There’s no finish line in motherhood

[00:00:00]

Pam Moore: I know I’m gonna miss it. I’m at that point now where I’m like, “Oh my God, my oldest is about to start high school.” I can see, I mean, I know there’s no finish line, but I can see how quickly the house is gonna get real quiet.

Andrea Marie: We are Moms Unhinged, a [00:00:15] 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 [00:00:30] us.

Hello everyone, and welcome to Moms Unhinged, the podcast. I’m your host, Andrea Marie, and today I am joined by the amazing Pam Moore. She is a local, [00:00:45] local to me, Boulder mom comedian. Welcome, among other things. Welcome, Pam.

Pam Moore: Thanks for having me, Andrea. I’m so excited to be here.

Andrea Marie: Yeah, yeah. I’m excited to have you too. You’ve been on a number [00:01:00] of Moms Unhinged shows. You’ve got another one coming up this weekend in Fort Collins, although it will be too late by the time this episode comes out to talk about that. But yeah, so I’m excited. And you’ve worked on our PR for Moms [00:01:15] Unhinged, so which is what you currently do.

Is that correct?

Pam Moore: Actually, I kinda don’t. Like, if you ask me a favor, I would do it, but I don’t focused on that.

Andrea Marie: You don’t do PR anymore. Yeah, ’cause you’ve done a lot of things.

Pam Moore: I might, but I’m not, like, trying to do more.

Andrea Marie: Sure. Sure. [00:01:30] You’ve done a lot of things in your career,

Pam Moore: I have

Andrea Marie: we were kind of talking that, about that a little bit, before we hit record of just the different things you’ve started and and done. So tell us a little bit about that.

Pam Moore: Sure. [00:01:45] Chronologically, I was an occupational therapist. That was like my… Well, I mean, really going back, I scooped ice cream. I delivered newspapers. I babysat. No, I did occupational therapy. That’s what I went to school for. I have a [00:02:00] master’s in that. I worked in mostly acute care, always with adults, for about 10 years, and then motherhood kind of flipped that upside down, between having children and, yeah, the math.

When you look at like, all right, [00:02:15] I’m going to work, I’m getting paid this much, I gotta pay my sitter this much, and I come home from work and I’m kind of exhausted, like the net gain is not a net gain.

Andrea Marie: No, I know. I know. It’s so unfortunate. Yeah, [00:02:30] that’s how it can work. So you stayed home with your kids then?

Pam Moore: Ish. I mean, I worked very part-time in healthcare when they were really little, but by the time the second one was born, who’s now 12, I’d been blogging. Like, remember blogs? Before there was social media, we had blogs. [00:02:45] I’d been blogging purely for fun for probably five years and I loved writing. And oh, you know what I did?

I co-produced the Listen to Your Mother show, which I don’t know if your listeners are familiar.

Andrea Marie: Yeah, we should mention that too. Listen to [00:03:00] Your Mother.

Pam Moore: Listen to Your Mother is a live storytelling show that happens in cities all over the United States. And back in whenever it was, 2013, the woman who established it, Ann Imig, who is quite funny herself, [00:03:15] Ann opened it up to like other cities.

Like, “Hey, apply. We want to grow this thing.” And my co-producer and I brought it to Boulder, and that was a huge experience for me because it was like a leadership opportunity. It was an opportunity to [00:03:30] get on stage, which I’ve always loved. I used to do theater when I was younger. And then, to identify as a writer.

There were a lot of opportunities to network in that space with writers, and I realized, “Oh, this is like a thing I could be.” [00:03:45] I didn’t know that you could just be a freelance writer and maybe you couldn’t before you know, the internet changed everything.

Andrea Marie: It was harder, yeah.

Pam Moore: Yeah, my husband encouraged me to grow, you know, because I love blogging so much, he’s like, “Why don’t you get paid to write?”

And I was like, “Oh my God.” [00:04:00] So I did. Gosh, I was doing a lot of health and fitness writing. I was writing for like The Washington Post, Runner’s World, a lot of different, my like dream publications. [00:04:15] And then I sort of got bore of that and ’cause writing was great ’cause it’s like something you can do from home.

Andrea Marie: Anytime, yeah.

