Episode Transcript
[00:00:03] Speaker A: So you ever noticed every day your feed gets filled with stories designed to make you feel something? You know, talking about social media, you know, sometimes you'll find a tearjerker about a little boy saving a dog or a headline claiming an alien probe just entered our solar system, or a meme meant to make you furious at those people on the other side.
Well, you know, here's the thing.
[00:00:27] Speaker B: I don't know about the alien probe one, but, yeah, I've seen the other one.
[00:00:30] Speaker A: I've seen the alien probe thing lately with the. The Three Eye Atlas meteor. I mean, a comet that's going around, people are saying it's an alien probe. But, you know, here's the deal. Those posts aren't about inspiring you. They're not about informing you or saving a puppy, for that matter. They're about harvesting your engagement and turning it into cold, hard cash.
[00:00:55] Speaker B: How quaintly phrased.
Go right ahead there, Barry.
[00:00:59] Speaker A: All these grandma stories, the alien mysteries, political outrage is all the same playbook with different costumes.
[00:01:07] Speaker B: So maybe I need to listen to my box. This chill freeze.
[00:01:13] Speaker A: Well, maybe we can dive in and kind of pull back the curtain on some of this stuff. Because what it comes down to is your. Your clicks are paying somebody else's bills. And. And the more and more I think about it, the more it just enra. Engages me even further. So they could talk it out for a little bit.
[00:01:29] Speaker B: Go in like the warrior for Sparta. You're already dead, right? So if you make it out, it's joy.
So they're already harvesting you. If you deny them, you've gained perspective.
[00:01:41] Speaker A: Just a little bit, you know, Just a little bit. So I've found out a bunch about this whole subject. If you're interested, I can just dive in and tell you all about it.
[00:01:50] Speaker B: And I know you all. I'm always interested.
Always interested.
[00:01:55] Speaker A: Well, let me tell you.
[00:01:56] Speaker B: I want to tell you. I do want to take this on before we go into your die.
[00:01:59] Speaker A: Go ahead.
[00:02:00] Speaker B: You know, when you make that agreement, then, hey, I know you're. You're taking my stuff, but I'm getting features for it. I'm getting something for it. Then it's a. It's okay. Because, you know, and I've come out of a couple of things already this week where I realized, oh, I'm doing something with things that they. Are they harvesting my stuff? Yeah, Google, Yeah. But I got features. So, you know, there's.
[00:02:24] Speaker A: There's always felt that way, Google. You know, like, Google knows way too much about me. Way too much Them and Amazon, both. But they throw some really cool stuff my way and I, you know, they know me well enough to know the things that I, that I could really use and it would enhance what's going on.
[00:02:40] Speaker B: They provide it. So I'm okay with it.
[00:02:42] Speaker A: Yeah, it's like a contract in it.
[00:02:44] Speaker B: It's a contract and you have to think of it like that.
[00:02:47] Speaker A: Yeah. So I'm with you. There's a good side to that kind of data harvesting.
And then there's a, there's another side that I'm noticing here lately. And it's not even so much data harvesting is more attention harvesting more than anything else.
So here's kind of what I learned about it. So how can just look, say list, for instance, you get, you get online and you see, I don't know, whatever, doesn't matter what political party you're part of, but you happen to see a political post that it's something that either enrages you or you agree with and you decide to go in and look at it and either say, yeah, you guys are nuts. I don't believe this. This is just wrong. And you put a comment in or you say, wow, this is the best thing since sliced bread. Yes, I agree. I wholeheartedly agree.
Either one of those are just two sides of the same coin. They, they got your attention and they got you to engage.
So why is that a big deal?
Well, what I've learned is, is that these kind of accounts that you see out in social media land, they get paid for engagement, they get paid for eyeballs and they don't care what kind of engagement it is. You can be agreeing with them all day long, or you could be disagreeing with them all day long. You engaged with them.
So the thing is, is after a while, these accounts, when they get enough eyeballs and they get enough engagements, then they start to get paid for it.
So they start to send out even more of these things and they pull in as much engagement as they possibly can.
