Muse

I don't think it's overstating anything to say that I was the first female to bring notoriety to our field as Minnie the Moose, the Vernon Community College baseball team's mascot. I once held the splits for the entire length of an extra inning baseball game in spite of excruciating pain and a severe severing of my adductor longest muscle that eventually required four hours of surgery and added two and a half inches to my left leg, forcing me to retire. I wrote a tale documenting that journey. A moosing grace, a mascot's journey to God and success in real estate. In the next hour, we will present information that's both shocking and enlightening

This need you have to be the smartest guy in the room is off-putting. I mean, I understand how people can love podcasts. I just never, they've never fit into my, into my day. I just have never gotten into the habit.

It isn't so much about what it is altogether. It's more about the modulation and what it is once it starts. It's a little bit of a groove.

Can you say apple?

Apple.

Can you say banana?

Okay, T-Bone, time for some serious crunching.

Well, all right, hello, good morning, and welcome, everyone, to a Monday edition of TBT All, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. Intoxicating to some, an acquired taste to others. My name's Luke Burbank. I am your host. You're still doing a podcast? Coming to you today from the beautiful Willamette Valley of Oregon. Oh, Ma, Pa, it's just beautiful. Where the rolling hills are still green and the trees are changing color, there is some fog that's been moving in and out intermittently. We've got the fog. This is such a beautiful part of the world that even when you're fogged in, it's still unbelievable. And just the exact right place and time for us to be bringing you episode 4,579 in A Collector's Series. Let the fun begin. Tonight, the Seattle Mariners will once again the far behind enemy lines in toronto canada trying to win the biggest baseball game in the history of the team and the history of my life you know if the hockey mobs can't handle me

yelling and heckling at the rinks i think they should stick to crosswords and knitting and i

will tell you i for one i am not nervous even a little bit when was the last time you your pants been a while so of course we will talk about that also we'll say hi to this guy longest running cobro of the show maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships he's also feeling extremely calm and zen about the seattle mariners tonight playing in game seven of the league championship series i'm not handling this well i don't feel competent i'm depressed i'm slouching He's Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.

Good morning, Luke. Can I start off the show today by telling you something that somebody told me this weekend, a phrase that I learned for the first time that I find so incredibly beautiful and calming for some reason that I don't even fully understand? And it may have to do with my high levels of stress and anxiety these days, which is a personal issue I'm dealing with on this end. and the saying has nothing to do with stress or anxiety it was just such a poetic thing that somebody said to me in the middle of the day yesterday when i was outside at my volunteer gig and we set up our tables under a bridge a big highway bridge so that if the rain comes we're protected and the food is protected we call that pulling a chili peppers we call that pulling a chili peppers under the bridge oh under the bridge thank you just waiting for the context that i could understand that a little bit better that is not i can't believe you didn't have anthony

ketis at the very front of your mind on this monday morning shame on you so we were under the

bridge i'm trying to think of the lyrics i don't even want to go that's not the lyrics what are

the lyrics close what is it uh i don't ever want to feel like i did that day take me to the place i love take me all the way you know who could help us with this is becca who is somewhere in this uh home right now maybe even overhearing this big chili peppers fan i think to the degree that it almost scuttled our relationship in the earliest of days because i thought i was asking a question that was like what is your favorite band of all time or something and i think she heard it as what's a band that you've listened to a lot or maybe seen in concert or a band that you know Thank you.

that you like and i think she said red hot chili peppers and i thought again peace and love to our pepper heads out there but i was like i don't i don't know if i see myself with someone who that is their like if that's the band that changed their life and then it took a few months and then we the conversation came up again and she was like that was absolutely not the question i was trying to answer with red hot chili peppers that being said and you said

lady knows the lyrics to under the bridge and you said well then i feel embarrassed standing here naked with just a athletic sock over my private area size small do you have anything in the

juniors department in terms of athletic socks anyway so you're under the bridge you're setting

things up for your pop-up i was shocked i didn't remember the lyrics of that though because that song i really disliked that song i really was not a pepper head myself but there was a period for people who are younger than us you don't understand there's a period of time where you could not live in america and not hear that song playing somewhere at any given moment like a car driving by the street your favorite radio station your least favorite radio station radio stations that are sort of in between everybody was playing that song on repeat your mtv's your vh's i can't tell if that is playing through the window or if you're doing that but anyway so i'll go back

no that was not a recording that was my voice reproducing the music of the red hot chili

peppers so in typical andrew fashion i've built this up way too much it was just a nice little saying we're underneath the bridge chili peppers reference insert here we uh it's a beautiful day and it's that it's a very you know it's getting to be very late fall i know you don't like to hear

that but it means the sun it's okay i'm good this year i have a whole new system i got a new mindset

and i'm locked in and it's a beautiful time of year right now don't worry about the future yet like it's just so beautiful and the sun though you really start to notice hangs in the sky in different ways so you get some pretty spectacular looking um i don't know just sort of like vistas and perspectives on scenes that you see every day or what have you and yesterday the sun was really low it's about you know 3 30 in the afternoon it's been a sunny day but the sun is low and then suddenly it starts raining but i'm out there with like a bunch of volunteers there's a really big crew and a bunch several of whom i'd never met before and it's just we're all having a really good time chatting and getting to know each other and we look in one direction and the sun is still out but it started raining and like kind of steadily like a big steady rain had suddenly started and we didn't notice at first because it's not hitting us but the way the rain is hitting the sunlight it looked absolutely magical some people were like is that snow because like you could just see almost every droplet of light but then if you turned your back on that scene and looked the other way like literally the opposite direction you couldn't see any rain coming down at all and it seemed like it wasn't raining there it was just this weird sort of perspective thing but we are all turning and we're looking at this rain coming down through the sun the sun hitting every single drop and this woman said it's a chameleon's wedding day what and we all just turned and stared at her waiting for the explanation and we're just like okay and she said it's a chameleon's wedding day we're like what she's like it means when the sun is shining and it's raining at the same time she says i think it's a lebanese expression it's a chameleon's wedding day oh my god i love it do you not love that i

love that so much and yeah why is that somehow steadying me on this monday as i think about the most important game in the history of the in the existence of the seattle mariners why is chameleon's wedding day providing me comfort i don't know but it is yes well can i tell you so

i texted that to a friend yesterday a friend was texting me about baseball and then i just inserted this in the middle of our conversation. And then I said, by the way, that has nothing to do with baseball. That's just something nice I wanted to share with you because I was thinking about it all night. And again, for some reason, that expression is somewhat calming to me. But then I started thinking, could this be, Luke, could this be an analogy for baseball? Like, think about where we were last night as the Mariners were playing some really, really bad baseball. And it hurt. It hurt to see our team blow an amazing historic opportunity. For those who don't know if the Mariners had beat the Blue Jays yesterday we would officially be in the World Series we'd be playing the World Series but we lost and we lost in a very kind of I would say embarrassing way because there were a lot of errors and things you just don't see all that often at least hopefully and so I started thinking about it I'm like well it's raining right now because the team is playing the way they're playing and we were hoping that this was going

to be a celebratory game but you know what else team is hitting into double plays to end three innings in a row which i'm not convinced is not a a record in postseason baseball i bet you think

it might bet you that's never happened right yeah i think i maybe i heard somebody say that anyway my gut says that has to be a record it feels like yes it was real rainy so it's rainy there but you know what else it's game six of the alcs and my team is playing in it and they've never been as close to the world series and so i thought you know what it's kind of raining and sunny at the seemed. it's a chameleon's wedding day. What do you think? Am I jamming it in there too much, or can I do that? No, my friend, I think that fits so neatly into our experience right now. I don't think that you're forcing that even slightly, and I totally feel the same way. I was pretty disappointed last night, although my viewing experience was kind of a unique one for me so far in this series because I was here in the sort of greater Salem, Oregon area in the willamette valley and becca and her family were having this big fall party that they have every year and like tons of people come over and there's apple cider pressing and just it's a wonderful afternoon and yeah the the weather cooperated and then i've got the mariners going on this laptop and i don't have the sound on um but i'm just kind of watching it and then throughout the kind of you know evening different folks are coming in and kind of going how are they doing or like is this still the playoffs or whatever and I'm kind of narrating and translating what's going on you know in the game and it was it was part of me was sort of like oh I'm not getting the full obsessive experience of watching this that I would normally at my house I'm on big tv and the stereos blasting the game everywhere but it was ultimately for me very it was a good thing that I wasn't allowed to fully engage with the game because it was so frustrating and there was so much rain that was coming down um as you know as it pertains to a bunch of specifics about gino suarez and other people etc that i won't get into here um but yes i i hear what you're saying i also had in the back of my mind yeah and we get to play tomorrow night and that's the game i guess because i kept explaining it to folks because you know there wasn't anybody else here who was as interested in the game as i was maybe maybe darcy my quasi sister-in-law who has become a mariners fan in the last week because i was on the phone with her i was texting with her and i said well something about the mariners and she goes i don't really oh no you know what i was talking to her in person and she said you know i'm not really i don't really get crazy about the baseball i said well the mariners are the only team that hasn't been to the world series and that for some reason was the that was the spark that she needed i very really care about them very relatable to me as a

as a fan of underdogs you tell me you tell me a stat like that i suddenly care about sports i

don't care about and it absolutely worked and so last night other than darcy i was most of the folks coming in i was explaining well i would like them to win this game because then they go to the world series but if they don't win this game they play tomorrow night and if they win that game they go to the world series and that was the sunshine that was this chameleon's wedding day that i was attending that i was officiating andrew and didn't even realize that you were the i was i was recently certified by the chameleon church of universal life i can i'm allowed to perform chameleon wedding days now and um yeah the fact that we get to play tonight is is a um that's that's a bit of sunshine and even if we don't win the fact that we took the american league championship series to seven games against another very good team and we got to have all of this fun um if it if we can decide that it's mostly been fun i think in retrospect it will i will consider it to be fun

You know what I mean? Yes, I agree. And it's been it's I told you like I sort of who knows how game seven will go. But I was really worried about something that felt cursed in the series. Like, oh, the same old Mariners. But like, listen, you can't make it this far and feel that way. If anything, it's got kind of like a to borrow a Browns expression from the early 80s. It's got kind of a cardiac kids feel to it. Like, well, of course, the Mariners aren't going to make this easy. Of course, we're going to go to a game seven. But that doesn't hurt. that feels like a team personality to me you know yeah we didn't get swept and we didn't you know

manage to lose to Detroit and we didn't by the way manage to not win all those games at the end of the season to even actually get into a position to go to the you know postseason like we we exceeded a lot of my expectation if you talk about my expectations from three months ago what I thought was going to happen as of three months ago versus you and I sitting here on this Monday talking about game seven of the alcs for all the marbles it's already wildly exceeded my expectations and so that's the sunshine that i need to keep thinking about um what is your plan uh tonight for how you are thinking you'll be viewing the game i will tell you in one moment but there's

one other sort of interesting thing i want to tell you about this chameleon wedding day thing and maybe i can say this as a warning to listeners if you've just you've just got your dj set up

You're trying to DJ more chameleon weddings? We could be a package deal. I'll officiate them. You DJ them.

If you're wondering whether or not I need fact checking, and so you're going to your internet right now and you're typing in chameleon wedding day, you will get the date, June 7th, 2008, because of course that was the date that Jose Chameleon, the Ugandan Afrobeat artist and musician, was wed. So just know that it does have two meanings. I've got a Google alert. It does. Anytime he gets wed, it's the first thing that comes up for me.

I Googled it while you were introducing me. I'm like, wait, I do have this right, right? And so I typed in Chameleon Wedding Day, and I just see June 7th, 2008. I'm like, what am I looking up? Oh, well, of course, it's Jose Chameleon's wedding day. Well, one piece of advice I'd like to give you, Luke.

What about the rapper Chameleon Air? Has he ever been married? At first, that's what I thought it was at first. Was that a Chameleon's Chameleon Air wedding day?

Chameleon Air's wedding day. um i well one thing i want to tell you about the viewing experience which is something that it sounds like you did at some point during one of these playoff games in the past week or two i have done for the last two games and has been a huge help is muting the national broadcast especially on the days that your team is really struggling i'm not even jumping on and i'm not saying i'm right or wrong i'm just saying i'm not reacting to necessarily that phenomenon where it seems like and maybe actually is true that the national announcers are always rooting for the team you're not rooting for i've been seeing a lot of people complaining about by the supposed or apparent bias in the coverage uh i don't i'm not saying that's not true i'm saying i'm not sure i do know that when certain narratives happen like uh you know vladdy jr just like being a slugger like of course the narrative is going to focus on him because of what an amazing postseason he is having and unfortunately a big chunk of that is happening at the hands of our beloved mariners i don't consider that to be in a game that we're losing by his hand i don't feel like that is bias under his eye under his watchful eye right um so i'm not even saying that but it's a real bummer and also i just haven't found it to be that great of an experience and so it's a little bit it does get a little bit tricky because i'm still watching i refuse to watch these games on my buddy's free Fubo that he sent me the login for.

What about my Fubo, which I could share with you?

