450. A Goose-Forward Home with Sharon McMahon

Here on IGTBO, we’re not about toxic positivity — we’re about finding things that are good even when the world is dark. Today’s guest, Sharon McMahon — a fellow tall woman — brought her OK things, including geese, being in a goose-forward household, and the acts of kindness that can change the trajectory of your life. 

For any long-time fans of IGTBO, this is a classic bird episode, and we couldn’t be happier.

Sharon’s book: ⁠Amazon⁠ | ⁠Bookshop

Transcripts may not appear in their final version and are subject to change.

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I’m Nora McInerny, and It’s Going To Be OK.

This is a podcast where we talk about the things that are getting us through in a world that is largely not OK. It is not toxic positivity, this is a coping skill.

When things are hard, when things are dark, it is even more important to look for and appreciate the good things in life. And when good feels like too high of a bar, we say, okay, lower the bar, find things that are OK.

You can do that, I can do that, we can do it together right here every other week. We do want your OK things. You can call them in, text them in, email.

Our phone number is 502-388-OKAY. That’s 502-388-OKAY. The numbers are 6529.

Or IGTBO at feelingsand.co. And both of those things are also always in our episode description. So if you didn’t write them down right now, that’s OK.

You can just open up the episode description and get them right there. But today we have a special guest. She is known as America’s Government Teacher.

She is the New York Times bestselling author of The Small and the Mighty, 12 unsung Americans who changed the course of history from the founding to the civil rights movement.

And she is the host and creator of The Preamble, a podcast and a newsletter.

She is Sharon McMahon, known as Sharon Says So on Instagram. And she is more than OK to me because, and yes, this is biased, she is also a very tall woman. And as a very tall woman, I love very tall women.

Today, we are talking about so many OK things, including country geese and what it’s like to grow up in a geese-forward household, unexpected jaw-dropping kindnesses that change the trajectory of your family forever, bird decor in general, bird

migration. A lot of bird talk, I’ll be honest. Dogs, dogs, and a lot more. So here is our conversation with Sharon McMahon.

Nora, are you aware that the geese are back?

Geese are back. You thought that they were left in the 90s. Oh, no, no, no.

Have you been to like a Home Goods or a TJ or a Coles lately?

Oh, I would. My kingdom for a Coles. Coles are kind of hard to come by in Arizona.

Are they?

You don’t have Coles.

They’re hard to come by. I have to Google it because I grew up in Coles country, as we call the Midwest. And I mean, my, I would say my currency is Coles Cash.

Where’s a Coles near me? But I haven’t seen a Coles in. It’s been a while.

Really?

Yeah.

Because we had Coles out in the DC area.

There were Coles galore.

Oh, they’re far. Yeah, it’s looking like a 30-minute drive to a Coles for me.

So that tracks. Well, I would imagine that even if you were to go to a Walmart home decor section, that there would be goose items. The geese are back.

Like country geese with the bonnets.

Oh, 100%.

Porch geese, outdoor geese. You can buy outfits for your porch goose on TikTok shop now. Seasonally appropriate outfits.

It’s springtime. Get your porch goose, a raincoat and a little bonnet. They now have, I’ve gotten served this ad on TikTok.

They now have a desk version of the porch goose. And the ad is like, I thought I was sad. I just needed a desk goose.

So like, get ready. You thought the 90s had geese, the geese are back.

I did love a 90s kitchen. You know, I grew up in a house that was, I think, built in the 20s. So we didn’t have a 90s kitchen.

We had a 1920s kitchen. And when I went to my cousin’s house in the suburbs and their parents had the goose wallpaper border, you know, goose.

Was it dusty blue?

Dusty blue, dusty rose. Dusty rose or dusty blue. There was like a matching trivet.

There were, you know, valances over the windows. Like the theme tracked throughout the kitchen. I just thought like, this is living.

This is luxury. This is life right here. And I crave that.

When I see that at Goodwill, I buy it. I live in a mid-century house and I say, I’m going to need this goose jar. I don’t know what the plan is, but I did not know that goose decor was back.

Is it popular with a generation of children who weren’t alive in the 90s? Do you think?

I think it’s popular with younger millennials. I think it’s like younger millennials who are like, it’s nostalgia, like maybe their grandma had some geeks.

And so like as the grandma hobbies have come back into fashion, as we have this nostalgia for a more analog way of life, things that were emblematic of times that our family remembers or that maybe we remembered when we were younger.

When I was growing up, my mom knew how to sew and she would sew pillows and make clothes for us and things like that.

She actually obtained, I don’t know if she purchased it or somebody gave it to her, a pattern for a stuffed goose that sat on your floor. It was a floor goose and it was about, I would say, 18 inches tall.

My mom made hers of a green calico and it had a weighted, it’s in beans or rice at the bottom, so it sat up.

Yeah, it had beans. I know it. I know it was beans.

It was a bean base.

She made a little bonnet for it, like a little house, the prairie bonnet, and then bent some wire to make it some glasses. This is very like Mother Goose archetype. And it had a little apron.

And this goose sat next to our fireplace. I grew up in an 1890s Victorian house that was basically condemned that my parents had been working on restoring although my parents did not have money. And so the the restoration project was very slow going.