Finding her way to stand-up comedy

Pam Moore: I still write for some colleges and brands. I don’t like hate writing, I just felt [00:04:30] like this isn’t it for me. I just know this is like a stepping stone to something else. I got certified as an intuitive eating counselor somewhere along the way, tried to grow that business, had like, I had a trickle of clients.

It wasn’t– it felt like banging my [00:04:45] head against a wall to try to get anything to happen with that. And then, and that as, when I was really going hard on trying to market that is when I got into standup comedy, and I saw how much it was just flowing. I would like [00:05:00] press on a door and it would fling open, whereas with the intuitive eating counseling, I was like, you know, banging on that door and it wouldn’t hardly budge.

Andrea Marie: Jackhammering through it. You know, it’s like, yeah, it is interesting when something flows [00:05:15] easily and then it’s like, “Oh, the sign from the universe. Hey, why not do something easy that actually, you know, feels like the path just gets laid in front of you with a red carpet?” So that’s awesome.

Pam Moore: Exactly. And actually you were a [00:05:30] pivotal part of me feeling like, “Hey, this could really be something,” because I was so lucky to have gotten introduced to you right after my first standup show, and you were so welcoming. Like I’ve only been doing comedy for, like, two and a half years, but looking [00:05:45] back I’m like, “Wow, she… you really took a risk on a brand new comic to put me on your Moms Unhinged stages,” which are the best stages ever.

Andrea Marie: Yeah. It’s so much fun. We are so lucky to have this going, so for sure, for sure. Well, that is [00:06:00] awesome. And so your kids, you know, one thing you mentioned, before we hit record that I just love so much is, you know, your kids kind of have got to watch you be bad at something.

Pam Moore: Oh, [00:06:15] many things.

Andrea Marie: And I’m not saying, I didn’t mean to suggest you’re bad at comedy, but it is.

It is such a huge thing at this stage of life, later in life, it is hard to be bad at something. It’s sucks. [00:06:30] It just feels icky, and you have to kind of plug through it and just keep going, and I think that’s such a gift to be able to even show your kids like, “Hey, I’m struggling right now,” you know?

Letting your kids see you struggle

Pam Moore: Yeah. Yeah, [00:06:45] and I mean, you know, they don’t come to my shows, but I think they know. They feel the energy. They overhear me talking to my husband.

Andrea Marie: Yes.

Pam Moore: And I’ll tell them, I don’t know if it matters what I say, you know, ’cause they have to learn things the hard way, their own way. But like, just the other night my kid was [00:07:00] like, “This is never gonna work out for me. I quit.”

And I was like, ” do you know how many times I’ve… You know, I’ve done a set and, like, crushed, and a week later I did the same set and I was like, ‘Okay, either the audience is, like, [00:07:15] a bunch of dead people or I really suck,’ and I’ve driven home crying.” But it’s like, that happens.

That’s just part of ’cause she was like, “Why? Why was I good last time and I sucked this time?” And I was like, “Girl, that’s life. That’s [00:07:30] just what life is.”

Andrea Marie: I know. It’s so hard. It’s so hard, especially in comedy. I think there’s multiple times where I’m still like, “You know, I think I’m quitting.”

Pam Moore: It’s embarrassing. It’s like nothing else is that public. Like, [00:07:45] I’ve fallen off my bike so many times. That’s another thing I’m new at. Like, I picked up gravel biking like five years ago from a road biking background. There’s a lot of skills I’ve had to learn and like, yeah, I’ve wiped out a few times, but not on a stage.

Andrea Marie: Yeah, not where, [00:08:00] not where there’s 100 people watching you. Yeah.

Pam Moore: Yeah.

Andrea Marie: Oh man, that’s, that is great. That’s great. Well, I love that example that you’re setting for your kids and, so you have two… Wait, remind me again. I’m so [00:08:15] bad with remembering how many kids people have. You have two.

Pam Moore: Two girls.

Parenting preteens and teens

Andrea Marie: Okay, two girls. All right. So that’s exciting, girl mom. What ages are they again?

Pam Moore: They’re 12 and 14.

Andrea Marie: Oh man, you’re in it. You’re in it. How is it [00:08:30] going, the preteen teen?

