COMEDY THROUGH THE CHAOS

Hmm. Hopefully third time is the charm. We'll just try one more time and see if that works. If not, we'll have to wait until Saturday and see if it does something different on Saturday. I don't know what else to try. And I showed up all cute. Nikki, want to try one more time and if you can let me know if you can hear me this time. Speak. Wonder if you can let me know if you can hear me this time. I do appreciate you tapping the live. I do appreciate you doing that. Huh? We will see. Working. Lovely.

That is fascinating. Thank you. Hello, my friend to you as well. Hello, everybody. You know, I was just talking to one of my friends. Here I am with my favorite corporate clients. Hello. I am so glad. Glad that you can hear me. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. I am here. I am in. I hub out of the great state of Minnesota. For anyone new that is joining me, I am Ms. Shannon. My pronouns are she, her, I get to wear my buttons because I am with my favorite corporate client, the National Co Op Grocer.

So thank you. Oh, good. I may. I'm glad I made you belly laugh. That is my job or one of the. I have a lot of jobs. So I'm with my friends at the National Co Op Grocer. So they are a national co op that works with a variety of different groceries, restore co ops throughout the country. So that is fantailia. So you know what, I'm gonna keep trying. You know what? That's what these bit long nails still can manage to do. A couple of clicks here and there, just keep it going kind of thing. I think it's interesting because to you I probably look like a very colorful old timey movie.

And I was just moving my face, moving my face to all of y'. All. So I think that that actually falls in alignment, as odd as it sounds, with what I was going to talk about today, which we will get to in, in a moment because I'm here at the St. Paul River center hanging out with my friends at the National Co Op Grocers. This is one of their bigger conferences called convergence where they are talking to the people from their grocery department, their wellness department and those type of things. And they're here also talking to some vendors and some other people that will help them go back to their individual co ops and do their jobs more efficiently and better with some more resources.

So it's great to be able to talk to them. And so that is fascinating. Fascinating. I get to learn a lot. And so this morning I talked to them about my kiddo and so going on at home right now with my son who, if you've followed me for a while here in the Cadre app and have an adorable teenage son who happens to be high supports on the autism spectrum, which is quite often why I join you here on Caregiver Thursdays and get to talk about our adventures that we have. And so I did what's called a GI map test for him.

So I got to see what is going on with some of his interworkings. And so I came out with some things that were on the high side, so streptococcus, some staph and some candida. So I am trying to clear some of those things out in a homeopathic way, which is an adventure. So I stopped at one of our local co ops to get some things to work on that. And so if you have gone down any of those routes, it's purchasing a lot of things and probiotics and prebiotics and stuff. And of those things have very complex multi syllabic names that look like, in my opinion, Harry Potter wizard spell names like Akkermansia and all these other things.

So I just basically went in with a handwritten list from my holistic healthcare provider and said, do you have this Staphylocolopus, blah, blah, blah. They also look like dinosaur names. That's what they are. Exactly. They're just a collection of all these names. So it was very appropriate that I got to talk to our friends here from the wellness departments, from our, from my favorite co ops and go, all right, who would like to give me a pronunciation lesson on all of these different things? And so they were very accommodating and that's how I got to start my morning.

So that's one of the things that were going on at home. And I posted a video in the Cadre Sphere app earlier this morning of what I wanted to talk about today, which is savoring, you know, because Nikki helped us come up with a really great focus for this month, which is savoring. And so I want to encourage us all to savor the surprises. So this morning when I was popping on with you, surprise technology was technology, new kind of thing. But the surprise I got last night, one of the things that I've been also working on with my kiddo is working with him.

He has a developmental delay. And so what delay means, it doesn't mean that it's never going to come around, but it also often means that I don't know when it's going to come around and we just work on things and I work on it without having an expectation of what the end timing is going to be on certain things. It's just I want him to eventually have more autonomy on certain things. I want him to eventually be better at washing his face. I want him to eventually have a skincare routine. Because having an inchy, flaky person living with you is not a good thing for any of us, regardless of what their age is.