And then after a while, there's another level to this. Not only will like say Meta, who owns Facebook and Instagram, they. They have certain metrics for if you are getting enough eyeballs or you're watch time, then they might play some ads around your stuff, maybe part of your reels, they might throw an ad before it or an ad after it or something like that. And you get some of the cash off of that after a while if you've got a big enough audience. So what builds your audience? More engagement, more eyes on things, controversial things Things that maybe your friends will share and get more eyeballs on it. So eventually you start building up this kind of. This kind of engagement farm. They want more and more people looking at their stuff because they get paid for it. And it gets even more insidious, Bobby. So what happens is after that's the case, then they starting to do. Well, they've got a bunch of eyeballs on stuff. They might, you might have somebody come along and just buy their account from them for a big ton of money. And why would they do that?
Well, because of all those eyeballs out there. Especially if there's eyeballs out there that are of a particular political persuasion maybe or. Or so. Or a certain age who gets upset by a lot of things and, or gets triggered by. By puppies having trouble or.
Or who are into aliens. What. It didn't really matter what the subject is. It's just if you can get enough eyeballs around your page, then somebody will pay you for it, either directly with the social media companies or somebody will come and buy it up for you. And then all of a sudden they'll turn it and start putting their own messages out there.
I've noticed this before. You've got 11 accounts. You see that, man, that's really cool stuff. That's great. That's great. And then all of a sudden they maybe like turn into some really weird political bit all of a sudden. Well, something might have happened is they got bought they. And they got paid. They. The person who originally built the account got paid for all those eyeballs that they had gathered up and then basically sold your attention to somebody else. So I've run into this a lot lately. I've kind of seen it more and more because my feeds are starting to get eat up with things that I've never seen before, like accounts I've never seen before, but they're of a particular persuasion. 1.
You know, I've loved the whole subject of aliens since I was a kid. You know, we're sci fi guys, we kind of dig that. So I see a lot of that. So Facebook knows that's kind of a thing for me. So I see more and more of them and they're terrible. I mean, they're terrible.
But.
But I think that's even.
I think that's even a vector. You know, it's like the more terrible it is, the more people will comment that it's terrible. Which is eyeballs, which is engagement there is so bad.
[00:07:05] Speaker B: It's good.
[00:07:06] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. And I'm seeing the same thing on the politics front I see is more, more things that I agree with and more things that I disagree with it with. And they're all getting more and more fringe and wanting you to disagree with them or agree with them in the comments and those kinds of things. Or there'll be call outs to where maybe you, you'll have an enraging headline. And then down in the comments, the very first comment is go to this website to seek to find out more. And if you go to that website, then you're, then you're really hooked. At that point you're gonna see 7,000 ads that they're getting paid for.
It's a rabbit hole, man. It's a rabbit hole.
[00:07:43] Speaker B: I recognize that mean and I, and I fight against it. So when I see my YouTube filled with things of the similar persuasion, I just think of things random and put a search in and then there's even a refresh button on YouTube, I think, where you can do it. I'm not sure if it's a real button or something to fake you out, but I hear you.
[00:08:03] Speaker A: So why am I talking about it here? Just because I'm, I'm being enraged about it. No, not really. I'm thinking is that, that maybe our audience might have some, some relatives of a certain age who are maybe in social media, maybe not in social media, but they're probably getting enraged by some of the things that they see. And it might be bothering their sleep, it might be just bothering their whole attitude. It might be instituting fear that shouldn't be there. You know, all these kinds of things.
[00:08:33] Speaker B: So it's funny you mentioned this.
[00:08:35] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:08:35] Speaker B: You know, I try hard not to, to get too personal, but you know, my loved ones are going through that, especially my mom has found a way to make everything a social media item. What do you mean by that? She does that with mail, a regular mail, when she reads, she obsesses on those messages, those junk mails on tv. She leaves it on a particular channel somehow. The channel is, I guess, pre programmed to try to get people of a certain time, of a certain age.
So, you know, you know what I mean? The commercials are about housewives during the day and, and the elderly, you know, from five to four or something like that. You know, something you go, what are they targeting? We're targeting her.
[00:09:24] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:09:24] Speaker B: And she's responded to them. So I have to, I have to a, be aware of them so I can counter them and, and also understand that her, her reactions are somehow based on what you're talking about. She's not into YouTube or Instagram. She doesn't do any of that stuff. But tv, mail, even her phone calls all affect her that way. Oh yeah, in a way that, that, that, that I'm often surprised by.