But we did have a beautiful oak fireplace with carvings on it. And next to it was my mother’s hand-sewn Mother Goose. And that sat there for absolutely years and years and years and years.

You’re describing my dream house, my dream decor.

There’s something about my mom also sewed, my grandma sewed, everyone was always making things. And I am more of an assembler.

I would say I’m an assembler of crafts so I can make something out of, you know, like I can needle point, don’t look at the back of it, right? If somebody hands me all of the materials, I can put them together. But sewing has always perplexed me.

And I do, you know, I’ll say collector, right? The line between collecting and hoarding is a thin one. I walk it every day.

But I do, if I’m a goodwill, and I see a crafting book from the 90s, I’m buying it. Oh, I love it. Cause the minute you described it, I had my eyes closed.

I could see this goose, that green calico fabric. It really is, that is a lost art. Okay, that is a lost art.

And every once in a while I’m like, yeah, I really, I never sewed a thing for my kids, but my mom was sewing Easter dresses for me and my sister to match. Matching Easter dresses, big old lace collars. Yeah.

You know? These were simpler times. And I don’t blame any younger millennial, senior millennial, Gen Xer.

I don’t blame anyone for craving those analog times at all. Like they really were, they were lovely. It was lovely.

I bet to have a mom who would sew a goose and say, now the fireplace is complete.

Now that’s exactly what this room needed.

Yeah.

That’s exactly what this room needed was a goose. She also had my dad cut out with his jigsaw. My dad was a tradesman, cut out with his jigsaw a wooden goose that sat on a shelf and peered down at you.

So it was made from about half inch plywood.

Yeah.

It sat on your shelf, if this is your shelf, it sat like this on its feet and its little beak peeked down like, what are you doing down there?

Then my mom would sand them up and a little coat of stain and then she’d paint like an eye and a little beak on it. We also had shelf geese and my dad would, she’d be like, it’s Sue Peterson’s birthday.

Can you cut out a shelf goose and then she would like make a little shelf goose for Sue Peterson.

What a team and what a blessing to live in a goose forward household.

Very, very progressive. A goose positive home. It was a goose positive home.

Because a lot of people look at a goose, we’ve talked about this on the podcast before.

A lot of people look at a goose and they say, wow, gross, you’ve ruined our parks. You are so mean, disrespectful. But somebody called in a year, two years ago, maybe three years ago, time means nothing to me anymore.

And her OK thing, Sharon, was that no matter what, people stop for geese in the road. She’s like, it could be rush hour, and you really need to get somewhere.

And she’s seen, I think she described seeing a semi-truck driver get out and try to help the geese across the road, just so everyone could get to work. And it’s like, you could run over a goose. You’re not going to.

Not intentionally. No, you’re gonna stop. There’s a mutual respect.

No, there’s a one-way respect, and it’s us to geese.

Geese don’t respect us. Geese do not respect you in the slightest. I live in the country, and I live near a beaver pond.

And so every time I drive past, I, of course, have to slow down. There’s never any traffic on this road. I just slow down and just kind of look around for the beavers.

It’s fun to see them, you know, like I just think it’s kind of delightful to be like, oh, there it is. There they are. Yeah, it’s moving around.

Well, of course, geese love a beaver pond. Why not? They love to make their nests in swampy areas.

Well, last year, there was a family of three adults, a family of three adult geese that lived in this pond. And this was not like a we’re a couple and you just happen to live here. The three adults spent all of their time together.

And so after their eggs hatched in the spring, I have no idea whose eggs belonged to whom, but I did see them walking down the road, this three adult family, obviously trying to cross from one portion of the swamp to the other.

Three adults and I don’t know, maybe 10 or 12 babies. And the three of them communally appear to care for all of their offspring.

They’re in a commune.

There’s definitely some kind of communal, like all, whatever number of geese we have is the correct number of geese. And so you gotta give that to the goose, that’s true.

What’s good for the goose is good for pretty much just the goose.

But I can guarantee you right now, there’s not a goose in the world that would have a porch human and dress it up.

Hell no. That’s not amusing in the slightest. Humans are disgusting.

Absolutely not.

Get that out of here.

No.

When a goose goes to TJ Maxx and Home Goods, they’re not looking for human motifs at all.

No, they’re not looking for gnomes. That seems too human-like. That’s a weird human with a beard and a pointy hat, and I would never have that at my home.

That’s true.

Probably a marsh dweller that would encroach upon their habitat. Sharon, one of my OK things is goose-related, and I did not plan this. There’s no way we could have planned this.

This is serendipity. But I live in Phoenix, Arizona. Not a lot of water here.

Do you have many geese, consequently?

I have not seen a goose until the other day.

I think these are technically geese, the ones that don’t feel… They’re not Canadian geese, right? They’re white, they’ve got the yellow beak.

Yeah, that’s a goose.

They’re a little more chic.

That’s a goose, but it’s a chic goose to me, right? That’s a goose of taste, class. You could put it in a pond at a wedding.

It’s a British goose.

Oh, is it?

OK.

No, I’m just saying, it has those vibes.

It has an accent.

OK.

You’re saying Sharon McMahon tells me a goose is British? I say, I’m not questioning it.

OK, cool.

No, I’m not fact checking.

It has upper class vibes.