And especially having an itchy, flaky teenager. Nobody want that. Nobody wants that. So I have been working on, you know, I call it our Friday night spa nights. We work on things, we do our face masks and other things. And so one of the ones we've done and what he kind of like is I have this green clay mask stick that we use. And I had to say that very slowly so that you knew what I was saying. And so we were messing with that a couple of weeks ago. And we've been. We've done it a few times over the last couple of months.

And usually it's like, come on, we're doing our mask. You ready to do your mask? And he'll say, mask back to me. And we'll put on these masks, usually together. And we'll sit there and we'll have our little masks and we'll sit there with our bonnets on and then we'll wash his face. Yes, we have a. Yeah, we do have a good time. Brianna doing our little spa nights. And so it's just kind of a lark and something that we do together. And I didn't really expect him to do this on his own, really. So yesterday or last evening, I'm in the kitchen and I hear kind of this thumping around in the bathroom.

And I'm very fortunate that although my kiddo is high supports, he usually can kind of do most of the stuff that he needs to do in the bathroom on his own. In fact, lately he doesn't want me bugging him in the bathroom. So I'm like, okay, fine. But I was still kind of suspicious where I'm like, what is he doing? So I go down the hallway and I go into the bathroom and he's in the bathroom and had fully gray green clay mask, his entire face. Well, completely appropriately, efficiently. Had done it all himself without me suggesting it, without anything and speak wonder.

You mentioned before that you belly laughed. I belly laugh. I guffawed. I was like, good job, great job. I'm glad he did it. There's a couple of places on his face that I've been hoping that we clear up. And you know what will help it clear up? Him occasionally on his own, going in there and giving himself a little spa night and his clay mask. You know, it's something that I had hoped that he would eventually find enough interest in, if not pure on joy, at least interest in that he would do it on his own, that he would find value in this thing that I had taught him to do.

If nothing else, us doing it enough that he would go. The repetition is of interest to me. So I would do it myself, even if mom wasn't here to suggest it. And I never thought that it would come to fruition this quickly. There's no way that I thought that. So I am soaking in this particular surprise like a tea bag in warm water. I am enjoying it while I can. And it's something that we have to remind ourselves to do specifically as caregivers, because there are so many things that we are working on in tandem at any given time.

There's things that we have to do and quite often, and we're on to the next thing. Here's the care that we have to give them at this moment, but there's also the next thing that we have to do and all the stuff that we have to do for ourselves, our jobs, Just trying to make sure that we stay hydrated is something that we have to do all the time. So we don't give ourselves time to go. Well, that's surprising. There's something that we worked on for a long time and, oh, it popped back up or look, I got something cool in the mail.

Oh, here's something that happened that I wasn't expecting. And you know, it's really cool. So give yourself time to stop and enjoy the surprise that you weren't expecting. And those days are what's going to get you through those hard times. Being able to look back at them or even just. I mean, we have difficult days, don't get me wrong, especially in the summer, because my son definitely benefits from the routine of the school. School year. I'm not gonna lie and say we don't. The routine of being able to go someplace to have something to do every day, he benefits from it.

Even though I do my best to try and fill that in different ways as much as I can. It's still not the same as him having that regular schedule that he gets to do from his pro from a day, a school program, Monday through Friday from 9 until 3. It's just not the Same as much as I give myself plenty of credit for making attempts. Not the same. So this is especially this far where we're like, it's been a long time. And he's like, when do I get to go someplace else and see somebody else? So the fact that he's finding other ways to occupy himself and that they're quality things, that they're fun things, that they're things that benefit him.

Congratulations to both of us. So what's going on for you right now that you're like, hey, it seems like it's a little thing, but it's something that you really have been working on. And hey, surprise. Just like a Jack in the box. You didn't know when it was going to spring out, but it did, and it's here now. And even though you may have had to jump a little bit because you didn't know it was going to jump out right now, give it a good long look before you push it back into the box, everybody. Thank you very much.

Nikki. Thank you. So sometimes when those things pop out, we just get rid of them too quick. We don't give a chance to give them a good look, to give them a full. Their. Their full experience. We don't give us a chance to actually catch our breath and go, oh, wait a minute, I get it. I do deserve to fully experience this and look at it for its full glory. So I encourage you to do that over the next week. If there's a surprise that comes in your life, actually look and see if this surprise is something that you should actually give yourself a little bit more time to enjoy.

