Pretty Funny Business Trip | NYC fka Little Tiny Wieners
In this episode, Lauren lays down her predictions for 2023 while Sydney reacts in real-time. Then, the two hosts recap a business planning trip to NYC gone awry due to bubbles on bubbles.
Podcast Summary
In this episode of Pretty Funny Business podcast, hosts Sydney and Lauren kick off the new year by making predictions for 2023, starting with Lauren's trip to New York City for some planning, or as she calls it, "vision questing." They then introduce a new segment called "PFB on the streets" where they make quick predictions. Lauren predicts that the side part hairstyle will be in, while Sydney jokes that Gen Z has poisoned her with their middle part propaganda. They also discuss the idea that AI will rule in the future, but Sydney is not convinced, stating that we are already seeing the shortcomings of AI and that it won't necessarily take over all jobs. Overall, it's a fun and lighthearted conversation full of laughter and witty banter.
Lauren and Sydney also discuss the competitiveness between HubSpot and Marketo in the B2B marketing industry. They discuss the idea of nepotism in the tech industry and question the true value of products and the high valuations of companies. Lauren believes that HubSpot is a nepo baby because it is cheaper than Marketo and has more users, while Sydney mentions Pardot, a marketing automation tool that “is basically free”. They end the section by talking about quitting jobs due to changes in tech stacks and making spicy generalizations.
When covering their predictions for 2023, they both agree that solo entrepreneurial training courses will become increasingly popular. Sydney shares her positive experience with online parenting courses and suggests that entrepreneurial courses should not be offered by pricey mega enterprises. She also expresses her support for those who want to break into Marketing Ops, but find it hard to do so. They then move on to talk about their recent trip to New York, where they accidentally got drunk early in the day after being given drink tickets to wait at the bar until their room was ready. The gals recall their experience of being drunk and hungry at a hotel bar, as they were waiting for their client, which made them late for their dinner reservation: so they were seated at an undesirable spot, Sydney felt sick and did not want to eat, but they ordered Fernet to help with digestion. They also joked about the explicit nature of their conversation, given their discussion of "teeny tiny wieners".
Finally, they describe their NYC antics, which include having breakfast, shopping, looking for EMMIE merch, visiting the New York Public Library, having dinner with Sydney's kids and Lauren nearly had a panic attack All in all, they had a great time together and got a lot of paperwork done, which they call pp due to its abbreviation, but also because it stinks like peepee.
Full Podcast Transcript
Sydney: Hello and welcome to Pretty Funny Business, first podcast of 2023!
Lauren: 2023. Happy New Year everyone!
Sydney: I'm Sydney
Lauren: Oh, I'm Lauren.
Sydney: Did you forget?
Lauren: And together we are
Sydney: Pretty funny business. It's in the vibe.
Lauren: It’s the best thing, go ahead.
Sydney: go ahead. What are we doing? How are we starting this? Let's do it.
Lauren: I was gonna say the best thing about our podcast is that, you know, we don't know what to expect, you don't know what to expect, it's just going to be really exciting for everyone. So today I am going to throw down some of my quick 2023 predictions, and Sydney is going to hit us back with her immediate reactions. And then we are going to recap my IRL trip to New York City, for my first time ever for fun: to visit Sydney and to do some planning - aka vision questing, aka dreaming for EMMIE Co for 2023.
Sydney: I love it. Let's do it.
Lauren: Are we ready? All right, so PFB on the streets, I think this is gonna become a segment. It's funny and we can do it for our guests, or I can rope you into it about 60 seconds before we start recording.
Sydney: Are these just general 2023 predictions, or are they MOPs specific?
Lauren: you know, they're mostly MOPs specific
Sydney: Okay.
Lauren: I'll start with the non MOPs specific one. My 2023 pretty, in the category of Pretty Funny Business, prediction is that the side part is in
Sydney: Oh, spicy. You know what they say, if you hold onto something long enough, it'll become in fashion again!
Lauren: What are you trying to say?
Sydney: never let it go! I tried the middle part and I would say the closest I got is to what I'm rocking currently, which I would classify as an off-center part, but I just can't go full middle. And I am happy that we're bringing back the middle part. I love it. You heard it here first, middle part, or die?
Lauren: side part.
Sydney: I'm sorry, side part. Gen Z has poisoned me with their middle part propaganda.
Lauren: You know, I have the same problem because, apparently Kourtney Kardashian has the same problem, where I've got this like colic, like I was born with the side part.
Sydney: A colic?
Lauren: A Colic, yeah.
Sydney: Cow lick?
Lauren: Oh, well maybe this is a Cleveland thing. I mean cow, I mean cowlick. Ooh. Does that mean like actually a cow licks your hair?
Sydney: Yeah, I swear !