Pam Moore: It’s hard. It’s really hard, and it, I think it’s made harder by the fact that like, I can’t tell you right now exactly what’s going on ’cause my children are fully formed people. And, you know, [00:08:45] when they were two I could be like, “Oh, potty training’s the friggin’ worst. Oh, this kid had a meltdown in a parking lot.”

But now I can’t say publicly what’s really going on. They have a right to their privacy.

Andrea Marie: Right. Yeah, that is [00:09:00] true.

Pam Moore: been amazing because even though it’s friggin’ hard, they’re fun, they’re cool, they have a great, both of them have a great sense of humor.

One of them actually has punched up a few of my jokes. [00:09:15] They’re cool people, and I feel like I’m doing an okay job sometimes. You know, I get glimmers of like, “Okay. Okay.” You know?

Andrea Marie: I know you’re doing, I know you’re doing a good job. I know it. It is hard though to [00:09:30] be like, “I hope I’m not ruining them.”

Pam Moore: Yeah, I have those moments. But like my older kid and I went on a trip, just the two of us. We stayed overnight in Winter Park this fall and like it was fun. We just got takeout and watched a movie and went to a hot [00:09:45] spring and like it was fun. You know, and I’m enjoying like even though driving them around is a pain in the ass, I like it.

We talk. I know I’m gonna miss it. I’m at that point now where I’m like, “Oh my God, my oldest is about to start high school.” I can [00:10:00] see, I mean, I know there’s no finish line, but I can see how quickly the house is gonna get real quiet.

Andrea Marie: Yep.

Pam Moore: I’m like, you know, when it’s someone has to drive her somewhere, I’m like, “I’ll do it.”

Andrea Marie: I know. I know. I did, I actually did [00:10:15] feel that same way. You know, it’s a lot. It gets to be a lot. My kids didn’t have like, a million activities. They, you know, two boys, they were just like, you know, not doing quite as much as sometimes girls, I think, do. But I still really enjoyed [00:10:30] driving them. As soon as I, as soon as they were on their own, I was like, “I don’t know what’s going on.

What’s happening?” you know, like, you would get to hear more about their day ’cause they were a captive audience and, I think sometimes they feel more comfortable sharing when you’re both looking straight [00:10:45] ahead.

Pam Moore: Absolutely. Absolutely. There’s something about not being face-to-face that just makes it easier.

Developing Bell’s palsy after childbirth

Andrea Marie: Yeah, exactly. I wanna get into, when they were born. We were also talking about this, and you’ve been very public about [00:11:00] sharing your struggles with getting Bell’s palsy right after… was it your oldest that was born?

Pam Moore: Was my youngest.

Andrea Marie: It was your youngest. Okay. Walk us through what happened there and tell us, like, you know, kind of what you were dealing with that.

Pam Moore: Okay, [00:11:15] so I had an, a toddler and a newborn. My little one was 10 days old, and it was just like a normal day, as normal as life can be when you have a 10-day-old newborn. It was, And she was a fussy one, like real fussy. My breasts were not cooperating. [00:11:30] Like, breastfeeding was like a walk in the park with the first one.

This was interesting. I had it in my head that the first one was… like, like life was gonna be horrible. Like I’d read a lot of mom blogs, you know, the honest ones, so I was gearing up for like, “Do I even wanna do [00:11:45] this?” And then I was pleasantly surprised. And with my second, everyone says, “Oh, two isn’t that much different than having one.

Like once you already have one, it’s no big deal.” And I just expected things to go roughly the same way, and they did [00:12:00] not. Like my breasts were, like, out of control with the breastfeeding. The kid was always crying. It was only 10 days in, and I was just, like, dying. And I was just like, brushing my teeth, and all of a sudden I’m like, “My face isn’t really functioning.”

The right-hand side of my face was drooping and wouldn’t [00:12:15] move, like I’d, like, had a stroke, or like when you go to the dentist and they numb you up. And I could feel. I- sensation was fine, but I was like, “I can’t really spit out the toothpaste fully.” And I was like, “Well, let’s see what happens.” And I go to…

Actually, I think it… No, it [00:12:30] wasn’t this mug. It was a similar mug. I go to drink my coffee, and it’s like, “I can’t really form a seal with my mouth. Like what’s going on?” But I kinda knew it was Bell’s palsy. Having worked in healthcare, I had a feeling. I’d seen it many times. Elderly folks will come in the hospital just to rule [00:12:45] it out and make sure it’s not a stroke.