Yes, yes. It says, I could be a swan. I just never had the time to grow a neck.

So those are the kind of geese I’ve seen. But I was driving down a busy street. I work adjacent to downtown.

I drive my kid off at school. I’m driving. I see this man in business clothes, and he is in a crouch with his phone out, on a sidewalk in front of a big office building in a suit.

And I was like, what is this guy taking a picture? He’s taking a picture of a goose, a Canada goose, Sharon.

He’s never seen it before.

I don’t know if he’d seen one before, but the smile on his face. I stopped at this light, and this man is conducting a photo shoot alone with a goose. And then he looks at his phone and smiles and walks into work.

And it was so cute. And I was like, I saw this moment. I don’t know if anyone else saw it, noticed it, took it to heart the way that I did.

But I’m like, he was taking that photo, maybe for himself. But the way he looked at his phone, I was like, you’re excited to send that goose picture to who? I don’t know.

But there’s some lucky lady on the other end.

You thought somebody would be impressed by this. And that’s why you did it. You couldn’t wait to show it to fill in the blank.

I’ve got to get a picture of this goose for her.

He got into the deepest squat. The kind of squat where you’re like, that’s good mobility. That’s good mobility.

You got good quads.

Yes, got good quads, got down there, got the shot.

You know, you’ve seen on Instagram the photos my husband takes of me. He’s not framing the shot. He’s not framing the shot.

He’s committing crimes against one part of humanity. Me, this man wanted the goose in her best light. He wanted to make sure the composition was correct.

And I don’t know, he got the shot. And it was only afterwards. I was like, that’s the first Canada goose I’ve seen in the city of Phoenix in six years.

What are you doing here, Mr.

Goose?

What are you doing here? And how’d you get downtown? Why are you alone?

Are you okay?

Wayward, a stray, it was a stray goose.

It’s a stray goose.

It’s a stray goose.

And you see goose, you see geese, goose. The plural is geese. You see geese in packs, just this one lonely goose, one lonely goose, but also not lonely because he had that man being his friend for a while.

So he got his free photo shoot.

Yeah, yeah.

And yeah, so I, yeah. And so how funny, how funny. We just, we got geese.

The geese are back.

The geese are back and the geese are back in every way.

I’m here for it, frankly.

Yeah, yeah.

I think the world needs more whimsy.

You know, like we even enough hellfire and brimstone. Yeah, I think we need more whimsy. And you know, different animals come in and out of fashion.

You know, like for a while it was hedgehogs. And you know, they’re like, owls, yes. Narwhals like they put, you know, different animals on to all kinds of decor and apparel motifs.

I think the geese are, the geese are going to be like the animal du jour. And I’m fine with that. Birds of all types are welcome.

Yeah, I agree.

I agree. We don’t get enough, aside from owls, I don’t know that we’ve had a lot of bird trends. Outside of course.

You know, what’s always trendy with a certain population are cardinals.

Cardinals never go out of style.

That’s true.

If you are looking in a gift shop that sells items for women 50 plus, you know, 25% minimum of the items have cardinals on them. Often gay cardinals, because there’s often two red cardinals at the same time, and that is a same sex couple.

OK, so let’s just get that, let’s get one thing straight. That’s a same sex cardinal couple. And you can be fine with that, but just know what you’re purchasing.

Know what you’re bringing home.

You’re purchasing the woke agenda every time you buy something. With two red cardinals.

Right. But like maybe 25% of the items in gift shops geared for women of a certain age have either like a chickadee on a white pine branch.

That’s true.

Like a chickadee or a cardinal. And of course we love to set cardinals in a snowy landscape because they really pop against the background. And so the women have the cardinals and the chickadees and now apparently geese.

And of course the men get like the black bear and the moose and wolves. An eagle. And a bald eagle.

Those are the things that are, you know, the manly animals. And the women have these like sort of defenseless, adorable type, except geese, if you’ve ever met one in public, they’re not defenseless. They’re mean AF.

Run.

Run. If you see a goose, run.

Yeah. The vibe is like, oh, so cute. Mother goose reads fairy tales to the children.

No, it’ll chase you.

The women do love a defenseless bird.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We do.

I love a hummingbird. I love a hummingbird. I think I’m, I mean, I’m already feeding the hummingbirds.

I got a little hummingbird feeder I can hold in my hand to entice them to land closer to me, hover around me. That hasn’t happened yet, but they’re not afraid. They’re like, the hummingbird feeder sits like right behind me.

If I sit outside, they’ll come right up to it. They won’t, they’ve not yet come to my hand. I have to be so clear about that.

That is something I’m trying to work up to. I have to earn that level of trust, but I’m, I think I’m just a few years out from saying full hummingbird decor, full on deck the house.

You know, it’s crazy to me, what’s absolutely bananas to me is, we get hummingbirds where I live to, and I have a lot of flowers at my house. I plant large ornamental gardens, and I have a lot of porch plants and things like that.

So I get quite a few hummingbirds here, and they love my petunias on the porch. They love them. But it’s crazy to me that hummingbirds are migrating from Central America to Northern Minnesota.

That they are these little, they weigh nothing. Like the wind could blow them away, and their little wings are beating so fast. How are you flying thousands and thousands of miles?

