When the baby carrots come home again

Stacy Pederson: I remember buying like, so many snacks, and then they would be gone like, in three seconds, and the baby carrots come back every day for like, four days, and I just would resend them until they were rotten.

Andrea Marie: We are Moms Unhinged, a nationally touring standup comedy show. Join us in our podcast as we explore everything from motherhood, midlife, crisis, marriage, divorce, online dating, menopause, and other things that irritate us.

Hello everyone, and welcome to Moms Unhinged, the podcast. I’m your host, Andrea Marie. I am joined by the lovely, fantastic, amazing Stacy Peterson. Welcome, Stacy.

Stacy Pederson: Thank you so much for having me. I’m excited to be here today.

Andrea Marie: Yeah, super fun. And we we’re just talking about, back to school time, ’cause it is back to school time. I mean, although some kids have been back in school for weeks now at this point.

I don’t know, when do they go back? Early August at this po- some of them. It’s crazy. Crazy. But yeah, we were just kind of reminiscing how difficult it was.

Stacy Pederson: Very much so. Yeah. Yeah, don’t miss it.

Andrea Marie: ’cause both of our kids now are older and have likr essentially launched, although mine’s, mine are back to college. Or, well, my oldest is launched. But yours are launched. You just had a grandchild too. Congratulations.

Stacy Pederson: Thank you. She’s so cute.

Andrea Marie: That’s exciting. Awesome.

Stacy Pederson: Yeah, so the next back to school will probably be in four years with the, or five, I guess, with the little one, with my grandchild this time. Yeah.

Andrea Marie: Yeah, and then you don’t have to get all the school suppli- well, I don’t know. They don’t get school supplies in kindergarten, do they? They have to bring Kleenex or whatever they bring. I don’t know.

Stacy Pederson: But now it’s like iPads. It’s crazy.

Andrea Marie: Oh, yeah.

Stacy Pederson: So.

Here’s an iPad. Can you imagine giving our kindergarten boys iPads?

Andrea Marie: No. No, seriously. Okay, don’t break this. All right. What?

Stacy Pederson: Yes.

Andrea Marie: Yeah, so do you have any back to school memories that pop out in your head?

Stacy Pederson: Yeah. So, oh, my camera is like blurry. Am I blurry?

Andrea Marie: I don’t know.

Stacy Pederson: I’m filtered. I’m highly filtered. I can’t get it to focus. Hey. Hey. Okay, well, I’ll just be blurry.

Andrea Marie: Well, that’s all-

School fees that never seem to end

Stacy Pederson: Oh, there it goes. Yeah, so I can tell you what I don’t miss, and that is so expensive.

Andrea Marie: Oh, right.

Stacy Pederson: Forget how painful August is financially because… And it’s not just the clothes, but like, then they have the school supplies they’re supposed to get and all of that.

Then you have the fees, and then when they’re in high school, there’s like, class fees ‘ cause they did pottery and it’s gonna cost like, $85. Then you have the sports fees, and then you just have like, so many fees. And when you multiply that by however many children, it’s brutal.

Andrea Marie: Yeah. I forgot about all that. I forgot, like, that I was just constantly logging in and just, there’s just a rack of them, and you just go down the list and start ba-bing, ba-bing, ba-bing, ba-bing. You pay for, yeah, I forgot about all those like, little classroom fees and yeah, sports especially.

Stacy Pederson: School ID, school lunch account, like it just never ended. And so yeah, glue sticks at Walmart are 20 cents, but like I said, the pottery was 89 bucks, right?

Andrea Marie: And it’s terrible pottery you get back. You get, you know, you put all that money in and you get some terrible mugs. You know, some really awful. I don’t even know what. I think my, one time my son was trying to make a bowl, and it just fell flat, and it ended up looking like a fried egg, and now I use it for a spoon rest.

So least there’s something.

Stacy Pederson: That’s sweet. Yes.

Andrea Marie: That was an-

Stacy Pederson: He’s a creative.

Andrea Marie: $89 spoon rest.

Stacy Pederson: Oh gosh. Yeah, well, and then the sports are hard. So like my son did football, and so they would do daily doubles, which is practice two times a day for two weeks before school started.

And so then you have like cleats and all, like all that stuff, but then everybody wants to go out to eat after, like, and then, and so it just, oh, it’s so nice to go, “Oh, it’s August and I’m not bankrupt? What?”