So but for listeners that don’t know, it’s when half of your face gets paralyzed spontaneously. No one is quite sure why it happens. Yeah, I went to the doctor, got the diagnosis. They were like, “Usually, you’d get a [00:13:00] course of steroids, but it’s not recommended if you’re breastfeeding. We don’t know if that’s safe for the baby.”

And it didn’t really occur to me to do formula. I also didn’t know how this was gonna go. My friend had it. It was [00:13:15] gone in a week or two. Statistically, like 90% of cases will resolve on their own very quickly.

Andrea Marie: Yeah.

Pam Moore: So I think if I had known that this thing was gonna be a whole thing, maybe I would’ve done the medication.

But I didn’t. I went to acupuncture. I did the breastfeeding, [00:13:30] da, da, da. Yeah, and it just… I had an unusual case, and it was facial paralysis that when it was like, about to get totally better, about six months in, it got worse again.

Andrea Marie: Oh, wow.

Pam Moore: And I tried [00:13:45] everything, you know? Uh huh. You name it, I tried it.

Craniosacral, PT, acupuncture, you know, random shit I found on the internet. It was just like anything I could do. And I was feeling, kind of ashamed of myself [00:14:00] for being so concerned because it was, for me, almost completely cosmetic. For other people… You know, I was in a few like, Facebook communities for people with Bell’s palsy.

Some people had tinnitus. They couldn’t fully shut their eye. They were in pain. I didn’t have any [00:14:15] of that, but I was so self-conscious of my appearance, and then I felt guilty for that. I was like, “I’m a terrible person. My children are maybe too young to have words for this, but they’re gonna feel, like, the darkness of my vain soul, like I’m a [00:14:30] terrible human.”

Andrea Marie: Oh, man. and Yeah, on top of Yeah just dealing with the challenge of, that it presents, you’re just that’s really hard to be dealing with all of that.

Pam Moore: Yeah, and my little one did not sleep through the night one time until [00:14:45] she was like 17 months old. So I was like seriously sleep deprived.

And even as I’m saying it now, and I felt this way at the time too, I even feel a little bit guilty saying this ’cause I know that like I’m so lucky. I had [00:15:00] two healthy kids even if the one was fussy and we later learned that she had food allergies and had to get that sorted out.

But like, but at the time I felt really bad too ’cause I was like what am I complaining about? Like I have the luxury of being able to go to the [00:15:15] acupuncture appointments, of being able to get a sitter so I can go to PT or go for a run or something and

Andrea Marie: Uh huh

Pam Moore: there was a lot of crying.

Self-compassion and accepting hard seasons

Andrea Marie: Yeah. There’s a lot of crying in motherhood in general, just newborn, you know, your [00:15:30] hormones are all over the place. You don’t, you’re not getting much sleep, and then dealing with, you know, a health challenge on top of all that. So, you know, what are some of the challenges with living with Bell’s palsy?

I know you like, I didn’t realize it could be quite [00:15:45] the spectrum that there could be, like, how serious it could get. But what kinds of things did you have to adjust with dealing with that?

Pam Moore: That’s a great question. Well, I had to be very mindful about pronouncing my name, which was funny ’cause I’m making all [00:16:00] of these phone calls to schedule appointments for myself. The letter P is hard to say when you can’t fully use half your mouth.

Andrea Marie: Yeah.

Pam Moore: More is easy. Pam is hard[00:16:15]

Andrea Marie: Yeah, you, it probably is even hard to spell out if you can’t say P, you know?

Pam Moore: Totally, totally. So that was rough. What was weird was like once it got better and then worse again, it was like better for a month and then overnight it got way [00:16:30] worse.

Andrea Marie: Oh, wow.

Pam Moore: Because I developed a condition called synkinesis, which is when your nerve is regrowing, but it takes the wrong path. So your face is doing weird stuff it’s not supposed to do.

