Night Pie

In a new segment called Parental Advisory, Katie advises against being a parent.

Next, she walks through a history of poor gift choices, after an epiphany reveals she has bad taste. Plus, an unfortunate mental breakdown while setting up an Xbox.

This episode also covers:

• Ted’s “Pint Glass Theory”
• Her favorite slave joke from a middle school field trip
• Being humiliated by a sadistic Special Ed teacher
• Waking up relatives at 3am to ask for more pie

Transcript

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SPEAKER_02 0:22

I thought of the new segment idea. It's called parental advisory, and it's where I advise people to not become parents. The true reality of being a parent is the biggest cover-up in world history. Oh, they think the moon landing, they think the moon landing. I don't care. What does that have to do with me? They're lying about the truth of parenting. People say it's a lot of work. That definitely happens. It's like, do you want kids? It's a lot of work. But no one's specifying the type of work. I assumed it was emotional involvement and caring about someone and putting someone before me. I didn't know that need was laundry. What a hoax. What a gigantic, tremendous hoax parenting is. You're gonna be on your hands and knees in the kitchen cleaning chocolate syrup up off the floor and like digging at it with your fingernail because it's congealed, because it's two weeks old. Oh I wish I had a family. I wish I had a family. You don't get family. You don't get a family, you get their chores. You know how whenever someone has a baby, the first thing you see is the picture of the mom lying in the hospital bed holding the baby. Instead of handing you your baby after you deliver it, they should make you clean the hospital room and then take a picture of that.

SPEAKER_00 1:56

The gitty galley show.