That's interesting. Maybe send that to me after the game, but I got to be very careful with game seven. I got to be very careful with game seven. So for most of this, I've been watching these games via streaming services that we like to call extra legal, right? Little corners of the internet that will stream the games. And that's, you know, I'm not saying they've won every game that I've watched that way, but they've definitely gotten into trouble both times I tried Fubo. That huge, humiliating loss last Wednesday, I wasn't watching the Fubo because I know it's jinxed, but Genevieve was watching it on the Fubo that whole time. And I did tell her, by the way, the reason she was watching on Fubo was because it's too complicated to try to explain to her how to use one of the bootleg streams. But I was not going to be at home watching, and I don't think she realized that until she knew it, but she didn't quite realize it.

anybody at your address and by the way just to update people who might be listening for the first time which would be many people who were at yesterday's fall party who were like what do you do for a job and i was like well i do this podcast really um yeah i'll be doing it from the house tomorrow what do you talk about probably this party um so to the new listeners andrew over the last week a couple of times tried to watch these baseball games on this service called fubo that he was sort of borrowing from a friend and the games weren't going well and so you decided that that was probably why the games weren't going well because you were jinxing it by using fubo but it also appears that even if you're not home if anyone under if anyone on the property within the property lines of your home is using fubo the jinx is activated apparently

because i'd only tried it once and that was literally the inning where i think it was in game three where the Mariners were winning, but my feed was going down. I'm like, okay, I'll try my buddy's Fubo that he had given me, but I was trying not to use because I didn't want to be a mooch. And then I logged in and the Mariners immediately gave up, immediately gave up three runs and went on to lose that game in pretty embarrassing fashion. And so I was like, well, I turned it off and I said I'm never using that service again for the Mariners games. I will definitely want you to watch Silk Stockings as soon as the series is over. I assume red shoe diaries hey and usa up all night all night um but um the other day uh so i had not been using it but i was going to be uh with some friends watching it and genevieve's like oh could you set up the tv so i can watch the game when i get home but the game wasn't starting for like two hours and you can't start these bootleg streams that early and i said well and i did say in a text message i said i will set it up on our buddies fubo for you but i want it for the record oh no you know what i said this is a little bit this is a little bit bitchy if i can be honest with you i said well i could set it up but the only way to do that would be through fubo and i know you're staunchly against that because oh yeah because also new listeners the reason that this

family doesn't just have a fubo subscription is because uh genevieve was not a fan of the hundred dollar a month price tag on that exactly and so or even going in irony of Thank you. of watching the Fubo when she was sort of anti-paying for the Fubo.

Right, and also I sort of said, well, we could also split the cost with our friend who signed up, and we could each pay half of that, and she was still like, I don't know. She's like, you make your own decision, but that's not something I'm necessarily on board with. So anyway, so I did tease her a little bit about that, but then what I did was I did use the Fubo login, and I left it on the TV, because I'm not loading it on my TV. I'm just playing it through a computer just for simplicity reasons. I don't know if my friend has a certain number of devices it can be on or something. So I'm just trying to be as— Not that I've noticed, for the record.

Oh, that's good to know. Because I have it going—I have had a time where I've got my TV, my laptop, and my phone all doing Fubo and on different sporting events, which I think speaks to a life that is really marked by the right priorities.

Yes, exactly. Well, anyway, I've just been—as you might expect, and maybe this will come up in another story I want to tell you later in the show. I just want to leave a very light footprint. I don't want to be that person who's kind of like, as I used the analogy the other day, oh, I don't drive, but then I just rely on everybody else to drive me places. You know what I mean? I don't want to do that with other people's Fubo. So the other day, though, I'm like, okay, I will turn on the Fubo. And it was Wednesday's game. I turned on the Fubo, left the house. Genevieve watched like the first half of the game at home. And then I think left it on and the game was just a disaster. And so I'm like, okay, nobody's using this Fubo except for my buddy who paid for it. Like, in this house, nobody's using this Fubo to watch any of these. And maybe not even him. I think I did tell him. I think I texted him. I'm like, buddy, you're not allowed to. You know what? I think that was Genevieve's joke. She's like, tell him he's not allowed to watch it anymore. I'm like, done and done.

I like the idea of you, like, black hat hacking into Fubo HQ and just taking the whole thing down.

Just taking it away from everybody.

Just out of an overabundance of caution.

Exactly. But so this, I'm sorry, I'm way off track again. But I was just going to, you asked me about my watching experience. I've really, really enjoyed turning on the bootleg stream and then turning on not like a transistor radio or a regular over-the-air radio, but the radio broadcast on my phone, which you can actually pause. I can't like pause or rewind the video broadcast I'm watching, but luckily it's always significantly behind. It's like a couple of pitches behind the radio broadcast, even on the somewhat delayed radio broadcast that comes through the apps, right? But you can pause the app so you can get the video rolling and then open up the audio app on your phone, which I have connected to this nice Bluetooth speaker I got recently, and then just sort of pause the audio for 10 seconds, then unpause it, and you can really sync it up. And boy, during wins and losses, having my friends, the Seattle Mariners broadcast crew in my ears, as opposed to these, to me, I still can't get the personalities down of whoever this national broadcast crew is. I don't even get enough personality from them to be mad at them or to name their names, like Aria Stark. You mean Joe Davis and John Schmoltz? Yeah, that's right. We talked about them the other day because they were carving that turkey. I guess that's a little bit. But I don't know. During the games, I don't like to mix with the crowd. Anyway, I've really enjoyed that. So I would recommend maybe doing that again to help someone.

Or people could do what I did for sections of Friday night, which was listen to Bon Iver on the studio. oh while the game while watching the game muted because that's interesting i was not in any way in a crazed headspace on friday night uh when we were playing and uh winning mercifully but like what had happened is i was making i decided to make like a kind of a sort of a um impromptu thanksgiving dinner oh nice on friday i didn't go i didn't go anywhere to watch the game i watched the game at home and I um uh and I had one of my uh one of my like uh like tofu kind of fake turkey thingies and I realized I had some potatoes and I had pretty much all the fixings minus the Hawaiian rolls to make like a cozy kind of like Thanksgiving meal for one and so I was doing that all day and I was listening to Bon Iver while I was doing that cooking and then I had the game on like the pregame show muted and then there were ports points in the game where I got so nervous that I just muted the announcers and just started playing Bon Iverigan that kind of seemed to jumpstart the Mariners or get them out of some pickles when I needed them to get out of those pickles and so anyway I'm just saying that's another way that people can experience the game is with the the soulful

sounds of Justin Vernon I'm pretty unfamiliar with Bon Iver by the way I'm I remember and I don't know if he actually has a beard or not but I sort of consider that kind of that beard core

era of he is one of the few people he actually has an interior beard too that's how bearded he is he has one on the outside of his face and one covering all of his internal organs wow that sounds uncomfortable oh and medically dangerous and medically dangerous but also it makes me

appreciate um that he's doing all right but uh yeah i remember seeing him perform at like an outdoor festival i think it was the pitchfork music festival let's just

say 2005 because i'm making this story up anyway who cares good um but i just remember being like this doesn't because he was on a relatively big stage i was like this doesn't translate to this atmosphere right now like i could you could just not really hear it very well over the top

it's very spare at least the early that like for emma which was this album that he put out um i think that's the name of the album for emma comma something something uh it was very spare very kind of quiet haunting music which was really growing in popularity but also maybe didn't translate as well into the like let's say a pitchfork or lollapalooza yeah kind of a scene

and that's not a statement on the music i'll bet you i might even go through my phase at some point

i just haven't had it i would start with that record and i would make it for some it's it's you know it's very moody and so i don't know why for me it's it's always been a cooking album for me like i like to listen to it when i'm cooking for some reason i like that i like i don't exactly know why but anyway it seemed to work on friday night who knows i may break it out tonight we'll see because what i'm going to do is i i feel like for this game tonight i need to return to my home environment i need to have my shrine which by the way has been growing i mean that's the other thing if we want to just get into the wild world of silly jinxes every is it every game that we've won i think it might be at least the important games that we have won i have been at my house with my shrine when it's happened and like last night i wasn't at my house with my shrine you know and that could have also been something that messed it up for them and i also added to the shrine on friday night i added a north central little league pin that someone mailed me junior sluggers someone who uh this was the um you know the little league that i played oh north seattle I'm sorry yes I'm sorry yes and um and somebody who heard me talking about it like found a north central I might have said the wrong name too by the way north central little league pin and mailed it to me years ago and then so I taped that up next to the picture of my niece Gemma wearing a mariner's jersey and near the photo of my brother Sam and Dave bedecked in mariner stuff and then for reasons that I don't even understand Andrew well it's because they were these two pins were pinned on the apron that i was wearing to make faux thanksgiving dinner for one so one of them was my north uh seattle a north central little league pin and then the other was a pin that i got when i went to that russell wilson event for alaska airlines it just says dangerous and they were both pinned on my apron and i was like for some reason it seemed funny to me and also i don't know whatever may be effective to tape those both up onto the shrine And so there is now a North Central Little League and a Dangerous pin that are both maybe because Russell Wilson has been part of some very good sports moments in my life. You know, some of my very favorite football moments involved Mr. Dangerous Wilson himself. So that is that's what's going on there. And I need to get back to the shrine so that I can do all of my weird machinations and mojo building tonight to try to send them all of the vibes that I can.

That's really interesting. I'll be honest with you. When you first, I think before the show, you mentioned really briefly that you had brought a Dangerous pin into the shrine. And I was like, oh, that's not good. But it sounds like, just like, I just don't feel like. Yeah, that's what I was going to say. I'm now realizing because I was like, the mojo on that is rough right now. But you said you did that on Friday, which Friday was maybe one will go down in history as one of the most memorable Mariners wins of all time. So I guess I can't poo-poo that if it worked on Friday.

By the way, if things start off poorly for the Mariners, I'll throw that Jonah right off the boat. I'll take that dangerous pin out of the shrine. I will chuck it all the way to the Columbia River if I need to, happily. I've got everything on a short leash tonight, Andrew. That's exactly right. I'm not giving any of these magical items. None of them are getting more than an inning, and if they get into a tiny bit of trouble, I'm bringing in the next magical item.

You have a keep-on-truckin' pin that will replace that dangerous pin in a second, the moment a runner reaches base. Exactly. Yeah, so anyway, that's my plan. I do plan on watching from here, and I think that's the right move for me. I'm trying to kind of keep things low-key. I sort of feel like on a Monday night if I go to a bar and things get kind of wild, it might set my week off wrong. I hope I'm not making the wrong choice. I am here in a city, like, almost every game I'm getting a text message from a buddy of mine, Nick, who recently moved, I think listeners know Nick Jarn, who's been on the show quite a bit, and he's recently moved back to Seattle, and it's been wonderful to see him, but he's much more of a, I don't even know if he would describe himself as an extrovert, he's just a normal guy, but he likes to go out, and he's really been looking for the kind of fan experience here in Seattle. He's a baseball fan, but mostly a basketball fan and has really enjoyed.

his time in Dallas where people were watching basketball games you know it's like you go out and everybody's like kind of rooting for the same team and he's looking for that energy in Seattle I think he's struggled to maybe find that same sort of kind of community and he's been like like after the win on Friday he was like where are you celebrating and I was like oh I'm dog sitting and so I was just kind of like I feel like I've been letting him down in the energy department sort of but i do sort of feel like i don't know man it's a monday night and i uh i could go out i'll let you know obviously tomorrow if that changes but right now my plan is to i think stay put and watch here and again listen to the local broadcast you could also i mean the thing

is if they even though it's a monday night if the mariners manage to win i have a feeling that all of seattle will turn into a rolling which is doesn't necessarily maybe strike me as your exact scene unless you'd already been a part of it like if you're at a bar and then there's a big celebration but like you could be out walking the streets of seattle not long after the game probably enjoying a lot of impromptu excitement from fans and yeah you know just all of that energy like i mean it will be pretty crazy if they if they somehow pull this off and i i would say the odds are sort of long just because you're at a slight structural disadvantage when you're the visiting team literally the fact that the other team gets to hit last there's a kind of an energetic thing so but um but if they do pull this off and they win and the headline in the seattle times tomorrow is you know mariners going to the world series like i think i'll cry actually like if i'm being totally honest which is not i don't know if i've i didn't i don't think i cried when the seahawks won the super bowl um maybe i did i don't know i mean i was very excited obviously I think this one, to see that in print, I don't know why it needs to be in print, and to go back to this reference again, it needs to be held up by Harry Truman for some reason in my version of this story. To see that in print somewhere permanent and no one can take it away that the Seattle Mariners are going to the World Series, I think that will be, I think it will actually be emotional for me if it happens. And if it doesn't happen, again, it's a classic chameleonare's wedding. That's right. where that was also it was some sunshine for me that they that they played this well and got this far and made these memories for me so you know um pure hearts clear eyes can't lose that's what

i'm saying about tonight andrew absolutely and i also and i was referencing this to you before the show a little bit um i have just a pit in my stomach these days anyway i'm just kind of really filled with anxiety that is like i'm managing in a way that is well maybe i'm mismanaging it but It's sort of seeping into this experience for me in a way that sort of bums me out. I'm very distracted. But looking at the clock here, it's like 30 minutes into the show. Should we thank donors and then I can come back and tell you about the, I don't know, mid-year crisis I'm having? Yes, absolutely. Let's do that. Thank you, baby.

Hey, let's thank those donors right here, right now. These are the people making TBTL possible. This is 100% listener-supported. As I tried to explain TBTL yesterday to people here at that fall party, people were polite. It was a very polite group. Nobody asked, yeah, but are you making any money on this thing? And I would have said to them, a little, a few small monies, and it's because we have these donors who voluntarily donate their own money to the show, and that's how we get to do this for our job, five days a week. Folks like Rose Zitnik in Phoenix, Arizona.

