We All Want Impossible Things

My dear friend Alison Schmelke joins the podcast, perhaps a bit reluctantly,  and together we interview our idol author and blogger Catherine Newman. We reminisce about Catherine's column Ben & Birdy and how it got us through the early days of parenthood.  Catherine discusses her poignant, hilarious and nostalgic novel, We All Want Impossible Things. It is the story about two best friends Edi and Ash and Edi's last days in hospice.

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Transcript

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I can't believe he just said that. I know we either. So I'm beaming. That was she is, you know What's so weird. You're not exactly the same, but she's always reminded me of you. Well, thank you. That is a very high compliment. I was exactly the way I pictured it way back in the day that the three of us would just sit around and be BFFs. Hello, welcome back to the Red Fern book review. I am your host, Amy Mair. And I am joined by one of my very best friends in the world, who I just love so much. While I'm getting emotional. Her name is Alison Schmell key. And she is gonna be a guest co host today. And she holds a BA in English law from the University of British Columbia. She is more well read than me. She's funnier than me. She's more insightful than me and more dramatic. So I think all of this is going to lend to a really good discussion. And we are here to talk about a book by one of our idols. And her name is Catherine Newman. And she's written her first novel for adults. And it's called, We All Want Impossible Things. So with that, I'd like to say hello, Allison. Hello, Miss Amy. Thank you for having me. It's so good to have a year. Okay, the first question I wanted to ask I, you have never offered to be on the podcast before. No, never. And you sent me an email and with this book, because I didn't know that she'd actually written a novel. And you said, Oh, my God, if you can get her on, I'm actually going to come on the podcast. So my first question is, what is it about this particular person that we're gonna talk to Katherine, that made you want to come on the podcast? Well, I wanted to come on the podcast to talk to and about Katherine, because it was with you. Because Katherine was a huge part of our lives. In our first sense were born. Yeah. And we really, that was when our friendship strengthened so much. Yeah. And she was such a big part of that. And with her early blog, and you and I both had a hard time. That time. Yeah. And she just brought us perspective and humor, and brought us together. So. But having said that, I never thought you would actually say yes, I knew I knew you actually weren't dying to come on the podcast. I really don't. Yeah, this is not my jam. This is not your jam. No, no. So I actually knew you really didn't want to come on the podcast. I just think you thought pie in the sky. Wouldn't this be fun? I can talk to you for hours and hours and hours and hours. Yeah, but I don't really want to do it like this. And then this is so funny. I sent an email to Katherine. And I copied Allison. And I just said, we're super fans, blah, blah, blah, please come on the podcast. She got back and like, a minute and a half. And was like, Oh my God, because like, I think the fact that we have this history with her, and we're her age. And so and then I kind of held Alison's feet to the fire. I kind of knew, but I think we're gonna have fun. But let's just give a just a little before we were going to interview Katherine together, but just a little background. And Catherine is hilarious. And I think what what she did was she wrote this column called Ben and Birdie and they're about her two children. And we just loved her blog and you found it. Do you remember how you found it? I don't remember because at that time, like we were hardly ever on the internet. I remember waiting for dinner to be over so I could run up to the attic at the time where our one computer was located so I could check to see if she'd like released a new blog that day. But I don't know how I think I must have read about it in a magazine or something. Well, it was off Baby Center, which I don't even know if that's still around, but you could get baby names off that And then like tips on, like how to like, I don't know, change a diaper, what was going on, but the funny thing is, is and prep for this, she wrote this column called Ben and birdie. And as we said there was this was 2000 2001. And there wasn't a lot of options for us. And there certainly wasn't like a thing called like a mommy blogger, that wasn't really a thing. And I wouldn't even put her in this category. I mean, I just she wrote this column, and I don't really remember the content except what I do remember, she would write about things that you we would all probably if you raise children laugh about, it would be like, you know, feeding them new foods for the first time. Yeah, and your that just now seems ridiculous. Why would you even stress up strain and knowing you you probably were crying it was crying it all up and what wouldn't got organic food at Granville Island? And then you like strange stuff? And you probably only got what what was in season? Oh, yeah. And then and then you