SPEAKER_02 1:59

And with little kids who are little for quite a while, up to 10 years. So for 10 years, not only are you doing laundry, the laundry changes rapidly. So you'll have little five-year-old socks, and then they get older, and you need six-year-old socks, and now the five-year-old socks are mixed in with the six-year-old socks. And should I throw this sock away? Oh, maybe I could save it for the younger one when they're this sock size. And now you just got socks upon socks upon socks, and there's socks everywhere. When I pass, no birth date, no death date. Don't even put my name on my tombstone. Just write fuck socks. I just remembered that I have the answer to the sock problem. I shouldn't be complaining about socks. I should be preaching about the sock solution. Unbelievable. I totally forgot that I already shown the way. I've strayed from the path, but I'm back. My friend Ted has eight kids, at least eight. Last time I heard it was eight. They were happy with eight. So it could be nine. It could be ten. It could be twelve. Oh my God, imagine if it was twelve. And he's not crazy. I know what you're thinking. You're like, oh, you're friends with a lunatic? No. Coolest guy, chillest guy. Now, his wife Kristen had a podcast, and I think still does, about parenting. One of the issues that she tackled on her show was socks. That's how big a deal it is. I'm sure you heard me ranting about socks and thought, you know, this bitch is just on one again. Here's the million-dollar advice. Everybody wears the same socks. She only buys gray socks size medium. This woman is not matching socks because there are no socks to be matched. She's not even doing black, white, and gray. Just gray. Gray medium. Everyone in the house wears medium gray socks. And I did that for a while and it changed my life. This was probably the last time I was happy. And I remember my son saying to me, Why are you wearing my socks? And it's like, these aren't your socks, these are our socks. We're all wearing the same socks now. Head also gives out great advice. We used to call him the Dad of the Friend group because he was always doling out sage advice of some kind. And he changed my life one day at a pre-wedding brunch where I had noticed that the pine glasses were really nice. And I remarked that I was planning on stealing one the next day. And Ted said, No, you need to steal it right now. Whenever you have an idea, the only way to guarantee that it gets done is to act upon it immediately. I'm normally pretty hard-headed, but that advice landed. I felt it in my bones. And maybe that's the power of Ted. Phrases things in a way where the advice actually gets through to you. Regardless, I took the glass. Which I really didn't want to do because we still had a wedding to go to. And now I had to spend five hours with this stolen pine glass in my purse. And wouldn't you know that the next day, the post-wedding brunch was at a different restaurant, which I had not foreseen. Ted was totally right. If I had waited until the next day, I wouldn't have gotten the glass. Great advice. Just great. The best example of the credibility of Ted's pine glass theory is a little morbid, but I'm gonna tell it anyways because it really drives home the point. Recently, I drove by a friend who I love and had not seen in a long time. I was like, oh my god, it's D. And then I thought, do I really want to talk to another human right now? And then a little pint glass appeared on my shoulder and it said, You should stop. If it's important to you, you would do it immediately. So I stopped and talked to her, and we had the best conversation. I was like, I totally made the right decision. Not only was it great to just see her and be around her energy, but she told me something that made me so happy. She said, I loved seeing your daughter last summer. She looks just like you. You guys have the same eyes and the same smile. I have been dying for someone to say this to me. My kids are biracial, they look nothing like me. Sometimes it feels like I'm in love with strangers. Here's how much my kids don't look like me. I was at Nordstrom Rack because regular Nordstroms makes me nervous. I was trying on hats, which side note is an impossible task because I have the world's largest head. And my daughter is playing in that general area. A security guard who looked nervous as hell comes over, goes on his radio, and says, Lock down the store. We have a code Adam missing and her abandoned child, lock down the store. And I was like, Wait, are you talking about her? Oh, she's with me. Back to the original story. About a month after our conversation, this woman died. That conversation was our last conversation. Can you imagine if my last memory of her was me driving by and thinking I'm too lazy to stop? That would have been a tough cross to bear for the rest of my life. All right, that was kind of sad. Let me end on a happier note with the super funny topic of human rights violations. Am I the only person that has a good handful of jokes from middle school that you still think about and still laugh about? This kid, Eric Collifson, told a joke in seventh grade that I am still laughing about. Our entire grade went to this place called Sturbridge Village, which is one of those living museum type things. So it's like a colonial town, and the people that work there are dressed as the villagers and tell you historical facts and whatnot. One of the things you learn about is something called the Von Du system. Well, I thought it was called Von Doe, but I just looked it up and it said Vendu. So now I'm not sure. Regardless, it's basically a form of slavery after they'd abolished slavery, because some people wanted to keep it going. And they talked a lot about how there were two types of workers. So there was the people in the fields, which is a lot of manual labor in the sun. And then there's the workers in the house where you don't have to be in the sun. But unfortunately, there's a lot of inappropriate sexual transgressions that go on. So both suck, but in different ways. At the end of the day, they had everybody congregate in this large room for a town hall meeting. And there were a lot of people there. It wasn't just our school, there was many schools. That's part of why this joke was so funny, because he really took a chance on this joke. He told it in front of like 200 people. Now we were told that if you stood up during the town hall meeting and pretended to be an inhabitant of the village and stated at least two facts about your life that you would get extra credit. So various people are standing up and saying, I work in the trade shop. I sell mostly grain and tobacco. And then Eric calls and stands up. And he says, in this like sad, downtrodden voice, Good afternoon, everyone. I am currently working as a housemaid under the Vendu system. Unfortunately, the master of my house has been raping me for years. I stole goods from the house to trade with the blacksmith for a knife. One of the top ten hardest times I've laughed in my life. Here's some old news. I've mentioned that my children are special needs, which is just code for they have extra needs, which is just code for they bother people. Because no one wants to do any more than they're already doing, including special needs teachers. I guess I'm on my myth buster shit again because I'm putting the word out that just because you're a teacher, that in no way means you're a nice person. Maybe in the 1950s or on Little House on the Prairie, the nicest lady in town was the school teacher. That's over. The meanest teacher I've ever encountered was a special needs kindergarten teacher. Unfortunately, I came across her during one of the darkest hours of my life when I really needed a helping hand and a friendly face. And she offered neither. Now, I was in a super fragile place because my son kind of turned on a dime. When he started preschool, he was completely normal. Actually, no, he was above average. The first parent-teacher meeting I had, the woman was like, he's smart, he's nice, he plays well with others, we don't need to have this meeting, he's perfect, whatever. And I was like, sweet. That was, you know, like what November? Dude got expelled in March. Okay. That's what we call a pivot. We went from head of the class to you're not welcome in this building anymore. I was kind of a troublemaker in school. Since I was pregnant, I was mentally preparing for my kids to be spending some time in the office, maybe getting suspended. But middle school, high school, I didn't even know you could be expelled from preschool. But you can. You can also be expelled from kindergarten, which happened the following year. Back to the main event. We switched schools, and within two weeks, my son gets moved out of the gen pop classroom and down the hall to the special needs dungeon. The trip keeper of this particular dungeon was named Miss O. For oh shit, you're gonna hate it here. I've seen POW camps that were more cheerful than this classroom. I spent most of my days advocating to get him out of there. And in doing that, I made a lot of enemies. Enemies who wanted revenge, which will never not shock me. It's wintertime, and Miss, oh, I'm only in this for the summers. I hope you didn't think I cared about kids, told me I needed to bring in snow boots for Lennox for recess. I don't know what I was thinking, but instead of buying the run-of-the-mill snow boots that every single child in America wears while playing in the snow, I bought these REI all-terrain hiking boots. So a couple of weeks pass, and then Lennox mentions that he hasn't been going to recess and doesn't get to play outside with the other kids. So not only does he spend all day in some kind of bunker, they don't even let him out for a break of fresh air. That seems cruel and unusual, which I think is the exact phrase I used when I called the school. And you know what this little spawn of Satan told me? That Lennox couldn't go outside because he didn't have the proper snow boots. And I was like, what are you talking about? He brings snow boots every day. And she's like, those are hiking boots. Heartless, soulless, takes joy and others pain. Now get ready for the frosting on the cupcake. When I pick up my son from school the next day, I am standing in the doorway of the classroom, and directly to my left is a large sign that says, These are snow boots. And underneath the text is a picture of snow boots. Next to that, it says, These are not snowboots. And there is a picture of my son's exact pair of shoes with a big X over them. This audacious prostitute had gone online and gotten a picture of my son's shoes. Your garden variety psychopath might have just used a clip art picture of a hiking boot, but this detail-oriented gremlin hooked up the exact brand, style, and color. I got in my car and cried so hard. I cried the entire commute to work, and then when I got to work, I closed my office door, shut the blinds, and continued crying. Also, it was my birthday, so I soon get a message from one of my coworkers saying, we have breakfast and coffee and a cake, we're all kind of waiting outside your office for you. And I had to write her back and say, My son's kindergarten teacher made me cry today. I can't face anyone. Please make up an excuse for me.