Nice. Thank you, Rose. Actually, can I say something to donors here, Luke, directly? You can listen in if you want to, but this is me speaking directly to donors. Those donors who donated at a level that means they will be receiving the TBTL Greatest Hits vinyl record, I want you to know that I got a very encouraging email today from the people who pressed the vinyl i uh i guess i don't have to go into too much detail here but they recommend a certain length of record they're very concerned about sound quality and i guess there's some flexibility in sound quality depending on how long you want each side of your record to be so the shorter amount of time the more fidelity or whatever like if we were recording a uh some sort of a you know like a very stereo centric trippy trying to i want to drop that band what's that one one word band that you love that i know less about but everything i hear i love by them with uh like it's kind of bass driven and there's some vocals but it's like real jammy you have no idea what i'm talking about krongbin krongbin is exactly what i'm talking about thank you my dude ah like if you're producing krongbin you want to keep those uh

those sides pretty tight right you want like a three minute song that takes up the whole one side of the record so you can have as much fidelity as possible Exactly. And so I knew that I was outside the bounds of what their time recommendation was, but I also knew that we were doing spoken word here. And so I sent an email last week via John Sklaroff, who's our intermediary, and just said, hey, listen, I know what the recommended time is, but I'm coming in at this time, but it's only spoken word. Some of this is like, you know, MP3s captured off the radio from back in the radio days. Like, do we really have to worry about that? They're like, no. I just got this email this morning, Luke. They're like, you're golden. Nice. Send us the files. So we are getting very, very, very close on all of these things. And I can't give you a specific time. But I do worry. And by the way, I just want to make it very, very clear. This is 100% on me. This was my project. And for various reasons, I've dragged my feet on this. And I apologize to listeners. But I want them to know that this hasn't slid off the front burner. This is, like, something that is actively being worked on, and hopefully soon, I mean, soon, not hopefully, soon, you will be holding the vinyl in your hands.

And it's going to be really something. Like, you were sending me some of the sort of, oh, okay, sorry.

Lowered expectations, lowered.

Darren Booknight, is Darren Booknight in KC, South Carolina? He's taping that, right? He's Tebowing that. We can't spoil this for Darren.

No, I just don't want you to raise expectations. don't say that it's going to be a super wonderful wonderful record because then what do we have you know I have to live up to that

well I'll say that what I've seen of the artwork I was pretty impressed I was pretty happy with this whole thing as I think will be Jane and Ross Johnson in Everett Washington

hey thank you Everett just above me

how about Jeff Stewart out there on Bainbridge Island Washington beautiful Bainbridge Island indeed thank you Jeff thanks to steve pruitt who's in ferndale michigan now my time up in whatcom county when i lived in bellingham the bay city uh there was a ferndale that's near bellingham and so i you know when i saw ferndale on this list i thought well we're talking we got to be talking ferndale washington home of doug peterson one time philadelphia eagles coach the one that took them to the super bowl and called famously called that play at the end of the first half the philly special But no, this is a totally different This is the Ferndale that's in Michigan

And also not a dazzling donor, Doug Peterson, I believe Not anymore

Not after I criticized some of his coaching decisions Later on at Philadelphia Thank you, Steve Thanks to Denise Tipton, who's in Las Vegas, Nevada

Ooh We may be darkening the door at some point Me and V's

I know, I'm excited for you to make that trip I think you'll It's funny because there's a lot about Las Vegas That doesn't strike me as sort of Andrew style, but then actually there's just so much going on there that there's also a lot of it that does strike me as Andrew style. Las Vegas, something

for everyone. Yes!

They need to get a tagline. They need to figure out how to get a tagline for the city that people repeat constantly and to each other in varieties of situations. Yeah, because it slips

under the radar. People are like, is that in Nevada? Is that where that is? I've heard of it. Last I checked. Yeah, that rings a faint

bell. Thank you to our donors for making tbtl possible we really could not be doing this without you so thank you so much hello and welcome to top story all right andrew top story how is dog sitting going because uh you've been you guys have been responsible for a couple of dogs the last week and

we've been getting updates what's the latest yeah well i mentioned before the break that i uh which isn't actually even a break anymore but we call them breaks it could be someday that's right yes no hopefully not not thanks to our donors but um i'm in a really high anxiety mode right now which i think i have been for a while now which is something that i should probably get examined and not just talk about on a podcast as the um as the now cliche saying goes uh men will rather start a men would rather start a podcast than go to therapy but um yeah something happened this weekend that like i'm having like a much i'm assuming much bigger emotional reaction to than is probably called for and this is one of those stories that i'm going to tell you i'll try to be as try to be as i guess brief as possible but i don't know how brief this is going to be and i'm a little bit worried to be honest with you that i maybe once i tell this story i'm not going to get the sympathy of the listeners or maybe even you but that's fine I will just tell you my emotional journey with this whole dog sitting thing and why I'm a little bit um why this weekend was really actually kind of rough for me to be honest with you um and well that's all right and again this is probably on me and maybe external factors or other other things that maybe were worth examining but if you don't mind I'm just going to like very briefly and economically rewind to how we got here. How did we get here?

We're on the second to last day of Andrew and Genevieve dog-sitting the neighbor's dogs, plural dogs, which was about, I don't know, a couple of months ago. Genevieve was coming home late one night, happened to run into our neighbor next door. By the way, we love our neighbors next door. People who are probably, you know, maybe in their, I'm going to say, maybe early 30s at their earliest, I'm guessing. But, you know, kind of younger than us. Musicians, very nice. When they have parties, they invite us over. Or we invite them over to our parties when Genevieve is having some shindig or whatever. We don't hang out all that much. But definitely, like, very good vibes. And I really like these people. Their lifestyle different than ours. You know, a little bit more of a rock and roll lifestyle, I would probably say. More rock and roll than your lifestyle? Can you believe it? Can you believe it? Do you want to take a moment to examine that? Like, how could that possibly be? Yet here we are. I have several Sonic Youth records. But anyway, so I just wanted to set that up as context. So Genevieve came home one night and pretty late and admittedly like kind of made this decision on the fly and without checking with me kind of said, hey, I ran into the neighbor and I volunteered to watch their dog. At this point, it's just one dog, Maggie, when they're out of town for about a week in October. And I said, oh, OK. But I'm like, that's pretty good. You know, we're down to one cat now, and we're very dog-curious as a family, as a couple. Instead of maybe getting another cat down the line, we've been thinking seriously about getting another dog. And I was in agreement with Genevieve that this could be a good experience for us. We know the neighbor's dog. I say hello to her over the fence. Her name is Maggie a lot. She seems absolutely lovely. And I do know that she's a very high-energy dog, which was something that I was sort of telling you, you know, before this even started, before this dog sitting started. I was like, I'm a little bit nervous about that. But I think the original idea was that Maggie would be spending more time over here with us. Maybe we would try to introduce her slowly to Bingo a little bit. They already know each other because Genevieve takes Bingo and walks around the yard on a leash, around our yard. But Bingo and Maggie are sort of friends through the fence. The irony is like Maggie is like kind of a mid-sized dog that is like a pit mix or something. And so like, you know, kind of a very sturdy dog, but just so, so lovely. but also a little bit like just high energy but also maybe a little bit nervous because she's she's like kind of scared of bingo a little bit while bingo is just like kind of chewing grass and wanting to touch noses with her through the fence it's not like bingo the small cat is the one who's scared but anyway we thought it'd be fun to maybe um have this week we could find opportunities to bring maggie over here and uh and you know just dog sit and then i told you a couple of weeks ago that we hadn't really heard any more information about even when this starts

All I knew was sometime in October, didn't really know the length of it, didn't know much. And then I coincidentally ran into my neighbor, one of my neighbors, at like a grocery store thing at this U.S. chef's store that I go to and sort of was having an awkward neighborly conversation across kind of the checkout area. I was at one checkout station, he was at another, and we're sort of like kind of chatting briefly, everybody can hear us, and then as he's leaving the grocery store, I sort of yell, hey, are we watching your dog? And he's like, ugh, yeah, well, my girlfriend brought home another dog, a puppy now, so now there's two, so we should talk, and then he leaves. And I was just like, well, that's kind of a huge, that's kind of a huge change in plans, like that's not like a, and also just to like kind of throw it out there as in like, so now you're watching two dogs, like without saying, hey, is this okay, or bringing us in. Spider-Man meme. now there are two of them right yeah and i was just kind of like okay so i i had i had um i remember calling genevieve and just being like well i had we had an interesting conversation with the neighbor at the store we should probably lock in like what's going on here and so i i had expressed my concerns about a second dog and she said well i i i'm supposed to go over there to meet the new dog anyway let me just sort of you know sniff out the situation as it were and then and no but she knew that i had some kind of concerns about the two dog situation because that just changes a lot, especially a puppy. And then what we learn is this puppy is bigger than probably a lot of people's dogs who are listening here. I'm going to put the puppy at 35 to 40 pounds right now. I know this because I know Maggie, the three-year-old dog whom I knew, was exactly 49 pounds. I remember they had just gotten her weight or something like right before we took over. So I know she's 49 and um goose the younger dog uh is not that much smaller than her yet he's still a puppy he's gonna be so huge he's got luke he's like a biggish puppy right now but he's got these paws that are so huge i can't even imagine what he's gonna grow up to be i mean hopefully i'll see um as he grows up next door to us but anyway so genevieve kind of comes back and says well i did agree that we can watch both dogs it'll it'll be different but like we can handle it and but one of the complications is This new dog, this puppy, does not have its shots yet. They're planning on getting him fixed and getting his, like, vaccinations and everything once they get back from their vacation overseas. And I guess the idea there, which makes sense, when I eventually met them the day they left, they said, well, we didn't want him, like, recovering from, like, a surgery or something while we were away. I'm like, okay, well, that makes sense. But, again, having two – and this dog is kind of crate trained or being crate trained.

And so he's got a crate that is not super big. It's about the size that he can fit into and he seems fine with it. But like, it seems like, you know, it doesn't seem like the best way for me. But again, I don't have dogs. I'm not trying to judge other people's ways. I know that crate training is a real thing and there's a way to do it. And he seems generally okay with it. but basically the responsibility that the neighbors are saying is like, we have a fenced in yard. You can just like go over there, let the dogs out during the day and, you know, feed them twice a day. I mean, basically the instructions that they gave us were essentially cat sitting instructions. Like, you know, which is something I'm much more familiar with. Like I watch our friends cats and you get into a routine with that. But I really was like, dogs are different than cats. Like when I go over there to see these two dogs and they're both, again, And I want you to know, I'm not using high energy as like a euphemism for being misbehaved. They're not. They're not misbehaved dogs. They are so sweet. And they're so sweet with each other. And yes, they're like young dogs, so they kind of like wrestle play sometimes. But in a way that even that I'm kind of impressed by. You got to keep in mind, this is coming from me, a guy who was really, as a kid, I was so afraid of dogs, Luke. I didn't understand the difference between playing and barking and just aggression. like I did I'm sure at some point on the show and I would assume you wouldn't remember this I probably told you about the first and only time a dog sat before this and it was when I was in college and I hadn't really at in college I hadn't been around many dogs and so I think I still basically had my somewhat fear of dogs carried into young adulthood there and one time a co-worker somebody older than me an actual adult at the radio station I worked at said hey could you house sit for me when we're gone for a week and I had I said yes and I forgot that she had a dog I thought they just wanted somebody in her house just to have somebody living there and then when I went over to learn the house I learned that they had a dog which was again a medium-sized a big dog and I had never I still hadn't had good experiences with dogs at this point I'm like oh okay and then it's my very first night going over there when they were gone the dog was like putting his paws on the ground and bark bark bark bark barking at me and everything and oh wow at you but he was just playing and but i but i didn't know dogs at all and i was just scared of a dog barking i mean i had to call this woman's father he was my emergency contact a man probably you know i'm in i'm in college i'm in you know late teens early 20s i had to call this i don't know 60 65 year old man to come rescue me from this dog that had me like trapped in a bathroom or something he came over he's like he's he's he tried the the man was trying to be nice to me Nancy's dad was trying to be nice to me, the retiree. But he's like, the dog is playing with you. Like, this is, I can't remember the dog's name. But anyway, that's my only experience. Cujo. I mean, in fairness to you, that's a scary name. It wasn't Cujo. It was Razor Teeth. Oh, sorry. Anyway, so sorry.

I told you I'd try to make this economical. But that's my experience with dog sitting. Now, in the intervening years, I have a lot more experience with dog. Not like I have a lot of experience, but I have, like, no longer do I have negative experience with dogs. You know, I've met some good dogs. And so I got to be honest with you. I'm almost, like, sort of proud or proud is not the right word, less shame. I don't know. Maybe somewhat delighted by the fact that as these two dogs who are both, like, kind of have these, you know, they're both, like, muscly kind of dogs, lovely dogs. But as they're sort of, like, wrestling for a toy, like, literally on top of me or whatever, like, I'm not worried at all. Like there's never a moment of me being like scared of these dogs. They are, they're, they're high energy dogs, but they're two of the, just the most, I just, I've really fallen in love with these dogs. And I think that's part of this narrative too, of why I'm feeling kind of upset today and why I kind of had a bad weekend. Cause here's, here's how it was going all last week. I tried to tell you about this a little bit and kind of omitting some details, but Genevieve was kind of doing the main feeding in the, in the morning and afternoons. But I was really concerned about them being alone in the house and everything. And when they're in the house, the puppy, the big puppy is supposed to be in the cage at all times. And here's the deal. So I was like kind of going over there, spend time with them, like in the yard. Like ideally you can just leave them in the yard and I could come back here and they could spend hours in the yard. But like I'm just so anxious about leaving them. I'm like there's just like one little gate, you know, it's like a chain link little classic gate from the 60s or something that separates them from the wide world. You know, so I can't tell you how paranoid I am. Like I, I was saying the other day that I worry about my anxiety as a potential future dog owner, like seeping into the persona of the dog, which I do think that animals can sort of vibe off of your energy a little bit. And so I always worry about having some nervous wreck of a dog because I'm a nervous wreck. I don't know if there's validity to that or not. But when I'm dog sitting, I think there's a level of anxiety that has ratcheted up a lot more. And it's because I'm responsible for now two lives that are not my responsibility usually. It is so important to me that the people who are coming home.

If something happened to your dog, it would be between you and the dog and your God. And when you say your God, you mean Genevieve, right?

Yes. Yes, exactly.

Whereas this is, like, all of the stuff you're nervous about, and then it's someone else's dogs where if something were to happen, you would then have to also explain to them what had happened. So it's just extra stress.