Lauren: No!
Sydney: Maybe I'm wrong. I'm happy to say something really confident
Lauren: When I was born, a cow licked my head and I do not have a center part. And actually this is something that I have passed onto my daughter - my seven year old daughter who is in ballet - and she cries every time we have to do her hair for rehearsal or for a recital because they require middle parts, and a low bun. And she's like, “my hair doesn't do that”. It does do that with a lot of gel, sort of. It's not right though, and she's not happy about it. I don't know, maybe this is the side part revolution for ballet, etc.
Sydney: I have no middle part disability. I just feel emotionally allergic to a middle part, and I am constantly chasing the Taylor Swift deep side part of the 1989 era. And my hair doesn't quite do that either, so I do sympathize with Marina
Lauren: I've been chasing the Dua Lipa side part, which is like three inches high and then over. Mm-hmm.
Sydney: I love it.
Lauren: And then it looks very, you know, it's very in, in Cleveland, Ohio
Sydney: Taste maker of Cleveland, Ohio. All right, next one!
Lauren: So this one is not that spicy. I'm going to go least spicy to most spicy. I think we're already seeing it: that AI rules the earth.
Sydney: I am not sure I agree with this. I think that in some capacity AI will rule the earth sure, but I think that’s what we're seeing right now, and everyone's like - oh my God the robots are taking over. Does anyone's job even matter if ChatGPT can just do everything for you? I think we're going to, and already are, quickly seeing the shortcomings of it which is good, probably, for all of us to remain gainfully employed. I don't know. I don't know. I'm not convinced. I think ChatGPT is interesting. I think the thing it has the biggest threat to kids that are still writing essays at school, but when was the last time I had to write some multi-paragraph thing that ChatGPT can just do for me now? Never. If ChatGPT can start building Marketo programs though, that would be great. If it could look at something that I've built in Marketo and then do all the documentation for me, that would be awesome.
Lauren: it may you know, it may be.
Sydney: but just set me a meeting agenda or define my marketing goals for the year. Like the bullshit that you have to bubble up to corporate, maybe that's gonna die and I feel like it's already personally died for me
Lauren: Some people are using it for Salesforce flows
Sydney: really?
Lauren: right? Salesforce flows. I mean, they're, they're not perfect and they're not necessarily best practice. It might be oh, well I would actually start it this way, or I would trigger it off like this. But you still can use it as a base.
Sydney: You can train the robot to get better at it until we work ourselves out of a job? Is this what the movie Wall-E is all about? I haven't watched it.
Lauren: I think… I haven't watched it in a long time, but I think it's more about recycling.
Sydney: Well we need to do that too.
Lauren: Onto the next one. I think this is gonna be the year of the agency non-compete, and what I mean by that, is that agencies are no longer going to compete with each other, they're going to have to partner.
Sydney: I love it. I'm here for it. I'm on board 100%. I agree. There's enough work for everybody and the competition game is just too much
Lauren: too dumb. But I also think we are going to be a little bit overwhelmed going forward with the layoffs and people not knowing what to do, and just typing in the Gs: dear God help me, why did they lay off our entire marketing and sales operations teams?
Lauren: All right. I don't know which one of these is spicier. I'm gonna do this one next in case Tim has to cut the final one. I need to look this up, so I'm going to pause. I should have had this all ready. Apologies. Sarah McNamara posted a meme
Sydney: Oh my God, I saw this this morning.
Lauren: that is many old white men laughing hysterically - definitely politicians. I'm not gonna try and guess who who they are, and then they switched to HubSpot because their new CMO is friends with someone from HubSpot who said it was better than Marketo. So I commented on this. I can count on two hands the number of times I've been witness to this in real life. But if you have the money, stay with Marketo honey. So the thing that I really wanna lay down is someone else's comment that says “even B2B marketing can’t escape nepotism”. And to which I a light bulb went off in my head that was like, is HubSpot a Nepo baby?
Sydney: I have read one business book in my life and it was five years ago, maybe more, on the plane to Marketo Summit. That's how long ago it was - Marketo Summit was still a thing, and it was called Disrupted. Have you read this? About the guy that was a journalist at Newsweek that got canned and then he went to work for HubSpot?
Lauren: Yeah, I have not read it, but I know what you're talking about.
Sydney: it radicalized me in a way that I probably should not have been right before I got to Marketo Summit, because it radicalized me against the entire tech industry and B2B, anything and all of it. But yeah, absolutely. I think that Hubspot is a Nepo baby. It seems like a fairly real company, but by that token, I don't think any of these companies are real companies. Is anyone's product real? Is anyone's product valuable enough to be even close to the valuation of their company? Is that why tech is falling apart right now? Is that what's happening?
