay.

SPEAKER_01 9:03

And I still remember camping with him at nine months old out there.

SPEAKER_00 9:06

Um probably thinking, why did we do this?

SPEAKER_01 9:09

There were moments. There was one night I ended up in we had a Ford Explorer at the time, and there was one night I ended up with the front seat reclined back as far as it would go, and him just laying on my chest. And that's how we spent the the night. Anything that works. Yeah, anything that works. But um, yeah. We catch trout out there. We we camp along this river. We brought this blow-up plastic pool, and we would catch a trout and put him sit him in the pool. And it he did well. You'd have to kind of sit the water out for a while, let it warm up a bit because it's like it's rushing, kind of coming off under the under, it's very cold. And um we'd put the trout in the water with him in this little pool, and it was hilarious. I mean, he loved it. He was like, it was this was this was our entertainment for the afternoon is the trout in the water with him. Yeah, nine months old.

SPEAKER_00 10:00

What show do you want to watch? Sunset or trout playing with a trout. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:05

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 10:05

It's a good show.

SPEAKER_01 10:06

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 10:07

How do you then uh you go take your big medicine? Again, I'm gonna use that phrase. I like it. Uh how you take it home, how do you bottle it up? What what is big medicine, or I guess smaller doses of big medicine in like the weeks where you're not in Wyoming? Like it's hard and it's just like, okay, there's my piece, or there's my zen, or there's my whatever it is.

SPEAKER_01 10:28

Yeah. Um well this week we have beautiful weather. So I love having uh I love sitting on the porch at night. Um, I love having the windows open in the house and just that fresh air. Um, that kind of walking in and having all the windows open, that fresh air kind of um grounds me a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 10:50

Do you ever have window battles?

SPEAKER_01 10:52

I don't know what that means.

SPEAKER_00 10:54

My wife likes, especially in our bedroom, having the windows um just as open as they possibly can be, even if it's like 28 degrees. And so then like she'll go use the bathroom like before bed or something, and I'll like just close them a little bit. And then she'll occasionally wake up at in the morning and be like, Did you close the windows? Because it got a little hot, and is it it'll be like 48 degrees, but she's always opening them more. I'm always closing them a little bit. Are you guys just cool with it?

SPEAKER_01 11:21

We don't have window battles, we have fan battles.

SPEAKER_00 11:24

Okay, how do those play?

SPEAKER_01 11:25

Jake loves the fan on all the time. Okay, and I don't really like to sleep. I don't like the fan to I want it to be really cool in the room, but I don't really need the fan on me.

SPEAKER_00 11:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:36

And so he'll turn it on and then I'll turn it off. And then he'll get up to do something and and realize he's like, Did you turn the fan off? Well, I don't know. I know, I didn't do that.

SPEAKER_00 11:44

I wonder how that happened.

SPEAKER_01 11:45

Um, and then if I happen to get up in the middle of the night or after he falls asleep, I'm just dip, turn it off again.

SPEAKER_00 11:50

Yep. Yeah, I think we probably had that battle too. Hannah likes the fan.

SPEAKER_01 11:54

I hope he doesn't listen to this.

SPEAKER_00 11:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:56

All those times he said, Did you turn off the fan? And I said no.

SPEAKER_00 11:59

He'll know. He'll know. I have bad news to give you. He already knows. Yeah, that's fair. He already knows he's just not saying anything. Or he's planning his revenge. It's a long play. Uh-huh. Yeah. Uh what else? Obviously, work, you're a hard driver, you do a lot, you lead a lot of people. Home, you lead three little people. Church, you do some leadership stuff. So, like, do you get a lot out of that, or do you need to sometimes take refuge from that? Or is that refuge in itself? Like you like those things enough where it's just like I those things, um, I like it.