When I stop to think about it, I’m like, aren’t there flowers to eat in Texas? Why are we, why do we have to migrate so far north? Now, I’m grateful for it.

I love to see the hummingbirds. When I hear them come back, it’s always like a great day in the spring. They’re back.

But to know that they have flown here from like Honduras, that just kind of blows my mind. Why keep going? Why not stop in Missouri and be like, it’s warm enough here, there’s flowers.

What is it about? Like, of course, it’s something we don’t understand about my animal migration. What is it about migration that makes you think, I gotta keep going?

I gotta go all the way to northern Minnesota.

I gotta keep going. What is it about my family’s migration where they said, you know what, we’re going to stop in Minnesota. We left Ireland and we think this place is warm enough.

This seems fine.

We’ve gone far enough.

We’ve gone far enough.

This seems fine.

This is great. That’s how I felt as a child laying in bed. I didn’t know that you could move states as a kid.

I thought you’re born in a state, that’s where you stay. And when I found out that people moved states, I looked at my parents completely differently. I was like, oh, they’re dumb.

They’re dumb people. There’s rocks on the inside of our windows. I was born into a family of stupid people.

It’s too cold to go outside.

You could have gone to California.

California? And you chose not to? As a child growing up in the Midwest, what was cooler to you than the idea of California?

And did you think that in California, it was hot and sunny every single day, in every place in California, and that everybody was tan and always wearing a bikini, or was my brain poisoned by Baywatch?

OK, so my mom is from Southern California. She moved to Minnesota as an adult when she got married. So she spent every single…

And of course, she’s from Los Angeles, OK, where they have the good weather.

72 and sunny.

Yeah, inland Los Angeles. So like not even the coast where it gets cool and misty. No.

So all of my mom’s scrapbooks, all of her childhood pictures, every picture is sunny. She is out riding her bike on Christmas morning. She’d get a new bike for Christmas, go out and ride it.

Such a foreign concept to a Minnesota child. The idea that you would buy a bike for Christmas, that’s ludicrous. Why would you buy your child a gift that they can’t use for five months?

That’s stupid. Don’t buy that. Get them a sled, get them some new skates, get them a hockey stick.

Why would you buy them a bike? That’s what my mom was getting. Like all of the pictures of her childhood, her adolescence.

She literally has long blonde hair and is wearing a bikini. She was a cheerleader, a football cheerleader. She was out there doing the splits in her little cheer uniform.

She was swimming in her friend’s pools. And my family, my grandparents were very middle class. They did not, they were not people of wealth.

But yet, so she grew up in this very nice middle class neighborhood. We’re like, there were five pools on her block. Just like, oh, I’m over at so-and-so’s pool.

We just jumped off the diving board 300 times a day, rode our bikes up and down, stopped at the gas station and got candy. So I didn’t, it wasn’t, your mind was not poisoned.

That was literally, it happened, actual childhood of somebody who grew up in Southern California. Yeah.

I think that I would have died if I knew somebody who had a pool in Minnesota.

Like had a pool, not an above ground pool, but like the way that we counted down to the opening of the public pool, you know, the way that that was like just such a, and it really is like a beautiful, I think like communal experiences like are so

beautiful to be like, oh, we’re all waiting. Like everyone is waiting for like when the pool opens, and then everyone is going to like try to get as much pool time as you can.

Hopefully, it’ll be a warm summer, like rainy days like when you were planning to go to the pool. Oh man, what a bummer. But I mean, I went to California and got an airplane for the first time at age 10, which was like a big, big, big treat.

Like I was like, I bragged about it at school. I was like, well, I’m getting on an airplane this weekend. So like, I can’t really like I can’t, I don’t know if I have time to talk to you guys right now.

I have to like focus because I have to get on an airplane this weekend. I’m going to California. We were going to like far, far, far Northern California.

I was freezing cold the whole time. I backed my own clothes and I was like, I’m sorry. It’s winter here too?

What? Who brought me here? Again, stupid people.

God bless my parents. But I wanted to go to California, not whatever this is.

Whatever this winter hellhole is. What were you doing there?

My grandparents were spending their winter out there and my uncle at the time had a business and lived in Petaluma, California. OK.

And so we went out there and I remember like going to the beach, like my first time seeing the ocean and it was like black water. You know, it’s just like stormy, misty, scary. I was like, OK, so I hate this.

Right.

Right. Well, see, Minnesota is full of lakes that you can swim in. And so this idea of like, I can’t swim in the ocean.

What are you talking about? That’s insane. Why is the ocean?

What does the ocean have way worse problem with weeds? You know, like children hate lake weeds. They brush up a gate like you get.

You get leeches on you and they feel slimy and disgusting. The idea that like you guys have a weed problem hearing this ocean.

Sorry, this beach is gross. Also, why is it rocks? I was expecting sand.

Also, there’s no palm trees. Also, there’s no sun. This is not what I wanted and I really, really expected it to be different.

But I eventually got to Southern California. I did survive that trip and I was an ungrateful child. So sorry for that little tangent about California, but I do.

I really, I admire a woman, like your mother, who can leave Southern California and settle in Northern Minnesota and stay.

To marry a man she had only met one time, Nora. To marry a man she’d only met one time, who was from Northern Minnesota. And her parents were like, they believed that their child was, it was like moving to Russian Siberia.