Five kids in five different schools

Andrea Marie: Yeah, yeah. And then for a little while you had, yeah, you had two sets of, you had five.

Stacy Pederson: Five. In five different schools.

Andrea Marie: Wow, five kids in five different schools. Now, did you have to get them every? I mean, that’s the thing I always hated is just, I mean, just getting them there. I, like sometimes…

I mean, they rode their bike a lot, but then there was a time where, you know, you have to drop them off and, whatever.

But did, did you have to get them to all those different schools?

Stacy Pederson: Dometimes. So sometimes, my ex, he would take them some- like hid three, ’cause I was a stepparent and I say in my set, because it’s true, that I love my stepkids so much, so I kept them in my life, but I got rid of the dad. And so he would sometimes, but sometimes it was up to me to pick everybody up.

And, but then when they got old enough to drive or like the school bus, that helped as well. But it’s still, I mean, it was like a four-hour round trip between the morning and the afternoon of just getting everybody. It was re- it’s so crazy

Andrea Marie: Right, that is crazy ’cause like, yeah, you, you just no sooner get them all off and you barely do anything and then you gotta start the pickup round. You know? Like, yeah.

Getting to carpool 40 minutes early

Stacy Pederson: Yeah, and then, you know, I was just remembering the other day carpool. I spent a lot of time in the carpool line.

Andrea Marie: God.

Stacy Pederson: So many years.

Andrea Marie: Yeah,

Stacy Pederson: My daughter she, from birth, she had separation anxiety.

Andrea Marie: Oh.

Stacy Pederson: When she was in early elementary, like first, second, third grade, if I wasn’t like the first half of like in the carpool line, she would start to panic and just get hysterical and cry.

And I’d be like, “Catherine, when have I ever left you? I never…” Like, it didn’t matter. So then I was one of those people that, so I felt guilty, that I was like the second person in line. Like get there like 40 minutes early just so she didn’t freak out.

Andrea Marie: Yeah, and it’s so funny is that I was just about to say that same thing ’cause I would panic ’cause, you know, I was trying to get some work done and then I would, I’d be like, “Oh no, I’m running late,” and if you’re late, you’re like a mile back, you know? And it’s just, yeah, I have to like, they’re looking for you, all that stuff.

But then, yeah, if you get there so early, you know, why don’t you just bring a book and like sit there and like, oh my God.

Stacy Pederson: Yeah, ’cause we didn’t have phones like way back when. There was nothing. So just kinda sat there.

Andrea Marie: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Right. I know. It is true now that, now, now we can just endlessly scroll and be like, “What? Huh?”

Why Andrea stopped going to back-to-school night

Stacy Pederson: You know, one of the things that I hated, and I don’t know why, was I hated back to school nights.

Andrea Marie: Oh.

Stacy Pederson: I don’t know.

Andrea Marie: That’s so funny. I stopped going to them. I didn’t go to them. I felt like a terrible mom, but I was like, “I can’t.” I hated them, too. I didn’t really care to meet… I was never super involved in all the classroom stuff. Like I was the crossing guard outside of the school. I didn’t want…

It was too chaotic in the school. I was like, “I don’t need that chaos. I’ll go get hit by a car outside. I’d rather do that than go. I’d rather get hit by a car than get in that school.” I didn’t want to do it.

And yeah, I never went to back to school nights, ’cause it was like I would get stressed out. It would bring, it would just remind me of being in school, and I was like, “Oh, what classroom do I have to go to?

I have to find it,” and I’m like, “Oh, God.” And you know, I always figured the teachers are all good. They’re nice. I don’t know. What am I gonna? I’m not interviewing them or something, or I don’t need to know how things are graded. I don’t, I don’t know.

Stacy Pederson: Right. Right.

Andrea Marie: I didn’t care.

Stacy Pederson: God. Well, yeah, and it was so, my camera, my goodness.

Andrea Marie: Yeah. It’s all good. Who knows?

Stacy Pederson: I will… I keep swiping at it trying to get it to… but yeah, I hated… And then in high school when they do the check, like they have their two-hour block where they go back and they get their school ID and their photo taken and all their books and see where their locker was.

Like, it just, when you have more than one kid, it is so much time and so much work.

Andrea Marie: Right. Yeah. And I always felt like I never felt like I fit in with the other moms. Like I had my little group, the mom friends that I was friends with, but I was never, like I was never super involved so I always felt like an outsider. And I would go to those big things and I was like, “Oh, I’m like, I don’t know anybody.”

