Day 17: Take Two, 1,000 Downloads & Finding Purpose in the Interruptions

Today's episode is actually...take two!

After recording most of the episode, my granddaughter had other plans, my daughter walked in, and I realized life was reminding me exactly why this is called 10 Unedited Minutes of Marlena's Time.

Today I'm sharing a little about our unexpected weekend, my daughter's return trip to the hospital, meeting our new priest, celebrating an exciting milestone of more than 1,000 podcast downloads, and why I believe God placed this podcast on my heart in the first place.

Sometimes the interruptions become the story.

As always...thank you for spending a few unedited minutes with me.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:11

Testing. There we go. There we go. If you're on YouTube, you got 30 extra seconds of me. Anyway, good morning, guys. Welcome to 10 unedited minutes with Marlena. Uh, it is Monday, July 13th, and it feels like a Monday. And I have to be very transparent with you guys. This is take two. Take two of today's podcast. I know I never do that. You always get raw, unedited uh talk from me, but I recorded about three-fourths of my podcast with my granddaughter sitting here. She made the cutest noises, like, like Grammy, be done already. And then my daughter walked in, and then we had to have a conversation, and I had to pause it. And I was like, I I truly, this is why I this is why when I record, I just talk into this microphone. I don't go back and listen to it. I just post it because it's 10 unedited minutes of my time. And I think that that's what um makes this, that's what the signature of this podcast is, is it's authentic, right? And so when I had to pause that last video, it was or whatever you call it, I got up and I thought about it. I was like, you know what? I just talked about a bunch of shit anyway. So let's let's start over. Let's we're just gonna start over. So we did. Here we go. So anyway, that was an extra minute and a half before we actually got into it. Um, so today's episode, or today's podcast, actually, is sponsored by my dear friend Rebecca Conklin Kleibomer. And um, Rebecca agreed to sponsor two months worth of my episodes uh because she loves me. She believes in me, and she just loves this work that I'm doing. And I love it too. And I really think it's turning into something here. Um, I'm excited about it. I'm gonna start expanding on this podcast a little bit. And I'm hoping to get more sponsorships, right? So if you want to sponsor me, um, it's a very minimal investment. Uh right now I'm charging $25 a month, and that is just uh covering my Buzz Sprout subscription. BuzzSprout is the um uh platform that I use to stream this to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and then I do record it uh for TikTok. I'm sorry, for YouTube. That was a Friday slip. You guys, you guys will get that later. Um, so anyway, in honor of my sweet friend Rebecca, we are uh dedicating the next two months worth of episodes to her. And I'm trying to start out each episode with a sweet memory of our friendship and um maybe just loving on Rebecca for a little bit. And to be quite honest with you, I'm running out of things to reminisce about. I truly am. And one thing that came to my mind this morning, and I just want to say this to Rebecca, I do feel a little guilty because I feel like I don't call you enough. And I feel like when I'm bored in the car, I don't pick up the phone and call just like you do when you're bored in the car and you pick up the phone and call me. So um I I am like that though. Like that if you're gonna be not Rebecca, this is to everybody now, but if you if you're gonna be my friend, you have to understand that I suck at kind of holding up my end of the friendship when times are good and you know I have nothing to talk about. And that's maybe that's why I love Rebecca so much, because she just loves me for me and takes all of me no matter what. So, Rebecca, I love you. And I do have a small surprise for you. I'm gonna start it here in the next couple weeks. I think you are going to die. Um, you're gonna love it. So that's a little teaser. Anyway, what are we gonna talk about today? I mean, let's we could talk about my weekend if you want to. Like, it sucked. Um, it was supposed to be a weekend with my bestie. We were supposed to go to Chayna Lakes. Um, we had an Airbnb rented, and we were going to do the Nine Lake Challenge, which is a kayaking trip. And on the lake we had the little cottage we had rented, there was a paddle boat. So I was really looking forward to just paddling around this little lake that the con the condo was on that we have. And um, yeah, so that kind of blew up because my oldest daughter, as you all know, she's pregnant. And if you heard yesterday's podcast or Saturday's, was it Saturday? Oh, I don't even know. I don't even know. You will know that we were in the hospital, and um we came home on Friday and I canceled the trip because I needed to be here for my daughter. And it's funny because Saturday night, I'm getting a little bit ahead of myself, but I had this fleeting thought of, hey, I should call Lisa and be like, let's go tomorrow, let's go kayaking tomorrow. And good thing I didn't because my daughter needed to go back to the hospital Saturday night. And when I say back to the hospital, I don't mean just back to, you know, the 30-minute away hospital. We have to go to the two-hour drive away hospital. And um she thought she was having contractions, and we get down there, they checked her all out, she was good. We spent more time on the road than we did actually in the OBED, but that's okay. I don't mind it at all. I would rather take the time and go down there and have it be nothing than question it and have it be something. So I do not mind. I do not mind being up literally all night Saturday night. I I literally saw the beginning stages of the sunrise on Sunday morning. And let me tell you what, that was absolutely beautiful. I don't know that I've ever seen that. Maybe I have, but maybe not that beautiful. So that was God's little gift to me for um being so kind to my daughter and staying up literally, literally all night. And when you are 40 some years old, your body does not want you to stay up all night. I commend anybody who works third shift because um that's not what our bodies are built to do. But anyway, the good thing about this weekend was