Like, how could you, what’s going to happen? I’ll never see her again. You know, like that was the, like, like a drunk.

Yeah. We’re sending our child off to live in the hell hole of a freezing cold place. Yes.

She moved to marry a man she had met one time. Wow. They just, well, they got engaged, they got engaged before they ever met.

And she’s like, I don’t think I can marry somebody I’ve never met before. So he did fly to, or she did fly to Minnesota one time to meet him in advance to ensure that like he was who she believed him to be.

How did they get engaged?

He said, well, OK, so this was in an era before cheap long distance where you literally would wait until 7 p.m. or 9 p.m. to have cheap long distance.

Or you, you know, so you could make phone calls. They would talk to each other on the phone in the evenings. And they would also write letters to each other.

But they started having to know who each other were. They were introduced by a my dad’s aunt who was who knew my mom. My dad’s aunt was stationed in California because they were in the military.

OK, and she knew my mom and she said, you should meet my nephew. And it’s a longer story than this. I can tell you the whole story if you want.

But the bottom line is they were introduced by somebody who knew them.

They were match made. That’s the kind of aunt I strived to be. I really do.

A meddler. A successful meddler.

A successful meddler. That’s right. They started writing to each other and calling each other on the phone and having like $500 phone bills.

And they eventually, I mean, after six weeks, this is how long it took, after six weeks of $500 phone bills and writing letters to each other, he finally said, we can’t keep doing this. We either need to get married or cut this off.

And she said, let’s get married. And so they agreed to get married, but she decided like, I don’t think I can marry somebody I’ve never met. So she agreed to, yeah.

So she agreed to fly to Minnesota to meet him and make sure it was actually the love connection that she thought it was. And it was, and that was in April, which I think is pretty gutsy because April is not Minnesota’s month. It just really is not.

It’s icy brown mud here. It’s either snowing or it’s muddy. We do not have cute spring in Minnesota.

We are robbed of the cute spring. So she visited here in April, thought Lake Superior was highly impressive, had never seen such a thing. She was not what she was picturing.

And he then flew out to California. Two months later in June, they had a little wedding and she packed up and moved to Minnesota. By the way, she also had two children.

And he also had two children. So, they had both been married before. And so she was not just moving herself of like, I’m going to see where adventure takes me.

She was moving her children to Minnesota as well.

Whoa. Wow. Wow.

Yeah.

So they had four girls between them and then they had one more daughter together. Wow.

And that’s you? No.

I was one of the children that my mother moved from California to Minnesota.

You’re from California?

I moved to Minnesota when I was four.

Wow. Wow. You show up.

You don’t have an appropriate jacket. I know it.

No. And I’m living with an absolute stranger. I had never met him before.

Yeah.

And now we live with him.

Yeah.

I’d never met him before, ever.

And he has other children that are now my sisters.

Yeah.

Oh, my God. And then my mom got pregnant six weeks after they got married. So then in addition to everything else, they were very poor, very, very poor.

We lived in a very bad neighborhood where stuff was constant. My toys were constantly getting stolen out of our yard. It was not, we would hear like domestic violence incidents in the apartment building across the street.

It was not a good neighborhood. And then that summer or that winter that my mom was pregnant, my dad broke his hand, which as a tradesman, that is not good. So my mom is like hugely pregnant.

They have very small children. It’s not like she can go get some high paying job, right, to like support the family. He is now out of work.

And they went from like lower middle class to truly below poverty level. And this is like the first, like they’ve been married for three or four months and they barely know each other. And she’s pregnant.

Yeah. So, I mean, they’re like, that was a very, very difficult introduction to enduring a Minnesota winter. Yeah.

Yeah.

First one, first one, first one, worst one, as they say. Oh, God.

My dad had all of his tools stolen out of his truck. All of them out of his locked truck box. And so he had no tools to be able to work.

And tradesmen have to provide their own tools.

Isn’t that wild? That’s wild to me. That’s wild to me.

And they’re so expensive.

Yes. You have to come with all of your own stuff.

Yeah. Yeah.

So one of my mom’s friends from California, her childhood best friend that they met in second grade that she is still best friends with.

My mom is still best friends with her second grade best friend. And they consider each other sisters. They take a trip together every year.

They, you know, they’re still best friends. She had been married, and her husband was a police officer who was shot and killed in the line of duty.

And so, shortly before my dad’s tools were all stolen, she had just received like a settlement from the life insurance settlement, from this insurance company. So she had come into this sort of like larger sum of money.

And my mom was telling her, you know, that she didn’t know what they were going to do. Like they didn’t have money to replace all of his tools, et cetera. And a couple days later, a check showed up in the mail from my mom’s childhood best friend.

For $10,000, which was, which is a lot of money. Yes. A lot of money today was even more than that.

That’s like sending somebody a check for like $50,000 or $75,000. I don’t know what the inflation is, but it’s a huge sum of money for him to replace all of his tools.

Oh, that is sisterhood. That’s sisterhood. That is sisterhood.

And I don’t think, you know what? I don’t think like we can get through the world without like friends like that, like sisters like that. That’s so incredible.

That’s so incredible. And also, of course, right? Of course.