You know? I don’t know, like it just felt like everyone’s like, “Oh, hey, hey, hey.” And I never, I always felt like kinda stupid at the, you know, back to school night or the, yeah, all the stuff where everyone felt like they were saying hi to each other.

I just didn’t feel like I fit in. So yeah.

Stacy Pederson: It’s funny how it does bring back, like, those insecurities that

Andrea Marie: I know. It, it is weird. Like, I, I don’t know if it was just being in a school setting again. I was like, “Ugh, I’m awkward. Where’s my backpack? I don’t know.”

Yeah, it’s definitely… And my kids hated going back to school. They were always like, all of their back to school, we did the, you know, back to school picture with like first grade and fourth grade, whatever, and they’re always like, “Ugh.”

Stacy Pederson: Same. Same. Yes. Oh gosh, I am glad that I don’t live like, in the Instagram when that was so pop- like, in 2015 and 2016, everybody had, like, the blackboards or the…

Andrea Marie: yeah. Yeah.

Stacy Pederson: Year seven, and I’m like, “I can’t even get him out the door on time.” yeah. And the other thing that I don’t miss that was also kind of expensive was packing school lunches.

Andrea Marie: Oh, yeah.

Stacy Pederson: I remember buying, like, so many snacks, and then they would be gone like, in three seconds, and the baby carrots come back every day for like, four days, and I just would resend them until they were rotten. But that was, like, that was time-consuming, too, ’cause you had to figure out pack the lunch.

 And gosh, how did we survive?

Andrea Marie: I know, right? It was. I know. It is weird to look back on now, and I’m like, “God, how did I get anything done with all that stuff?” ‘Cause it was, it was like this, like, you’d wake up in the morning, and it’s like, “Okay, today is this. We gotta have this. We gotta go,” you know, “Gotta pack the lunch. We gotta da, da, da, da, da.

We gotta get the food.” And one morning, my son, where I’m driving my son to school, and he’s like, “Mom, I’m hungry.” And I’m like, “What? How, what, how could you be hungry?” And I realized I forgot to give him breakfast.

Stacy Pederson: Oh

Andrea Marie: I was like, “Oh my God, how… This is horrible.” I’m, like, looking around in the glove box. I’m like, “Here’s some old granola.” And like, I was like, “Oh, God.”

Stacy Pederson: That’s why we have scraps floating around in our car, right?

Andrea Marie: Oh my gosh. Felt so guilty, you know? I’m like, “Good luck.”

Keeping the entire family schedule in your head

Stacy Pederson: I was always impressed with the mothers who were always put together. Like, they look like they walk out of a fashion and everything’s done perfect. And I’m like, “Do you, when do you sleep?”

Andrea Marie: Yeah. Yeah.

Stacy Pederson: How do you do all that and then look like that?

Andrea Marie: Yeah. Well, for sure I, I didn’t sleep that much. Like I was up at 5:30 in the morning. Like, I don’t get up at 5… I, like, it’s not, I don’t get up at 5:30 anymore. It’s like I mean, and I wasn’t even going to bed that early. I’m like, I just didn’t sleep. I don’t know how I did it. Yeah.

Stacy Pederson: Say, I had a pretty strict sch- I was midnight to 6:00 AM. That was my schedule. I think that’s why in menopause our bodies are just like, “Ugh,” like.

Andrea Marie: I know.

Stacy Pederson: All all those years of functioning, it’s just like, “I can’t.” And everything just shuts down.

Andrea Marie: I know. I’m done now.

Stacy Pederson: Metabolism, memory, just every- hormones. It’s just like, “I can’t.

I

Andrea Marie: I do, I know, I do think of all the things I had, I kept in my head, like, as, you know, running kind of like, thing, and now I can’t remember anyone’s names. I can’t remember, like, you know. It’s terrible.

Stacy Pederson: Wonder cause I, you know, my kids are grown, but I do wonder how much easier it is with the back to school that you can get everything online now.

Andrea Marie: Yeah. I mean, that definitely feels like, I don’t know, for people who are still in the middle of it, tell us, is it easy? I mean, you wouldn’t know if it’s easier, but like, is it like you just order a packet? I don’t even know how they do back to school stuff. Do you just like click a button and it’s all like sent to the school?