Right. And so this anxiety that I have around this is probably not the healthiest thing, and I appreciate people who are way more chill. And, again, given the instructions that we were given by these folks, which were very minimal, they're very chill. So I just tried to remember, like, they're chill people. I'm just going to keep these dogs alive and keep them happy. and also love on them and play with them. And so I even, I went to the store, I bought them a couple of toys because I noticed that they were sort of, I thought they were sort of fighting over one bone that they had, like some like a fake bone. So I went and I bought another like scented bone or something, I guess I didn't realize that those plastic nylon bones that last forever also have like flavors on them or whatever. I thought, oh, if I bring this, then they can like kind of each have a bone, but it turns out that's not how it works. Maggie is the older sister, so she just took ownership of it and then she took that and I started worrying because now like she loved this thing so much that she was just like digging up all these holes in the yard to bury it she just buried it inside she kept finding places to bury it under Blake and she just like her only game with this toy was not to chew on it but just to bury it then unbury it bury it and unbury it so it was weird to see this instinct kick in and then I'm like maybe I shouldn't have gotten that bone like you know they're digging up the yard now but I also got them this ball that they play with Now, during all of this time, I'm trying to spend as much time over there as possible. As I mentioned, I've also had big work projects I was working on last week with this vinyl record or whatever. And it was not the best timing for me, to be honest with you. And again, I kept thinking, they just said, leave the dogs in the yard and they'll be fine. But I'm like, I can't just do that. Like, as I think I described maybe to you or Genevieve earlier today before we were recording, it's like my personality is I'm down here in my studio working. And if I hear the dogs next door start barking in the yard, I'm like, oh, no, what's wrong? And so I go out and I see what's going on. But then if I'm working in my studio for another five minutes and there's no barking, I'm like, oh, no, it's too quiet. And so I go over. And by the way, they don't bark a lot. It's only when, like, another dog walks by. And I guess that's just, like, kind of normal dog behavior. But then I was, like, apologizing to neighbors. I'm like, I'm sorry. I'm just dog sitting. I hope I didn't scare you. They're like, no, dogs are allowed to bark at other dogs. Like, it's part of the code. Like, okay, fine. But that's just to give you my sense of both anxiety about this, but also, I mean, I hope I'm coming off not totally as a crazy person, but as a responsible person, as a person.

Yeah, you're taking it very seriously. I'm taking it very seriously. And you're really trying to do right by these dogs and by extension by these dogs' owners.

Yes, but I also want you to know that when I am going over there, I'm also really enjoying my time with these dogs and really falling for them, like honestly, and having some good times. And so, and then Genevieve and I got in the habit of, because again, if Goose is supposed to be in his cage when we're not there and he has to be inside, well, then we want to be there as much as possible. So for several nights last week, Veves and I would go over there with a couple of Coors Lights and a pack of cards, a deck of cards, and we would watch Columbo episodes and we would snuggle with the dogs and play cards for like an hour, hour and a half or something like that. And as I mentioned to you, I don't know if I said this on the air or not, but on the very first day that I went over there, Genevieve was at work. She had fed them in the morning and then put them in the house. I went over there, and it was an absolute disaster scene. They had destroyed one of the neighbor's shoes, which are all just kind of in this pile by the door, and just absolutely destroyed. It was a Doc Martin or possibly a fake Doc Martin. All that was left was the rubber sole, not the Beatles record. and just like pieces of leather all over the place or pleather or whatever it was and also destroyed one of their beds, just like foam all over the place. Oh, dog bed, not human bed. Yeah, dog bed, yeah. Whatever bedrooms they have or all the other doors in this place are closed. So we just have a kind of access to the living area and then the kitchen. And I will mention to you, and again, I don't want to sound judgmental about this or even classist about it, but like this is not a living space that I am particularly comfortable in. You know, it's very dog centric. It's very messy. And I'll just say unkempt. And again, people can live their life however they want. I really don't want to sound like a snob about it. But you also.

know that i am a and again this might be this might be something that i should work on but i'm just like a very neat and clean person and being in spaces that all that seem very sticky and dog drooly and and just whatever is not a comfort zone for me that's not where i want to be on my monday and tuesday nights right but yeah so the the day that they had destroyed that thing i picked up as much of the mess as possible the next day i i found my old vacuum and i went over there because it seemed like kind of a big mess i went over there and just sort of cleaned up all the threads and all the leftover everything i vacuumed their their rug for them and uh one of the dogs maggie is what they call a happy peer which is she's again she's not misbehaved i would say that that's maybe her one flaw is that like when you see her she cannot help herself she piddles as you said and so when you get over there you just try to get her outside as fast as possible to give her love because she's just going to jump all over you and want love, which I love. Like, I understand the joy of having a dog. Like, the joy of going over there.

It's like how you are when we do the sound check in the morning. Exactly. I have to get you outside immediately.

Exactly.

That's how excited you are to do the show.

I'm trying to lick you. It's one of the reasons we don't do the show in person anymore. But it is, I mean, boy, talk about a rush. When you go over to someplace and these two creatures that you love are looking at you and jumping all over you like you are the only thing that matters, I get it. I mean, dude. i get it and so i've but the one day i wasn't quite sure if maybe she peed on the floor a little bit i mean the one day she definitely did and i wiped it up but also i thought it might have gotten on one of these blankets that they have thrown kind of haphazardly on the couch area so i was like well that's not that's not good why don't i just take this blanket home and wash it anyway so i actually took a couple of blankets on different days home and washed them just to one of them i kind of had a bunch of drool all over it when maggie was chewing on one of her bones and i was like well that'd just be nice it'd be nicer for me if i'm coming over here to spend time with them to have these cleaned but also just i i luke i'm so paranoid and this is a big part of this too i told you my history and anxiety maybe around other people's dogs but also i have a lot of anxiety being in other people's spaces when they're not there like i just want to be so respectful like i was doing things that i considered to be nice which was like taking blankets home and washing them and bringing them back but i was also thinking would this be intrusive if they found out i did this would they think boy this is kind of pushing the limits of neighborliness like is this too much i literally had a little bit of a like what if one of them is allergic to scented stuff my detergent you know like these are the thoughts i'm having like i'm not doing any of this carelessly and i'm trying not to be a budinsky or like i'm not trying to like have them come home and i've like organ i've alphabetized all of their belongings and i've

made it you're not trying to turn this into one of those home makeover shows where right exactly they removed a wall or two or whatever. Deserving family that's got some kids with some stuff going on, but now the community has come together. Or how about like the Simpsons, when they rebuild the Flanders house, the house that Love made. We made this house with Love and some concrete. I believe this is what Apu said. And then they go into one of the rooms that Bart worked on. There's a poster, and Rod and Todd, I think there's something wrong with the poster. It's inappropriate or something. They move it, and he goes, I wouldn't. That's a load-bearing poster.

A load-bearing poster.

You were trying to create like a reveal when these people came home and was like, you've cleaned their house and fixed their life because their life sucked and you fixed it.

Yeah, I am not doing that. In fact, I'm like sheepish about it. I'm even kind of like, boy, I hope, you know, like if they were to see me carrying this vacuum, could I look like a pushy neighbor or something? But I hoped it wasn't. And again, I just want to remind everybody, it was like I took it over there not because I don't – I didn't want to just clean up. I wasn't cleaning up after them. I was cleaning up after an issue with the dogs destroying a bunch of stuff in their living room, right? And so I thought that that was fine. And again, on the blanket thing, I was like, I can probably do this without seeming intrusive. But I realized maybe it is. And those are just things that are going on in my mind to sort of give you my mindset. Those two things do not come back, at least as of yet, into this story. But I've just been very anxious about keeping the dogs happy, keeping the dogs alive and in their yard. And also being in somebody else's space, generally speaking, no matter what the space is, if it's a super fancy space or a space that is not super fancy, I just feel a great responsibility being alone in other people's spaces when they're not there. And so all of this is sort of I realize kind of in hindsight now how much this has gotten my kind of anxiety motor running the past week. and it hasn't been fully examined because I'm mostly having a good time with these dogs and there were a couple of times I was like boy it'd be kind of nice to be home just throwing darts now I haven't thrown darts in three days because we've been watching these dogs but that's okay and there's a little part of me I will say that if there's any judginess it's a little bit like wow these folks just really threw this at us gave us very little instructions and again sort of treated this like it was a cat sitting situation It was fun. as what they expected the interaction to be but we're going above and beyond that especially with trying to spend real quality time with these dogs and keep keeping one out of a small crate for extended periods of time right yeah and so that's all what's going on and then on friday so this is friday of the big mariners game the game that starts off not so great and it looks like it could be it could be a pretty pretty disappointing loss for the mariners vives and i start that at 5 p.m here at home we're watching listening to the local broadcast as i recommend but i was telling oh that's right did that game no no did friday's game start at three luke i think that makes more sense it did okay this makes a lot more sense so the game starts at three in the afternoon sorry there was no newsletter on friday everybody so this makes more sense and then as it's getting closer. I can't not think about those dogs being alone over there. At this point, I think they're in the house. We feed them around five. Around 4.45, I say, I'm going to go over there. I'm going to feed the dogs and then spend some time with them. I'm going to listen to the rest of this game, or at least for a while, I'll just listen to the baseball game on my phone, in my headphones. I don't even really mind that that much. The game isn't going well. Mixing up the mojo isn't such a bad thing and so i go over there by the way i've already spent this is now friday

around five o'clock midday on friday i was over there they had like maggie had dug this big hole in a part of the yard where i've seen them kind of yelling at her for digging a hole before and she kind of dug up some wires like cables or something along the side of the house i'm like oh this is call before you dig maggie so i actually like took their rake and i was raking the dirt back in that's a good joke i know that you get mad when i don't acknowledge them um and And then and then I don't add that to your list of things. And then I like I even swept their sidewalk. And then I realized like and I am this is maybe kind of important context for later, too. But like this whole time I am I'm making some travel plans that I have coming up to go back to Cleveland, take care of some stuff, kind of some serious stuff. And I'm on the phone with my dad and my headphones for a part of for a bunch of this time in the afternoon before the game had started. And I'm in their yard and I'm kind of sweeping the sidewalk a little bit just because I'm a putterer and I'm I'm talking on the phone to various people making kind of various plans. And I cleaned up one thing and then I just started kind of sweeping up their their sidewalk and everything, not even for whatever it's worth, not even really not even really realizing I'm doing it in the moment. That's just like when the puttering takes over. But like also their their deal with poop is they let the dogs poop in the yard and then you go and you clean it up. And they have kind of a big version of one of those things that you would put down on the ground and then sweep into it. Like if you were sweeping up a movie theater or something like that, only it's a little bit bigger than that, like a dustpan kind of thing with a, you know, big pole. But then they have a little rake. And so I've spent the week going around, like just putting that thing on. And they left it like mostly full of shit for us. Like it was not empty when I got there. It was like maybe half full. And so as I'm like scooping up and they go to the bathroom a lot and they're big. they're like human size and so i'm going around with this little shit rake in this shit bucket like several times a day and like scooping this up that's the stuff of nightmares for me it's really really gross and on friday and i was kind of thinking like this thing is not going to be useful to me as we continue to fill it up and so early on i'm like at some point i'm gonna have to empty this thing they haven't told me where the garbage is they haven't mentioned anything they so i on friday when i'm kind of again like kind of like puttering over there and just trying to be there with the dogs as much as possible during the afternoon i go home i grab a big black garbage bag i put the whole i put the whole poop bucket thing in there and kind of turn it over and it wasn't as bad as i thought i had gloves on and it actually wasn't it luckily emptied pretty easily i would have been dressed like dustin hoffman in outbreak it was so it was i had to really get out of my head for it because if i thought about it for a second i would have retched i have a pretty bad gag reflex but I bag that up I take it I find their garbage in the way way back you take it to shoreline I put on a Baltimore Orioles cap you know it's funny in going over the greatest hits tape I think now if I ever this story were to be on another greatest hits tape all of the little references like that I have to take out like the Baltimore Orioles hat will mean nothing

to future generations of TBTL listeners because that that bit will have been long forgotten um but anyway I uh I just feel like and again I'm not looking for a parade with this shit like I don't even really want them to notice any of this truly like I don't but it was just like for my own you're doing this for your own level of comfort exactly and so but I mean honestly leaving us this shit bucket was just like so gross and I clean it up or whatever I even look to hose it down because then you have this thing it's still just like it just looks like it's something that had been digging in the mud

only it's not mud. My friend, you're talking to America's number one bidet evangelist. Yes, exactly. You are talking to the rest of the world. person about the need for water being applied to that situation oh and by the way just one other thing about this is like so they have there are two different sort of sections of this house next door and we're looking at we're looking after the dogs who live in sort of the upstairs and then our other neighbor is their cousin and she's the one who was living here when we first moved in these folks are been living here for maybe two years now she's been living here she's been a constant. And there is some relation. I believe they're cousins. She might be his sister. I'm not exactly sure. But I had even texted her before I emptied out this poop bucket. Just said, hey, Kelly, just so you know, I assume you know this and I think that you're out of town as well because that's why I think she wasn't watching the dogs. I said, I think you're out of town as well. But just in case, I want you to let you know that Vives and I are watching the dogs upstairs And I'm going to have to walk across your yard to empty this this poop bucket thing. And I don't think I put that in the text, but I just don't want to scare you in case you're home and you see me in your yard. You know, again, just to like say, like, I'm really self-conscious about being in other people's spaces and not ever wanting to seem like sort of like kind of creepy or something. And so all of this is Friday afternoon. And then I told you, we're watching the game Friday night. I go over there, feed them. I'm watching them. I'm listening to the game on my headphones, just sitting on the porch. Goose is walking all over me. Goose thinks he's 10 pounds and he's walking all over me with his muddy paws and I don't even care. I absolutely love it. He's one of those dogs who wants to love on you so much. He's just kind of like, can I be inside your skin so much? You know what I mean? Like, is there some way we could meld as a unit? That's how lovey Goose is. and so i'm petting them and kind of just sitting and then and then the and then um gino hits the grand slam and i'm hearing people in the neighborhood celebrate and i'm like oh another another huge moment for the mariners and i'm not watching it on tv but that's okay you know like i'm over here i'm just very very happy and i get a text message around this time or a little bit earlier from my buddy paulie you know paul he's my best friend from since high school like a brother and he's like hey i'm in your area for some reason and um just thought maybe i could swing by. I hadn't seen him in a while. I'm like, okay, yeah. He's like, I'll pick up some beers. I'm like, okay, I'm dog sitting. Why don't you like go next door? Tell me when you get here. Vives will let you in to our place. She's in the basement watching the game. And then I'll meet you over there. So anyway, I kind of wrap up with the dogs. Let's say it's about, I don't know, whenever that game kind of wrapped up. And I put them back inside and I go over and I'm hanging out with Genevieve and Polly after the game is over. And we're not really doing much. They're just sort of hanging out being very very chill for a couple of hours and then around eight o'clock I want to say at night I say well listen I need to go check in on the dogs one more time like I feel like do you guys want to just like go over there and spend some quality time with them because that's what Veves and I were doing we're spending quality time with the dogs for about an hour before putting them