[00:09:52] Speaker A: They hit on a subconscious level sometimes, don't they?
[00:09:54] Speaker B: Yeah. You know that her, her, her resistance is not as high as it used to be and therefore those, you know, even the 1950s way of, of driving the upper wall now drives her up a wall and I have to be careful about that. So you know, maybe I turned this box on it maybe, maybe it's time to chill. Tell her to chill and not worry about the news so much. The news is bad. 24 hour news cycles do this all the time. They give you this high, low, the world's going to end and then they show you the puppy and how, what it did once, you know, just like.
[00:10:28] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:10:28] Speaker B: Moving you back and forth. Almost, almost. So I don't know how this relates to Cartech and tips other than media I guess affects everyone and you can be aware of it.
[00:10:37] Speaker A: So it's definitely a tech thing. It's a, it's an algorithm thing.
It's a.
On the weaponizing your attention kind of thing. And it's, it, it affects us as Gen Xers. I know it's got to affect our parents and the generation before us. Oh it does, it does. And probably even worse. I mean one I like to make a joke about is like, I know there's like cozy TV is one of the things out there that kind of, kind of shows a lot of shows from when I was a kid, you know, like stuff that was going on in the 70s. And you know the targeting thing you're talking about, you know, they're talking about specific kinds of medicines right now they're talking about Medicaid benefits or Medicare benefits or you know, reverse mortgages. Yeah. Do you do this thing and you'll, you'll get this at no cost to you. It's billed to Medicare, you know that kind of stuff. But my favorite thing on these commercials is one of them will go alert, alert.
Your Medicare may be in jeopardy or something to that effect. But that alert, alert thing kills me. I'm thinking, who just jumps up and says okay, I'm listening now?
[00:11:43] Speaker B: My mom. My mom.
[00:11:45] Speaker A: Yeah, okay, there you go.
[00:11:46] Speaker B: Call me once she sees that commercial and goes, is there alert? No it's not.
[00:11:50] Speaker A: Right, right. It's, I mean it's insidious and it really is. And so my approach lately has been, I go on these Social media cleanses every once in a while and just kind of stay away from it altogether. I'm also on a national news cleanse too.
[00:12:09] Speaker B: There's.
[00:12:10] Speaker A: I. I just can't right now. I try to keep it local.
[00:12:13] Speaker B: Aware that we are part of that mechanism in very small ways. So 100. We will not bring any of that stuff.
[00:12:21] Speaker A: Exactly. I know. It is.
[00:12:23] Speaker B: It's good. Go ahead and do that.
[00:12:25] Speaker A: It is weird, isn't it, to be part of the social media landscape, but also recognizing that it can be used for evil, which I guess really comes down to it's just a tool. Everybody's got a tool. What you do that Tools another matter altogether.
[00:12:41] Speaker B: But it has to discern what. What information is out there.
[00:12:45] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:12:45] Speaker B: And how it affects you and if it's true and sourced and things like that. And we try to do that here, but, you know, we're not perfect either. So sometimes the information we're sourcing is wrong. But, you know, everybody has to do that. And caretakers in particular have to do that for the people they're caretaking with. They have to engage with that.
[00:13:05] Speaker A: They really do.
[00:13:06] Speaker B: But.
[00:13:06] Speaker A: Because especially a lot of people of that generation that they're caring for don't understand that just because you heard it on TV doesn't mean it is true or it's a. Or it's a viable source or a reputable source or any of that kind of stuff.
[00:13:25] Speaker B: They're used to an editing world, probably where the best sources bubbled to the top because there was a layer of effort that they had to get through. They were vetted. They were truth. They were, you know, looked at. They were argued way before they were presented on tv. And now all these things can be coming out with no level of editing. No level.
[00:13:47] Speaker A: And everybody's brother can broadcast. I mean, we're doing it right now. Yeah, exactly.
[00:13:53] Speaker B: Us. So.
[00:13:54] Speaker A: Right.
So anyway, I'm. That's one of my pet peeves right now. So I'm kind of working through that as you might have been able to tell.
So what else have you got going.
[00:14:05] Speaker B: On that you want your soapbox because you were a little higher in the window Just a tiny bit.
[00:14:09] Speaker A: That's when I start leaning in. Is that what it is?