SPEAKER_01 12:34

I like it. I like uh I like adventure, I like new things, I like learning new things, I love learning new things. Um and I just I love people too. I think I think one of my favorite parts about well pieces of it, I guess. My favorite part about pieces of it, I love um getting groups of people together and creating opportunities for them to laugh and get to know each other better. I think it's uh really cool, really awesome, really beautiful. So a lot of times I do that through competition because I'm kind of a competitive person, but if there's a group competition of some sort, uh I'm probably in.

SPEAKER_00 13:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:14

It brings me an incredible amount of joy, probably more than it should. Uh, but I love it so much.

SPEAKER_00 13:19

Well, I'll pay you a compliment on that because I've seen you in that mode a few times. And here's the compliment. I think you're really good at reading when to like be the centerpiece and have to bring the energy yourself and when it kind of gets going and when you just can kind of disappear and let it roll. Like that's a good sense of time. And I think you have that ability, like, hey, I need to be the one driving, and then you get someone else driving, and you're real good at like, all right, it's going.

SPEAKER_01 13:45

You start to know people well enough and you know their little competitive tendencies, and it's fun for me to uh poke at a couple competitive people with their little tendencies and then kind of step back and let them go.

SPEAKER_00 14:00

Yeah, I guess you had the more honest uh appraisal of it. You're an instigator.

SPEAKER_01 14:03

I'm an instigator, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:04

Yeah, instigating action, and then people will forget that you're the one who turned off the fan in the first place.

SPEAKER_01 14:09

Yeah, that's right. Yep. That's good.

SPEAKER_00 14:11

Uh here's uh what's this will be hard to answer, so you can round it down, but what's the dumbest thing that makes you happy? And it's hard to come up with sometimes the dumbest thing. So what is a dumb thing that makes you happy? I'll give an example from my own life. So um I think it's pretty dumb. Like the show Survivor. Um, I don't miss an episode. I'd like to be on the show. I realize at some point after watching this thing for 20 years, there's a lot of hours of my life I could get back doing something else. I always know how it's gonna go, you know how it's gonna end, you know it's kind of silly. I eat 13 chocolate chip cookies and a mug of milk, and I watch it every Wednesday night. And at some point in my life I just became okay with that because it makes me so happy. I just I'm gonna have that in my life if I can.

SPEAKER_01 14:55

I think you should, but can we go back to the part where you said I want to be on Survivor?

SPEAKER_00 14:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:00

You do.

SPEAKER_00 15:00

Oh, I I since the age of like 16 when I saw the first season or something like that, yeah, I would like to be on Survivor. Now, not as much. I think this sounds so boastful, but I think at like 26 years old, I I maybe could have won the show. Now I think with a family and a failing body um and really needing sleep, I think I might be miserable and be the first one voted out, but I kind of like to see.

SPEAKER_01 15:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:26

So yeah, I I think it'd be awesome to do.

SPEAKER_01 15:28

I feel like we should try to make this happen.

SPEAKER_00 15:30

Who do you know? Let's do it.

SPEAKER_01 15:31

I don't know. I think I think we gotta Oh my oh man, that'd be incredible.

SPEAKER_00 15:36

Okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:37

See, this is the instigator part of me. Now I'm gonna tell everybody that I know that Matt wants to be on Survivor. How can we make this happen?

SPEAKER_00 15:45

You would get me on there, and then like I'm like a chaplain type who also like preaches and stuff, and it turned out that I'm like the most devious liar ever, and America cancels me, and I'm just like America's villain, and I'd that's what would happen. I'd come home and have no friends, no job. Um yeah, it'd be my job story that I brought on myself. But yeah, if they called, I would probably try and figure out a way to make it happen. My wife is already giving me permission, and we like don't spend time apart from each other. She's like, if you call, I will make you go if they call. But the thing is, they just don't call.

SPEAKER_01 16:18

Yeah, I don't do you apply?

SPEAKER_00 16:20

Not really. No.

SPEAKER_01 16:21

How do you get on survival? Aren't they all celebrities now?

SPEAKER_00 16:24

Uh or no? Well, this season they're all returners.

SPEAKER_01 16:29

Not that that would stop you.