to bed for the night and putting Goose in his cage so I'm like you just want to come over there and meet the dogs he's like oh yeah of course and so the three of us go over there and um i'm doing the thing that i've been doing which is when we're over there i've been trying to send them a wrap up of photos from the day of their dogs because when people cats it for our cats that is what i really love like i love it when they're like here's some photos of your cats enjoying what they do and it de-stresses me when i'm on vacation so i'm trying to replicate that and i've been doing that for several days and they even noticed the new toy one of the new toys i got the dogs are like thanks for the new toy and i was like you're sure no problem i never get to buy dog toys or something and in the back of my head i'm a little bit like hope they didn't see that as like overstepping like i i'm thinking of myself maybe as like the the stereotype of the the nosy mother-in-law from like a 1950s sitcom or something like that you know yeah right dream of jimmy and i'm hoping i'm not overstepping by getting the dogs toys they didn't have i just really wanted them to be happy while their folks are away you know so anyway um we go over there around eight o'clock at night and uh we just go into their house we get maggie outside we let them run around a little bit because maggie's gonna do her happy peeing or whatever and we go inside and genevieve just sits down and goose immediately gets on her lap so i'm taking a photo of of genevieve and goose together so i can send it to them and i take a photo of maggie chewing on her new toy on the couch and I am now scrolling. I'm looking for another photo from the daytime from them playing in the yard that I can add and I find it. And so then I open up my WhatsApp app, which is how we're communicating with the neighbors because they're overseas, right? And where they are, there's a huge time difference. Eight o'clock at night for us, about the time we're over there, is like kind of mid-morning for them. It's about 10 o'clock or something in the morning. And so that's where doing most of our communicating. So I open up the app to send them these photos of what we're doing right now in their house. And I see that I had just missed a message from them, like literally less than a minute earlier, that basically said, the cameras show that you brought a stranger into our house.

We are not comfortable with you bringing strangers into our house. Oh my God. Sounds like you're. Look at that text. So it sounds like me. Again, this is from, I've given you like a half hour of context from my perspective on this. Theirs might be very different. Theirs might just be like, hey, we don't like strangers in our house. And I think there are people, because Genevieve was telling a friend that she's like, well, that's reasonable. Like, don't bring strangers into people's houses when they're not there. I think there is a narrative where that makes reasonable sense.

I can tell you that narrative right now in 30 seconds. The narrative is someone has an immaculate home that is full of valuables, and they are paying you to watch their dogs. and you bring somebody into the house when you're there as a paid person to watch their dogs and you didn't clear it with them. That is the time when someone gets to send that message. Nothing about this setup, this lead-up, in any way justifies them suddenly having thoughts about you, a responsible, wonderful adult, bringing a different, responsible, wonderful adult, your friend Polly, into the situation.

And I want to be clear, like in their original text, it was definitely finger waggy and it was definitely like you could tell that they were upset with what they just saw on the cameras there was some language in there like I'm sure they're lovely people oh by the way they didn't say someone this is actually key I'm kind of mad I messed that up they said we see that you're bringing people into our house we're not comfortable with strangers being in our house and they said what are the strangers going to do wash the dishes right now here's where I okay I want to be careful about a couple of things here first of all I don't want to be classist about it like I've really been examining that as if to say well I'm just saying that a class issue well i'm just saying here's what i here's i you can say what you want i just want to be very clear about something i want to say like you had mentioned like if it was a really nice house i don't want to say that somebody who is more wealthy has more of a deserving right to have that attitude than somebody it's their space and and people can feel about their space however they feel it and this is a lovely space to them and and that's fine i don't want to be too judgy about what their space is i kind of set it up before to let everybody know that this isn't like this isn't like oh this is so great we're dog singing so we get to go take advantage of those amenities which is sometimes part of dog walking watching right and i guess that was just

just just to be clear i think that was more kind of what i was well first of all the me the critical thing is if you're getting paid or not but also yes yes i want to i'm totally i've been thinking about that a lot but go ahead yes the paid thing just the the thing i was saying about the beautiful house that's full of valuable things i think really what was behind that was most of us had an experience maybe when you're a kid and you're either watching a pet or you're babysitting or something and you get to go to this house that's actually way nicer than your house yes and it's like like you said that's kind of the benefit it's like hey have anything you want out of the fridge and they have like snacks in their fridge that you don't have at your house and it's just like it all feels like kind of a you know part of the part of the payment is that you get to have this fun experience in in somebody else's home or whatever and that just but again i hear what you're saying and i certainly don't mean to say that you know someone's economic situation is it defines whether or not they're allowed to have feelings about their who comes into their home but certainly like everything you've told me about this doesn't sound like it just sounds to me like the favor has been so firmly being done from you and genevieve towards these neighbors and and

anyway so keep going so anyway yeah no and i that clarification though luke was not me trying to correct you but i just don't want because you know who knows who will hear this i do not want anybody to think that that's like that i yeah that that is how i feel about it like if somebody has if somebody feels very protective of their space and they have that rule that's fine people's space is their space this is a situation where number one if that was so let me go through the issues with this if that was a huge concern that is definitely something you need to tell us up front but again i don't think that they considered this whole situation at all i don't think they consider this that big of a favor i think that they just are again treating this like cat sitting or something i think that if i were hired you know through a service to do this and i were a stranger that is absolutely the rule you don't it's absolutely the rule you wouldn't bring your friends over there um and again how they live is up to them and i don't want to be judgy about it but i want to make it very clear this isn't some space that i'm going to because oh guess what they have a foosball table and we love playing the foosball table i don't even like foosball to be honest with you it's just too difficult i'll take air spinners never win andrew uh i and so it's i just wanted my point of all of this was this wasn't some place that i was excited to go over to because it was like hey cool we can go party at the neighbors now i'll be honest with you we took a couple of beers over there with paulie so maybe they did see on the cameras three people are coming in and they have like a six pack and a hand and it wasn't even a six pack by the way it's like four beers in a box but it's a few small beers and by the way and again not that this should even have to be said but like i wasn't even drinking up until this point like i want to make it just i don't think i have to say that but this just wasn't a we were super partying and now we're like gonna go over there like i was just like listening and watching the game like none of this was going on i had just taken a shower as you you know i don't know what that has to do with anything but i'm just saying that we were in a very domestic like kind of mindset and we're just like well we were having a time with our friend Polly over here but now we need to interrupt that to go take care of our responsibility do you want to go meet the dogs and that was it and so there's that aspect of it I'm not going over there because it's like fun times I'm going over there because it's the responsibility that I feel and you would

so much rather be in your own very comfortable very clean lovely home where you have the stuff that you like including your record player and your dartboard and your everything and the idea that like how much you were going over there only because you care about these dogs not because it was an upgrade in your evening experience we were not lost on we're listening to records luke we

were literally listening to the silver jews record that has that song that they put on there only to make people mad that you don't like we're literally listening well maybe honestly maybe these dogs are doing you a favor forcing you to leave that record behind i don't say that to goose you as it were i say that because it's it's a fact of when i came on i was like because i almost skipped it because we were hanging out and i was like oh luke wouldn't like this you're like luke and i got in an argument in australia no but anyway but it's just like it's not like we're going over there for any reason other than to care for the dogs not because we there's some advantage to us going over there and so we get this text message and again it does say something like i'm sure but here so the thing is accusing us of taking people over there but also the cameras show us that you're bringing people into our home this is the first I've heard about cameras oh that's a good point cameras are they indoor or the outdoor now if there's only a camera on the outdoor like that's fine but also I learned this and this is maybe just because of my naivete regarding like security cameras because we just don't have one I remember being at my parents house one time and my dad was like look you got home late last night like nothing was wrong I was hanging out with my sister and I got back really late years and years ago when I was visiting my folks in Ohio and he showed me his ring cam of me getting home and what I didn't realize you could hear me because it was kind of raining but I had walked the last mile and you could sort of hear me huffing and puffing I'm like you can hear my breath on that thing and so now I'm like well what are the cameras and were they were they picking up things we were saying because sometimes the door has to stay open to for the dogs to go in and out and i have and now i'm like i have no idea no idea over the course of several days almost a week what they have seen and what they have heard now i want to be very clear there is nothing that i did in their house that i would be embarrassed about other than going a little bit maybe commenting to genevieve about certain states of things as far as talking about things I remember Genevieve saying I could see this not being your ideal situation I remember her at one point saying like even for me this is a little bit much um and so I understand why you know you being a real neat nick or whatever not the most comfortable space um but like you just don't personal conversations between me and Veve which I don't think we had but you just don't know and again this might be generational some people might be thinking like yeah in what house in 2025 wouldn't at least have an outdoor camera and it's true that vives and i are probably in the minority in america on that so maybe there's just an expectation of that now but it just hadn't really occurred to me that i was on camera either indoor but possibly indoor and outdoor i'm sorry definitely outdoor but potentially indoor and outdoor at the same time i don't know and all i know is i'm getting ready to send them a joyous text message of their dogs

being loved upon and having a great day and i'm sending that to them because it's morning where they are and i want them to know that everything is good and safe and i go to open this and they had literally just texted me because we had literally just gotten there were there maybe three minutes at this point i just had yeah also it's like it's like how's your vacation going that

you're literally i mean i'm sure that what they have is an alert yeah a push notification but

even so but like to be talked to and again there was some language in there like i'm sure they're lovely but we're but like but it was definitely like a we it not only are you doing something wrong and we are without a doubt reprimanding you for that i'm being reprimanded for sure it is we caught you doing something this feeling of we're being caught doing something yeah when

the only reason this is hollering circa 20 right exactly which is a real triggering thing for me

and that's sort of why i kind of set this up to say that like Thank you.

There's probably another narrative from their perspective where maybe this all makes more sense, and I'm a basket case, and other people who watch Dogs don't have all of this anxiety and hang-ups going into it, but I am who I am. So I just wanted to tell you the version of why this set me off for the rest of the weekend. So I respond immediately. Looking back, I just wish I had sort of – I didn't say anything awful. I just said – it was just stupid. I was so flummoxed. I was so flummoxed. I just said, this is my best friend from high school. He was like a brother to me. I'll ask him to leave. But I am reading this. This is the truth. I say to Genevieve, like Genevieve and Pauly are kind of talking, and Genevieve's petting the dog, and again, we just got there. And I say, Genevieve, no, no, no, we just got a note from the neighbors. They don't want a stranger in their house asking us to leave. Genevieve laughed out loud. She thought I was pulling one of my stupid-ass Andrew jokes, where I just say a lie. It was so absurd to her that she said, ha, ha, ha. And I was like, Genevieve, no, we got to leave now. We got to put Goose away and we got to get out of here. And we left. And then so I responded to him like, that's my best friend. And I'll ask him to leave or something. And then we all just left. And then I got this response back from them that, again, was something like, I'm sure he's fine. It's just we don't want people in our space. This is our space. Please ask in advance next time.