Lauren: I mean, if you think about Marketo being acquired by Vista and then Adobe, that's an insane pathway
Sydney: that’s an insane amount of money. What did Adobe buy them for? It was like 4 billion dollars.
Lauren: crazy.
Sydney: It was crazy. 4 billion. I mean, I use it every day. I live and breathe it. I could tell you anything you wanted to know about Marketo, but 4 billion dollars. And this is us saying you should stay with Marketo if you have it, and not go to HubSpot because it's a vastly better tool for B2B Enterprise. But still, 4 billion dollars. Anyway. Yeah, HubSpot's a Nepo baby, they're all Nepo babies. Tech is an Nepo baby
Lauren: they're all Nepo babies. I could go into why all of them are, but that HubSpot specifically is a Nepo baby, because people take one look at how much Marketo costs and go “I've used HubSpot in the past”. Everyone has used HubSpot in the past.
Sydney: I've never logged into HubSpot in my life.
Lauren: Because HubSpot has so many small to mid-size companies, that there's more breadth of people that have used it, have logged in or sent an email or whatever. So they've used it in the past and so naturally it would be an easy selection given how expensive Marketo is. And that's why it already has a leg up, just due to how many users have ever logged in.
Sydney: I mean if we're gonna go with everyone wants HubSpot because it's cheaper, talk about how Pardot is basically free. Are they still doing that? Like everyone has Pardot because they got it for free with Salesforce
Lauren: No, this is like the time that, at a previous company, we got Microsoft Dynamics for free and for a year we tried it and then we were like, no, no, no, no.
Sydney: I worked at a company where we had Marketo, and we had a pretty solid instance with Marketo and they were like, well, we're gonna get rid of it because we're about to get Pardot for free. And I was like, oh excuse me? Anyway, they kept Marketo and then I quit. So we all have happily ever afters.
Lauren: I wanna know, send us a direct message on Instagram Pretty Funny Business if you have ever quit a job due to a change in tech stack, we need to know
Sydney: When I was earlier in my career, I told more than one boss that I would quit if they got rid of Marketo. I never ended up actually quitting because they got rid of Marketo, because I threatened them instead. But I always recommend threatening your bosses as the best path to growth. And then I ended up quitting anyway for unrelated reasons. So I hope you guys are enjoying Marketo.
Lauren: Because, yeah.
Sydney: but I wouldn't do that now. I don't think
Lauren: You wouldn't change?
Sydney: No, I think for me, I'll make the spicy, large generalization, someone prove me wrong, but I think that when you are earlier in your career and your technical skills are newer and you feel very comfortable with one tool, it is so scary to think about switching to something else and no longer feeling confident in the work that you're doing. So it is much easier to say, no, there are a million companies who use Marketo I will just quit and go find one of those. Plus, you know, job hopping early career is actually something I'm very pro, so do it. Now I'm like, well if I found a company I really liked and notwithstanding my actual current situation, if I was working somewhere and I really liked it and I liked my team and I liked my boss, I feel much more confident in my technical skills now that I could easily pick up another software, and that other stuff is not to be taken for granted.
Lauren: Yeah, I don't think that it is about being able to use it. I think it's about being pleased with the outcome. I think earlier in my career, I'd be like, oh, this cannot get me the same results that Marketo did. And so I'm out. But now I think I would be like, that's on you. Like I'll use this tool, but that's on you that it's not getting the results, and I don't take it as personally
Sydney: yeah.
Lauren: Okay, last one, for better or for worse, and looking forward to your hot takes on this, 2023 is gonna be the year: solo entrepreneurial training courses.
Sydney: Oh, I totally agree with this. I've talked to quite a few people who are developing their own training courses. I think it's great. You know, I think it's time. I have been a supporter of solo entrepreneurial training courses in the other part of my life, which is being a parent, and you're gonna think this is hilarious cause I think this is one of the things that we are like so different on, but when I was a first time mom, I discovered online parenting courses and I took all of them.
Lauren: Yeah, I did not
Sydney: I loved it. It was like crack to me and I would absorb the information from the course and then spout it to absolutely anybody that would listen. Oh you're having trouble with your baby sleeping? Let me teach you about wake windows and sleepy cues, and how to avoid having an overtired newborn because I learned that on a baby sleep course that I will not name because I no longer support that person. And then I took a baby-led weaning class with Feeding Littles. I loved it. I still love it. I took it again with my second, I'm all about it, solo entrepreneurial education courses, I think it’s awesome. I think it should be decoupled from these mega enterprises that start way overcharging for them, cause I was paying like a hundred bucks for each of these courses: it's nothing when you feel like you're drowning, it's nothing to pay a hundred bucks to have someone teach me how to not feel like I wanna die.