Oh, my goodness. So what you got going on these days?
[00:14:18] Speaker B: Well, a little update from something I brought up a couple, I guess, a couple of shows ago. Yeah. My lawn. My lawn starter experiment has. Has proven to be. To go. Well, I do recognize, you know, just like we just talked about, I'm recognizing the Catch. And the catch is, yeah, they want you to do some things. They want you to, you know, buy some services. And sometimes those services cost extra money. And frankly I looked at it and, and I went, oh, that's interesting. If I were in a position where I didn't want to rake my leaves in my yard, I could pay for that, I guess.
[00:14:50] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:14:51] Speaker B: So I'm entertaining that idea. So they, they have some success, but the service itself is worth the money. That's great. Very well, very well done. App is very well clear but a lot of good communication. So when they can't do something, they get back to me and say we're rescheduling. You want options.
So it is exactly as it appears. And my yard has never looked better. So, you know, hey, that's wonderful success story. So I'll have to give a, a, a single thumbs up on, on launch starter and I might give it to down the road if they continue to do well. But, but they've done a good job. I think this is a really useful service, especially if you're in a situation where you can't do as much for that, that, that location as you want to. Sure, I have someone who does, who does my mother's yard, but if I were in a situation where that was lost to me, I know I could do Lawn starter and probably find somebody.
[00:15:41] Speaker A: So that's, that's wonderful. And I can give them a thumbs up too, or leave a half of a thumbs up anyway, because I called him. I actually got on the app and had a conversation with them about my dad's place and his for them ended up being too big.
There was too much grass and they, and, but what I'm giving them a thumbs up for is that they were able to look at it and say, yep, we would love to be able to help you, but that's too big for our folks. So don't, you know, we'll go ahead and tell you right now we're not going to be able to pull that off for you. And I really respected that, is that, you know, don't, don't leave me alone. Don't, don't bring in a somebody who's going to do this, who's going to, going to charge me an exorbitant price for it, you know, all that. They were super communicative and really easy to deal with. So yeah, I can give them a thumbs up as well. Even though it didn't work out for me, I'm sure it will work out for other people.
[00:16:30] Speaker B: That's all you can ask is for someone to be honest about what service they can provide. And.
[00:16:34] Speaker A: Oh yeah. 100. 100.
Oh, wow. Thinking about being honest. There's. I got something interesting here.
So we just do a segue. I think we did. I think we did. And it. This is a. Is a weird little scam that we ran into this past week or two.
My wife had had some doctor's appointments in the last couple of weeks, you know, nothing serious, but it's like she's gone to. Gone and had a, you know, a couple of little things in an office somewhere. But, you know, you always get. You get. It gets charged to. If you're a certain age, get charged to Medicare and then your supplement picks up pieces of that kind of stuff. But whenever that happens, you'll always get a thing, an explanation of benefits in the mail from. From your insurance company or from. From Medicare, that kind of thing. And it's basically saying what they covered and what they didn't cover.
And you know, usually I am guilty about just getting those in the mail and just throwing them out because I'm not paying attention to. They're not really giving me that much information. But my wife is very, very conscientious about that. She looks like. Likes to look over that stuff, and she did this week and she saw the charges for what was covered and wasn't covered for the daughter's appointment. And then there were some other things down there. She started looking into it and it looked like that she had been charged or Medicare in her, you know, in her name had been charged over $16,000 for catheters.
She doesn't need catheters. She doesn't use catheters. There's no catheters around here.
Sixteen thousand dol. Thousand dollars over three months. It's crazy.
So she got on the phone with them and let them know that there was something weird going on. And they thanked her profusely for reporting it and that they were gonna go hunt it down essentially. But apparently this is a big deal and it happens all the time that people can slide things in and under the. I guess under the guise that people aren't paying attention. And we don't necessarily personally have.
Get billed for any of that kind of stuff, but Medicare does.
And a lot of times they just go ahead and pay it and it's just fraud. It just comes down to being fraud. And it runs everybody's bills up over the years and it costs us all money. So it's. If you happen to get those explanations of Benefits, we're taking a look at them just to make sure that you and the government are being charged the right sorts of things. If you're the age that you have Medcare, I think that's a good idea.
[00:19:08] Speaker B: Because not only that, sometimes. Not just sometimes, it's just mistakes that if you catch them.