Oh, my God. when you're doing us this incredible like life-changing life taking up favor that's going on for over a week would you please ask next time ask next time as if it was kind of like hey guys

we're thinking about having a party at your house like i'm still concerned like what is i don't know what they think the threat is now if it was actually more than one person maybe if it looked like we showed up like certainly if it was like there's me and veeves and three other people i could definitely see that being weird but like we show up at eight o'clock to like pet the dogs and just look after him for a little bit and put him down for the night and like put him to sleep for the night i should watch my language when talking about dogs versus babies to send them over the rainbow bridge for the night i was you know i don't like to be reprimanded anyway i didn't know i was on camera like i am having an onrush of emotions and also this is where i realize when And it becomes like an hour later, and Vives and I are back home, and Pauly has left. And we're watching a Columbo at home. Luke, I don't know one thing about the Columbo. Genevieve keeps responding to things on the TV. We're playing cards on our couch now. And Genevieve keeps on responding to things that are happening on the TV, and I have no idea what she's talking about. My brain is spinning with adrenaline and anger and really hurt. I don't even want to get choked up, but I think part of this is how much I fucking love those dogs.

right well that's the thing that i keep thinking of in all this is that if i were in your shoes and i got that message i would just want to be like well um please go i'm going to use a bad word here please go fuck yourself into infinity find someone else to watch your dogs for free in your gross ass house this is just me triggered saying this and then i would storm back to my house and then the problem is you know who loses in that maggie and goose exactly exactly and so now you're in this impossible position where it's like this what they have done is so wildly inappropriate to me but of course you love these dogs and so you you can't just you can't just tell them where to stuff it that is the owners because that just hurts the dogs right exactly so after

the like uh please ask us next time or something i think i respond and again like in the none of this really made a lot i don't think i was being super articulate i think i wrote we have been spending much much much i remember writing much three times i said we have been spending much much much time over there to make sure that the dogs aren't lonely to take care of the dogs we stopped over briefly we will change up the routine i said we will change up the routine and then the guy wrote back we're all good we're fine like we oh we trust your we trust your decision making or something like that we trust your judgment he said no no we're all good we're all good we trust your judgment i'm like don't fucking tell me you trust my judgment when you just said you caught me on tape doing something that you think is violating your space if that was a again i've said it now i don't want to spend the rest of this like me spinning and repeating the same things but you can imagine that i went to bed that night still really upset and woke had dreams about it and woke up like saturday luke and this is where this is probably my own emotional uh weaknesses or whatever like i just was i was just like coming down from something almost like almost chemical i think in my mind i was still so hurt and and mad about i was very very angry i was very hurt i do think there i think you're actually right about maybe that idea of we've talked about it so much on the show me being hollered at as being something very triggering for me especially when i think i'm doing the right thing um but you know vives i'm kind of happy to say vives is very much in lockstep with me.

she's more emotionally balanced but she's just as insulted and basically like well we will you know finish out this tour of duty and but then that's it you know these folks said when we get back they're like oh we couldn't appreciate this more we're gonna make you dinner when we get back i remember the night they said that i came back i'm like so i'm gonna be punished for doing this thing like i don't want to go over there for dinner um and that would be for anybody like i don't like you know what i mean i don't like going over to people's houses for dinner and saying well i don't eat this i don't eat that no it doesn't make sense like i just that's not my thing and um and then you know sort of seeing their kitchen and the refrigerator that i think should

have a hazmat warning on you're like okay we will accept you making us dinner as long as we can make

the dinner and it's at our house and you don't come and it's just us so unfortunately like i'm not so well whatever i don't want to get ahead of myself but there is a there's kind of a co so that that's just me being really really upset and then on on saturday veves is still you know we're both still i think i'm spinning a little bit more than her but she's still very upset and it just keeps on saying how disappointed she is she's like like this was such a good experience these we've been taking care of these dogs we love these dogs um and she's just like really really disappointed in the whole thing and she also and again maybe some people listening could say well why would you not expect to be on a ring cam or something which is i think kind of reasonable i

wouldn't have expected it although i might have maybe looked for it like noted it because if i do want to you know rob that place stupid right to know if i'm on camera but i don't as a person who has i have like a google nest cameras at my house i do not think of it as um uh i do not think of it as something that anyone should ever assume and if there was ever anybody like staying at my house or whatever i would definitely say hey just so you know like there are ring cameras they're by the way not inside the house that would that also strikes me as very odd and i don't know i

by the way i don't all i know is they said cameras you know what i mean that you say cameras funny sorry but you know that that's camera you know what i mean they didn't say hey we saw in our ring cam like all we know is now there are cameras involved and like so that's another part of this too which maybe might sound like me overblowing this but I'm just being honest about like my weird stew of emotion that is now feels like almost like certain chemicals are being released in my brain like I felt really kind of violated which is maybe a word I don't want to use because it's such a strong word but I will tell you that the next Saturday when I'm still feeling really weird about things Genevieve left to go to the shoreline, no King's March. And I was home alone. I can't remember what it was, but there was a moment I was doing something in my own house and I had this weird nagging feeling of being watched. And I was like, Oh my God, Oh my God. Like that's in, again, I'm not trying to make it sound like I'm a victim of something, but it immediately made me think of like, Oh, when you hear stories about people who've truly been violated in some way like that, some sort of, I don't even know, they call them peeping Tom. I don't even like that term.

A hidden camera maybe in somewhere or somebody looking in their window, a voyeur.

Yeah. The fact that, honestly, like now I don't even like to use the word peeping Tom because it's such a cutesy name for something that I understand can just be, that must, I could understand how that could like ruin, ruin your life or chunks of your life or take a long time to get over as far as just trust or being alone and having your own privacy. And so there was just like a whole bunch of stuff swimming through my head. So after he had responded, like, just ask us next time, I never responded again. And basically, and Genevieve has been very cool about this. I don't think she's super a fan of me not, like, kind of going over there today. But I just said, Veves, I'm not going over there anymore. Like, I didn't really want to do this. I had concern when they just suddenly made it to dogs. And I didn't really sign off on this. And I'm not comfortable over there. I mean, obviously, I'm just really, really mad. And I don't know what it's going to be like when they get back. And so, oh, wait, hold on. the code on the story is so Genevieve basically has the same attitude of kind of like well we still love those dogs I'm still going to take care of them obviously but we need to dial it back a little bit and so she's like I'll just go this is Saturday morning she gets up maybe around I don't know eight o'clock or something and lets the dogs into their yard and just comes back and just kind of comes back and we can kind of hear if the dogs are barking every now and then we can kind of hear it if a dog if another dog is walking down the street and they bark we can hear it but i'm also i still have this non-stop little anxiety motor going because i'm just still responsible for these two dogs in in some way and just leaving them in the yard it's just like they can get up to things and i'm just still kind of like what's going on are they there are they not i can tell you it was almost exactly 9 40 in the morning now at this point i have not slept that well the night before and I'm still sort of laying in bed but still very much shadow boxing them in my head and going over this over and over again sleeping very fitfully which if I'm using that correctly means just fits and starts and just feeling not well rested and shitty and trying to sneak in some extra sleep late in the morning reading my book it. And Genevieve's like, okay, I'm going to go. I let them out at about 8 o'clock. They've been in the yard now for about an hour and 45 minutes. And, like, I'll just go let them back inside. And usually I would have been out there kind of poking my head over the fence every now and then, making sure they're still in there, that they haven't found a way to escape or something. Genevieve puts on her, like, flip-flop. She's wearing her pajama pants. She goes over next door. As soon as the door closes of our house, I hear Genevieve leave. I pick up my phone, and I see that there is an email. on the neighborhood text chain that says lost dogs. And I open up the email, and it's from a neighbor down the street that says, has anybody lost two medium-sized dogs, a black one and a brindle? We have them here. And I am like, this is the only way this gets worse. Actually, she didn't say we have them here.

She just said, did anybody lose two dogs, a black one and a brindle, question mark? And I'm like, OMG.

worst nightmare achieved we need to re order the tbtl greatest hits album something just entered forget shitting your pants in the kingdom something just entered the discourse that it is two missing dogs

never used

the world's shortest most upsetting story when I go on these

stem winders i'm never even sure i'm i get very insecure so i appreciate you saying that um oh my

god dude i am my mind is has been blown multiple times throughout this conversation i i see that

the email had just come in or i don't even note the time of the email i just get up because at some point in the past hour and a half as i've been like trying desperately to fall back asleep by doing my game where i try to think of actors who have names that begin with the first same letter and go through the entire alphabet starting with alan alda and then bob alaband

and then charlie i would have gone adam arkin but okay no dude i swapped those two in and out

very nice yeah yeah by the way i'm very proud of my k which is kira knightley that was a very

difficult one think of it because the because uh for some reason that doesn't come to mind

immediately that's very good and i skip i because i don't think there is an i anyway um genevieve has just left the house, and as Genevieve leaves the house, I grab my phone just to see if anything's up. I see an email that says two lost dogs, question mark, with this information. I run to my side door which kind of opens up to the neighbor's side of the house and I yell, Genevieve, Genevieve. She's like, yes, and I can hear that she's got now fear in her voice. She doesn't have her phone. She's left her phone behind. Very classic Genevieve. I look because I'm like, Genevieve's phone is on her end table she's not even like looking at this i yell are they there she's like no where are they and i'm like we just got an email from a neighbor that says law and it has anybody lost these two dogs and she's like oh no so i am now like rushing to put on pants and some shoes genevieve i'm assuming is just going out to the neighborhood to start canvassing basically or to start like looking for the not canvassing would imply that we had posters made up already for this instance but like to start like looking around the neighborhood and i'm just going to get out there as quickly as possible, but I'm also responding. Then I go back to the email and I'm like, when was this sent? It was sent at 944. As I'm responding, it's 945. So one thing is really good, which is this email didn't come in an hour earlier and neither one of us were looking at our phone. But also keep in mind the phone number on the tags of these dogs are not our phone number, right? They're the neighbor's phone number and their phones aren't working because they're in a different part of the world completely and so i respond to the thing i'm like uh the we're dog sitting for the neighbors um you know do you have them here's our phone number we don't get i don't get a response

right away because this is all just happening can i ask a question please yes are the neighbors on

the text on the email chain i have no idea but i would doubt it i would highly doubt it okay this is very good well well the thing well they're going to know though because so here's what happens luckily this part of the story Luke is not super long and drawn out that's why I said this is more of a coda what happened was by the time I'm responding Genevieve is already down the street and sees that a neighbor I'm guessing the husband maybe or partner of the woman who sent out the email already has the two dogs and they're on a they're on a leash like a two dog leash that he must have had they must be dog owners and thank goodness like again like just leash enthusiasts who knows what they get up to I'll let you know if they ever let me house sit I'll have all the dirt on them because you know how I love to do that and so

So luckily, what I don't know, while I'm kind of getting dressed as hurriedly as possible, is Genevieve's already sort of met this fellow. She said that the fellow kind of didn't give her his name, but it seems like he wasn't maybe trying to be rude. He was just like really discombobulated. He's like, we've been trying to call. We've been trying to call. And Genevieve's like, well, that's not our number on the tags. So point about our neighbors definitely know that they're going to come home to a whole bunch of voicemails about like we have your dogs. And also we wouldn't keep that from them anyway. but we don't know how the dogs got out so Genevieve you know has the neighbor go to the cameras yeah well exactly exactly so Genevieve has the neighbor walk with her bring the dogs inside puts them inside and sort of like figures out what happened well their yard is all fenced in and in part of their yard they have the same huge hedge we have and our hedge has a chain link fence that goes all the way through it and I don't know if they're if this part of their fence doesn't go all the way through the hedge or if maybe there's just like a weakness in it or something but what they've done or somebody has done is put up like some green gardening fence you know the stuff that's maybe about two and a half three feet high and very it's like plastic no this is metal this is wire oh it's metal this is wire but it's it's not like it's not tight-knit like chain link fence it's like almost things would kind of grow up it or something it's like a the weakest thing you could possibly imagine it seemed like it was just sort of set up there well that one of the dogs i'm assuming maggie who's just been digging like crazy just kind of knocked the whole thing over just pulled it down because these dogs are higher high energy anyway and we all know that pets really miss their owners and stuff you know and now and i've been spending so much time over there that i've been possible they missed paulie they missed they missed paul exactly but you know they made a really strong connection in those 45 seconds you were all inside the house so luckily the missing dog drama ends pretty quickly because the neighbor brings them back thank goodness those neighbors got the dogs and that they had a leash and were able to handle it because I don't know what I would do if I would see two pit bulls walking you know pit mixes walking down the street I don't know what would have happened if they had gotten as far as the cemetery I don't know what would have happened if we didn't realize for an hour that these dogs were roaming around the neighborhood they were still together which I loved but oh and by the way one of the reasons too that like the whole thing about like the original plan was we were going to watch one dog and bring her over here more was now that there were two dogs, we couldn't bring them both over. There were definitely concerns about Goose even leaving the house because he's not fixed and doesn't have his shots. And also, I didn't want to separate the two dogs because if they don't have their owners, at least they have each other and they clearly have a bond. And so now, we never separated them at all. So now, Genevieve bring the dogs back over to their house and the fence is compromised. The whole green gardening fence thing is just sort of pulled down and so she puts him back inside and has to put goose in the middle of the day in his crate because he's supposed to be in his crate at all

times when he's in the house alone she you know uses the whatsapp thing to text the actual neighbors and let them know but it was like middle of the night to their time hours later they get back with us they're like oh sorry about all the drama we'll be home soon and now for the past couple of days so that was all on saturday that was saturday morning that the dogs went out it's monday now so for the past two days essentially Genevieve has been on dog duty trying to spend some time with them and she did say she spent a little snuggle time with them yesterday she wanted me very much to like kind of um go over there at least once today and I just said Genevieve I really I'm just not comfortable doing this anymore and this was something that you signed up for like can you just kind of figure out a way to take care of this and uh she was very very cool about it I don't know um I don't know if that hurt her feelings or whatever. I think she understands I want to be a good partner, but I was also kind of like this just isn't my thing, and I'm just dealing with a lot of upset emotions right now, and I do not want to go over there. I just don't want to go over there. And, again, I feel very much like I'm overreacting to this whole thing in some ways. Like I just think that there's another narrative that doesn't go on for an hour and that doesn't involve a lifetime of anxiety and not liking to be hollered at. an emotional weakness or whatever, but that's where I am right now on this Monday, and they're supposed to come back tomorrow at some point, and I don't know exactly when. But I have not, we haven't been, other than Genevieve texting them and letting them know that the dogs got out, like there's no way that they haven't noticed a vibe shift. First of all, if they have their cameras, they know that I haven't been back over there. When I was spending copious amounts of time in their yard cleaning up, looking for things, cleaning up poop, doing all this stuff, they know that i'm not there i they sent they haven't heard from us for a couple of days they texted us this morning and said hope all is well we're you know we're now in like hong kong and you know on a layover and headed home or something and uh i just didn't respond and so there's no way that they don't know that there's been

a huge vibe shift since they basically dressed me down um yeah and uh and that's it and so Genevieve worked from home for partially today and and is looking after the dogs and supposedly they'll be home at tomorrow at some point and I don't know if they want to raise this like I'm happy just not talking about it and just being like I I don't want to I don't want to have a war with all of my neighbors you know that neighbor across the street who's a total a-hole

and like and tore up you've got to figure out a way to pit them against the neighbor who likes to tear up signs and somehow...

And I don't want to hate these folks. They're different than us. They have maybe different expectations or whatever. But I can't help but feel that if you don't trust us enough to do this and you don't trust who we would bring over for a small moment, then you should have hired somebody to do this. And I keep on thinking about how much would this have cost for the amount of care? Oh, a lot. Like a lot of money in this economy. I'm talking thousands.