I got to attend mass. And um the reason I was excited about that is because we have a new priest. And I've been messaging him because I'm trying to do an intro story on him for the icon. So we've been kind of talking back and forth on messenger, but um, it was really cool to meet him face to face. He is really cool, and I'm really excited to see, you know, what he does, where he takes our parish, and um because I I think he's gonna do great. Um, I was a Eucharistic minister on Saturday, last minute, thankfully. Not thankfully, but last minute, and I I gotta meet him, and we got to chat for a little bit. So um I'm really excited. I really like him. But I will say it was really weird not having Father John there. I I did, I I missed him, and I still miss him, but um, it just was different to not have him, you know, walk down the aisle at the end of Mass, tap me on the shoulder, and tell me how amazing my cookies or whatever the dessert was um that I made for him. And yeah, that kind of sucked. And uh, yeah. So anyway, so that was a good thing that happened this weekend. And uh Saturday night after mass, I got home, and my husband's like, let's go fishing. So I said, Okay, so he has this little fishing hole that he has fished at since he was a little boy, and I he never took me there. So we got to go fishing on the Blanchard Saturday night, and it was it was really nice, it was beautiful out, absolutely beautiful. Um, there was a little breeze coming off the river, and it ended with the most gorgeous sunset on the face of this planet. It was absolutely stunning. So it it ended up being a good night, and then um just as I was getting ready to call it a day, my daughter called me and off we went back to Columbus. So um, yeah, I pray every single day for her that uh this baby is going to at least make it. We're we're hoping for 36 weeks, guys. Just give us get us to 36 weeks. That's uh when Taja was born, and I think that I'm calling it baby T. Oh my gosh, you guys, did I? Yeah, I think I told you that about the ultrasound and how I saw, got to see like her face. Like it was it was like right there. Oh my gosh, that ultrasound was so cool. But anyway, uh I'm going crazy now. Um, I do want to talk a little bit about um I'm I'm excited because uh yesterday I got an email from Buzz Sprout, and this podcast has been downloaded over a thousand times. And some people might think that that's whoopy-doo, but I think I think that's really cool, and I'm very excited about it, and that's because all you guys listening have downloaded this podcast, and it's because you love me, you support me, and I want to see where this podcast goes, right? So um we're gonna start doing a couple things to maybe uh grow it, and I don't even know. Like I just honestly started this podcast just as something to where I can have something to get up to to do. Let me start that little sentence over. I started this podcast because I wanted a reason to get up every morning and I needed consistency in my life. You know, when you're a small business owner for 12 years and you suddenly close, not suddenly, but you close your business and you don't have anything to do during the day consistently, like it's weird. It's weird, I'm telling you. So I needed consistency, and so I thought, well, how about I start this podcast? And I think God placed this podcast on my heart as a way for me to spread his word. And I know, I know, every once in a while you I get on here and you hear me vent, you hear me say the word fuck, you hear me cuss. But I truly believe that that's why God put this on my heart. And maybe that's why he's uh pushing it out there and making it grow. And maybe that's why he put it on my heart to um do these new wonderful, amazing, cool things that we're gonna be doing to see if we can't get it to grow a little bit more. So um if you love me and if you love this podcast, hit the subscribe button or put a comment on the Facebook page that I post it to, or send me a message and say, Hey Marlena, great podcast. I don't even know. You don't have to do that. I don't give a shit. But um yeah, I I really I really I care, but I I don't because I just this is just something for me to do. And I talk into this microphone like it's my best friend, and it's um therapeutic for me. I always feel better afterwards, and I don't know, it's just a really fun thing to do. What am I doing today? I do have quite a list. Um I do have my own doctor's appointment. I get Botox injections, and no, it's not to make me feel younger, it's to help with uh migraines. And I'm telling you what, if you suffer from migraines, talk to your doctor about um Botox for the treatment because it's life-changing. And do it. That's all I'm gonna say. So I'm I'm getting that done. You it's you go every three months, I think, and you want to be consistent with it because it does wear off after a little bit. But the good thing is, if you're on YouTube, look, look like right there. I have no frown lines, they're coming back a little bit, but I get injection like there's two spots, and I'm pointing above my eyes, by the way, if you're not on YouTube, but um in each eyebrow, and then they put they inject all over my head. But anyway, yeah, my forehead is nice and smooth. That's a positive side effect, guys. What else do I have to do today? I have some things to do for the icon, and um I have some stuff to do for my hook and rise creative. I have to, I have a whole marketing campaign made up for my daughter's uh massage business. So I need to consistently post that out there. And her and I talked a little bit last night. I'm going to start a marketing campaign for her cleaning service to see if we can't grow that a little bit. And that's what I'm gonna work on today. And the things I'm doing with this podcast might take me a little bit of extra time, but hey, that's all we have on our hands is time, right? So that's all we have for today. We're already at 15 minutes, guys. Anyway, um, okay, so I love you, and again, thank you, thank you, thank you for all of your support. If one of you want to sponsor me, let me know. Let me know. Thank you, Rebecca, for sponsoring me. I absolutely love you, and I love that you just love me no matter what. And it's an unconditional love, and I love that about you, and you have the same in return. Anyway, I love you guys and pray for me. I pray for you every single day, and we'll see you tomorrow. Bye.