Lauren: Yeah
Sydney: I think part of the problem with MOPs in general is it's so hard to break into, like there was a conversation in MOPs Pros last week - I don't remember what the question was - it was like what is the hardest bridge to cross or leap to make in Marketing Ops, and it's the hardest skill to learn. I don't know, anyway, the hardest thing to do is break into MOPs in the first place. There's no way to learn these platforms without working for a company that already has them. And if they're hiring someone with Marketo experience, you can't get Marketo experience until someone hires you. It's just like a vicious cycle. I have a good friend that would love to break into this and she can't. How do you do it? I don't know. So solopreneurs, I'm here for you. I will be your hype wooman. I will post your shit all over LinkedIn. Make me a beginner Marketo course. I'm here for it. Let's do it. I love it. It’s really hard to develop - I tried to do it in a past life and it is really hard, so do it.
Lauren: So 2023 will not be the year of EMMIE Collective’s training courses, but we're taking partners. All right, so that closes out Pretty Funny Business on the street: 2023 predictions. Thank you for humoring me.
Sydney: Always every day.
Lauren: All right. Okay, so let's get to the good stuff
Sydney: talk about a trip. You keep calling it our trip, even though I live here. There was no travel involved for me, but Lauren came to visit me in New York. It was great. I went to visit Lauren in Ohio in September, and that was really fun.
Lauren: We will definitely have to have Krystle on to talk about that trip shortly.
Sydney: Yeah, absolutely! It's a cliff hanger for all our ravenous fans, a little teaser
Lauren: Almost, almost literally.
Sydney: almost literally oh my God. Anyway, so Lauren came to visit me. It was fun. It was just the two of us. When I went to Ohio - we have some other members in Ohio - so we all met up and that was awesome. But this time it was just the two of us and you were here for what, two nights and we spent the first night together in a hotel.
Lauren: What was the thing? One night out on the town?
Sydney: One night on the town, one night on the couch? That's how we do it. That's us as a start-up. We spent one night on the town and one night on the couch. In Ohio we spent one night at Lauren's AirBnb on the lake, and I spent one night sleeping in her bed with her at home while her husband slept in the basement. I don't know, that's just how we do it here. Anyway, so Lauren came in early December, which is a pretty miserable weather time in New York, but that's fine. We stayed at a hotel downtown, and then we stayed on my couch one night. The night that we were downtown was the most fun, but also the most chaotic because we accidentally got really drunk really early in the day, through what I'll describe as a series of unfortunately fortunate events. We got to our hotel right at three o'clock when check-in started and our room was not ready and they gave us drink tickets to go wait at the bar until our room was ready. So we went and had a cocktail each. The problem was that we had an appointment very soon after that. So we did not have a lot of time to drink these cocktails and just sit and relax. So we kind of chugged them, then we went to our appointment, which was at DryBar, which is my favorite place to go. So I felt it was appropriate to bring Lauren there with me. And DryBar also had some sort of appointment snafu and Lauren ended up waiting for a long time. So they gave us some champagne there also. So we drank those, and then we got back to our hotel and went to our room; and because Lauren is a member of some sort of travel agency, something, something, something…
Lauren: Well Travelled Club. Shout out
Sydney: …we got a free bottle of champagne in our room, so it is now, I don't know, 4- 4:30 and we are three and a half drinks in each. And then what did we do? Is that when we were going to meet our client?
Lauren: We were getting ready to meet her. This is where our night was supposed to begin
Sydney: This is where it was supposed to begin and yet we were already three and a half drinks in.
Lauren: which is
Sydney: a bad place to be.
Lauren: I'm not sure. No, no. I may have had one more drink the rest of the night, but that was it for me. And this was supposed to be the start. So we were at the Roxy, great hotel (very cool) and our client met us there, although she was very late. I'm trying to keep up with our timeline here
Sydney: True, because I think she was supposed to meet us at five and then she ended up not meeting us till like six thirty.
Lauren: which was interesting because I'm pretty sure she was going to a concert that started at six thirty.
Sydney: it started at seven thirty, but it was in Brooklyn.
Lauren: And we were in Manhattan
Sydney: and she lives in Brooklyn, and I thought that maybe she would come to the office because their office is right next to our hotel, which is where we were meeting her, at the hotel bar, but she didn't, so she came into Manhattan from Brooklyn, which I don't know geographically how many of our listeners are familiar with the geography of New York, but it's kinda a pain in the ass to get into Manhattan from Brooklyn, like it's on the train but it's a long trek. She lives deep in Brooklyn, I think she lives in Crown Heights maybe. Anyway she came in and had a drink with us, which was great, I was so happy to see her, and Lauren had never met her before, but then she went right back out to go back to Brooklyn for this concert
Lauren: Which fun fact, it was a One Republic concert
Sydney: it was a free One Republic concert put on by Pandora, which is why she was very excited that she got tickets for it
Lauren: Oh, the fun fact, the bassist is my cousin, my second cousin.
