Perfectionism, Perms & a Minor Flood Episode 5

In this episode, Claire revisits her first-grade era, where overachieving was the personality, perms were a choice, and things occasionally… got out of hand.

From trying a little too hard to be the teacher’s pet to a kitchen incident that escalated quickly, and a ski trip meltdown that did not go as planned, it’s a look back at the early signs of perfectionism, pressure, and just a touch of chaos.

Because even then… it was never that simple.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Okay, friends, you know what that sound means. It's time for another episode of the Claire Blair Plum. Okay, now it's feeling a little grim, a little gloom, a little sadness because I have recorded this a couple of times, and what I got in the output section was just a bunch of muffledy muffledy mup. So I'm feeling it. I'm now back in action. I had to take, oh, a moment, and by moment I mean four hours to decompress, unplug, replug, unplug, replug. How many times? I don't know. There is a lady on the internet, a lady, a girl, I should say, and I don't know what generation it is. It's all about these generational wars like Alpha, Sebum, Versify. I don't know what the new generations are, but they're like, hey, millennials, you should take a boot camp in technology. Yeah, Haley, I would love to do that. The problem is, is I can barely brush my teeth in the morning. So asking me to learn about coding and technology and algorithms is off the table. Okay. I'm over here just trying to drink water and get through a day. Actually, just four hours. Okay. And it's not my fault if I have these mixers and computers and they're about to blow up in my face, possibly. I don't know. Like if there was a boot camp, I'd probably attend and retain what 7% of what they're telling me, just like how to reset your computer. Hey, Haley, I already know how to do that. Right now I'm just trying to figure out how you record yourself on the internet with YouTube and this and that and then monetize it, okay? I'm not there yet. I'm at the cusp. And every time I think I figure it out, I go to record the next episode and no sound happens. Now, I will say, my son was playing trumpet and has a virtual lesson, and then Mr. Tech Trumpet teacher tried to mess with my settings, and I think that was the cause of the problem. It's okay. Shout out, Luke. But the next time you try to Wi-Fi in or mock or share screen with my computer, that's gonna be a no. Because it's taken me four hours and a lot of prayer and about three big crash outs to get this episode off the ground. And also, Haley, why don't you try wearing business casual for all your party times in your early 20s? It's not that easy, girlfriend. Anyways, here we are. Here we are. It's episode five, and I know I said I would do something big for episode five. Well, the big thing is that I didn't throw my computer into the pool. Okay. So here we are. We're celebrating, just getting basically barely tiny crawling through this episode. But it's episode five, and I can tell you I'm like already feeling like kind of the defeat, you know, Alex Earl or Alex Cooper, and I've got them mixed up because I've been following the drama for so long, but I still haven't been signed to a network. I don't have brand deals. I was not invited to Coachella News Flash. And if I was, I don't have enough lingerie to go to that thing. They were really wearing like 90s lingerie with safety pin cover-ups. And I honestly, honest to God, I think I saw somebody in my feed with like an ankle weight choker. Now, I need two ankle weights for each ankle because my ankles are a little thick. You know, they've been rolled a few times. And I like to eat a burger or two here and there, okay? So I'm not about to try to put an ankle weight on my neck, but somebody did that goes to Coachella. It looks like they were the person that like takes the donation box from your car and they had to make an outfit out of that. But what we didn't see is that process. And I think if we were allowed and privy to that process of you just like making a shirt out of a lampshade and some safety pins, that would be really helpful. I honestly think I even saw somebody on the internet like stitching brooches together to make a dress. Oh, and I definitely saw somebody make a hot glue dress that she wore out. She wore a dress with just hot glue drizzle. Like if you're doing a craft project for your kids and that drippity drip drip just drips everywhere. Yeah, they thought, you know what? This should be a dress. Why? I don't know. I guess their estrogen is firing powerfully and mine's not because I don't see the vision. It didn't really come to life for me. But I don't want to be a negative Nancy that has to get enrolled mandatorily, is that a word, into this millennial boot camp. I mean, I'll go, but you