Like in a thousand dollar range,

for seven full days for seven full days or because the alternative is

if you really had the expectation well I'll let you finish and then can I give you

yeah yeah and I'm basically done but that's something I'm sort of thinking about too I'm just in this mode now of like if they want to address this again I'm trying to figure out if I just let them say what they want to say and just say okay won't be a problem in the future and just like leave it at that or if I want to kind of explain like that if you trusted enough us to do this but you didn't have the trust in our judgment to be in your space and the decisions that we made going into this, then you should have hired somebody. And I don't know. I just don't want to have the conversation. I just want to coolly let this drop and obviously never engage with this again. And as I told Veeves now, I've had two dog-sitting experiences in my life, and two of them have both been just pretty rough for very, very different reasons at various stages of my life. I'm like, I will not be dog-sitting anymore. It has not turned me off of getting a dog, by the way, more than ever. Like, I love those two dogs over there, and I know that I have the ability to care for dogs and love them. And so Veeves and I will continue that conversation. But I will never – cats sitting, you know, like my buddies who I cats sit for, I love them. They're very, very close friends. We know the routine. You know, that's fine. but I will never, like, on a fringe case like this again, and especially with dogs. I just think dogs are a bit much.

Well, I think your feelings are so valid on this, and I had the exact same. When you were just, like, sort of reading the first message that came in about the camera's show, I mean, when I tell you that my blood started boiling, like J.P. Crawford hitting into a double play, uh i think you're i think your feelings on it are totally valid um and another thing i would say though i think is and i'm not in any way trying to let these folks off it is pretty obvious to me that they did not the way that that email came off which was ridiculous and and and just so tone deaf and also just like rude they certainly that was not they did not think that's how that was going to be interpreted like that was not the message they were trying to send i don't know

why their tone was so weird well can i just say again there were i'm i'm paraphrasing and telling you how it hit me i mean there were think there was language in there that they were trying to soften it they were just kind of like i'm sure that they're fine people but we're just not comfortable with people in our space like they didn't say anything unreasonable and it wasn't like an all caps thing i think that they were trying to be very reasonable but it's there's also no doubt like and i'm sorry to cut you off in in your response to this luke but i don't want to misrepresent their thing it was but it was very clear that they weren't backing down from this idea that we had done something wrong if that makes sense there were some niceties in there but it wasn't like oh okay we understand and it wasn't how i would have done it which would have been like hey guys not to be super uh weird weird but we i you know on our ring cam we noticed that somebody's over is everything okay and then maybe that would be a way to put that yeah and like just made but it was like definitely like it it had niceties in there but it was but it was definitely like it was reproach caught you and then when i responded they said please let us know in the future and or please ask in advance or something and and that's when i was kind of like really you're not backing off of this like you're still treating me like a like a child who's going into your house so i can like what play in your indoor swimming pool or something because like your house is the party house? You guys have a ball pit. What do you think we were doing? Like, literally, what is your concern? Quite literally, what is your concern? That we brought somebody over there to go through your stuff, to steal your stuff, to start a meth operation? Like, what actually is it? Sorry. Go ahead, Luke.

Well, so I guess here's the thing. If before all of this... If you had a really pleasant relationship with them as neighbors and you guys all liked each other, which it sounds like you did, and there was this really tone-deaf email from them where they, for some reason, picked the weirdest hill to want to die on when you were doing them this massive favor. like it feels to me like it might be uncomfortable but i think it would be good if it comes up when they when they get home so that you can go back to being friendly neighbors where you could just say to them hey that message really offended me because of the immense amount of time that we were putting in trying to take care of these dogs that we now really love and to feel like you were suspicious of us grown adults in you know approaching the midpoint of a century on this planet that we would in any way be bringing somebody into your home that would you know be a risk it just was was so offensive on the heels of a lot of stuff that felt to me like honestly a little disrespectful like leaving us with a ton of undealt with dog poop and treating this whole thing like it was kind of a you know cat sitting situation where we'll pop in for a couple minutes put some food out and then let the dogs in the yard and then leave you know like basically i feel like if you were to explain to them how you really felt i'm guessing that they would obviously i'm guessing that they would be very apologetic and and also i would say the small good news of this is that you guys do not ever ever have to dog sit for them again for instance if this hadn't happened like if they hadn't sent you that weird message and everything keeps going and then the next time they go out of town it's like you guys become the dog sitters like this has officially ended any risk of that happening which is kind of a positive like you never have to do it again because you could just tell them that was a really bad experience for me because we put in a lot of

time and we felt really insulted by you sending that message yeah well it's funny because I think even before that message I think that I was in the mindset that we're not doing this again like it's just too much work and they're not they're they don't understand or again they're their dogs And the dogs are really good dogs. So I don't want to sound like I'm criticizing the way that they're raising their dogs. Like, you know, like maybe the dogs seem happy, you know, like they love people. So I don't want to do that. But, like, I do think that they don't understand or maybe their approach to dog sitting would be different than ours. And maybe everything would work out in the end. And, again, I just want to acknowledge that I bring a lot of anxiety into situations like this that is on me and probably outside the norm of most human beings. but um it's just not a good match and i don't think that they set us up for success here let

me put it well exactly the problem is and this feels to me like if the only way for this to be lower impact on your and genevieve's lives would be to do the bare minimum and then the bare minimum is a real bummer for those dogs exactly and like the idea that the owners would leave the country and their expectation would be we're going to set this up so that our neighbors can do the bare minimum um and therefore our dogs are gonna have a really shitty week and a half of being mostly crated and mostly inside or outside a little bit but like that to me is like that just bums me out for those dogs because i feel like there's only there's one or two ways this could go either you guys either you did this in the in the least impactful way on your life which again sucks for the dogs or you did what you did which is you took it really seriously you totally changed your whole life around for this period of time to make sure these dogs had a good time and then got hollered at over over wanting to continue talking to your friend paul as you were again being nice to go over and hang out with these dogs like again it just feels to me a little bit like not very well thought through by the dog owners to set up a system where the only way that it's not a hassle for you and genevieve is for the dogs to have a a pretty bad experience you know that's that's

definitely what feels like and especially now because keep in mind we can't leave them in the yard alone anymore luke right because the fence is broken so they're spending more and more time

inside and um so anyway capable are you let me ask you this let's say this is never brought up again let's say here's what i think i mean a thing that seems possible they'll get home they'll be very effusive they'll have bought you some bullshit thing in vietnam that you don't want that they will present to you in lieu of a thousand dollars which is what they would have paid to have somebody come over and actually take care of their dogs for a week plus and then you just it never comes up it's never revisited you never dogs it for them again but would you feel like you could you could personally like let life kind of go back to normal with these folks where you could talk across the fence and be friends and if you were having a barbecue invite them over or do you feel like you'll never really be able to have that kind of relationship with them again that's a really

good question because um you know this luke when you get into something that feels like a confrontation whether it is or not but something that feels like a confrontation you know that feeling that you have afterwards right which is very like kind of adrenaline based and very self

righteous and all of the things that go along with it. And this was such a severe one. And this is where, again, the reason I'm going into so much detail about all of my various emotions is because I've had like 36 hours to sort of process this thing that really hit hard. And again, I think it hit hard because of all of the stew of emotions kind of going into it and the release of the anxiety that had been building up that I kind of hadn't fully acknowledged. That at one point was it was an okay anxiety to have um and so saturday night you know as i'm trying to sleep and like i'm still to the point where almost any time my brain relaxes i catch myself shadow boxing with them even having a conversation in this and it's been a while now and that's what i'm not comfortable with in my own brain my inability to just sort of compartmentalize this in some way like Saturday was really bad Saturday all day like until like the evening I think I finally started to calm down a little bit but maybe because it is so close to home like literally our home and you know what I mean kind of a shared space situation love thy neighbor but build a fence as my dad's mug famously said um I don't build it out of whatever that stuff was that the dog tipped over fair enough so the thing is the question that you ask is a really good one I don't have an answer to it, but it's the question I'm asking myself right now, because there was certainly the moment when it was hotter, when all that my brain was doing was like trying to figure out. And I know that you understand this better than anyone that you and I are very similar in this way. You're just thinking of like the coldest, most brutal thing that you can and, you know, efficient thing that you can say that just lets them know how you feel. A haiku of devastation.

Is that the B side of wave of mutilation?

of devastation is maybe better than a chameleon's wedding day but i want to keep the show title

happy today so i think i might stick with that i like chameleon's wedding day that was it feels like a lifetime ago but that was a big part of the early phases of today's episode so i don't

have an answer to your question luke i want to i want i i'm hoping that by the time they're here i can like kind of be an adult i kind of like everything you said is very reasonable about like if we had a conversation about this but I kind of this is where I this is where this is a real failing on my part something I don't like about me is like I don't want to have that conversation because I don't trust myself in those conversations I'm never as articulate as I want to be I'm never able to truly leave those conversations feeling like I have on me I have not said or articulated well enough what I want to leave them with even if it's like above board and friendly I don't want to talk about it, but I also want to just put space between us. Like, I don't want to have conversations with them. I don't want to pretend like everything is okay. But I also don't want to have a cold war with them. You know what I mean? I don't want to be in a war with them. And, okay, here, let me just say one last thing about this that I was thinking about you last night. Because I was going, you know, all of this has, it just exhausted me. Like, Saturday, I was just, like, spinning on this stuff for so long, so hot. And, again, that's on me. But by last night, by Sunday night, I watched the Mariners game with Genevieve. And after it was over, I was just feeling like really tired. And I've been reading this book. I'm trying to finish this book. And I just said, you know what? It's 9 o'clock. I'm just going to go to bed. I'm sure that this is going to – going to bed this early. I usually go to bed 1 o'clock in the morning, sometimes 2. Going to bed at 9 is going to wreck me because if I fall asleep, I'll fall asleep for an hour, or wake up at 10 and then be an insomniac the rest of the night. But I went to bed early, and instead of reading, I decided, and this was a stupid mistake, this was like the wrong time to test this show, but I was like, maybe I'll just lay in bed and check out The Chair Company. But there's something kind of serious about this, and you mentioned this is the new Tim Robinson show that is like, it's not a sketch show, the way I think you should leave is, but it is more of a sitcom format, a sitcom drama-y format. Um, but it doesn't have the, the tension release of a sketch ending after six minutes or something. And it's very much, I feel like the movie friendship in the way that Tim Robinson plays one character that is sort of, that is only relatable in his worst faults, but not really likable or rootable. I only watched the first 20 minutes of it, but he's a man who is just always mad at everybody. He's mad at the old lady at work who walks too slowly through the hallways. He's just so in his head and angry, and that anger comes from places of lack of self-esteem and all these things. And I think maybe partially one of the reasons why that kind of Tim Robinson-esque humor in long form, whether it's this show or the movie Friendship, is I see...

an exaggerated version of a lot of the the petty stuff that I hold on to that I think is the worst part of my personality and I'm watching that last night and when you're feeling like a petty jerk and then you're watching this like truly exaggerated petty jerk live his life and then have these terrible moments where he has to crawl under his desk to scream because he's so mad at the world and embarrassed about something that happened to him that wasn't his fault but still feels like he's in the right that kind of ugliness like speaks to me in a way that i'm just kind of wrong thing to watch when i was trying to fall asleep early on a sunday night clearly and i'm not saying it's a bad show but i think it's a reason why that kind of entertainment and humor from him hits me in a kind of a tough way you know what i mean and so you can relate to it it makes me relate to it but i will say and this is true of both friendship and watching 20 minutes of The Chair Company. It's called The Chair Company, right? As I'm saying it out loud, I feel like, okay. Watching that Tim Robinson character, which is kind of a very similar character, it makes me want to be a better person. It makes me want to say, Genevieve, which I didn't do, but I will be better at helping you with the dogs these next two days, even though it's difficult for me, or whatever. It makes me say, don't be Tim Robinson. It's like a cautionary tale for me a little bit. I don't know. um i kind of i kind of kept you on a short leash when you were talking about the show the other day because i hadn't seen it yet and i didn't want to know what to expect but does that sort of ring

true do you have any of that oh yeah watch it i don't see the thing for me and maybe this is why that movie friendship and and this chair company thing for whatever it is the way that my wiring is that like thing of like something embarrassing happens to him and he's under his own desk just with this level of like rage and embarrassment that he just doesn't know how to process and he's that's not how my my my wiring works as much and so i think that's not when i see him doing that stuff it just seems funny and offbeat to me because there's not a part of me that goes oh i know what that feels like that you know i obviously deal with my own a ton of my own stuff and i deal with in my own weird ways but it's not that way so that i i actually absolutely hear what you're saying though and i i totally the you talk about the relief of the sketch being over because the thing also is i know that you really love i think you should leave and so and you know and detroiters which has like a little bit of that not as much but still a little bit of that in his character but there is that sense of like well the sketch is over or the episode is over and there's a kind of like usually there's a at least on the detroiter side there's a semi-happy ending there's something that kind of cuts that tension and and the stuff like the movie friendship or this the chair company show that tension doesn't get released and so therefore it probably is is not very relaxing to observe if that's a feeling you've ever had in your own life yeah that's sort of like

real impotent frustration but also like there's this there's this again like the ugliness of that character that he kind of plays and sort of returns to of also feeling like he's better than everybody else in this in this weird way and not being and again to talk about like not being able to articulate in the moment when somebody challenges him on something. I think of the opening scene. Well, this is a mall. You're in a mall right now. Sir, this is a restaurant. Well, it's a kind of mall. And he's like, oh. The waitress at the restaurant. And then he says to his wife later, he says, well, what was I going to say? As if his outburst was at all a reasonable thing. And it's like, how many times have I tried to be articulate in a moment of absolute frustration and then just say something so inarticulate and then like well what else let me just let let me

just say i think if you have this conversation with your neighbors i don't think it's going to be adversarial i think they've already got their tails pretty far between their legs i think they know the vibe has shifted i think that they're that's why their messages are all like thank you we can't thank you enough we're coming up like they sense that that was that that message really did not uh come off the way that they probably intended it to or that that was a reaction by them and if to me it's like if you are if you do have a conversation with them the good news i think for you is that it doesn't have to be a debate where you're trying to like co-host a talk radio show with somebody who doesn't believe in gun control and you're just like i gotta make sure i'm saying i'm putting an airtight argument up i mean someone who thinks dan wilson is the best manager ever exactly well i mean that guy was right whoever that was and i'm not sure it's john who you're talking about but um but i guess what i was what i would say is a thing about this conversation that i think would really insulate you from a lot of the stuff that it makes you nervous about or makes you not look forward to these kind of conversations want to avoid them is like i think you could just be so honest and not in a like i have to have my argument so dialed in that there's no way they can refute it, but just say like, Hey, you know what? It just really bummed me out to get that email because it felt like you.