So for example, like, every time I would blink, my face, [00:16:45] my mouth would like pull to the side, which it kinda still does, but it’s gotten so much better. Or like at all times I felt like there was like a rubber band around my eyeball, and especially when I chewed, smiled, laughed. And it was just [00:17:00] distracting.

It’s just this constant reminder like something’s wrong with my face. Uh huh. Hated taking pictures of myself. Hated pictures so much.

Andrea Marie: Yeah.

Pam Moore: Yeah, there’s a lot of selfies of me and my first when she was a little baby, but not so [00:17:15] many of me and the second one, ’cause I just couldn’t bear to like look at myself.

Andrea Marie: Oh, that’s so hard. Yeah, so I mean, and you just don’t know when it’s gonna get better. And like, so when it got better and then got worse, like that must have been [00:17:30] kind of a real challenging time mentally when, if you just don’t know when it’s gonna come up.

Pam Moore: Yeah. I remember it exactly. We were about to go out. I think we got a sitter and we were gonna go out, and I was like doing a once-over in the [00:17:45] mirror, and I was like, “What the f- Oh my God. Is it back? Like, what’s going on?” And I like, you know, it was after hours. I called the doctor on call and like waiting for him to call back.

I remember like taking the call at a restaurant and when we were going to [00:18:00] this, restaurant on the… I remember in the car on the way there, I was crying to my husband. I was like, “I can’t do this again. I cannot deal with this again.” But like you know, I’m looking back on it, I can see that it was just [00:18:15] a season that I had to get through.

And that’s how, like right now things have, you know, we’ve had some hard times in our family and I’m like, it’s a season. You can’t make spring come faster when you’re sick of winter. You just need to like, you know? It, but I couldn’t really [00:18:30] see that at the time.

Andrea Marie: Yeah, what were some of the lessons you learned from that time? Like obviously be acceptance and, you know, having to realize that it is just a season in your life, but like, but you don’t know if, when it’ll go away [00:18:45] or, you know, do people deal with it forever or is that?

Pam Moore: Yeah, they do. Actually, I found a physical therapist, like, ’cause the residual effects, like it didn’t get be- I mean, it got worse again, it happened in 2014, [00:19:00] got worse again at the very end of 2014, and it kinda stayed pretty bad for a while. And I was just working on getting used to it, and about two or three years ago, I found this PT on the East Coast [00:19:15] who works with me over telehealth, and she’s frigging phenomenal.

And I do like, face exercises every day, and they have helped me tremendously. So, that’s amazing. Like so if I hadn’t have found her, I’d still be like, hating photos of [00:19:30] myself. yeah, some people have surgery. There’s different routes you can go for extreme cases. But I definitely feel like between Bell’s palsy and also therapy, I have learned self-compassion.

Andrea Marie: Mm-hmm.

Pam Moore: I think I used to be really hard [00:19:45] on myself, really hard on myself. And what I’ve also noticed as it pertains, you know, to motherhood and Moms Unhinged is that when my kids present me with challenging behavior, which of course they do every day.

Andrea Marie: Mm-hmm.

Pam Moore: The [00:20:00] more I can accept that I am just who I am, I’ve noticed, without even trying to, it kinda comes naturally, that I have a lot more capacity for them.

Andrea Marie: Mm-hmm.

Pam Moore: Do a better job of accepting, “Okay, this one’s having a [00:20:15] meltdown. This one can’t get their act together on time,” or whatever it may be.

Yeah.

Accept. It doesn’t help to be trying to, like, go against the current.

Andrea Marie: Yeah. Yeah, raging against reality is just never going to go well. [00:20:30] It’s just like, you know, you just… You know?

Pam Moore: It sounds so obvious when you say it like that.

Andrea Marie: I’ve been reading.

Pam Moore: Like it’s so.

Andrea Marie: I really have been reading a lot of books on stoicism, and it is very much like accepting it to [00:20:45] staying present in the moment. And I’m like, “God, I wish I kinda had found that a little bit earlier when I was, like, trying to control everything.” But it is so true. It’s like just you can…

It just, you can feel more zen. You feel more like, [00:21:00] you know, hey, the whole it is what it is kind of… I mean, we say that a lot, but do we really mean it?