SPEAKER_00 16:30

Thank you. Thank you for noting that. Yeah, they're all like super handsome, so I think I'd qualify. Um, very athletic. Uh no, you're generally like regular people, and then you send in a video.

SPEAKER_01 16:41

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 16:42

Uh, and then if you do it well enough on the my sister got a call back before, so I know a little bit of this. Um then you get a call back, and then you do like an in uh phone interview, and then if you do a couple of those, then they fly you out for a casting thing. And then you either are on or you're an alternate, something like that. So But this isn't about me and my dreams of Survivor. I just watch it on Wednesday nights, which I know is a silly thing to do, but it fills my cup. And so what's the silly things that you do that fill your cup?

SPEAKER_01 17:12

Um, you know, the first thing that came to my mind, maybe just because it's uh it's the end of March as we're having this conversation and the and the weather things are starting to get green again and the weather's changing. I love the lemonade trucks.

unknown 17:26

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 17:28

I thought maybe we were gonna go like baseball opening that was getting ready for a Me Too, and then you said lemonade trucks, and I was like, I don't I'm not sure if I know what we're talking about.

SPEAKER_01 17:35

There are kind of like uh food trucks.

SPEAKER_00 17:38

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01 17:39

There are a couple lemonade trucks that I don't know how you get them to come to where you are, but um they're I think they're incredible and they're they bring so much joy to everybody. So they show up sunny day. You just get a lemonade and they have all kinds of flavors, and you can get it sugar-free, or you can get it all with all kinds of different stuff in it, and it's this big cup of lemonade, and it's just delicious.

SPEAKER_00 18:04

It's just lemonade though, they don't have like little pretzels or anything, it's just lemonade.

SPEAKER_01 18:07

It's just drinks.

SPEAKER_00 18:08

That's okay. Yeah. No alcohol, just lemonade.

SPEAKER_01 18:13

Just lemonade.

SPEAKER_00 18:14

It just feels like a business model that would be tough. But I guess they're doing all right. They there's no Kelly's in the world.

SPEAKER_01 18:20

I think they pull up to Daniel Boone on a Tuesday night. That's true.

SPEAKER_00 18:25

You find the little league baseball and you'll probably yeah, you can make a run.

SPEAKER_01 18:28

I'm in.

SPEAKER_00 18:28

Yeah. Pretty good profit marketing.

SPEAKER_01 18:35

It's like an $8 lemonade or something like that.

SPEAKER_00 18:37

But is it fresh squeeze and all that, or they say it is?

SPEAKER_01 18:41

I mean, that might be going a little too fast. Yeah, well, it's um I there's a couple of them in town, Matt, and I've had them both.

SPEAKER_00 18:51

Let me pause. Are you a lemonade connoisseur? Do you love lemonade? Have you always loved lemonade? Could you tell if I had fresh squeeze versus powder? Whatever.

SPEAKER_01 19:00

I I actually think I could tell.

SPEAKER_00 19:02

Wow. I do.

SPEAKER_01 19:03

I love flavored water, but not iced tea.

SPEAKER_00 19:08

Who doesn't? I mean, who loves a good flavored water? Man, this is exciting.

SPEAKER_01 19:14

You said what something dumb. It is dumb. But that's why I get the flavored water. Yeah. But you can do so many different things with it, and it's good. You don't like water.

SPEAKER_00 19:23

Drink it, pour it on yourself, swim in it.

SPEAKER_01 19:26

You don't even like water, so this is not a good comparison. I've never watched a full episode of Survivor, by the way.

SPEAKER_00 19:32

I will drink my entire life. The largest flavored water that you can concoct, whatever flavors you want to put in there, non-gross variety, and you can watch an episode of Survivor and then we can trade stories.

SPEAKER_01 19:43

I think so. I think we should. I gotta figure out how to make the lemonade truck show up to wherever we are.