[00:19:14] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:19:14] Speaker B: And get them to do something different. So. I agree. Yeah, I. I do look at them a little bit more my watch better than I am, but I need to get better.
[00:19:21] Speaker A: Yeah, me too. Me too. It's just one of those things.
Gosh.
So I got another governmental thing for you today.
Thinking about Medicare and thinking about governments and stuff.
I had a call from my aunt a week or two back, and she was telling me that her phone had gone off in the middle of the night making all this noise.
And, you know, okay, I'm thinking, okay, what was that about? And she started telling me what was going on. And what it was basically was an Amber Alert. You know, when a child goes missing or has been abducted or something, you'll. They'll send out a message to certain areas to say, be on the lookout for this person. Or if there's, you know, really, really bad weather or something like that, there'll be alerts that goes to phones. And it can scare you in the middle of the night.
And my. It kind of freaked my aunt out because she had never experienced that before. It was like two in the morning.
But she. She basically said, well, I live in assisted living. What am I supposed to do about this?
I don't want it waking me up in the night, but I don't want to turn my phone off at night. I want it, like, to keep it on in case some family members need to get in touch with me. But I don't want that happening. So I did a little looking around, and it turns out you can turn those things off. Off on an iPhone especially. I'm sure you can probably do this on an Android as well. It's fairly simple to do.
Essentially, you go to your phone settings and you navigate over to notifications.
And in notifications, I think, well, on iPhones, it's notifications. I think it's safety and emergency. On Android phones, maybe, but essentially, slide down and find the wireless emergency alerts or government alerts sections inside notifications. When you go down there, you can pick and choose what you want to see. You can say, I want to turn them all off. I can. I can say I want to see weather alerts, but not Amber alerts, or I don't Want to see any of them? Or you can kind of pick and choose what's there. It's really kind of handy to be able to turn those on and off in situations. Like in this case, my. My aunt's in assisted living. She says, I can't do a thing about this. I would rather not be scared at night. So I went over, showed her on her phone how to do it, and we turned them off. And now she doesn't have to worry about it. So I don't know if that's the case for you or any of your other loved ones, but it might be.
[00:21:43] Speaker B: A really good idea because there are lots of things, and my mother can't sometimes tell me what's happening, so it's hard to diagnose when it's happening.
[00:21:50] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:21:51] Speaker B: So I've. I've looked at my situation, and you can also turn that off. Not on your phone, but I think there's some devices other than phones that you can do that with, too, like iPads and maybe something like that.
[00:22:01] Speaker A: Yeah, I think so. I'm probably watching some of your.
[00:22:03] Speaker B: I don't know if you have this already, but I'm going to drop some. Some steps in our show notes.
[00:22:07] Speaker A: No, go for it. That's great. Yeah.
So, you know, there's a lot of those kinds of things, but you notice, you know, what you just said, your mom a lot of times will talk to you and you can't kind of discern what's happening, and she can't put into words what's happening. I get this a lot of times with my dad. He'll call me up and he'll say, my phone's going crazy.
[00:22:25] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:22:28] Speaker A: And I'm like, well, can you give me some context? You know, at what point did it go crazy? What were you doing when it went crazy? I wasn't doing anything. Okay. I'm not. This is not a.
An accusation. I'm trying to figure out what's going on.
Do you run into the same sort of thing?
[00:22:44] Speaker B: Yes, I do, all the time. And you have to watch your attitude. So this is probably from a caretaker's point of view, is you have to understand that their attack is not an attack on you. It's a result of a disease, a condition.
You have to answer back in a way that gives. That gets the information and does not elicit another reaction. And I know what I'm saying is harder to do than it is to say. Right. I really do.
But. But you have to keep that in mind. It's one of those Things you have to sign in your head. And. And I. I often use my. My techniques when, way back when I used to run a help desk that you have to. When people are calling you, they're in stress and need, and you're their rescue. And that's what you are as a caretaker. You're rescued. So you can't let yourself get too worked up. And I know you're looking at me right now because I've already talked to you when I've got myself worked up, but you have to understand that that's a no. That's your human reaction. You're it trying to get out, and you have to find a way to calm it down, to get to the help that she needs. So. And the most important thing you need to do when you see that is tell her everything's okay. There's. There's nothing in that phone that's going to hurt her. You know, it might be making a loud noise, but we can fix that ultimately, too, and eventually it will go away.