can't make my thumbs. Again, I've tried. I've tried to get my brain to do it. I've tried to ask AI, hey, how can I be more productive? It's not happening. It's just not happening. I just want to nap and needlework. I don't even want to drink anymore, you guys. I just want to nap. Isn't that weird? Did I waste all of my flying frogs in the beginning of my life? I don't know. I don't know. What I will tell you is we have some stories to get to today, but before we do that, this, you know, you know, you know, you know, I can't get that phrase out of my vocabulary. So you're gonna have to bear with me, yeah no. So what I'm realizing is going into the closet full of memories and trauma, it's a little triggering. Like I had a lot of anxiety last week, and it could have just been me fearful that the world is ending by being on social media too much. Or it could be actually that like I am healing. And if you've ever cleaned out your closet, you kind of take everything out, or if you've moved, and then you have to put everything back in organized in such a way, hopefully, if you have time. And so I feel like I'm in that process right now where I'm kind of taking everything out of my brain and getting all the trauma out and talking about it and then putting it back in reorganized. But doing that while actually living life, it's kind of hard. Which brings me to my next point. I really want to know are we born with certain personality traits that get us through the times, or are those personality traits reflective of what we've gone through in life? It's like a nature versus nurture kind of thing. I'm really curious. Or does the universe truly have my back and has an ultimate powerful plan? And God, the Lord, universe, power knows exactly what we need. And it gives us the tools to adapt to that with our story so that we'll never know if it was the chicken or the egg that came first. We will just never know, and we have to trust the universe, which is hard for somebody that has gone through a lot of trauma. Okay, I think I'm talking way too fast and getting ahead of myself because again, I did record this 1,400 times, and it's just been a lot, and I'm just back up and running. And so to celebrate that, what do you say we do a little rant? Last week you really liked the rant. So I'm gonna talk about it. I'm gonna carry on the Coachella. Like, what is happening? And also, did we stop wearing bras, which I'm down with? I would love to have a no-bray, but it's not looking like the Coachella gal's tatas. My tatas are in my toes and I don't like it. So if we're gonna go like brahless with crop tops, that's gonna be a no for me. Do we actually just like pick an age and that's what we settle on? Like if I was really feeling myself at 38, it's just leggings and hoodies for the rest of my life. Side part, leggings, hoodies, skinny jeans, I'm done. I wonder if we just get to an age where we're like, we're not participating. But remember our moms, they participated. I remember every mom in the 90s had blouses, not a button-up, not a pullover, not a shirt dress, a blouse. And it was always floral. Sometimes it had like a floral and animal print vibe, and they would kind of like come together at the bottom and flare out. Does anyone remember this? It was very Chico's. How is Chico still in business? I don't know. But every time I go in there, I'm like, I just want to wear this and just flow around. But it also just reminds me of moms in the 90s just wearing blouses. They loved a blouse. But ladies, what are we wearing? Because I'm at the, you know, ballpark and we have several genres to choose from. And I'm not sure that I want that many options. I'm really struggling here as a middle-aged woman. And maybe it's because all of us grew up like right before Limited 2, and we literally were wearing business casual to party in the 2000s. That was weird, right? Why were we wearing business pants? Now you can't even like try to put business pants on this fate and boots with the fur. I wasn't wearing boots with the fur, but I was singing the song in my business casual clothing. That was so weird. I don't understand how that became a trend. And there was no internet. So we all just thought, let's go to the limited or Montgomery Ward. Was that a was that a shopping? Sears. Let's go to Sears and get some black pants that look like we are going to the interview, and then let's get a sparkly tube top, and then let's all wear the same shoes. Let's all wear these Steve Madden platforms, and then let's drink some amaretto sours. And maybe it's that that has caused so much confusion now because I'm at sporting events for young children, and I feel like we have several genres to choose from. One is it looks like people are very fit. And if you got it, flaunt it, girlfriend. I love that for you. But it also with your hair extensions and