Of course. Before you hit the ground, like your best friend will catch you. That’s so beautiful.

That’s so beautiful.

I know. And they’re still friends. I love that.

I love that for them.

They’re still friends. Yeah. From second grade.

I know.

The shared history.

From afar to show up like that.

Yeah.

God. I know. So aside from decorative birds, what else is making you feel like It’s Going To Be OK?

Aside from geese and people replacing other people’s tools.

And yes, and really long shot love stories and unexpected just wild acts of friendship.

What else do you have?

I have a weird one.

Oh, good.

OK.

I have a weird one that I think a bunch of people might be like, that’s not that’s weird. But when I saw we were recording this shortly after the launch of the Artemis 2 mission, NASA’s new mission to the moon.

Space is one of those things that I just do not understand. Makes no sense to me.

Space. I hate it.

Makes no sense to me.

You couldn’t be.

Oh, hell no. I would never go to space. There’s no amount of money.

You could pay me to go to space. I’m not going.

You could be like, here’s what you’re doing. And I was invited on Blue Origin. And you know what I said?

I’m actually busy. Okay.

You were invited?

No, of course.

I’m like, what?

They didn’t actually, they didn’t want to bring Gail. They wanted to bring me. And I said, I’m busy.

I can’t go. Ask Katy Perry. Okay.

She’s the next, she’s next on our list.

No, you could not pay me to space. I have no interest in going. I don’t understand how it works.

I don’t understand physics. I don’t understand how these shuttles work. I don’t understand why people want to go.

I also get terrible motion sickness. And so the idea that I would just be like puking in space and terrified for my life, it all seems absolutely terrible.

I have often said that if it were up to me to have been like an ancient explorer where like, you know, I had to set sail from the coast of Portugal and go see what’s out there, it would just have never happened.

Map would just have a bunch of question marks on it. I have no-

We’re good right here.

Sea monster, question mark, question mark. I don’t know, I’m not going. So all that to say, I’m not somebody who’s like, oh, I’d love to be an astronaut or I like, I just think space is so amazing because I understand it.

I do not.

But when I watched that sort of collective moment, I watched the Artemis 2 launch and on the NASA YouTube channel, which was broadcasting it live, were, I want to say it was like 22 million people who were watching the launch of that from all over

the world, watching the launch live. And I lived through the Challenger disaster. So I was like, my heart was in my throat, like, please let this not explode. We’ve had a couple of disasters in the past.

Watching it launch successfully, and knowing the number of people, the thousands of people who had spent years and years dotting every I and crossing every T and doing the calculations and assembling the equipment and getting advanced degrees and

calculating trajectories, and the amount of collective effort to send a tiny number of people in a capsule to something that we observe from earth on a nightly basis. And then the 20 million people, I’m just spitballing this number, who were watching

it all happen live, and the number of little hearts that were appearing on the YouTube feed as this was all going off, and the the announcer from Mission Control being like, you know, humanities next frontier, just like this collective experience of

damn, like humans really are incredible. We really are incredible. That we just decided we’re going to build ourselves a machine to go to the moon because we can, and because we want to learn things.

And every, and the number of people who are excited about that, it just was like this very, it was a cool moment to be a part of, even though I understand nothing about space and would never go. I had tears in my eyes from watching it launch.

And it made me feel like humans are really capable of incredible things.

Yeah. Oh, it’s really beautiful. We are, not me personally, not me personally, but other people are, other people are capable of cool things.

And also when you think, I mean, and that’s all math, basically. But how do you even know what to, you know, I did, I maxed out in pre-calculus, I believe. And even that was, that was, it was a tough road for me.

Yes.

But there are people who like that makes perfect sense too.

And I really do think that is so cool. You know, like there are people who spend their days, but also their lives thinking about things that would never ever cross my own mind.

No, like the idea that like some people’s brains are conceptually so fundamentally different than my own, that they actually can come up with a way to say, we could go to the moon, and I’m gonna do some facts and figures on this piece of paper as a

way of sort of devising a plan. Like the idea that we could engineer a little capsule, like we blast off and then the rockets fall off of it, and the capsule is now going 10,000 miles an hour.

Yeah. Yeah.

My brain does not, I can make a sweater out of two sticks and some string, but my brain does not understand how one would even begin to engage with that problem. Like how do you even think to yourself, if we do X, then Y would happen.

My brain doesn’t even understand what X and Y would be.

No.

No.

No.

No. That’s not even, like again, it’s one small step for mankind, like whatever the quote is, I admire it. And I wonder if because it makes no sense in my mind that I have a stronger sense of awe for it, because it makes absolutely no sense to me.

There’s no sense of like, well, I could do that. Zero cockiness when it comes to space. Maybe that makes it more like, damn, that is really, that’s just incredible.

And when I think about it is incredible.

Our ancestors who have spent that millennia staring up at the moon and the idea that someday their descendants would figure out a way to get there.

I don’t know. There’s just something really. Yeah, there’s something moving about that.

Yeah.

So you’re really beautiful. I really love that. That is so meaningful.

And also just that it has taken so much time and that everybody builds on the knowledge that came before and discovers things that you that they didn’t know before, that their predecessors didn’t know.