[00:23:59] Speaker A: So, yeah, that's. That's a really good point.
[00:24:02] Speaker B: And I think it's a really good idea for us to all know. And there's some people. You're right. My mother can't do anything about Amber.
If she could tell them anything about it, it wouldn't be anything reliable. So we could. We can go ahead and turn that on.
[00:24:15] Speaker A: Not for her.
[00:24:16] Speaker B: You know, I can react. You can react, but the people we're caretaking for, they don't need to be a part of that.
[00:24:22] Speaker A: And if it doesn't do anything but agitate them, there's no point in doing. No point in that.
And even if you just, you know, even if you don't have a dementia sort of thing going on, even if just, you know, at some point in time, if you don't understand the technology, you don't know how to say what's going on and say what's happening. You don't have the context for it. And you have to be patient in trying to pull that context out to help them out, regardless of who you're working with. Even if it's, you know, even if it was a peer, for that matter, you know, it's just not. Not being a difficult helper.
[00:24:58] Speaker B: By the way, it does happen on Macs. It happens on PCs and Windows. On Macs, you can go to notifications and turn it off. You can turn it off in a browser. There are some browsers that have it that way, too.
[00:25:08] Speaker A: Oh, cool.
[00:25:09] Speaker B: So you can go into Chrome and turn it off. So I always love it when we.
[00:25:13] Speaker A: Have these subjects where I'll know a little bit about it and then you go dig in and find out all the other options too. You know, so we. I love that. Can bounce each other. Bounce these things off of each other.
[00:25:21] Speaker B: Teamwork.
[00:25:22] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:25:23] Speaker B: That's what I'm talking about.
[00:25:24] Speaker A: Good team.
Well, I think you had. Did you have a couple more things for our list today? Let's see here.
[00:25:32] Speaker B: Not so much. I am trying to think about what I'm going to do for Thanksgiving.
[00:25:37] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:25:38] Speaker B: Holidays with loved ones. And I just wanted to sort of talk about what are the. Some of the things I've done in the past and maybe that helps somebody think of an idea or two about what they're going to do. So I have two situations. I have a mother in a home who has a caretaker and then I have a father in law who's in assisted living and they're both fairly close together. So what we normally do is figure out how to get one to the other and it's usually that we bring my mother closer to my father in law and we do something together.
So make sure when you're doing that, think about what you're going to be dealing with with your loved ones. You know, is it a visit where you go to them and you visit for a time and then you leave or is it an extended stay where you might bring them into a house where other people come in to see each other and there's some planning that goes along with that.
Make sure you got medication. Make sure that you know the rules about taking your loved one out of assisted living area.
The other thing is that you don't want to give too much exposure to people who may be in that kind of texting situation. It can be overwhelming. Yep. So maybe stage it in ways, you know, you don't have to be on Thanksgiving. It can be the day after. You know, it cannot. It doesn't have to be really in person. You can do things virtually that make a lot of sense where you bring family members over. So we've done a lot of that. And I might drop a little. Just some ideas about how to do that. Drop it in the notes. You know, it's time to start thinking about that. You might have to have conversations with your family and what. What a. What they're going to do and what they're willing to do.
[00:27:12] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:27:13] Speaker B: So we are actually six weeks away from Thanksgiving today as we speak.
[00:27:18] Speaker A: I can't believe.
[00:27:21] Speaker B: It'S coming. And then you know, right after that is the Christmas and. And Hanukkah holidays and you might have to do the same thing. So find ways to engage your people you're caretaking for and just think about how you can do it.
[00:27:34] Speaker A: And don't get hung up on a particular date.
You know, it's more about the togetherness than it is about doing it on a particular day.
We've tried to do that in our family over the last few years, especially when you get larger extended families trying to find the right date. We can get everybody together. There's no way. So just know you're not going to pull that off, especially on one particular day, and just kind of spread it over.
You don't call it the holiday season for nothing.
[00:27:58] Speaker B: Right.
Be opportunistic. You know, a 15 minute how are you doing? Is really good. But it can be staged in a way that whenever you can.