your eyelashes, it does look like you spent a week in Vegas filming OnlyFans content, and then you are rocking that Lululemon like it's never been rocked before. You look great. Your boobs are perky. You are perfection. It just looks a little worn out, like I just flew red eye to get to the baseball game. And I love that for you. It's also a little intimidating, and maybe that's where I have the problem with it. But then my other option is to look like Adam Sandler, but bedazzled. So it's like sweats and flannels, trucker hats with rhinestone Florida Lees kind of plastered and applique everywhere. I don't know if I'm feeling that. It's giving like trash dumpster man goes to Charlotte Roos, kind of. I don't know. It's like I got a bedazzler, but I used my dad's old clothes to do it. And again, that I was seeing that on the Coachella Girls too. It was like baggy gym shorts. It was looking like walk of shame circa 2003. That's not what you want to be caught in. Heck, standards will call you in if you were in somebody's jorts and a sports bra or a bralette if you back to what we're wearing. So we've got hot fitness models that maybe could do a little bit more um lash and extensions. Like, I love that. I love that you guys are doing all of that maintenance. It's just sometimes your weave's falling off and your eyelashes are like, you need to get a fill-in. You're right at that cusp. And listen, that's why I stopped doing all the things because it's just too much maintenance. And it's like I only look good for like the day that I get the thing done. Also, when I got fake lashes, I literally look like a doll and I had to cut them, and then I look like even a weirder doll that glued caterpillars to my eyelids. So let me just be clear. I'm not knocking it. I'm just saying, like, if we all kind of high tides raise the harbor, is what I'm saying. Can we get a collective vibe going? So then the other option in this genre of, you know, sporting moms is um the Amish dresses. That's making a comeback. If we're all wearing Laura Ashley, floor length, flowers everywhere, like Moo Moo style, but not, it looks very cute on you ladies. I could give you like a little parousel, parasol, what does that think? The mini umbrella in a basket. And it just looks like you can go on a stroll on the promenade, you know? I like your outfits too. I'm just wondering if we can just all get together and and figure out a Saturday morning vibe. Maybe is it just hats? You can even wear your bedazzle trucker hats. And we do baggy on top or baggy on bottom, but not both, and some tennies. And we just make it affordable. And maybe Sears needs to come back into business and we can all shop in the same section. Now that they've opened up the gates of Timu and Sheehan and the internet, I feel like we're all just diving right in. And some of us are trying to dress like 13-year-olds, 13-year-olds are dressing like 40-year-olds. I'm so confused. So if somebody can just like, follow, DM, comment, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, tell me what to wear. And again, I'm I have some boundaries. I'm not gonna put on ankle weights as a choker. I'm also not gonna wear anything that shows my muffin top. I'm not gonna do more beauty regimen things. I did it all. I don't like it. I don't want fake eyelashes clouding my vision. My vision's cloudy enough. I am so hot and sweaty all the time. I don't care if I have eight strands. Those eight strands get so hot and sweaty and heavy. I'm not putting more strands on my hair. I don't care if it makes me look like a Victoria's Secret model. I'm just gonna have to look like a really old wrecked rainbow bright, and I'm fine with that. But I do want to look like I put in a little effort and I don't want it to come across in the way that I applicate Fleur-Deeze and Leopard Crosses onto my dad's gym clothes. And before you even offer up the suggestion of a $70 white tea, let me stop you right there. I'm not paying $70 just to dribble coffee, spaghetti, whatever is falling out of my mouth on my t-shirt. I eat too often and I drink too often and I miss my mouth. Remember, my vision is cloudy, probably because I got fake lashes that didn't work and the glue infected my eye in like 2007 or something. I don't know, but I'm not buying a $70 white tea. Don't even recommend it, okay? Clearly, I must be having some hormone fluctuations because I'm feeling a little ragey. Is anyone else feeling ragy today? Yeah. Anyways, the topic of clothing just gets me a little ragey, and maybe I just need to hang it up and get a blouse. Our moms had blouses. Just have a nice blouse. I hate the word blouse, but it's truly what they were, you know? I just a blouse. Let's just keep saying blouse. So yeah, maybe I just need to hang it up, get my golden girls haircut on, just find me a nice blouse and those one kind of shoes