I mean, ’cause that was it too. You’d get, you get it all. You have to unpack all the pencils and, you know, whatever, and you just, yeah, you’d, you’d have it all in your, in the backpack, and they’d have, you know, you had to get the little carrier and the little, all the little different things. But yeah, now is it just like you just push a button and it, Amazon delivers it to your classroom and you know, like a DoorDash kinda deal or something?

What happens now if you’re a mom with young kids now? Tell us what the deal is.

Stacy Pederson: Cause even lunchboxes, remember how hard it was to find lunchboxes that every kid wanted? Like, you had to do Walmart, Target, and, you know, all the different stores … Ross, Marshalls,

Andrea Marie: Right, You would to lots.

Stacy Pederson: I finally found the one they wanted.

Andrea Marie: Exactly, that’s true, but like when our kids were young, it was, there was no online shopping, so you would have to go to like five different stores and, you know, and then they’d see one that they like better, and then you’d have to return the other one. Like that was, go back to the store.

Yeah, go back to the store. And then like my kids got like hooked on a certain type of backpack that I guess they discontinued or something. So now I’m like searching all over for a type of oh my God. Yeah,

 Homemade treats and school parties

Andrea Marie: Well, I love your bit that you do about school snacks. Like how different that was, you know?

Stacy Pederson: Yeah, ’cause every party, every event, you signed up, but the only way to sign up was to actually go to the school.

Andrea Marie: Yeah.

Stacy Pederson: Sign up on the sheet in the classroom to say that you were gonna bring whatever, and then you, you know, it was homemade. ‘Cause if you brought in food that wasn’t homemade, you were a

Andrea Marie: It was, I know. It was kinda like, “Mm, mm.” And yeah, so.

Stacy Pederson: Couldn’t bake, you know, organic ingredients. You just got it at Safeway. Like, you know?

Andrea Marie: I know.

Stacy Pederson: It didn’t matter.

Andrea Marie: It was, yeah, in school parties, like I remember like yeah, the school parties were just a giant sugar fest. You know? It was just all the like, there was some healthy snacks, but who ate those? No one. I mean, you know, it was just all, all the sugar. And I went to, I did a couple of the school parties, like the class parties or whatever for Halloween or whatever it was, and it was chaos.

You know? It’s just, I could not be a teacher, no way. I would be yelling my head off.

Stacy Pederson: Oh gosh, yeah, yeah. It’s so much energy to wrangle that many kids for that long. I don’t know how they do it, and to be paid so little, and then to have to deal with us parents, ’cause we’re not fun.

Andrea Marie: Right.

Stacy Pederson: What do you mean my daughter is not… You know?

Andrea Marie: You must have that wrong. Clearly.

Stacy Pederson: I wonder how teachers feel too. Like, if they’re excited or like, it’s probably mixed. I’m guessing mixed emotion.

Andrea Marie: Yeah. Well, and they have to go back so early. I mean, and get their classroom all set up and like, pay for everything too. Like, you know? That’s ridiculous.

Stacy Pederson: I, me and this was depressing. Our education system.

Andrea Marie: I know.

Stacy Pederson: Our education system sucks. How’s that for an uplifting podcast?

Andrea Marie: Yeah. Right, right, right. Now, did your kids ever get in trouble? Did you have to get called in? Did you have to go in and talk to the teacher or anything like that?

Stacy Pederson: A few times. Yes. A few times.

So, my kids are very different.

Andrea Marie: Mm-hmm.

Stacy Pederson: and liked, they are just dead opposite. So I got called in twice, I think, for Luke, but both times he actually was with somebody who did it so, he wasn’t the perpetrator. Catherine, I got called in several- many times.

Andrea Marie: Yeah.

Stacy Pederson: So she was my, she was my non-rule follower.

Yeah. But you know what? Yeah It’s so funny how they turn out and, like, you see, oh, okay. I mean, she’s such a brilliant artist, and she has such a heart for kids that don’t fit in, you know, a certain way,

didn’t fit in a box and so it just, it turned out. But raising her was, so yeah. And it looks like my granddaughter already has a pretty fiery personality, so part of me is like, “We’ll see how that goes.”

Andrea Marie: Yeah. See, I know, right? You’re like, “Okay, there’s a little payback. I’m gonna enjoy watching this.”

Stacy Pederson: Yes. But yeah. What about you? Did you get? Were your kids?

Andrea Marie: No, they were really very good kids. I mean, one time I got a phone call. It was… And I even forget exactly what the deal was. I think he was jumping off the swings or something like that.