[00:28:08] Speaker A: Yep. And like you said, you know, try to think about there's going to be a limit that anybody's going to be able to run up against about if you. If you go too long, nobody will stay at the party too long. That right there fits. Fits to a lot of situations. Shoot. I don't want to be at the party that long time. So everybody's got a different tolerance for togetherness, I suppose is a good way to say it. Yep. And just be. Be mindful of that in all as many of the situations as you can, I think is a good way to go about it.
You know what? You reminded me of something else I need to talk about. There are unicorns. We have.
If you listeners, if you listen to a couple of episodes back, we might have said that we were looking for a property for my dad and that I thinking that unicorns don't exist. We were able to find something in the right price range in the right place that was available and had the right amenities that he liked. It actually worked out. And we're in the process of. We're in the process of making a purchase at this point for him and gonna get him a little closer to my brother.
He's gonna live within two miles of my brother here as soon as we're done with this. And then we got to get about selling his old place. So it's.
It finally came together. It finally came together. So we're pretty happy about that. And now I'm working through a while to get there.
[00:29:29] Speaker B: But once you did.
[00:29:31] Speaker A: Yeah.
Honestly, once it's. Once we found it and we made an offer and they accepted the offer, it's been going really fast at this point.
So we may. What made me think about it is the holiday season. We may have him in there before Christmas. So.
[00:29:47] Speaker B: Wow, that's nice.
[00:29:48] Speaker A: Yeah, no doubt, no doubt. So pretty happy about that. And it's going to be. It's going to be good all around for. For everybody.
I think it'll put him a lot closer to some. Some. Some more of his relatives and some people that he knew years and years ago. This is. He's moving back to a small town that he spent a lot of years in. So there's a. He told me the other day that the word is already out that he's coming back to town and he's getting calls from people saying, I'm so glad you're coming back and can't wait to get together with you. So it. It's just been good all around.
[00:30:21] Speaker B: So. Yeah, that's great. So, I mean, housewarming is in your. Is in your schedule maybe.
[00:30:27] Speaker A: There you go.
Yeah, yeah, no doubt.
[00:30:31] Speaker B: I'm gonna throw some tips in there. I found some good ones.
[00:30:34] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:30:34] Speaker B: About that.
[00:30:36] Speaker A: And.
[00:30:38] Speaker B: Actually seven tips. I'll just name them real quick too. I know we talked about some of them, but they're kind of interesting. Plan the environment around accessibility, which is a good one. Making sure that you. In a place where they can move around.
Simplify your gathering. Don't make it complicated. That's. That's a good idea too.
Modify food and dining comfort. So if you're bringing a lot of people in, do something simple that doesn't require you to cook for every one of them. You know, maybe it's all about treats. Maybe it's potluck. You know, something like that.
Focus on emotional inclusion and what you do. So it's about them, not about you.
How. How's that for a good. I think that's pretty good.
[00:31:20] Speaker A: There you go. Yeah.
[00:31:21] Speaker B: Make sure you manage comfort and their health proactively.
So if they have hearing aids that they have walking aids that they have, make sure you label things in case you're bringing multiple people into an area.
And keep it meaningful. But not perfect. But not necessarily perfect, which I think you hopped on before it's going to be. It can be just good enough.
So that was really nice.
[00:31:43] Speaker A: That's great. That was great. It's good advice all around.
Yeah.
Yeah.
See here we're at the. About 30 minutes or so here and I think I've gotten near the end of my list where about. What about you?
[00:32:00] Speaker B: I'm pretty done, man. So, I mean I think. I think the theme of it is. Is not. It's not to let the environment control. You control the environment, whether bringing them in for holidays or taking your time and getting the right place for your father, or, you know, being aware what's. What's agitating them and countering that with calm and a little sensibility and then frankly, enjoying yourself in the holidays, because that's what's for. To make this not so much stressful. So I think, for sure, really good things.
[00:32:34] Speaker A: Yeah. And doing that for yourself, you know, being aware of what's. What's doing that to you.
[00:32:39] Speaker B: As a caretaker, you deserve to have a good time. There's nothing wrong. And even if that good time doesn't include your loved one, it's okay. It's totally okay.
[00:32:50] Speaker A: Now I keep saying we're near the end of our time. We're really not. You keep bringing up things that made me think of other things. I need to say something. I think that. I don't know, maybe everybody does at this. At this point, or at least I do.