that they only sell. It kind of looks like a natural REI that just sells shoes. And maybe I just need to get some of those cloggish leather things with a zigzag or a swirl on it. A paisley, a paisley print into some nice clogs and just head out into my old lady era. Either way, maybe it's just leggings, top knot, hoodie for me for the rest of my life. And honestly, if you see me rocking a hoodie and it's 104 this summer, yeah, that's what I like to wear as a hoodie. Okay. I feel comfortable, I feel safe, I feel like a constant, warm, snuggy. And I do sweat a lot in it, and I'm just still not taking off my hoodie. I love it so much. It's like my security blanket. And maybe that's just where I leave it because that's all I have the effort for these days. I don't know. You can also like, comment, and share this episode. I'm discovering in order to get sponsors, I need more listeners. And so what I need you to do is comment below and be like, yes, the queen, just do it. Like DM. I don't know. Comment anything. But I need you to rate this podcast and then comment something and then start sharing it around. And let's see if we can get a little traction so that we can have an actual fifth episode launch party. Because right now, the fifth episode launch party is literally me just not throwing my computer into the abyss. Which I'd say that's a party enough. Again, it's progress over perfection era. And I know that I probably gave all of my F's away and I'm here to talk about it. Because in first grade, I was high anxiety, an overachiever, extremely codependent. And I want to explore is that something that I was born with, or is that something that I was given? Or, you know, like how does this all work? And the truth is, I don't think any of us know. But if you do and you want to know, just comment so that it can show that this podcast is getting out into the universe. Okay, so let's talk about first grade. Ooh, full day of school, right? I'm going, I'm learning how to read, I'm tying my shoes that I probably got at payless. I'm feeling myself, picking out outfits. I think I even was Madonna for Halloween that year, inspired by my student teacher. Also, teachers chime in. Whatever happened to student teachers, because we had them all the time. Is this the decline of our education system? Maybe I just need to create a plan where it's student teachers and we go in and we're like, we'll help you and we'll wear makeup and play music when it's sad time or nap time or reading time. I don't know what happens in schools. I don't know. Don't ask me. I should not be a teacher or a student teacher. Let's just leave it at that. But I had the most fire student teacher in first grade. I wanted to be her. She always wore something bedazzled, something very bedazzled all of the time with shoulder pads. And when I say eyeshadow, she had eyeshadow up to her eyebrows, blush in circles, blonde hair permed to perfection and kind of a little frizzed out. But I wanted that look. I wanted that look like nothing I've ever wanted before. It was perfection. And she was always happy, so happy. And just a lot of blush and always happy. And that's how I wanted it. When I was dressing up as Madonna again for Halloween, I was like, more makeup, more makeup, put all the makeup on. I want to look just like round, rosy cheeks. And I could not wait to be successful in my life and wear shoulder pads and something bedazzled and just perms for days. So many perms. I loved a perm. Now remember, we were balling on a budget. So I did many of perms in some lady Phyllis's kitchen. And some of those perms didn't take, and that was very upsetting because you know my mom was like, listen, we can only afford this $12 perm every once in a while. And then I got to kick Phyllis back, you know, at 20 or 25. And I think it was probably too expensive to go to the Pueblo Beauty College, which isn't a thing, but I made a thing, so it's a thing. Okay. So I'm in first grade, loving my life, student teacher, on point. There are some great kids in the class that I'm learning about. You know, we had this one kid. I don't know what his real name was. We just called him Judd. Now, Judd, it seemed as if he drove a motorcycle to school. And I know you're like, Claire, you were seven or eight. I know this, but somehow in my memory, Judd did have a full-blown Harley. He had a leather jacket. He had this really cool haircut that was like shaved on the sides, like a mohawk that flopped over. But one time I think he did spike it up, and I was like, whoa, Judd. And so it was kind of like in Greece, you know, when they always come in and their leather jacket and they're the bad guy. I don't remember Judd even talking much, but I do remember that he definitely drove a Harley to the school, to the first grade. He did. And me and my best friend, we talk about Judd all the