I don’t know. It was something, like, fairly minor where I was like, “Well,” you know. And I think there was another time where it was actually just, like, off camp- off campus, but someone reported something. And it does make a difference on, sometimes on who they’re hanging around with.

I’m like, “Oh, I think that was kind of some extra influence there from, you know, from those, that little group.” And, you know, then they find their place and are like, “Okay, that,” yeah. I mean, my kids, my youngest, like, I mean, definitely was just really around the, some of the nerdiest kids, which is which is great.

You kinda, you know, that’s like, “Oh, I’m peer pressured to study.” You know, I don’t know.

Stacy Pederson: That’s great.

Andrea Marie: luckily I didn’t have too much, too much trouble. And I know, you know, all kids are different. I don’t think school is like, the best setting for a lot of kids. I mean, like, you know, some kids like maybe Catherine, they’re not, they’re, they need more, less rigidity, more, you know, flow, more ability to express themselves probably in a different way.

So, you know, I think there’s that unschooling movement, you know, with people doing different, school different ways, and I think every kid is different.

Stacy Pederson: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Those were some years.

Andrea Marie: Yeah, yeah. I know, it’s weird looking back, right?

 

Stacy Pederson: How did I survive that?

Andrea Marie: Know, right? Totally.

Stacy Pederson: How did they?

Andrea Marie: Yeah, yeah. Now, do you have any back to school memories from when you were a kid that stand out?

Stacy Pederson: I remember crying every year the night before because it’s so weird, I’ll just be honest. Because all summer, we were so remote. But so I, like, never saw anyone. I just was, like, with my animals. And I would spend all this time with my sheep and the goats and my dog, and I remember crying ’cause I was gonna miss them.

Andrea Marie: Uh.

Trapper Keepers and the “cool” school supplies

Stacy Pederson: And then we didn’t really do back to school like, you just got put on the school bus and thrown in there. Yeah. I remember not being able to find my classroom, like, when I was in first grade, and I found my sister in a hallway, and I was like… And she got mad ’cause she had to take me to my class ’cause I couldn’t figure out where it was.

But, and I also remember the school supplies were so different back then. We had the pee-chee folder. And yellow pencils, and thing in paper, and that was, like, it.

Andrea Marie: Yeah.

Stacy Pederson: If you were cool, you got the Clicker pencil or pen that had the different colors, and you got a binder that had, like, Garfield on it or something. That’s what the cool, cool girls had.

Andrea Marie: I do remember my Trapper Keeper I got. I don’t remember exactly what was on it, but I remember really loving it. I remember I was like, “Oh, this is the best.” You know? It was, I felt really cool with that.

Stacy Pederson: Yeah. I never, I never got the Trapper Keeper. And I do remember the puffy or smelly stickers? That was like a

Andrea Marie: Oh. Yeah, yeah.

Stacy Pederson: You had a Trapper Keeper and stickers on your Trapper Keeper? I mean, what a different world we lived in, right?

Andrea Marie: I know.

Stacy Pederson: Like, “What new phone do you have?”

Andrea Marie: I’ve got the Trapper Keeper.

Stacy Pederson: Shoes for second grade, and I’m like, “I got a puffy sticker of strawberries.”

Andrea Marie: It smells. I know. Different times for sure, for sure. Oh man. Well, this was so much fun, Stacy. Thank you so much for joining us and talking about back to school. And if you are… I know, like, the East Coast goes back a little bit later, but you know, for those of you moms who are kind of recovering from your back to school experience here in the last week or two, whatever it’s, however long it’s been, just, you know, come out to a show.

Come out to a show and laugh. We’ve got a lot of shows happening in September all over the country. That’s why we start them in September, ’cause we know August is just a shit show. So come out, take a breather, relax with your girlfriends. Come out and s- have some fun at a Moms Unhinged show.

Check out our schedule online at momsunhinged.com. And Stacy, where can people find you?

Stacy Pederson: well, just, my name. If you just cyberstalk my name, and so it’s… But my name’s hard to spell. It’s Stacy, S-T-A-C-Y. No I-E with a heart on it. Darn it. And Peterson, P-E D as in David, E-R-S-O-N. I have a website and of course my social media

Andrea Marie: Awesome. Awesome. Well, thank you Stacy, and good luck everyone out there. Just sending you good, good vibes as you survive. All right, bye.

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