And I think about I don’t even know if it’s true, but they say we only use a very small percentage of our minds, but we’re all using different parts of our minds, too.

Like just, you know, having our own thoughts, seeing things differently, experiencing things differently. I can’t believe you brought such a meaningful thing, and then I’m going to do this, which is hold up to you this.

Is it bedazzled?

It is bedazzled. It is, I think people, they call it stoning now. Because these are little rhinestones that I have glued to a Walgreens pill bottle fully covered.

It took quite a while to find the right orange and the right white for the cap. This is my first project.

Your first stoning project?

Yes, and so while your mother could craft a geese, I can take other things and add them to things that already exist. And I can’t tell you why. Yes, I can, because I have been stressed out and so lightly to very depressed and needed to do work.

But instead of doing work, I sat at a table and listened to Trashy Bravo TV in the background. And painstakingly, possibly aggravating carpal tunnel or developing it.

We’ll see thousands of tiny little rhinestones to a pill bottle until it was perfectly covered. So that I could have it. So that I could have it for literally no reason.

And now I’m asking everybody to save their pill bottles, because this is my new thing. This is my new thing. What am I going to do with it?

I don’t know. I don’t know.

But do you just like having it on your desk?

I love it. It was actually on the shelf, so I’m going to return it, because it was catching the light that nice way.

I like having it on the shelf.

So yeah, and this is sort of a little bit of a… I’m not going to say…

It’s nothing I’m really committed to in a formal way, but I had spent some time with one of my cousins who’s so creative, Sharon, and she was like, you just got to make something stupid just for fun.

And I was like, make something stupid just for fun. Make something stupid just for fun. And so I’ve just been looking around being like, what stupid thing can I make just for fun?

Not to impress anybody but myself and Sharon McMahon and everybody else that I show it to when they walk in the door. I’m like, and did you notice this? Anything new?

Anything new on these crowded shelves full of tchotchkes? Have you noticed anything that I’ve made perhaps? But just like literally just something stupid just for fun and it just it just felt so good to just…

I think it’s important.

I think it’s important. Humans need to make things. That humans need to make things.

For you so often what you have, you know, been making has been the written word. You’ve been making podcasts. You’ve been making other things.

But there is this sense of like, I need to be good at it because I need to show this off in public. There is, you have to turn it into a publisher. People are listening.

There’s this sense of like it needs to be high quality because other people are going to see it. So you have been engaged in these sort of creative pursuits. Humans need to make things, whether or not you think you do.

But I do think there is a tremendous amount of value in just literally having absolutely no judgment about something that you’re making, because you’re not going to show it to anybody.

Absolutely no need to monetize what you’re making, because you’re not going to sell it. And have it be, if it can be some kind of repetitive motion with your hands, that’s excellent for nervous system regulation.

There’s a reason our ancestors have developed these things, because we know that it’s good for us. There’s this sort of like unknown, but ancient wisdom in the idea of making things.

It’s the same thing like with the last Easter, I remember needle pointing this little bunny on what is supposed to be a coaster, you know, like you put it inside an acrylic thingy, rubber, and it’s like a coaster.

There’s absolutely no, I’m deriving no economic value. In fact, it costs me a lot of money to make the back.

Oh my God, it costs so much to needle point.

Yes, needle point’s a very expensive hobby, I love it. I’m not showing it off. I’m not like everyone check out my rabbit and be impressed.

But I remember the memory of making that bunny because it was Easter and everybody had already eaten. We were all just chilling, we’re talking. And I’m talking to people while working on this.

And I have this memory of like how much I enjoyed making that little bunny on a holiday. The bunny ultimately is not particularly meaningful in and of itself, but the act of making things is. Yeah, the act of making things is meaningful.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And it’s a repetitive motion and just kind of like, you know, sitting with the and then also being able to see your progress, you know, because so much of life, right, is just like sort of like finishing something and like, you know, checking the box

and like getting it out the door, like just like turning it in that no matter what your job is. Or, you know, making a meal for your children that they like take two bites of and you’re like, cool, OK, you know.

And it’s so nice to like just finish something and have that be the whole thing in and of itself.

It’s very satisfying to be like, I made this fine.

It’s so satisfying. Yeah, yeah. Needle point does do that for me.

But so this is another thing too. I’ve got to finish some things because I’ll finish needle pointing, but I won’t. That’s the stuff.

I’m done with the needle.

You don’t take it to the finisher.

I don’t take it to the finisher. I don’t take it to the finisher. And also because it’s so expensive to take to the finisher, I’ve got probably four or five YouTube videos bookmarked about how to do it.

How to do it yourself.

But I also have the initiation anxiety of if I mess this up, then I’ve wasted, untold, dozens of dollars, hundreds of dollars, at this point.

You’re buying different, sometimes you’re buying a whole little thing of thread to make three stitches out of a specific color. OK? But I do, there are a few that I want to finish, finish.

And so I’ve made a little pile on this shelf that you can’t see of all the things that I’m going to finish. And I just know that that is going to feel so good.

It’s going to feel so good. The easiest way to finish something, a needlepoint thing, is just to frame it.

Oh, yeah.

Put it in a frame and then put it on a shelf.

Or put it on the wall.