SPEAKER_00 17:34

The gimme galley show.

SPEAKER_02 17:36

I had a moment of clarity the other day that only comes along maybe once or twice in a lifetime. I think I'm ready to admit that I'm not a good gift giver. I can hardly believe this even happened. It's kind of miraculous. I got my son Lennox a lot of Sonic toys for Christmas, and so did his aunt Amy. I think that's how this miracle was able to occur because I had the direct juxtaposition of my Sonic toys and Amy's Sonic toys. My sonic toys were laying untouched under the tree. Amy's Sonic toys were being actively played with quite a lot, even took them to bed, which he's never done before. I've never seen him like a toy so much that he took it to bed, which now I realize is because everything that I've given him has sucked. So he's playing with this Gerald Robotnik figurine. And he made the kind of cute and astute observation that the figurine was from the movie. So it was not the cartoon character, it was Jim Carrey who plays Dr. Robotnik. So Lennox said, if you think about it, this is actually a Jim Carrey toy, not a Dr. Robotnik toy. And I was like, yeah, good point. So I pick it up and I'm looking at it and I'm like, this is a really cool toy. I like this. And then I thought about the robot toy that I had gotten Lennox. Do you want to know what happened when he opened my robotnik? He folded the wrapping paper back around it, handed it to me, and said, You can return this. I'm not joking. Motherfucker told me he wanted to return it. Ouch. Anyway, now I'm putting two and two together, and I'm realizing I picked the wrong toy. I'm a bad gift giver. There's a line in when Harry met Sally that goes, everyone thinks they have great taste and a great sense of humor, which is so true. If you have bad taste, you're not aware of it. But now I am because I cracked the code. The moment I had the realization that I might not be as good a gift giver as I think I am, I was lotted with examples in my head. You know how when you die, your life flashes before your eyes? It was like that, but with presents, all the presents I'd ever given. I was at a work holiday party once where I gifted someone this really cute and classy and chic green parrot statue. I was so excited for my friend to open it. And when she did, everyone started laughing really hard, too. People were like, This is the best gag gift we've ever seen. You nailed it 10 out of 10, no notes. And I was like, what is going on here? Why don't they like the parrot statue? This gift was such a crowd pleaser. Everyone was dying. The girl that I gave it to kept it on her desk for the next three years. Of course, it was intended for her home. I was thinking living room. Also, I'm now seeing all the lies I told myself to keep this reality afloat. One of his presents, I shit you not, is still in the box. Like he unwrapped it, but it's still in the box. And you know what I told myself? I was like he's he's saving it for later. And right now, I realize the gift is unopened because it sucks. I once got my mom a necklace, everyone made fun of and said it looked like something a gladiator would wear. And then there were a ton of Coliseum jokes for the rest of the night. And in my head, I thought, you Yeah, the woman who made this did a bad job. That's what I told myself. Lennox is eight years old right now, and you kind of start understanding things around what, like four years old? So for four years, he's known that I'm a bad gift giver. And he has not said word one about it. That's going above and beyond. What's that Meg Ryan movie? Oh, wait, Courage Under Fire? Yeah, that's not what I'm trying to say. He loves me so much. He's willing to live a shitty gift life in order to spare my feelings. That's very cool. Very adult, very mature. Not to take anything away from him. I do sometimes wonder what things are his true personality and what things are a result of being neurodivergent. Is he not telling me because he's kind, or is he not telling me because it doesn't occur to him to call me out on it? We'll never know. Especially since he refuses to answer any direct questions. I have a gift problem. I have a gift deficiency. I'm also a weird gift giver. The act of delivering the gift, I've messed that up too. When you receive your first gaming console, that's a big deal. I woke him up early before school to surprise him with the Xbox. And then we could play games together for like an hour and create core memories, and he'd forget he didn't have a dad. Just kidding. But I wanted it to be a big deal. I wanted this to be a day he would always remember. Actually, that is what happened. Little did I know that gaming consoles have come a long way since Nintendo. I thought I was gonna open the box, plug it in, and we would start playing, you know, in under a minute's time. Not the case at all. First of all, you need a degree in robotics to even get the thing up and running. Just getting to the main page took me over a half an hour. And then I had to create a login. I was like, a login, I'm logged in. I turning on the thing was the login. What do you mean I need a login? I'm creating passwords, downloading things. My dreams are evaporating. I can't get this thing to work at all. Suddenly the bus is outside, and we haven't even played one game. I was heartbroken that we weren't gonna get to play the games, letting down my son. So I lost it and started crying and apologizing to Lennox while weeping. I didn't I didn't I didn't know it was gonna be this hard to put together. Crying like a fucking idiot. And guess who's there to pick me up? The birthday boy. He was like, Mom, it's okay, we'll get it to work later. Don't be sad, no, don't cry. And I was like, I I wanted I wanted to play the games before you went to school. You can play when I get home, it'll be good. We'll do it later. We can play after school, it's fine. I was like, it's not the same after school, it had to be before. What a loser. I did create a day to remember because I had a full mental breakdown in front of my son on his birthday. But some people beat their kids, relatively speaking. I'm a great parent.