Sydney: Ryan Tedder is your cousin?
Lauren: We covered this already! The story goes that my mom was having dinner with her uncle. And her uncle was telling her how his grandson was in some garage band called One Republic, and my mom was like, I think I've heard of them before. I'll have to ask my daughter. And then I was like, oh God, please don't say it was Ryan Tedder. Don't tell me I've had a crush on my cousin!
Sydney: You know I'm not a huge One Republic fan, but I would be really, really excited if Ryan Tedder was your cousin, because of course, he is a longtime collaborator of Taylor Swift.
Lauren: Yeah, I mean, think about what Ryan Tedder could do with Taylor Swift and ChatGPT.
Sydney: What if Taylor trains an AI to write songs for her. What if we had an AI that was Taylor's brain?
Lauren: I think we'll get there.
Sydney: she could live forever.
Lauren: You can tell ChatGPT to do that. You can say, write a song as if you are Taylor Swift
Sydney: I don't have access to ChatGPT
Lauren: why? you didn't get in?
Sydney: No, I've never tried to get in, but I heard that by the time I heard about it. Or cared to try to get in. It was like “sorry, you can't get in anymore” thing.
Lauren: All right. I have access. Next time we'll use my login.
Sydney: Anyway, she's at the One Republic thingy, we're at the hotel
Lauren: Wait, you need to talk about the food situation.
Sydney: We leave the hotel room to go to the hotel bar and I'm like, I am drunk and I need to eat now. I need to eat immediately because - had we even eaten at all? I don't remember.
Lauren: I think maybe when we got to yours
Sydney: Oh, yeah, I made you frozen pizza at my house. You got to my house really early. Your flight was really early and I made frozen pizza and we did some work and then we went downtown to go to the hotel and to DryBar, and that was where our adventures really began. Anyway, so I'm starving and I'm drunk, and we get to the hotel bar and the waitress is like: what do you want to order? And I think we each ordered a drink and I was like, we need to order food. And I asked her what was good and she said, the pigs in a blanket are very popular. And I was like great, let's get those! And she said, do you want six or do you want 12? And drunk, hangry, Sydney absolutely wanted 12 pigs in a blanket
Lauren: If you were to have asked me, my answer would've been zero for the record. But we ordered fries and, this might sound contentious, but
Sydney: Yeah. You ordered a weird thing.
Lauren: beef tartare
Sydney: Yeah. So we have beef tartare, a dozen pigs in a blanket and a big basket of fries, and we are just eating and waiting, eating and waiting
Lauren: This is why it was important that our client was a little bit late
Sydney: Yeah cuz we were eating for a very long time, but we also had dinner reservations to go to at 7:30.
Lauren: Oh right. Seven
Sydney: Yeah, this night felt like it lasted forever, or it felt like we got back so late. I do not think it was 10 o'clock, I don't think it was nine o'clock. It was really early. We had a dinner reservation to go to, so I was like, I don't wanna eat too much, but also I was hangry and drunk, so I'm eating these pigs in a blanket and there's so many of them.
Lauren: And they were big. They were like full hot dogs in a blanket. They were not piglets.
Sydney: Listen, your husband texted me and was like, how many pigs and blankets did you eat? And so I knew you were telling him this story. I think this was maybe when you were in Mexico, no, I don't know where you were! But I told him I probably ate five. And he was like, oh my god. And I looked up a picture of them, they are piglets. They were, yes they were.
Lauren: they are not little tiny wieners.
Sydney: Little tiny wieners is why this podcast has to be explicit on Spotify
Lauren: it might be the name of this episode.
Sydney: we've noticed a correlation between how many listens the podcast gets and how raunchy the title is. Okay, so we ate the little tiny wieners and our client came, she left. It was great. I'm like, we have to go to this dinner reservation. Also, I think our reservation was at 7:30 and we did not leave the bar until 7:40.
Lauren: We sat there at eight
Sydney: we got there at eight, and they were not pleased. And I was like, hi, we're a little late for our reservation. And they were like, what time is your reservation? And I said 7:30. And it was almost eight. And she was like: “no so you missed your reservation and you would like to walk in”. And I was like, ha ha ha, I am 0% hungry, not hungry at all. I feel like I'm here to throw up cuz I ate too many teeny tiny wieners. And we sit down and Lauren.