time. And she remembers him too. And she wasn't in the same class. So she also thinks Judd drove a Harley. Confirmed. You know, it wasn't just my imagination and tinfoil hat playing tricks on me. We had Judd. We had the student teacher. Life was good. If there was an opportunity to be had, I was taking it. I was taking it full effect. I volunteered to be the student representative for student council. If you don't know what that is, each class selected a boy and a girl representative and you went to student council meetings. And I think there was some sort of election, but I'm probably sure I'm the only one that volunteered and then probably cheated to win. That's just me. I really was an overachiever. And if I could go back and tell myself anything, it'd be like, hmm, slow your roll because you're gonna hit middle aged. And even then, I knew young Claire had so much ambition that I was like, nah, it'll never run out. It's run out. It's run out, little Claire. You have no ambition anymore. You're tired. Discipline, nope. You're barely just hanging on to try and get a weekly podcast episode out, and you don't know anything about technology. That's what I would tell her. And I would say, pace yourself. Life is a marathon, not a sprint. You don't have to do it all in first grade. But again, they don't have time traveling. So I can't go back and be like, hey, little clear, let me change the course of your life. No, but what I can do is yap about it on the internet. And that's what I'm doing. So I was doing all the things. I was the student council class representative for the girl side. I was reading all of the books. There was like some sort of contest of who could read the most books, and then you would write in every day, and I would study that chart. And every day I would go home and read double the amount just to get ahead. And finally I did win. I did win that contest and I feel very proud about it. But I don't know if it was trouble at home that was brewing or if I'm just a natural codependent slash empath, slash people pleaser, slash overachiever, slash psychopath, slash insane, slash all of the things. But I felt like I would carry the weight of the world of all the people around me. You work at Walgreens, I want to impress you. You're the lunch lady, new best friend. And then yet I would go home to my loved ones and just dump. So if you know a people pleaser, if you are married to one, if you have a child that's one, and they come home and they just act crazy like a raging bitch, that's what I was doing at home. And I feel really bad for my family because I know that when I turn into a raging bitch, you better get out of my way because it's not pretty. In fact, there was this one time, and I don't know if it was because my mom had done pigtails on my hair and she left a tiny slitherin of a piece of hair out. And I decided I couldn't wait the 30 seconds for her to dry her hands and fix the hair piece. I went and just snipped it. And then probably from there, I raged out and somehow I got myself locked in my room. Now you're probably thinking, oh my gosh, locked in a room. And that's because you've blacked out your childhood or you're younger than third. But yes, we got locked in our room, especially me. And I got spanked. I don't think my sister got spanked. I didn't get like the belt or the spoon that some people did, but I definitely did get spanked. And I thought it was kind of weird, and it was very painful. It's just, I feel like, and maybe it's just because we're tired. We grew up with like no internet. Again, we went over what happened in the last episode. Like, so much has happened in the last 50 years. But then if you take it back just the last 10, a lot of things have stayed the same. And so did We just go through so much change as a generation and it's caused us to kind of like glitch out or something. Because now what we're seeing is that people are talking to kids and students, like, make better choices and refraining everything into a positive. But now I'm realizing I don't speak 20-year-old. I'm like, hey, go in there and do this task. That could be considered abusive, I guess. Now go walk a line to the stop sign. Oh, abusive, too direct. You need to reframe it in a positive. I don't understand how to make it a positive. Go do that thing. It's not that hard. It's really this new wave of gentle parenting has created a riff in our generations because we just want to be like, get a clue. Get a clue and stop doing what you're doing and do the right thing. And meanwhile, there's these things at schools called student success offices. And that's where the bad kids go. In my mind, I think that's where the student council representative should go that won the Bronco title of the year, not where the bad kids go. Just to, I don't know. I don't have the answers. Clearly, I'm not like winning