created these like, and then you'd feel really in control? Because you had like, a whole freezer full of like, control, control controlling the controllables. And so she would, let's say, after you'd spent a week working on that, yeah, you would then read a column about that. Oh, and then all I remember is that she would write in depth about said topic, and then somehow make us laugh. Yes. And then somehow know that even though you actually this time didn't buy organic food when you made your baby food. It's all about loving that. Exactly. And so like and then, but the thing that I remember that you did do, you would send me these I remember being because in our first house, we had this basement suite. And sometimes I'd go down there to escape from the babies. And Jeff, I'd be down there. And I would read this in the dark, and you would send me this note, and you'd be like, How did she know? Yeah, okay, so funny thing, when, when this book came out, I didn't even I was like, let's do it. I didn't even know what it was about. So this is actually we're going to talk to her about it, but it's about best friends and one of them is dying. And somehow it it's a loving book, and it's a funny book. But Okay, one more thing. I'm just gonna give you a little baby background on her and I'm going to read from her back of her book is this is just explains Katherine in a tea. She said in her own words, she's written a gazillion columns, articles and can be in recipes for magazines and newspapers. She's penned memoirs, and even a middle grade novel. This is her first adult novel, non adult adults in the porn way, just you know, for grownups, and she lives in Amherst, Massachusetts. So I think we're ready to talk to her. I can't wait. Okay. All right. Okay. Here we go. Oh, my God. I'm on this new computer and I don't know what I'm doing. Okay. Also see that my filters didn't transfer. I I'm not in love with that. I was just talking about read my faces. Yeah. Okay. I'm usually on blurred out like I'm in a porn film. So this is kind of shocking. All right. Okay. Hi. Hi. Thanks for joining. Thank you for having me. i So I'm Katherine. who's who? I'm Amy. Amy. I'm the podcast is my podcast. Cast. I mean, Allison, is my guest, co host for today. Hi, you guys. Thanks so much for having me on. Thanks for coming. We just did a little intro before you came on. And what we were talking about is we before we talk about your book, we have to talk about Ben and Bertie, because that that's why you're here. Like I didn't even know what your book was about. And I didn't care. I just wanted to meet you. And I I, we loved it so much. And just wanted to talk with you a little bit about that. Like we were just discussing how, at that time, it was what early 2000s and just weren't a lot of options. And the main thing was she found that she can't remember how she found you. And we actually can't remember all the content. We just remember that we were really stressed about things that now we think are silly, and you weren't stressed about the same thing. And then you kind of somehow made it funny, and then you brought it back to love and I It was kind of the same. But she would send it to me. And we just use the example of maybe introducing a new food. And like, we talked about it for hours, and we're so worried. And then somehow, she would say, How did Catherine know? Ah, thinks that's so great. I just wrote down stress, funny love, because that is probably a pretty good three word summary of my career. That's a really nice way to frame that. I appreciate it. How Why do you think your column was so popular with so many people? And we and Ellison noted that we're thanking your afterward because we're brainy. I think, I think the same thing you think like, I feel like before the internet, I mean, it's so weird now to even think about it. But I get I know, sorry, my cats complaining. I feel like I mean, now. We just are these like cows in the wilderness. And we're moving out. And because of the internet, other towns are moving back to us. And they're like, Oh, my God, you know, twin XL sheets, what a disaster or kids are leaving for college, whatever. And I feel like back then, it was so new, that you could like put something out and it would echo back to you that like brand new internet feeling of like, oh my god, I'm not alone. You know, the thing our kids totally take for granted like Tic Tac, you have a weird thing. 1000 people on tic tac already made a video about how they can't stop cute dipping their ears or like whatever your weird thing is. But for us back then I feel like we didn't know other people thought the same thing as us, it was so new to find that like resonance. Especially if you didn't get to just talk with them every day, like Amy and I felt like we were going through it together and having actually a really hard time. So thanks. Thankfully, we had each other. But then when we found you, we were like, oh, there's actually people across the world that are going through this as well. We're not literally not alone. And that would just make you feel so much better at the end of the day. That just that like the you are not alone vibe, I feel like was so profound. And it was really profound for me too. Because I would put this stuff