SPEAKER_00 19:49

But do you hide your love of the lemonade truck? Like, are you the first one in line? Do you like if it pulled up to work and you see it and it's like the lemonade truck, are you out the door Michael Scott on Pretzel Day? Or do you kind of play it cool and be like, well, I might get a lemonade, I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 20:02

Well, so this this was a real situation that happened this week. There was a lemonade truck at one of our we we worked together. There was a lemonade truck at one of our buildings, and I was pumped. And it was gonna be there from two to four. I had a meeting from two to three thirty.

SPEAKER_00 20:16

You're just looking out the window the whole time at the meeting.

SPEAKER_01 20:18

And I sat down with the group and I said, Hey guys, look, it's two. I don't want to be, I feel um, I don't want to be the first in line. I want to give other people an opportunity to also get the lemonade. I I mean I don't need to like throw elbows to pick up your cross to get to the well but it hit three o'clock and everybody was still talking, and I said, We have to time out. We have got to time out because I don't know how long this line is, and if it goes past four o'clock, they'll cut you off. That is gonna make me super sad.

SPEAKER_00 20:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:50

So we stopped. We stopped the meeting, we went out, it brought everybody an incredible amount of joy, I think. I mean it brought me joy. And then we finished the meeting, and it was way better with our flavored water.

SPEAKER_00 21:01

They all respected the decision?

SPEAKER_01 21:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:03

Mm-hmm. Oh well, I don't know. They did it. They they uh they appeased me.

SPEAKER_00 21:09

Okay, so that's a good one. Flavored water and lemonade trucks. I'm never it's one of those things, I forget what it's called. Um but like you buy a yellow car and then you see yellow cars everywhere.

SPEAKER_01 21:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:20

Um I've never really seen a lemonade truck, I don't think. And now I'm gonna see them.

unknown 21:25

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 21:25

And I'm gonna think of you and your lemonade, and maybe I'll even yeah, I'll go get one sometime and just see how it stacks up.

SPEAKER_01 21:32

I feel like we can figure out how to make this happen. Um we gotta get a lemonade truck. They're pretty great.

SPEAKER_00 21:38

Yeah, I believe you've sold it well. Are you on the take? You work for the lemonade companies?

SPEAKER_01 21:43

You know, there's a piece of there was a there was a um uh a thought as I was waiting in line for lemonade earlier this week. I thought, you know what? What a great um afternoon. Like, I don't know if you like when you work in a lemonade truck, if you really like it or not, but You get to all these people are so excited. They're it's an afternoon, you're bringing them a little bit of joy. And you get to make this lemonade for people. I don't know. It seemed like that might not be the worst thing.

SPEAKER_00 22:11

Yeah. Yeah. Can you have a bad day as the lemonade truck driver? Stuff can break. Of course, there's stresses with the business probably, but just the hour of like it's the hot air balloon. Their only reason I can think of that hot air balloon was flying over my neighborhood was because it was like the Pied Piper. He wanted to see all those kids run around, get excited, and like Did he land? Uh-uh. No. Just skimmed houses. They kept saying it's landing in Miss Donna's backyard. And they'd all run to Miss Donna's house and then kept going, like, it's going to the pond. And they'd all run to the pond. And this dude just, you could see him driving, like trimming the trees. Uh it's probably an emergency. And we were all just laughing and cheering. Uh no, but I think he was just doing it because he joy. Joy.

SPEAKER_01 22:53

Bringing people joy.

SPEAKER_00 22:54

Bring kids up and lift them with this hot air. And so I guess, yeah, Eliminade would feel that way, just throwing that out.

SPEAKER_01 22:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:00

One last thing, and then I'll let you like dismount however you want to dismount. Um, kind of the same question, but with your people. Because you talk about your people, you talk about Wyoming, talk about being with your people. So let's say it snows or it's raining or something, you're all just stuck at home together. It's a Friday night, nowhere to go, nothing to do. What kind of stuff does your family get into? Not like we're all on our devices time, because that happens, of course. We're are you like we're watching movies, we're playing games, we just get talking, we eat dinner together. Like, what is the thing that you'll remember in 20 years when your kids are grown? Like, I love doing that.