mom of the year, and I can't even get myself together. But I'm wondering if we should maybe bring in a little harsher parenting to gentle parenting. There's gotta be a middle ground because it can all be sound baths and positive interactions. You know, yeah no. Can't stop saying it. Can't stop, won't stop. And at this point in time, I wonder if my parents were kind of on the edge. And I think this was kind of the beginning of the end. And there were signs and symptoms. And I don't know if I was carrying that with me and having anxiety and having to perform in first grade. But that was bizarre. It's bizarre behavior now that I'm looking back and I want to hug my inner child. Is that like a therapy term? I don't know. Someone comment in the comments, help me psychoanalyze this. It's not like I can go back and do anything now, but I do think, wow, somebody should have said to just slow my role because if there was a task, I wanted to do it. If there was a goal, I wanted to achieve it. If there was a contest, I wanted to win it. And it's just like it's first grade, girlfriend. Just get hooked on phonics and live your best life. Just go ask Jud how he got a motorcycle at seven. But this undertone of anxiety is brewing, right? Even Dr. Seuss Day, like we had green eggs and ham, and they only have so many portions. The teachers are basically paying for this out of their own pocket. And my green eggs and ham slid on the floor and there was no more for me to eat. And if there's one thing I can tell you, it's I love breakfast food. I love Dr. Seuss. And what I really love is eating. I eat. I mean, it's just a joy. And so then I was just like, fine, I'll go hungry, but I held those tears back because as a codependent people pleaser, I'm not gonna let anybody see that I'm crashing out outside of my home. No, I say that for all of my family that I love and care about, which again is so weird. Why do we as humans go out into the world and perform for people that, you know, they matter, of course. Everyone matters in life, but then we dump on our loved one. I really regret that and I feel bad, and I'm probably responsible for my parents' divorce or not. Maybe that's why my mom and my sister are so laid back and black out literally everything from the past. Gosh, must be nice. Hook me up with that life to just not have all of these memories and anxiety swimming. Again, nature nurture. I don't know. And if I did know, I don't know that it would change the trajectory of everything. So this is just an exploration process, and I'm just learning who I am through getting it all out in the open. I start to notice that the teacher is asking another student to run all of the errands, take notes to the office, or go tell the other teacher this or that, or pick up all the pencils. And I'm seething. I'm seething inside as I notice this. Again, is this not insane? And I must have just festered on this for a while. And I probably tried to outperform her preference for another student. I was probably exhausting to her, to be honest. And she was, I gotta quit asking this Susie know it all, because she's driving me insane and making me tired. Or maybe she didn't even think about it. I don't know. I have a tendency to let my thoughts run the ship and get extremely overwhelmed. And so I must have festered it and held it all in, and we went on a family ski trip. The first, the only. We went to Monarch. If you're from Colorado, you know Monarch. It's kind of a low-budget ski resort. And by resort, I think it's more of a hill. I don't even know if it's still open, but Monarch to me was my one and only time that I had been skiing in my life. So it was essentially my aspen, and I'll just take it. I have a weird thing with skiing. Everyone is like, you should ski, you should ski. You're from Colorado, be a skier. It's so much money and it's a lot of effort. And I'm not saying that it's not worth it. I think it is, but skiing and I, we get into some rumbles down the road, and we'll get there. We'll get there. You know, I like to say that when I have more stories brewing, but many of stories about skiing. And to this day, I'm not necessarily a great skier. I'll go. I'll go because who doesn't love going down a ski hill, trying to avoid crashing into a like one of those orange caution fences or a three-year-old and then just seeing your life flash before your eyes. Who doesn't love that? I don't know. Anyways, so I'm not necessarily much of a skier, but let's table love and hate for skiing. We're on this family trip, right? And we're not going to go on very many other family trips because literally, I think my family got sick of all of my crash-outs and had to dissolve. I don't know, but this is kind of the beginning of the end. And so I'm festering it, I'm festering it. My sister, who's way more athletic than me, just has that natural