out there like, I don't know, you know, anybody and then get this like, you know, tsunami of like, yeah, me i also have that are like, Oh my God, thank God, and then a bunch of people who were like, your kids should be taken away from you. It was really, it really was I do feel like it's hard. For people who were new to the internet the way we all were. It's almost hard to evoke. Like, if you were to be me now. There'd be 100,000 places to look and have your experience echoed back to you. So I just think for us it was like, we were just like, poking at it to see if anybody felt the way we felt. Okay, so let's talk about the book. Okay. We'll move on. Okay. First of all, can you tell give people tell people what is the Book about tell people? We'll have you give a little bit so funny because I just like two days ago, I was like, Oh, I gotta come up with a better elevator pitch because I just described it to somebody as a sleazy hospice friendship, romance. And she was like, Really, that's not really a genre I'm familiar with, but that's kind of it. Lazy hospice, friendship, romance. So the book is about a woman whose best friend is dying in hospice, and for sort of complicated logistical reasons that is happening where the narrator lives in her town, and she takes on this role of kind of primary point person for this passage. And it's a book about friendship and death and sex and she has two sort of half grown daughters. She has a faltering marriage. And she is trying to navigate all of these things while being kind of blown apart by grief. So you know, a person who's been just blown apart and then is wide open to life and love in the world. That's, that's good. Okay. The first thing that came to mind when I Read this book, you are known for your nonfiction, you have written a middle grade novel. That's fiction. And this is based on you had a personal experience of a very your best friend passed away. And so my question is, I know you wrote something in New York Times about that. Why did you decide when you're known? And obviously, it's easy for you to access nonfiction. What made you decide to create a novel of fiction around the storyline? Um, so no spoilers. I mean, it's kind of obvious from the beginning that this is what's happening in the book, but the main character is, like, kind of inappropriately sleeping with everybody. And the when my friend was dying, I experienced this thing that the main character experiences not coincidentally, called. She, the main character in this book calls it her falling in love disorder, which I actually always have called it too. And that is part of the being blown apart by grief is that she's so open that everybody she encounters everybody, she just follows along with them. And that is her kids, her ex husband, all of her friends, everyone in the hospice, she is just her friend who's dying. She's just like, in love with the world. And I had that experience. And I remember to line up a time, I'm gonna have to write this as a novel, because the only way I'm going to be able to communicate this experience as if she's sleeping with everybody. The best way to translate this, right? Okay, like, almost like a lack of boundaries, or just like, everything's open to her, all those things. So on the one hand, a lot on trees, I just read a one star Goodreads review that was like, why does this person have no boundaries? Like, I'm really sorry. A lack of boundaries is I think, the traditional sort of negative framework of it, I think. So and, and she's clearly like, behaving in some unhealthy ways. I think the positive version of it is, in the face of this incalculable loss, she is just grabbing love, at connection. And finding one thing about the book that I liked that seems to be driving some other people crazy is that everywhere she turned, people meet her where she's at people just, there's not like somebody in the book, who's a jerk, while there's one character who's not the greatest, but like, people just keep meeting her where she's at, she's, she's grieving, she's needy, she's all over the place. She's a mess, and people keep showing up for her with love. And that was my experience. And that part, I feel like, is an opportunity, even though it's, you know, also some boundary lessness well, because we often don't do that in our own lives. But when you're so vulnerable and raw like that, you but you're putting yourself out and out out there, and what an incredible gift to be met where you are with only love when not so vulnerable and raw. Is that exactly. And in fact, this I don't think this is in the book. I'm like, I already don't remember what's in the book. But when my friend died in real life I came home, she died in New York, I came home to Western Massachusetts, and my friends just came in the house. Like I can't even explain it really. But like everybody we loved without being especially invited or prompted people just started coming to the house like with food with musical instruments. And by the end of the night, there were like 25 people in our house playing music and eating and, and it was the most, like, beautiful. I mean, I think that happens a lot when people die that that people just show up for you. But it was so moving to me. Just that impulse to just