Pam Moore: Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t know. And the thing I wish I had learned from all of this, I’m like, I wish I could sit here and tell [00:21:15] you honestly like, I learned that beauty is on the inside. I mean, like, of course it is, also I’m still seeing my PT every three weeks, and I’m doing my stupid exercises, like at red lights and like, in front of TV.[00:21:30]

I want to look normal. I do.

 An unexpected upside of getting older

Andrea Marie: Yeah. Yeah, and that is, it’s so true. That’s, I think, one of the hardest things around acceptance is we live in a society that’s very beauty-focused, very youth-focused, very, very much [00:21:45] about your appearance. And your appearance does change the way people react to you or connect to you or whatever it might be.

So it’s really hard when we’re dealing with something that you know, makes us feel bad about our [00:22:00] appearance or even, like in your case, changes your appearance drastically. So that’s a huge challenge, and that, I think, is probably one of the, one of a big lesson that’s hard to learn even as we’re, even as we’re aging too.

Like beauty is on the [00:22:15] inside.

Pam Moore: One cool thing is that I think I’m the only person I know that’s roughly my age, like late 40s, who is not doing like, you know, Botox and fill- Okay, I have gotten Botox like therapeutically, but it’s worn [00:22:30] off. I don’t know any of my friends that are like, “I feel like I look better as I look, as I get older,” because my face is getting better even though I’m aging.

I’m like, “I feel pretty damn good.” [00:22:45] So that’s like an unexpected perk.

Andrea Marie: Unexpected win.

 My goodness, yeah, definitely. Definitely it’s all, being a woman in today’s so- society, mom in today’s society too, [00:23:00] is definitely a challenge. So, awesome. Well, thank you so much for sharing all that. I know that it’s really important I mean, that’s part of why I love comedy too, is just sharing things to make us all feel normal, to [00:23:15] make us all, you know, to relate to people who have either Bell’s palsy themselves or some other health challenge.

And I think we’re just not always as honest about our real feelings about that, so I appreciate your [00:23:30] honesty and share, being willing to share that journey with us and everything. So yeah.

Pam Moore: My pleasure. And I’ve talked about it on stage. Like I’ve been able to make it funny, and that has been ridiculously healing. [00:23:45] I mean, to sometimes reflect and be like, “Oh my God, the thing that I thought was the absolute worst,” which still, I still think it sucked, but to be able to metabolize that pain into something [00:24:00] that can create joy and connection, that’s really cool.

 Pam’s unhinged mom moment

Andrea Marie: Yeah, that is really cool. Really cool. So one of the things that I always ask our guests is for, speaking of like normalizing things, [00:24:15] I always ask for an unhinged moment or a story from, you know, either with your kids or with your own mom about something that went wrong that was unhinged so we can all feel a little bit better about ourselves.

Pam Moore: Okay, and [00:24:30] just purely in service of making other people feel better about themselves, this was probably in the last six to 12 months. My then sixth grader, uh… I’m trying to remember how this went down. She [00:24:45] needed to get out the door. She’s not great at time management. I feel like I can say that ’cause I’m not great at time management.

I think that’s one of the reasons it like, frustrates me so much that… so anyways, she’s running super late. She’s like, “Can you help me with my lunch?” Sure.

Andrea Marie: Uh huh.

Pam Moore: She’d [00:25:00] gotten it together, but it needed to like, go in the bag, and she’s in charge of her own lunch. I feel like that’s a task a sixth grader can do.

But as I’m putting the lunch into the bag, there was, like, a bunch of papaya… not [00:25:15] papaya, sorry, pomegranate seeds in a unsealed container, like upside down. So they went everywhere. And as I was discovering pomegranate juice friggin’ everywhere, I also [00:25:30] noticed the lunch.

The lunch was pomegranate seeds, four of those little Hawaiian pretzel bites, and like, some pickles. And she comes down the, she comes [00:25:45] down the stairs. I’m like, “What is this? This is a lunch for a toddler. This is not a lunch for an 11-year-old girl. Like, what are you doing?” And also, I wanna state for the record, for months I’d been, you know, every time I go to the [00:26:00] store, I’m like, “What would you like to put on the grocery list?