But you can literally be done with that in an afternoon. Extremely low stakes, you haven’t really cut anything. You can just get some museum tape, tape it into a mat, put it in a frame and be able to just look at it and be like, here it is.

Here it is.

And I own several needlepoints that were donated, that are framed, that were donated to Goodwill, so I know it’s possible.

Yeah.

Yeah, wow. OK. Those might get done today.

Start framing some stuff.

Those might get done today.

Yeah, that’s sometimes all it takes is just one person to tell you, you know, that you don’t have to do it that way. And you’ve done that for me twice today, Sharon.

You could do something different.

Twice, twice before we hit record, Sharon said, I wonder if you’re overthinking this. And I said, no one’s ever said that to my face. Whoa.

Me? No. Come on.

Impossible.

Yeah.

Impossible.

Yeah.

Why would I do that? Why would I do that? Could you have any other OK things to share with us?

Oh, let’s see.

Here’s, I mean, like the other thing that I just feel like is like everything’s going to be OK is because we don’t deserve dogs.

Oh, I know.

And they still love us anyway.

Oh, I know.

Oh, I know. I’ve written, I’ve read one person’s writing. It might have been Anne Lamott, but I can’t say for certain where she said, dogs are God’s love wrapped in fur coats.

And I just like the, they’re just, I don’t know. I mean, it’s a very cliche answer like, yeah, everybody loves their dogs, Sharon, bleh. You know, like it’s a dumb thing.

But there is something so kind of profound about being loved in that way. And they also require us, right? Like they need us to, they need us to care for them.

And like that relationship that humans have developed with dogs over thousands of years, I don’t know.

There’s just something about the animal kingdom to me that just every, all the babies and the birds and the dogs, like I just, they do not care about the problems that humans have managed to devise for themselves.

Yeah, yeah. Sharon, okay. We’re so in sync.

We’re so in sync because last night, late night trip to the store, there’s not a lot of laws in Arizona. You can bring anything anywhere, okay? You can walk into a store and you’re like, wow, that guy’s got a gun.

This guy’s got something in his arms. Everyone is gathered around him. What could it be?

A baby Chihuahua this big. I’ve never seen something so small in my life. If it’s in one of his hands, he’s got to just in one little hand.

I said that’s not a real dog, like stop it right now. This dog looks at me. This dog, the man offers this dog on his little, the palm of his hand to me.

This tiny little creature trustingly puts his little tiny, never seen a head this small head into my hand, gently lays it down. And I did feel all the love in the universe all at once from this tiny dog at the self checkout.

It’s so cute.

I’ve never, I was like, I have a chihuahua. I don’t have a chihuahua like this. Like, what is this?

I need this one. Like, I’ll trade you, I’ll trade you my used chihuahua for this brand new chihuahua straight up right now.

We’re looking chihuahua upgrade.

OK.

Oh, I know. I mean, like, there’s just this morning, you know, here in Minnesota last night, we got eight inches of snow and nobody welcomes an April snow. Nobody’s excited about that.

Even the most diehard winter lovers.

That’s what drove me out of the state. This was the April snowstorm of 2019. If you were there, you know Minneapolis.

We did a live show at the Fitzgerald. I walked out at 10 p.m. There was so much snow.

I just thought, oh, God, you got to be kidding me. You got to be kidding me. You got to be kidding me.

And the next day we were snowed in, snowed in. Little toddler with a little sand shovel, trying to help clear the driveway. And I looked at my husband.

I said, I’m not doing this again. Like it was his fault. He had done this to me.

And I said, no, no, I’m out of here.

We’re done.

So yeah, but you’re a better woman than I. You are there. You are sticking it out.

Well, this morning I woke up and it had been very windy and kind of borderline blizzardy yesterday.

And this morning I woke up and there was, it was a beautiful sunrise. There was snow on the trees. The wind had stopped overnight and the snow was on the branches.

If it was January, you’d be like, oh.

Yeah.

But I went outside and I was struck by the enormity of the bird song. The bird song was incredible. It was like you lived in a jungle.

And the birds were like probably like, what the hell?

Yeah.

Why did we fly over that? But this sort of sunrise with the snow on the trees and the birds, like the cacophony of birds, woodpeckers and crows and chickadees and robins.

And yesterday there was like an entire flock of like maybe 30 robins on one tree in my yard.

Just, it feels like hope is returning to the earth from the bird song alone, even though, even though there is much evidence to the contrary, even though it snowed all day yesterday and the air temperature was cold.

If you look, there are always signs of life.

I’m Nora McInerny, this has been It’s Going To Be OK. This podcast and life in general is a group project, so remember to share your OK things with us.

OK, you can call them, you can text them, you can email them, it’s 502-388-OKAY or IGTBO at feelingsand.co. Both of those are in our episode description. This episode was produced by Marcel Malekebu.

Our theme music is by Secret Audio. They also have an album out, and you may or may not hear my voice on it, which will be the worst part of an otherwise great album, which is linked in our episode description.

The rest of our team is Grace Berry and me, Nora McInerny. We are an independent production. It’s pretty incredible to be independent and making independent podcasts in the year that we are in.

It’s pretty crazy. We can only do it because of you. So thank you for being here.

Thank you for rating, reviewing, sharing, following us on Instagram. All of that stuff helps. We’ll see you back again here the week after next.