SPEAKER_01 23:35

We um we now that now that they've gotten a little bit older and they can, uh, we play a we play cards.

SPEAKER_00 23:43

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 23:43

We play um we play a card game called golf and with them, and we play a card game called Is Golf in the Corner?

SPEAKER_00 23:53

You're trying to get a low score.

SPEAKER_01 23:54

You're trying to get a low score.

SPEAKER_00 23:56

It's a fun game.

SPEAKER_01 23:57

Uh we play a game called Kings in the Corner.

SPEAKER_00 23:59

I don't know that one.

SPEAKER_01 24:00

I really want to teach them spades, but they're not quite. We're not we're not quite there yet.

SPEAKER_00 24:04

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 24:04

Uh but this might be because the competitive piece of me, right? Like we're gonna play a game.

SPEAKER_00 24:08

Are they competitive?

SPEAKER_01 24:10

Um yes.

SPEAKER_00 24:10

All of them? Well, because that's fun, unless you're the one who isn't. They're like, oh, I live with crazy people.

SPEAKER_01 24:16

My uh my boys, yes. My daughter's nine. I think she might she she's getting there. Um, but she doesn't really she doesn't understand the gameplay. Like playing old maid with her, you you know who has. You very clearly know who has the old maid. No, not really. Um she's not quite got that part of it down yet. So then her brothers get frustrated uh if they're on her team. So we're getting there. Okay. We're getting there. But we play cards.

SPEAKER_00 24:45

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 24:46

Play cards. We we are also just outdoor people, so we are outside a lot.

SPEAKER_00 24:50

It's good.

SPEAKER_01 24:51

Um this time of year we're walking creeks looking for um arrowheads, looking for rocks, we're out in the woods.

SPEAKER_00 25:00

So I found we went looking for arrowheads for a couple weeks. A couple years ago. We got the bug, we went and looked. I found a rock that was shaped like a triangle. That's as close as we got. I took a picture of it. I sent it to a person who I know who likes arrowheads a lot. Like, what do you think of this one? And is like, dude, that's a rock. Uh but like two weeks of our lives, we're really into looking for these things. You actually know how to find them? You find these things? Is it real? I would think it is like a scam that all the people who go arrowhead hunting know there aren't any, and they're just tricking people like me and then laughing at me, creekside.

SPEAKER_01 25:34

Well, you Yeah. Did anybody help you where you were going, or you just decided, you know what, we've got a creek in the backyard?

SPEAKER_00 25:42

It was that we just pull up, we'd see water and just pull over. Oh, kick our shoes off and go, me and my two boys. And like we had just had a kid during this season, so my wife was home with the baby, and she'd just be like, get these kids out, get the boys out. They're too loud, they're too wild. And I was like, Creek time, and we'd wear I got these little like um I got special sandals for creeks, even. But there's like the fancy kind, like Tevas or something. They're like eighty dollars. I got a Walmart pair that was made of rubber that was three dollars, and I'd have those in the back. We'd strap them on, and we'd go find rocks that look like triangles and call it a day.

SPEAKER_01 26:15

Now listen, I don't know how old your kids were, but there is a lot of joy of little kids. It's just finding rocks they think are cute, pretty, cute. Uh cute's not the right word.

SPEAKER_00 26:23

Cool? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:24

Boys, boys, they're cool.

SPEAKER_00 26:26

Yeah, oh yeah. Um taught them how to skip stones.

SPEAKER_01 26:28

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 26:29

And then it all ended when one of them skipped a stone into my temple.

SPEAKER_01 26:32

Well, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:33

I have blood. Like I was bleeding.

SPEAKER_01 26:35

That'll happen too.

SPEAKER_00 26:35

Because they don't know how to throw right. And so it's like, okay, maybe we should like play switch instead.

SPEAKER_01 26:39

Uh-huh. Um currently, we actually just walked a creek last weekend, and at one point I the 15 and 12-year-old were they had found a um a stick that looked kind of like a bat. And they were trying to throw rocks up in the air and then hit them at each other.