you didn't trust us and also this was on the heels of us doing a lot of stuff that felt kind of above and beyond like dealing with a lot of dog poop that was undealt with when we got the

thing about this is by the way we've stopped dealing with the dog poop they will deal with the dog poop when they get home and they will have an empty container to put it in so good for them

but but just kind of like you just not even saying well here's why that here here's here's the here's the argument here's the forensic argument as to why that was not okay for you to send that email because of this that and the other it's just more like that really made that really bummed me out that really went from this thing where we were having a good time getting to know these dogs to feeling really underappreciated and kind of judged and um and i really wish that wouldn't have happened you know and it's like balls in their court at that point and i have a feeling they will be super duper apologetic and i guess the the thing also about having the conversation if it comes up is that i do think that it would make it and you know this because you're smart but i think it will make your life a lot easier for the rest of being neighbors with these people because I bet you if they apologize to you like if they really realize how wrong that was what they did and how they came off it would be such a relief for you too don't you think because like all of these feelings that you're still having there is at least an opening for them there's at least a you know somebody has possibly pricked the balloon of all of those feelings and now some of that can go out it has somewhere to go because when people apologize from the heart when they've done something wrong to you it does give you an opportunity to let those feelings go and that

might be actually really kind of helpful maybe i doubt that they will i i actually really doubt i would get an apology because that's really again about that's a whole different animal so i don't have a good theory on on saturday night i got three text messages the first one that was basically like we just caught you doing something we're not comfortable with me me kind of trying to explain it them saying yeah yeah understood like i'm sure everything is fine but we just do not want people in our space and you should ask us next time so it was still it was still like it was it was not like oh okay sorry we didn't see it from that perspective it was just still and then the third one was still kind of like i'm sure everything's fine but it was still like them they clearly felt violated they clearly felt violated now so did i that's right i even said in a text i'm like i'm sorry if you felt violated but we have been spending much much time with the dogs and trying to give them the best experience possible or something like that um but though i don't think that they feel and now maybe if they're feeling coldness from us which they they probably are I don't I bet you that they still think that they're still on the right because like I said I think and again this is the part of the story where a lot of people might be listening right now and again I've had my chance to really lay on my side of the story but I think in a much more abbreviated version of this story there might be a lot of people who are like oof I wouldn't want the dog sitters bringing a stranger into my space people's spaces are very private and you should get permission first, which in some contexts, I think, is a reasonable way to feel, and I don't think that they—

Yeah, if the house is fancy.

If they're rich. If they have a swimming pool filled with doubloons. No, and so I don't think that they—I still think that they think that they're being pretty chill and forgiving about this, to be honest with you.

But I also think they haven't considered your experience properly. If their thing is, if they're still holding on to the sense that they were in the right, I have to imagine, unless they're just truly bad people, which I don't think they are, that is because they have not actually considered how it felt to you based on all the stuff that had led up to it and that's where i wonder if if you just lay it out for them like hey you know like this is this is this felt really shitty to us because we had put in so much time with these animals that we really really like and then to have it feel like you were saying that we had somehow violated your space or done something inappropriate when all we're doing is a favor here to try to be nice neighbors that that just really left us feeling really bummed out and uh you know we're definitely gonna not be signing up for any more dog sitting or something i wonder again i want this to go however is the least painful for you because you've already been through a lot with it so if that's just never talking about it again then that's what i'm wishing for you but i also think i just have been in enough stuff like this in my life with different people and things and usually like usually a conversation where it gets aired out a little bit leaves me feeling

ultimately a lot less torqued up about it well we've been going on for a long time here i have

one last question i don't know how you're going to cut this down for the greatest hits this one's

lengthy it's going to it's going to press luke we're not we're not changing anything around now but um volume two volume two i do have one last question for you which is uh who's going to win the baseball game tonight well what do i always say andrew here's what i tried to take over the

world it's such a the game is so streaky and it is so it when when your team is doing poorly like we did last night and vladimir guerrero jr is like hitting on all cylinders on every phase of the game weirdly like

and then they're just triumphantly showing him and the crowd's going crazy it feels like like well the Mariners will never win another baseball game for the rest of their existence as a team and yet that's how it felt after Gino hit that grand slam on Friday night and so I feel like here's the thing this is what I keep going back to over and over and over and over again I think there is a reason statistically that teams that win the first two games on the road typically end up winning the series because i think that the ball tends to bounce the way it bounces i think it tends to eventually regress to a mean which is about an equal amount of ball bounces in either team's favor we had some really unlucky bounces last night i mean that might have been one of the more unlucky games in terms of just barely missing home runs and barely hitting into double plays and barely dropping balls if you're gino and whatever all that is to say i think that they used up they used up all their lucky bounces last night and i think that the lucky bounces are going to go back the mariners way tonight and we're going to win i just feel very i feel i feel pretty i feel pretty at peace about the whole thing and then in my back pocket is the fact that if if we don't win it will sting certainly but we played a really good season and we took this series to the absolute max and like the the new york yankees are not playing right now the Boston Red Sox are not playing the New York Mets are not playing you know so we outlasted a lot of other teams that spent a lot more money than us and maybe had higher I mean like imagine being a Brewers fan I know like you had that season and then you just ran into the buzzsaw of the Dodgers in like fully reared up mode all of a sudden and Otani is hitting did he hit three home runs in the same game that he pitched 10 strikeouts is that true I don't I saw everybody

just video game number I know I saw people going crazy over him and I knew he had a great day on the mound i didn't realize that combined with three homers he threw three strikeouts and hit

three home runs andrew in that game and just so to be the brewers fans and watching that on tv in los angeles like you know and when you know by the way you know that los angeles is now seen as being in the market for tarik scoobal well i heard somebody joking about that i heard somebody

joking about that on national radio but were they is that an actual thing that's happening

or the i mean well i think what it is is it's i think it's a the i think that the theory behind it is the theory behind it is that he wants more money than detroit can or will pay him and that there's only one other team that has the resources to pay him the the the amount of money he wants and that it turned that turns out to be the los angeles dodgers so like all this is to say i think that we're going to win tonight i just do i think we had a really lousy game last night and i think that we're going to bounce back and have a really good game tonight and what i would say is i could see it as so often does coming from where we least expect it i guess to me the the thing i would be surprised by tonight although i would take it would just be cal raleigh and julio rodriguez just go absolutely nuts and are just hitting home runs and all this stuff i mean again no complaints from me but i feel like in this kind of a game with this amount of pressure and like they're swapping pitchers out maybe every inning i mean tonight's going to be insane like you might see i was texting with my brother david about this this morning you might

see a different picture every single inning yeah that would be very i was thinking that'd be very interesting if every inning they just brought out another starter like you know just throw one good

inning that's all we need from you is one good inning and so it's going to be a weird game i think in a pressure-packed game and i wouldn't be shocked to see the mariners win because of something extraordinary from like you know somebody that we're not a mitch garver hero game a garv sauce hero game could very much happen um but again i'm also i'm also trying to you know hedge my bet by also reminding myself that it's been a pretty fun cool ride this year and i think we're going to be pretty good for a while now and so i think if we don't make it to the world series this time around i i don't think that that that door is being slammed shut on us so yeah that's what

i'm feeling cautiously optimistic go mariners back to the la thing which is a terrible place to take it because it's just enmity from my perspective but like they're just leaning into the evil empire thing now which is let's like they're like hey yankees hold my beer like did you see that the manager because at first i had to double check this luke because i was somebody sent me a ticky-tocky link and you know how that goes you click on one and then you can't get out of the app so you start seeing a bunch of other stuff and i saw the fake ai ticky-tocky of the Detroit manager, J.J. Oh, yeah. Hintz. No, I'm blanking on his name. J.J. Hintz? Hintz? It is Hintz? Hintz. Hintz. Hintz. There it is. You know, berating his players on the team, which is totally fake AI. Right, with on the plane, right? On the plane. Yeah. I saw that, too. And so I had to double-check to make sure that this was true, that the manager of the Dodgers said, let's go win four more games and ruin baseball! Like, did you know that? Because everybody's saying that the Dodgers are ruining baseball. Dave Roberts said that? Yes, so everybody... saying that the dodgers are ruining baseball by doing all this shit with by just like you know stacking up these players and playing financial games to be able to do that and now it's like a rallying cry and i'm just like could you lean into it anymore have fun at your second trip to

the white house like i'm so i mean that's real maga energy oh it's so gross this idea that where it's like the you know the cruelty is the point as adam serrer once wrote you know it's like come on guys like at least yeah somebody handed you you know the absolute best set of tools ever and then we had a whittling contest no wonder you're winning you got all the woodworking tools and now you're just like you're like joking about that you're making that like now your brand that you just spend more money than anyone that's very very unsatisfying um i mean there is also a world andrew i know this just seems absolutely it seems so far in the words of dire straits it seems so far away right now so far i just can't see but there is a universe in which the mariners win tonight and then just for some reason despite what you might think just actually give the dodgers a tough series and somehow win the world series the mariners are not statistically eliminated from winning the world series as of as of recording time i know that sounds absolutely to Lulu. But, I mean, that is a universe that we could be actually existing in in a couple of weeks, which would really be something. But, you know, it's fun that we get to play in the seventh game of the ALCS. I'm looking forward to it tonight. That doesn't mean, when I say looking forward to it, I mean pacing around my house, screaming at my shrine, scaring my neighbors who are a half acre away.

Like I like to. I'm looking forward to tonight's game. I gotta be honest with you, I struggle with making it sound like I'm Like, I've already given up hope because that's a sad thing to say. And I promise you it's not that. I'm not trying to be like, game over, air over.

Not hoping is a very dangerous thing, as I think someone famously said.

Not hoping is not not a very dangerous thing, as I think on that one. But I am, at this point here on Monday morning before Game 7, I'm actually really embracing the idea of, man, we have a Game 7 in the ALCS, like I kind of said at the beginning of the show. And that's really where I am. And I'm almost freed of the expectation of winning, and I'm not trying to be like loser talk, but I'm freed of the expectation of it. And honestly, even though the fans drive me bananas and there would be so much, so much joy in actually winning in their house the way they take over our house, and that's my issue with them, that would bring me so much schadenfreude joy. um i don't there i don't hate losing to the jays if that were to be the thing you know like of all of the teams out there like i don't it's it's not the yankees would hurt a lot more the red socks would hurt a lot more exactly and uh and again like my my my past beef uh with probably the astros would hurt a lot more a million times more yeah and and the blue jays um it's really hard for me to get to this kind of stuff because i i just like i'm such just a homer usually and like i don't enjoy the the miracle of otani because he's not on our team like a real baseball person might just be able to enjoy it somewhat objectively i'm not that guy i'm like a child when it comes to this stuff but at the end of the day like i you know there there's stuff to root for uh you know on that team and it's not a mystery to me you know what i mean it's not some huge big bucks team uh i i hope that i hope that no matter what happens tonight that we have a fun rivalry and maintain this sort of like these are two teams that are really well matched in in different ways but that it can be kind of a fun non-hate-filled rivalry uh for two teams that were born in the same year you know our brothers yeah you know and just remember we we ended we

knocked them out of the playoffs a few years ago exactly a crazy game like a game that for them is probably like circled on the calendar as a day that will live in infamy that helps and i actually kind of like that because it tells it makes me think that like in the way that if we were host if this if this was could we even play the alcs against houston could that that could happen right

theoretically through a wild card situation i think i don't i don't know but i think so

it'd be like if we were hosting Houston and it was the seventh game of the ALCS and I don't think we could and Altuve came up I would be like these guys own us or they or Alvarez came up it'd be like these guys own us and I would start to get a really bad feeling because it feels like they've got our number and I like the fact that they're if the if Toronto fans are smart they'll also have that fear they'll also be like these guys got us last time we had a last time we you know we played in the playoffs against these guys they eliminated us at home on an insane comeback game that should have never happened and so i like the idea that

Maybe we live in their nightmares a little bit as their bugaboo team. You know, that's fun. We don't get to be that team very often. And so, I don't know. Again, cautiously optimistic. I'm just, you know what, I'm just ready for this chameleonare's wedding.

Now, that's the question. Is it a chameleon's wedding day or a chameleonare's wedding day? One is funnier, one is more earnest.

I'll let you choose. It was your story. I think I'm going earnest.

It was a big day for earnestness.

I'm always like I'm always looking around for some little shiny aphorism that can help quiet my mind down and I'm always presenting it on the show so I like that you pulled a real Burbank with that and I actually do also I like that thought of chameleon's wedding so that's what we're all going to be thinking about tonight and we'll say thank you for listening folks that's going to bring us to the end of today's show but of course we will be back here tomorrow with much to discuss on a Tuesday edition of TBTL in the meantime have a great Monday. Take care of yourselves. Stay safe. Go Mariners. And please remember, no mountain too

tall. And good luck to all. I told you I could tell it in 20 minutes. Tight 20. Power out.