ability. She's rocking and rolling, basically looks like an Olympic skier. And I'm just sitting there, you know, trying and trying again, drinking Shirley Temples, again, just feeling like a failure, festering up all this energy. And we finally get into their room at night. And I am like, I have something to tell you guys again. News flash, they don't want to hear it. Why were they not shutting those things down? Or maybe they were, and I just remember these dramatic moments and episodes. I don't even know where my sister was. Maybe I had to lock her in the adjoining room and be like, play with your teddy ruck spin, leave me alone. I have something to figure out right now with mom and dad. So I'm like, I don't know how to tell you this, but I am not the teacher's favorite. She doesn't ask me to do errands or anything anymore. And I'm just, I'm, I am the number one reader and I am the student counsel class representative. And why is she not asking me to turn the lights off when it's quiet time? I should be the one. And again, as my parents do, I think they just looked at each other and looked at me. They saw that I was clearly crashing out and having an episode. And I just don't think they knew what to do. I don't remember them giving me any advice. That being said, if anybody did give me advice, I'd probably be like, you have no idea. I just want to tell you about my feelings. And again, here I am doing it right now. But I would be open to advice at this point. Not that it would really help to go back, what, 40 years and try to figure things out. But, anyways, so I think I was putting a strain on the family that I'm not proud to say that that was me being a psychopath. But yeah, I think I was carrying just the weight of the world, having so much anxiety for no reason. I was just supposed to be learning about like adjectives. If that even, do you even learn about adjectives in first grade? I don't know. Don't let me be a student teacher. And I don't know if my parents ever said anything to the teacher. I doubt they did because there was no email or faxing. And again, I don't know what my ride situation was, who was picking me up, but there was a clear border between teachers and parents. Unless you came on like one day a year to volunteer, you were not getting into the classroom and you were not talking about how to control anything, which is kind of nice. Teachers should really shut it down to the outside world. And I'm not saying in a bad way, but just you don't need my opinion to teach your kids first grade. That would be a bad idea. But somehow, somehow, the teddy bear picnic was on my birthday. And of course, I dropped off my birthday bear and she was in the birthday chair. Hey, hey. So that kind of made up for my crash out. But I definitely think these crashing outs were getting a little intense. Like the one time that my mom locked me in the room, back to that story, and she said, You can't come out. And I said, if you don't, I have to go to the bathroom so bad. If you don't let me out, I'm gonna pee on the floor. And there's one thing about me maybe I'm not disciplined, maybe I'm not committed, maybe I don't have very good follow-through, but I will commit to a bit. And if I tell you I'm gonna do something, and if I'm making threats, guaranteed I will follow through on that. So you know what I did? Pulled down my pants, peed all over the floor, and then I got let out. Again, I have to say, I feel so sorry for my parents. I was crazy. Was I getting hormones in first grade? Because this is crazy behavior now that I'm looking back. And maybe this is why what has prevented me from wanting to sit down and unpack this, because it's a lot. I'm thinking of what a terror of a person I was at seven or eight years old. Like something is wrong there. And finally we come to the beginning of the end. And again, maybe when I've done all these metaphysicals and readers and healers, they're like you're an empath and you absorb energy and then you turn it up a notch. You exacerbate whatever the undertone of energy is. And maybe that's the case. Maybe there was trouble in paradise. Maybe I was feeling the disintegration of my parents' marriage, which wasn't even that bad. For a divorce, at least the ones that I've been through myself, it was actually kind of peaceful and just easy, just kind of like a natural progression. My dad just loved fixing cars that never got fixed, drinking beer and watching golf. He loved it. He had a lazy boy, and that's kind of what he did. And so this particular day, my mom was, Michael, I am going out, and I don't know where she was going, maybe to fashion bar. Does anybody remember that? It was kind of like a department store, but in a mall. I don't know where she was going, but it was probably somewhere like the grocery store to get her hair done at Pueblo Beauty College. It's