Manic Rambling Spiral

There's a lot of stress around the holidays. Between kids being home and efforts to make everything perfect, it's enough to ruin the whole season. Light-up baby Jesus to the rescue!  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Thanks for sticking with us, everyone!  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Kids are a-holes. Okay, that's probably a bit of a sweeping statement; but, when your child is faced with bullies, it's the first thing that comes to mind. And it brings back a flood of memories about how hard life can be when you're an insecure 13-year-old who's just trying to figure things out.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Politics, religion, and Twitter. The big three. Sort of. Now that we think about it, it's sort of surprising that sex didn't come up at all. We'll try harder next week.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

John is back from Hong Kong, and we're talking travel, jet lag, basic airplane courtesy, and service jobs. Why service jobs? Because they're rough, people can be terrible, and we've both been there so we totally get it.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Teaching kids about finances is important and usually the best way to do that is to demonstrate budget-savvy behavior. But that's not always easy. And sometimes it's a unique challenge when you're self-employed.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Yes. We're talking about living wills. It not super uplifting, but it's an important topic. Also, Heather managed to bring up orgasms, so it's not completely grim.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Health care, independence and, on yeah, John's brief hospital stay are all part of this week. We also talk about peeing with an audience and international travel because we like variety.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Sometimes it's tough to stay level-headed. Sometimes it feels damn near impossible when you have to do so while also trying to keep your kids relatively level. Hormones, parenting, life. Awesome.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

From charities and organizations to individual creative pursuits and business startups, you can give money to a lot of different things. This week we're talking about how and where we give and why we're bringing MRS to Patreon. So tell us: Where should MRS go from here?  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

For every up, there's at least three downs. Sometimes real life feels a bit relentless. But we're still not going to homeschool our kids even if that would make everything blissfully easy.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Twitter sensation James Breakwell (@XplodingUnicorn) joins MRS this week! He's a father to four girls, he's got a new book on the way ("Only Dead on the Inside: A Parent's Guide to Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse") and he's adding a lot to the conversation.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Life is hard. It's easy to let yourself slip while trying to juggle everything else. Self care - in bad times and in good - is the only way to keep moving forward.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

School's in session! Our routines return! Everything is just as crazy as we imagined it would be! Moral: Learning is hard and it probably never gets any easier.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Call it survival if you must, but we're trying to figure out how to compartmentalize so we can survive the day-to-day. Heather's one step ahead on this one, but John is determined. Any suggestions?  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.