Lauren: I was hungry because I had one wiener
Sydney: She had one wiener and I had a lot, and our client had some, which was good because she was about to go to a concert and not eat dinner. We were on the way to a dinner reservation. Lauren ordered a drink for us that she told me would make my tummy feel better. Also, the restaurant was like angry that we were there, which I can't really blame them for. We were super late for a reservation and they like put us at the bar technically, but it was really at the armpit of the restaurant, like the asshole of the restaurant. Yeah, it was like sitting next to the entrance of the kitchen directly behind where they print the checks. So it's the waiters hangout spot, and Sydney and Lauren, who are too drunk and are now going to order one entree to share. So we ordered one burger to share - the burgers are really good. It's a good restaurant, but they were not really happy that we were there. Anyway, you ordered us something
Lauren: I ordered us each a Fernet and the waitress looked at me like I was an idiot and said, Fernet. And I go yep. And she's like, maybe I'm pronouncing it wrong. And I was like, well, maybe I am. Then we got them.
Sydney: I think Ohio had the upper hand on the class there.
Lauren: I don't know. We'll have to Google,
Sydney: Maybe it's Fernet. I gotta ask Tim. Tim!
Lauren: it's Italian. It's Italian.
Sydney: Is it Fernet or Fernet?
Lauren: I think it's Italian, but I feel like there's not a lot of tea going on in Europe. Exactly. So that came to the table. You were not happy.
Sydney: No. I'm not like a, I'm not a dark liquor person in general.
Lauren: I'm not either, but I would say the last time that I was in this situation and I had the Fernet, it worked. It was great. So I did that. And you were unhappy. You took one sniff and you were like, hell no, I'm not doing that. Then we got a burger, one burger to split. We split it in half. I happily ate my burger. You took one bite, maybe two
Sydney: I did not spit into a napkin, but it did take me two solid minutes to get it down.
Lauren: So I was very happy to eat my half a burger. We waited a long time for the waitress, so I think that's why by the time she finally came around, we were all in on the key lime pie
Sydney: Oh yeah, I had enough time to digest. I forgot about the key lime pie, that was delicious. I enjoyed the key lime pie.
Lauren: So you'd think like at this point, you know, like, we're having a great time. We are fed, we are two moms out in New York City. It is 8:45. We're ready, to like karaoke or, I don't know, do something in the city that never sleeps.
Sydney: We went back to the hotel and got in our jammy jams. And, is that when you cleaned your snow boots in the bathtub?
Lauren: Can't remember when that was
Sydney: Well, I do remember you saying, are you going to take a shower here? And I said, no, because we're here less than 24 hours and I will take a shower at home. And you're like, great, I'm gonna clean my boots in the bathtub. And that bathtub was disgusting, but we came back to the hotel and we got in our jammies and we listened to records in our hotel room, that inexplicably had a record player and a bunch of vinyls, and we hung out and
Lauren: and we watched The Office
Sydney: I think you painted your nails. And then we're like ready to drift off to sleepy town in our lovely giant hotel bed where there are no baby monitors. And right when we're falling asleep, Lauren sits up and goes, I have to do my French!
Lauren: My Duolingo streak
Sydney: So she does her fucking Duolingo and I believe falls asleep doing Duolingo.
Lauren: No, I finished it, but I know that it was a little bit rough because in the morning you were like, why is your phone just floating in the bed? This is chaos. Plug it in.
Sydney: Yeah, and you said something about how your phone is always dying, and this is why
Lauren: And you said it was like, the menora always
Sydney: always at 1%, it's only supposed to last for 15 more minutes and it lasted for eight more hours.
Lauren: Well, I will say this was the first time that my husband tells me to warn people when I sleep in the same room with them for the first time, because this has never been true of me. But for about the past year, ever since I started mental therapy, emotional therapy - whatever, non-physical
Sydney: Just therapy, I guess.
Lauren: I have two types of therapy, so I like to clarify
Sydney: there's the wound care therapy, there's the physical therapy, and then there's the mental health therapy.
Lauren: mental health therapy. Ever since I started mental health therapy, I started having really crazy dreams and now I talk in my sleep - occasionally - so I can tell either if I remember laughing hysterically in my dream or crying in my dream. I know that I for sure was talking, so I woke up and was like, I'm so sorry, I know that I was talking in my sleep last night
Sydney: Yes, she definitely was. The first time it happened, I was like oh my God, are you okay? And then I realized she was sound asleep and I was like, all right, I guess this is just what we're doing. This did not happen the first time we shared a bed, which was at your house. But it did happen this time. I was also still kind of drunk and so were you, so I was worried that you were about to be sick or something, but you were fine. We were all fine. Everything was fine.
Lauren: Oops. I didn't cross my personal boundaries that night. I like throwing up as much as this is the next person, but I do try to avoid it when I can.
Sydney: Wait, did you say you like throwing up?
Lauren: Yeah, I love it. It makes you feel better. Like if you're sick
Sydney: No one likes throwing up! I like throwing up as much as the next person?