like come up, come be with us and I loved it. So So there's a lot of that believer in the book, I think, one of my questions for you because you have been able to do this, you know, everything that I've ever read with you is, we've humor in so effortlessly to what you're writing. And yes, I It's funny that you say I don't remember what was in my book because I read this. I tried to read it as close to when we were going to meet you as possible. So yesterday, I was finishing it. Yesterday was a really hard day for me, I have stuff going on, in my own family, and I was really tired. And so I was reading the and and I was crying at the funeral, which I don't think is a spoiler because we have. And I was crying and I and then I got to page when the dad whispers, when the montage is coming up, I never was a fan of that particular hairstyle. And I burst out laughing and I was crying and laughing at the same time. But is that my question is, is that after as effortless as it seems to be for you? Or is? Or is that a way of like, do you have to try to put that humor in? Because that's sort of your thing? Hmm, it's a good question. I mean, I, um, the humor is a funny thing. Like, the only reason there are any Jews still alive on the planet is because we were funny. And so I just feel like it's such a like, it's such an inborn survival strategy that I seem to have inherited from a long line of like funny Jews. On the one hand, on the other mother is British, and not Jewish, very self contained and proper. So I definitely must have been an interesting teenagehood really, continues to be and you're done. Um, but I will say that that impulse of I definitely like when I think about writing the Ben and Brody column, I remember like holding my hands cupped for someone to barf into them and thinking, at least this is going to be a funny story. And I have had that, that like narrative impulse, which I think in despair is very, there's a lot of salvation and of projecting into the future, when I'm going to be looking back and it's going to be something about it's going to be funny. So on the one hand, that and on the other hand, the material I am given is, it's to hand it to me on a platter. I wrote this book while Bernie was living at home because of the pandemic. And I basically transcribed everything she said in real time. Like, there's not a line that this bell character has. That is not a thing that came out of birdies mouth to She is just like a font of really like craziness. So that was great. And my father really does actually a little peeved about the book, he feels I missed representative and I was like dad, she'll the ash loves her father's like if you miss that she feels well loved by those parents. Like that's some not great reading in my opinion. However, my dad's offended just let it be noted. Well, I think he sounds great. Hilarious. Um, let's do a reading. Um, so in in this chapter, the main character has brought her 16 year old daughter to the hospice. I think she's 16 Again, don't remember. Inside the hospice Bill glows like a shiny ambassador from the land of youth. It feels almost indecent to bring her Belle Ed cries when she sees her. Oh, yay, Ed is the friend who's dying. Hi, Bella says and leans over to kiss EDS cheek a little shy. Hospice is just so existentially weird. It's like you walk in under a giant banner that says everyone here is dying. But then most of the time, you're just making small talk and case study is trying to find something to watch on Netflix or wondering if there's any pie left. I mean, isn't that just life though? Jonah had said to me when I described this, we're doing all the things enjoying ourselves where we can even though we're all just gonna die at the end of it. Jonah's a friend of hers who's his brother? Geez, Jonah. I'd said too much fucking perspective. He asked because all the men in My wife like to quote from spinal tap whenever the occasion arises, but yes, too much fucking perspective. Violent comes in while we're bundling ed up smiles at us. Are they breaking you at violets? And are they breaking you out? She says to Ed and Ed says, yep, finally, Violet helps us sort out the tubes and wires. The down jacket and blankets and slippers helps us help Ed from the edge of the bed into the wheelchair, which is inexplicably more epic than it sounds like trying to get your suitcase into the overhead bin. Only it's made of heavy floppy bones and cries out sometimes. Edie grimaces every few seconds and it's terrible. EADS I say grimacing myself and she says no, no, no, I'm good. To lace to life. Love. Hi, I'm Bella singing along. There's someone in the hospice who's always listening to Fiddler on the Roof. Bell stops peering into the hallway. Is that a crib she whispers and I nod. She raises her eyebrows questioningly and I shake my head shrug. Woof. She says there's a baby in the hospice. Are you guys just going into the courtyard violent asks, Would you be willing to take Farah out to pee? Viola inherited, Farrah Fawcett from a longtime resident of the hospice who died last year. Farah is a dog. There's an elderly Chihuahua floating around here too, adopted by viola in a similar fashion but he's usually cowering under the desk at the nurse's station. Of course I say do you