not a thing, but you know what I mean. So she goes out and about. And of course, I get one of my bright ideas, which again, shout out to my sister for knowing that I have horrible bright ideas, but she goes along with them. So my dad's watching TV. He was probably kind of half asleep. And I said, What what a better way to celebrate our mom on Mother's Day than clean the kitchen? And my sister said, Bet. And we could have just gotten probably a bowl. Now, this kitchen wasn't very big. It was probably four by four. It was an old 1950s kitchen. There was a step down, if you will, to kind of get into it from the dining room. And then back stairs from the back side, it's very hard to explain, but anyways, it was a kitchen in with linoleum tile floor. And it was very small. For instance, I could have used a spray bottle to probably clean the floors, but that wasn't enough. I like to dream big. I like to have bright ideas. I like to do it all. So eventually that bucket got bigger or the bowl. And then we used a whole thing of Dawn dish soap or whatever was squeezed out and just layered it, syruped on the floor. And then I was like, wow, this is getting sudsy. Why don't we just bring the hose right on in here? So then we brought the hose. And the next thing you know, our clothes were wet. We couldn't clean the floor in wet clothes. So we took those off and we were slipping and sliding in our underwear, living our best life in a flooded kitchen that we were supposed to clean for our mom for Mother's Day that probably went out just to get a break, and our dad wasn't watching us, which is weird because we were a whole maybe 10 feet away from him, having the time of our life in a kitchen-turned water park. It was amazing until my mom walked in and she said, What are you doing and why is your dad not watching you? And I think that could have been the beginning of the end. I think we quietly did help unflood, but I do think there they had to call somebody to help air it out because there was leakages and things like that. And again, I my heart was in the right place. I just get so excited and then my ideas get carried away. And the next thing I know, I'm slip and sliding in my underwear in my kitchen, which sounds fabulous. Nowadays, I'm like, no, keep your chip crumbs right under your mouth. And if you even have one crumb, pick it up, pick it up, pick it up. I have a little OCD. So yeah, this was kind of a hard episode because I think I'm slowly realizing that I am an insane person and have been from a young age, and nothing happened to me to cause me to be that insane. I just was born that way. And that's hard to admit. To realize I just was born abnormal, weird, overachiever, but in the weirdest sort of ways. Flooding kitchens, but not, but kind of on purpose, but not. Anyways, it's just very bizarre. So this episode was a little hard. I also am thinking I need some guests now. I need a little interaction. I need to like pump this up. So that's where we're at. I know it wasn't like the most pivotal episode ever, but I hope you enjoyed just self-deprecating with me and hearing about these stories of Judd and the kitchen floor. Just a young kid on a Harley and flooding the heck out of your house. I do think though, that was the beginning of the end. My mom was like, I can't parent with you, and this kid is insane, and so I don't know what I'm gonna do. And I don't blame them. I would have fled the scene as well. I don't know how you would do it because my mom was a social worker, so she had to know about like foster care and adoption. But I think I would have like told my kid, essentially me, to be like, you can just leave. Just go ahead here, take your new kids on the block tape and just head on, head that direction. Best of luck. I think she kind of did that to us later on in life when it got too overwhelming. But I mean, I really would have been like, hey, we're going on a vacation, but you're staying behind. Gosh, I I'm such a great mother. Anyways, again, I don't know what she did in her past life or my dad to get a child like me, but it was something not good because I don't think I could have parented myself, that's for sure. So, episode five in the books, hey, hey, hey. And then next week we talk about dun dun dun, the divorce, which is not really it. Like in my family, it was kind of just a cheek little thing that just happened. And but there are some weird stories around it that we will explore. If you want to come on the podcast, DM, follow, like, follow it, anyways. I don't know. I hope you guys have a great week. And guess what? Guess what I get to say now? I will see you next Tuesday. This episode of Claire Bear has been brought to you by, directed by, edited by all the things by your host, Claire. I love you all so much for the support. Thank you so much, and I will see you next Tuesday.