As a caretaker or just as a. As a kid of an older parent, do you ever get your. Get this guilty feeling whenever you're doing anything fun?
Yeah, you know?
[00:33:16] Speaker B: Yeah. It's part of the syndrome. I think we talked about it before. Caretaker syndrome is real, and one of them is the guilt that you have when you just have a good time and you're having a good time by yourself and you think, yeah, but every human being deserves enjoyment in their life. Every human being deserves to have time with their loved one, your wife, their significant other. And if you don't do that with the person you're caretaking with, it's not a crime. It's actually healthy for Europe for you to have that. It's called disengagement.
And you need. You need time to recharge. And there are lots of organizations that recognize that. There are lots of organizations that will come in and give you a day or give you a week, just so as a caretaker, and you should seek them out, whether it's the Alzheimer's association or just some of the caretaking items that we have from different elements, you know, everything from Parkinson's to diabetes, you know, they all recognize that the health of the caretaker is essential to what they do. So, yeah, just. There's nothing wrong with that.
[00:34:20] Speaker A: I guess what it comes down to is everybody needs to take care of themselves a little bit.
[00:34:24] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:34:24] Speaker A: It's the whole airplane mask thing. You got to put it. Put your mask on first before you can help any others.
[00:34:30] Speaker B: So yeah, including other caretakers in your group. So yeah, there's sometimes people suffer with those thoughts that you just brought up in silence and thinking, I'm the only one like this. But no, no, you're not. And you got to share and have that conversation with everybody else too.
[00:34:45] Speaker A: Yeah, everybody. Everybody has it. Everybody goes through it. Everybody should probably talk about it. It would do everybody get a lot of good. I really, really believe that if you can't talk directly with somebody, there are a lot of.
A lot of services online where you can talk to folks just journaling if you need to, just write it down. Sometimes just getting it out of your head and on paper, it's a way.
[00:35:06] Speaker B: Of talking to yourself.
[00:35:07] Speaker A: Absolutely, absolutely. Sure enough.
[00:35:09] Speaker B: And then lots of good tech that does that. Some recent ones, Apple has come up with something called journal and expanded it from the phone to the iPad.
There are lots of free journals out there you can get.
I might throw some of those in there too. Why not?
[00:35:23] Speaker A: So, yeah, that's great. Even Apple notes, or paper and pad for that matter.
I've been trying lately to journal some just analog, you know, just on paper with a pen.
And I can do it. And it does help.
I think there is something different there. I see all these influencers saying, yes, yes, this is the only way to do it. You should really do it this way because it does something different for your brain.
Maybe I kind of get that. But what I find is that it's been so long that I have since I have written anything of substance longhand that I get more aggravated with my.
The fact that I'm having my. My A's come out weird or I'm having trouble reading what I just wrote down than it is then I'm actually getting out of my head. So I go back and forth. I do some on paper. I do some electronically. I actually can get a whole lot more out electronically quicker.
I know it's not a productivity thing, but it's. But it feels better to me in some cases.
Yep. So you're gonna add a few things to the list on that one. Cool.
[00:36:25] Speaker B: Yeah, I will. I'm going to throw that in. I'm actually looking at some stuff right now that I'll throw in. No particular reason why I should pick one or the other over because I haven't tried all of them. But I'll stick them in there with some references so that other people can do that.
[00:36:44] Speaker A: Okay, well, all right, I'll quit teasing us with the end of the thing today. But I think we're about at the end of our list. And we just want to, one, thank you all guys for listening. And two, thank you for any sharing that you've done and you've told other folks about us. And we appreciate it if you could rate and review us wherever you listen to us, whether it happens to be Spotify or Apple podcast or Google Play or Amazon or wherever. But just if there's a way to say, hey, these guys are doing okay, they're doing a pretty good job, how about doing that for us? It really helps our channel. And we appreciate you.
[00:37:19] Speaker B: Yeah, we want you to notify us and give us a review. So grow the community.
[00:37:24] Speaker A: All right. Well, thanks, y'.
[00:37:25] Speaker B: All.
[00:37:25] Speaker A: We appreciate you spending some time with us. And we'll see you again soon.
[00:37:29] Speaker B: Yes. Happy Fall. Happy Fall.