I will buy you whatever you want to pack for your lunch. What would you like?” And I have bought the things. So I lost my fucking… Can I say fuck on this podcast?

Andrea Marie: Sure.

Pam Moore: I lost my fucking mind. I [00:26:15] grabbed a, I went into the freezer and I grabbed a bag of frozen tortellini, and I said, “I bought you this,” and I threw it on the ground.

And then I got out the frozen, dumplings, and I was like, “And I got you this,” [00:26:30] and I threw that on the ground. “And you’re bringing pickles and pomegranate. This-” That was bad. That was really bad. But the funny thing [00:26:45] was so I ended up, yeah, she was so late I had to drive her to school, so I’m driving both kids to school, and it’s like, not a fun ride. And as we’re getting close to the school, I’m like, I’m like, “I’m sorry. That was out of [00:27:00] control. That was uncalled for.”

The “throwing frozen food” anger scale

Pam Moore: I did apologize. But a few days later, we’re watching I don’t know what. I have a bad habit of sometimes watching Selling Sunset with my girls, which if your listeners don’t know, it’s like a terrible reality show that I [00:27:15] probably shouldn’t admit to watching in public. So I think somebody on there had a crazy tattoo, and my younger child, so she’s in the sixth grade at the time, she goes, “Mom, what would you do, like, how mad would you be, if Charlotte,” her older sister, who [00:27:30] at the time was in the eighth grade, she goes, ” How mad would you be if Charlotte came home with a tramp stamp?”

No, I don’t think yeah, and I said, “What?” And she goes, “For real, how mad would you be?” I was like, “I’ve literally never thought about that. I have no idea how mad I would be.” And she goes, “No, no, how mad would you be? [00:27:45] Like, 1 is totally calm, and 10 is throwing frozen food.”

Andrea Marie: That’s now the new bar. The new maximum.

Pam Moore: So.

Andrea Marie: They’ve seen it. They’ve seen the edge. [00:28:00] They’ve seen the edge, and hopefully it doesn’t get worse, you know? But like, throwing frozen food is the ultimate.

Pam Moore: Was bad. So yeah, that was.

Andrea Marie: That is so funny. I love that story so much because I can just [00:28:15] so relate. It’s wild how mad we can get in the moment of, you know, you’re trying so hard, you’re trying your best to, you know, take care of them, do everything you can to raise them healthy, have healthy options for [00:28:30] them, and then like doing that kind of thing.

Pam Moore: Oh, and I forgot to… I’m remembering now too, during that whole debacle, the part of the thing was the kid had, she had pomegranate juice all over her shirt, and she was like, “What do I do?” And I’m [00:28:45] like, “Take the shirt, find a new shirt, spot treat the shirt.” And then she’s calling me from upstairs.

She’s like, “How do I spot treat it?” And I’m like, “Ugh.” That was, I forgot that part. I was just like, “Oh my God. Spray the [00:29:00] Shout.”

Andrea Marie: And it’s always when you’re trying to get out the door, right? You’ve just got limited time. You’re late. Everyone’s late. It’s just like, yeah, yeah. Oh my gosh. That is hilarious. Thank you so much for the good belly laugh for the morning for [00:29:15] me. So that’s amazing. I’m sure we can all relate, relate to that.

So Pam, this has been so much fun. Thank you so much for coming on. Why don’t you let people, let our listeners know where you, they can find you and, all that kind of [00:29:30] stuff and what you got coming up.

Pam Moore: Yeah, let’s see. You can find me on all the socials at @thatpammoore and that’ll take you everywhere. You can find me on my website pam-moore.com, but that’s where you can get me. What’s coming up for me, as you mentioned, I get to host a [00:29:45] Moms Unhinged show in Fort Collins, which will have happened by the time you listen to this.

I’m doing the Rise Comedy Festival in Denver in late July. That’s coming right up. Those are the biggest things on my calendar right now.

Andrea Marie: Yeah, awesome. I love that. [00:30:00] Well, thank you so much again. We’ll have those links for everybody in the show notes. Thanks, Pam.

Pam Moore: Thank you.

Andrea Marie: Thanks for listening and make sure you subscribe, share, and follow us on the socials to get more comedy clips.