Lauren: I would say that is a joke, most people do not like throwing up. But I thought you and I were on the same page with this: if you're sick, you should just throw up
Sydney: if you're sick you should just throw up, but I don't like throwing up.
Lauren: No, I know, but some people are like, oh, I avoid throwing up at all costs. Like, why?
Sydney: I see what you're saying. No, I would just rather throw up and feel better. My son Chance is a puker. He just pukes anytime he's sick. He also gets super car sick. He's just a puker. And, he hates throwing up so much that I know he's about to throw up because he starts screaming at the top of his lungs, like absolute full body shriek at the top of his lungs, even if it's the middle of the night - and he shares a room with his baby sister. He just starts like full throttle screaming. That's how I know he's about to throw up. I will say, as a fun aside puking story, my children are chronically sick since Thanksgiving, so that's great - love that for me. I got a call from daycare at four o'clock on Friday that said Chance is in the corner crying that his tummy hurts. And Ellie had already been out with the stomach virus for the last three days, so I knew that's what it was. And the stomach virus was going through school. So I went and picked him up and Lauren thought this was really poor planning on my part - I think it was the right plan, but that's fine. I put him in a backpack carrier on my back and we walked out of school five steps, and he started screaming at the top of his lungs. And I was like, here it comes, the vomit. And he is on my back, what are we gonna do? So I just tipped over like the goddamn teapot and I was like, “in the grass buddy, in the grass, puke in the grass”. And he's just going: NO! NO! I was like, “it's ok, throw up in the grass”. So finally it's like splash everywhere, huge volumes down my arm all over, and then he starts screaming: “I’m messy! The big boy carrier is messy”. I know bud, it's okay. But now we're 15 blocks from home, and I still have to get us home. So I was like, maybe we should get in a cab. And he goes, “NO! I don't wanna get in a taxi cab”, because he gets carsick. So we go to the train, I'm standing there on the platform, just waiting for the train. All these people are looking at me like: that woman is covered in vomit. And I'm like, I know. And I hear his little voice back there and he said: “Mama?” And I said, yeah bud. And he goes, “I think I feel better”. Sweet baby. And we got on the train, two different people came up to me and said he threw up all over himself. And I was like, wow, thank you! Thanks! Didn't realize that we are covered head to toe in vomit. Thank you. But we made it home and he took a shower and that was it. He was really fine after that.
Lauren: Bye-bye.
Sydney: Bye bye. Anyway, so that was a fun puke aside story, so no vomit, no more drunk. We woke up the next morning and we came back to my house, I think, and dropped off our stuff.
Lauren: Yeah, we walked around a little bit and then, oh yeah, we had breakfast. That is a non-interesting part of our day.
Sydney: Not of general interest. We did have breakfast.
Lauren: Mm-hmm.
Sydney: Oh yeah.
Lauren: Well, well, well
Sydney: This is where our vision questing began because we started looking at stores and we started talking about EMMIE merch.
Lauren: Right. And we found a sign that was like the perfect pink
Sydney: like a pink Joe & The Juice sign next to the green Subway.
Lauren: Yeah. And like the EMMIE pink is not quite millennial bubblegum. It's like a light red, it's like a terracotta pink. My favorite, I think it's rare.
Sydney: Yeah, definitely.
Lauren: but we found it and I love it. We found it in many places in New York and I loved it. I loved it. Next to the deep green street lights. And then there was a coffee shop where there was a candy cane, I was feeling those vibes. It was nice. So we went to New York Or Nowhere - Sydney's favorite spot.
Sydney: I almost bought an $80 candle because they told me it was an in store exclusive, and I'm a real sucker for scarcity, but I did not because that would've been stupid. And then I think you got your earring changed.
Lauren: Oh yeah, I have my Tragus pierced, but it's very difficult to put the earring back in after you take it out, and I had to take it out for my surgery, so that's why. I've had a normal earring in there, which is not ideal.
Sydney: So then we went back home and you know when people text me and say - I'm coming to visit New York, what should I do? Visiting New York is a really different experience than living here. You would be surprised how small my life is living in New York, I rarely leave a 15 block radius between my home and daycare. Everything I need is in between there. The pediatrician, the diner, where else do I go? That's it. My kids are sick all the time. What else are we gonna do? So Lauren, welcome. I welcome Lauren back to my normal life and we worked at my house for a while.
Lauren: If you wanna hear what happened between nap time and the little afternoon, you'll have to listen to the 12 Days of Christmas podcast.
Sydney: That's not when we recorded that.
Lauren: Yeah, on the 10th day of Christmas
Sydney: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. That's right. That's right. And then we went to the library, the New York Public Library and did some vision questing fun
Lauren: this was awesome.