want me to take tiny to Nash? She says he's scared of the courtyard here. Let's finish getting everybody ready. The sun rises and sets rises and sets calendar pages fly off the wall. The roses bud open, we'll drop all their petals. The ACE cups finished melting the seas rise. And finally Ed is ready to go. I kind of have to pee she says and I laughed say okay, I remember a long ago snow day. Jules this is her older daughter Jules Jules insisted on dressing herself so I left her to it while I changed Bell's diaper noodled her fat little arms and Kiki little legs into Willie long underwear stuffed her whole round woolly little self into a down sack and zipped it up carefully over her tummy and under her many Chin's when I looked up again, Jules had stuffed both feet down one leg of her snowsuit and also zipped her hair into it. She cried and cried while a gentle to her hair out of the zipper and tugged out her legs. Don't help me she was sobbing and furious, and then finally wrapped in my arms face patted dry with a tissue consoled had the snow already melted by now. I peered out the window it had not Jules stood up from my lap to pull on her boots. And then Bill from the carpet where she was still on her back waving her little arms and legs around like an appendage tortoise announced proudly mama i pooping in that, you know that reading that last bit because that that's what I would ask me what I wanted you to read. And I mean, I think what you're trying to do with this novel, many things like you talked about, this is about grief, but it's about bringing everything together. And I thought a lot about when I was reading this is the passage of time. And I that that snow suit passage it. It made me emotional. And it also made me think of like, well, I was just even thinking about Ivan so her son Ivan's 22. And he's very accomplished. And sometimes he's a bit serious. And I can think about him, you know, naked in the paddling pool with my son. And every time I see him, I have these feelings, but I can't reveal them. And I started like, that's what this reminded me of. I was like, I know you. But like, I don't know, necessarily all the new things about him. And actually, I mean, no, it's just captured that. Yeah, yeah, I know what you mean. Yes, I? Yeah, it's the thing I've always written about. I think I've written about it. I think it's actually in this novel, too. But I used to write about it in the column of feeling that feeling of like all the nested cells, like your kids are these matushka dolls. And you just inside them are all the cells they've already been, you know that that weird feeling? And it's so layered or like, you know, an onion or I feel that layered pneus and I feel too like I volunteer in a hospice as another kind of complicated part of this book. But I make dinner in a hospice every Monday night and I've done that for years. But there's also something about the sort of cycle of caretaking. That is astonishing to me in this life that, you know, here we're like people who have cared for for little children. And then there comes a time where you care for adults, you know, where you either Shepherd a friend out of life or your parents or strangers if you have that kind of job or, and that is very emotional for me to that feeling of like, oh, is it that full circle weird feeling of sort of bringing someone into the world via caretaking and then sending someone out of the world? It's incredibly moving to me. Is this having written this book and now talking about it a lot. And I saw your review in the New York Times yesterday. Yeah. Oh, battle, I actually just opened up the New York Times, which I get, and I was like, Oh, my God, I actually get to be my hero tomorrow. And she's in the New York Times today. But I was wondering if, if the process of writing the book and now talking about it a lot and stuff is that? How is that for you thinking about your friend, huh? It's really strange. I gotta say, I, you know, I carry it, she's in our lives a lot. Like we see her family and our kids, like, she's very present. For us. It's not like long stretches past and I don't think of her so. But then, you know, when I wrote the book, I was very in it very, I had taken a lot of notes when she was done, which, by the way, she watched to me, I had mixed feelings about but um, so I've taken a lot of notes. And so when I was writing the book being in Merced, and that was really a mixed bag. On the one hand, I have this great reason to kind of wallow around in my own grief, like I'm writing a book, I have to be this grief stricken, and I'm trying to do my work, you know, and on the other hand, just devastating. And then this weird amount of time passed, you know, you sell a book. And then basically like two years pass, and then the book comes out. I mean, things happen along the way, but and then I realized, this box of books came from the publisher, you know, the finished what they call the finished copies. And right before I opened the box, I realized that like, my friend wasn't going to genie out of the box. And not that I had ever thought she would. But there was something so like, I was so excited. Cutting Open the tape, and then so sad for one of a better word, like this feeling that I had not magic her back