SPEAKER_00 26:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:57

So it was all good fun until mom had to stop the hit rocks at your brother game.

SPEAKER_00 27:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:04

Just a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 27:05

Play that game at the house sometimes.

SPEAKER_01 27:06

Maybe we could not do that. Yeah. Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 27:08

But you find them. You find arrowheads. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:11

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 27:11

Someday. I'm gonna I'm gonna get a big gulp lemonade. I'm gonna find my first arrowhead.

SPEAKER_01 27:15

Do you know what it looks like to see flint in because arrowheads are made out of flint.

SPEAKER_00 27:20

You gotta you gotta have Of course I know what it looks like, but you should explain it to the people listening in case they're idiots.

SPEAKER_01 27:26

Well Most of the time it's much lighter color than the ra other rocks surrounding it. And so you're kind of looking for flint. That's what you're looking for. You're not looking for the shape of an arrowhead, you're looking for flint.

SPEAKER_00 27:40

Okay. Do you know what it's like to brush your hair?

SPEAKER_01 27:44

Um yep.

SPEAKER_00 27:45

That's our strategy. We use our fingers and they're the brushes. And the creep. Scrape around. So that's been our strategy up to this point, but I think I'm gonna do the flint thing.

SPEAKER_01 27:54

Yeah, we should work on your strategy. I think that might help.

SPEAKER_00 27:57

Yeah, maybe.

SPEAKER_01 27:58

One of these days, you're gonna find a you're gonna find an arrowhead. It'll be super cool.

SPEAKER_00 28:01

So many things. You'll keep it forever. Well, that's the thing, like and part of the reason why we want to do the show, and I'll give you a last word to share anything you want that we didn't get to, or I don't know, some kind of send-off if you want. But it is like joy sort of like finding the arrowheads, and it's not some crazy huge thing like getting a massive raise. It can be. That can that's a wonderful thing, but it can be just like finding these little rocks that are there in plain sight if you know what to look for. And so that's I think worthwhile, and I love that you can get such delight by going to a creek and finding a stick and hitting rocks at your brother. Like you can always do that stuff. So I hope everyone can find their ways to do that. Um so I want to leave this with wherever you want to leave us. Is there anything that you'd like to say as people are listening about happiness, joy, your pursuit? Anything?

SPEAKER_01 28:51

Yeah, I think that's uh I think you make a I think you make a really great point. I think as I've it's probably age, part of it's age, um, I would assume. But I think as I've gotten older, um I think happiness is you you you find you f you have to look for happiness in where you are, not where you think you need to be or where you want to be or what you're striving for, because that's not where it is. And so if you can't find that joy or that happiness where you're at today, then I think the question is, well, what's happening today that we should it's not it's not, well, the reason why I can't find that joy today is because I need these things. Um and so that's been something that I've been trying to be, and I I run a lot of look different directions and I've got a busy schedule, and I don't always do this for sure, but I try in those moments where I have the opportunity to walk in the creek, walk in the creek.

SPEAKER_00 29:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:50

Because I could have been doing all kinds of other things and trying to get caught up on stuff or um and set told my husband, you take the kids and go walk in the creek, I'm gonna get these other things done. But I think for me it's making sure that I take those moments to walk in the creek or stand in a lemonade line or um whatever, whatever it may be. Yep. Take the vacation where there's no phones.

SPEAKER_00 30:12

Yep. No, I think those are wise words. Thanks for sharing them. So to those listening, have a big dose of big medicine.

SPEAKER_01 30:19

Big medicine.

SPEAKER_00 30:20

Gulp down a lemonade and walk in the creek. That's a great day. That's a great day, and that's a joyful day. So find your ways to do that, and I hope you'll find your way back to us at some point as we keep chasing around joy and happiness and what life can be. So this is a Fiercer Light. I want a Fiercer Light. I hope you do too. Thanks for listening.