Sydney: I might go back there. We went to like the big one, the Fifth Avenue branch, and it's more like a museum than a true library.
Lauren: But then we found a reading room where you could actually chill and work
Sydney: Yes. And I got out my laptop and started actually working and Lauren was like, you're supposed to be vision questing -why are you responding to Slack messages? But I needed to, I had some work to do and then we picked up my kids and went to the diner. Something normal, my normal shit.
Lauren: I did have a panic attack in between - I left my purse in the reading room and I realized it as soon as we left the library, thank God. But I was like, Sydney, I'm going down
Sydney: you were panicking because you weren't sure if you left it in the reading room or if you left it on like a park bench or the subway
Lauren: yes. But I was literally sinking on the spot, I was afraid I was going to pass out in the library. You have to go get it
Sydney: So I went and it was right there in the reading room. No problems.
Lauren: now, every time that she needs me to
Sydney: I say, I need you to look at this. I'm worried I broke something. I have lost my purse feelings. I need you.
Lauren: So I'm glad it happened, glad it happened.
Sydney: Yes, me too
Lauren: Well, I would say, I miss seeing you IRL. What was kind of fun is that we were launching somebody's order of operations while I was there on the final day, and so we were a little bit half-working. I think if I had to do it over again, maybe we would've planned that a little bit better so we weren't so stressed. But New York's got plenty of vibes. We had a wonderful time. We got a lot of pp work done, which is my favorite term for paperwork, and it was great and I hope to be back very soon
Sydney: My friend used the acronym pp to talk about postpartum yesterday, and I was so confused for a minute and I was like, I just realized what you actually mean. But Lauren and I use pp to talk about paperwork because it's an abbreviation for paperwork, but also because it stinks like peepee
Lauren: So I have to say this since we're here, that I was talking to Courtney McAra last week, who is where I got the term paperwork, although she did not realize that that's really what she was saying
Sydney: I think pp work is perhaps an acronym that normal people use for paper work. Maybe?
Lauren: No!
Sydney: she just made that up? You've never heard that anywhere else?
Lauren: She used that. I've never heard it anywhere else. She made it up and in that moment I said pp work. That is hilarious, I am adopting that as an official term now, and I did! The other day I was saying something and I said, pp work. And she was like, what's that? And I was like - whoa!
Sydney: You invented pp work. How do you not know?
Lauren: I had a screenshot of our conversation from when you originally asked where it came from, and so I just sent it to her and she was like, oh my gosh, I had no idea. And she's like, I am not owning that. And I said, you should own it. You have to own it. Somebody has to because it's a literal every day part of my life
Sydney: is just part of the zeitgeist now, the EMMIE Collective zeitgeist pp work.
Lauren: So thank you Courtney for creating, and then letting go and letting me have
Sydney: That is an open source term owned by the community at large.
Lauren: I love that. That might be it
Sydney: That was our trip. We had a great time.
Lauren: Any other hot takes? I feel like there must have been some other things in there, but if anyone else is in New York, reach out to Sydney, she needs friends. I'll come meet you.
Sydney: Actually. My friendship quota is fulfilled and I do not have great recommendations for you either, unless you would like to go to Metro Diner.
Lauren: Oh, we did that. Yeah, that was great. I highly recommend the potato salad. It was dill heavy if you have an aversion, but it was delicious. Dill forward, fresh dill forward.
Sydney: this is why people listen to our podcast for the hot takes about the potato salad ingredients
Lauren: And the other thing I really loved about going to the diner is that Chance told me they have the best chocolate chip pancakes. You have to get the chocolate chip pancakes. And then he immediately ordered the french toast with blueberries. I felt a little bit like I don't believe you little sir. All right. Well, I hope that for us, the 2023 prediction is year of
Sydney: Taylor Swift AI, that is my 2023 hope
Lauren: no, year of the PFB podcast. So if there's anything you want us to talk about, or if you wanna be a guest, I guess we'll go ahead and take those. Sydney's not as sure!
Sydney: Why not? Love guests.
Lauren: come on board and have a great 2023.
Sydney: we’re going to be guests on someone else’s podcast this week
Lauren: I'm so excited. Spoiler
Sydney: Spoiler alert,
Lauren: I think this is the first time for me. I know it's not the first time for you.
Sydney: isn't it? Oh, I have been on someone else's
Lauren: Krystle’s in the other room and she's screaming.
Sydney: Who?
Lauren: I just heard Krystle. She just went, “what up? What up?”
Sydney: I thought you said Pippa. I was like, my God, isn't Pippa not at school?
Lauren: I'm at the office.
Sydney: Oh yeah, you are at the office. All right, well that's it for PFB everybody! Catch you on the flippity flop.
Lauren: Haha. Bye.