SPEAKER_00 25:54

The Kitty Kelly Show.

SPEAKER_02 25:57

The holidays are over. A lot of people are looking forward to getting back to regular life, stress levels decreasing. However, there's a good portion of us people out there that are facing a day of reckoning. And I'm talking to all my fellow fat asses. For some of us, it's always the year of the pig. I'm not going to actually step on a scale and see what I've done to myself, but I am forced to see myself in the shower and I know what's happened, okay? This year is extra devastating because I started off in a great place. I wore a pair of pants on Christmas Eve that they haven't seen the light of day in a minute. At this Christmas Eve party, somebody came up to me and they said, Wow, you look really good. And I was like, Oh yeah, I know I've like lost a bunch of weight this year. And she goes, Well, I haven't seen you in two years. What the hell is that supposed to mean? Was that her way of telling me? Oh no, you've been physically unacceptable for at least two years. Grats on the weight loss, though. Long overdue, but congrats. My husband and I actually had a whole conversation about this in the car on whether or not you were still going to be fat, yada yada yada. I owe him 50 bucks. I was in the shower yesterday, looking at my stomach and crying, and I think that I figured something out. I've never been on board with the idea that people gain weight over the holidays because they go to a lot of parties. Who's to say I'm not going to parties all year long? You don't know my life. That's a ludicrous concept. What's really happening is some kind of Higlet snowball effect. You spend all year having some kind of control over your eating, right? And then Thanksgiving comes. And you think, oh, I'll have a nice little treat. Not realizing that once you let the little piggy out of the sty, it is very hard to get little piggy back. My little swine solstice kicked off at Thanksgiving over some remarkable blueberry pie. I don't even like blueberry pie. I'm a pumpkin pie person. I usually don't engage with the other pies because I want to concentrate on the pumpkin. Well, this blueberry pie really caught my attention because I had a slice at dinner and then another slice a few hours later. Now things start to snowball because I end up spending the night at my brother's house. So I wake up at like three in the morning, and I think, hmm, I could sure go for some blueberry pie right now. So I get up and I try to go downstairs, but the alarm is on. Instead of going back to bed, I go to my brother's room, I knock on the door, no one answers. They're dead asleep. Does not dissuade me, right? The piggy is out. The piggy has been activated. So I open the door to my brother's room and I go over to the bed where he and his wife are sleeping. And I shake him on the shoulder. And I was like, Johnny, Johnny. I wake him up and I was like, I think the alarm is on. Did you turn the alarm off? He goes, Why? What? I'm not one of your kids. Why? Don't cross-examine me. You better turn this shit off before I snuff you out with a pillow. I said, I need a drink of water. Because I didn't want to tell him about the pie, which is completely smart because this is the same man who gave me the nickname Pig Lore. The last thing I want is for him to know I'm going downstairs to get pie in the middle of the night. Which I did because the snowball was rolling. Which reminds me, I have a great story about a friend of mine who died in an avalanche, but I'm going to save that for next time. All right. I think we're done here. Thank you for listening, and I'll see you next week.