So hopefully there are some good things that are going on for you in your life. And often I encourage you to go, is there something I've been working on taking accountability for my schedule to make it work for me. That is okay. I appreciate you sharing that. Your giant smile is fixing my high stress day. Oh, thank you for sharing that, Andi Mack. I appreciate that. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. And I am sorry that your day is doing that to you. Shame on it. I'm sorry that there are so many things that are going on.

Nikki, I appreciate you sharing that. You are talking about taking accountability for your schedule. I would encourage you to do this for me. Whenever I feel like my schedule is overwhelming me, I try to look through my schedule from this perspective. What are the manufactured deadlines on my schedule? And by manufactured deadlines, I say, what are the deadlines on here? There are things that I really made that aren't really deadlines, are there certain things that you're going? I created this deadline where I'm going.

I have to get it done by this time. But that's not actually the reality. And that might be a way to diffuse a few of those things, you know, where you put this pressure on yourself. But in reality, it's not a I have to, it's an I should to. And I have been doing for me, part of my practice has been rearranging the I have to, I should to and I wants so that the I have to's maintain their value as an I have to. The I shoulds, I reevaluate those a lot differently than I used to. And then the I wants get a lot more.

A lot more weight than they used to because before the I wants did not get nearly as much weight as they they really warranted. And so now those I wants really get second position to those I have to's. Yeah, the. The I shoulds, I challenge you, I challenge you to reevaluate I shoulds. I shoulds are just like your shoulders. They're just weights sometimes. And so I challenge you to go and look at those I shoulds quite often. Those I shoulds really should be your lowest priorities. I say that from experience.

I say that from experience. So maybe reevaluate a few of those I shoulds and see if they really should maintain that. Yeah, that's where we are. So thank you, Brianna as well. Thank you for laughing. Thank you for laughing along with us. Andi Mack, Andy. I do hope that just like a tea kettle, that a little bit of the pressure in your day releases a little bit for the rest of the day. Yeah. So release some shoulds, release some time, allow a little bit of a surprise to pop into the rest of your day.

Everyone, I'm going to be here at the St. Paul River center for a few more hours and I'll be back here tomorrow. I am excited because I bought a new variety of mask. I have a tumorous, a turmeric honey mask that I was going to try with my son tomorrow night for our Friday night spa night. So I will see what he thinks of it. A few weeks ago, I tried a serum that I thought that he would like and he was not a fan of it. Nope. Wiped it off immediately. He was not. Did not think that the serum was seruming.

So we will see how spa mite goes tomorrow night. So, Paris, No, I do not have an emotional attachment to what he does with it. But, you know, one of these days it may be his next favorite thing. And so you don't know what your next favorite thing is going to be. But everyone, we do appreciate all of you being here in the Cadre sphere. We are about building community. That is how I started the day is reminding everybody that we hope that you find community somewhere. It is important to so important now more than ever to find a variety of community.

Hopefully it's in your family, it's in your place of work, it's in your place. If you're a person that needs to find a place of worship, there needs to be a variety of ways that you find community. Because right now isolation is so devastating. So continuing to build it here in the cadres here. We're glad that we can help you do that. If there's something that we can continue to share, let us know. There are a variety of ways for you to contact us here in the Cadre sphere. Leave us a note in the chat, you can figure out ways to email us.

We have lots of different ways that we can communicate with you coach you just continue to like share information, share resources, share this way that we continue to build. I personally will see you back here on Saturday at 10am Central for the parenting variety of things. So anyone who joins me there will for sure get to see how our Friday night spa night goes and then I will have some other wonderful, wonderful chaos to be able to share with you everyone. Thank you much for joining us. Everyone who joined in early and helped me navigate our chaos.

As far as the technology, thank you for joining me for that as well. So I appreciate all of you so much. I am so glad that I get to join you here and I will see you all very soon. So be safe and be well everybody. Enjoy the rest of your day.