into life somehow, which I never thought I was going to. But it was it's been a little feeling of finality or they don't Yeah, yeah, maybe like, like this other thing was hap like, yeah, it's so dull. It's like people die and they're just dead forever. And so I think that there was something like happening that gave me this kind of excited feeling and then it really was not happening in that way. You know, so that what would what would ally think of this book husband got first crack at reading it before anything happened with it, and you know, signed off on it, which was all I really needed to happen. I mean, I can't really imagine I just couldn't have written the book if she were alive. So I can't quite piece it together. I think I think she would think it was a book about me and it is, I mean, that's the thing. Like when somebody you know, the other thing people like to complain about on Goodreads is the ashes a narcissist. You only know that cuz she told you like, I just feel like, yeah, it's, that's the theme of the book. Like that's not figuring out. Ash is the healthy friend and she makes it about her a lot of everything is good to me at the end of it is like, right, right. I was stealing the thunder. Yep, yep. Stealing everybody's best lines making notes while our friend is. So I feel like that part that was not news to my best friend of 40 years. So I don't know. I don't know what to think she wouldn't be here. I mean, I wouldn't have written the book Kena I have a kind of a frivolous question to ask, I guess. But I know that you've written for so many different magazines and, and publications over the years. And I'm what I was wondering, I said to Amy, and she was like, oh ask ask ask. Have you ever actually met Oprah? Oh, no. No, never met Oprah. And it's like, where do you meet Gail? I know. I've written I've written a fair amount for that magazine. But I have never met her and like every now and then something I've written. They'll be in the ED note, you know, that she allegedly has written but I'm not sure she really writes her own edit notes. But then I'm like, oh, did Oprah's eyes Passover thick. Perchance but I have that again. Again. We know ashes, nurses. So let's not be shocked like this. But when the time's named this book, like one of November's must reads, and it was emptied. Michelle Obama. All I thought was like, I wonder if Michelle Obama's eyeballs will test for my name. Like I felt so graced by the potential anyway, no way of knowing. Yeah. Okay. All right. Any other questions? Well, I also, it was interesting when you were talking about the, like, the very visceral parts of being in the hospice, because you're writing I was saying an AMI, when you when you're describing, particularly the hospice, but I'm not as familiar with that setting, but your home setting with the food and the cats and the kind of like, I could smell sort of like the unwashed bodies and the dishes and the sick, like nothing else matters, right? Except in what's happening with that. And you did such a good job of, of weaving that through and food is a big part of your writing as well, too, isn't it? It is? Yeah, it is I wanted, I wanted there to be a lot of food, partly because in real life, that friendship was very food centric. And hospice can be an incredibly food focused place, because it's kind of you're very constrained, and what pleasures you have access to, but if you can still eat, or you can still taste or still enjoy. Food is very central. And I find that to be always true in hospice, like the people who are still eating. They're like, what do you make, you know, it's very, so I did want food and also that that twins thing of like, you know, death and life, like, you know, at some point, I think, I think it's in this book, at some point, one of the characters says, It's so stupid, but I'm kind of hungry. And it's like, right, it's not stupid. It's like your body doing its animal thing. And it keeps doing it. Even if your heart is breaking, you keep having to eat and pee and sleep. And it's the weirdest experience. But everyone who has experienced a huge loss knows that experience of your body keeps making its demands. It's so strange, even the dying body keeps making its demands, you know, in the book, Ed, so thirsty all the time, and she has to keep drinking, and it's like, you know, she's dying. But in the meantime, the body has all these, all these things it needs and wants. So I think the food pieces is just a mix of stuff, I guess. And I think talking about the thirst I just also wanted to comment on the cover art is so beautiful is on like a soda can with a straw coming out and then a flower coming out. And because she's so thirsty all the time. I didn't I didn't know what it what it was until about halfway through and I was like, oh, that's what I know. I love it so much because it's funny. I've never had this experience, but they sent me this cover as it is. It was the first cover I saw. And I was like, blown away by it. It's so perfect. Because you know, hospice and friendship. I was like, oh, no, what are they gonna do? Is it gonna be like clasped hands? You know, like, I just have this like whore. I have this terror of like corniness or sort of homework Enos. Even though I was braced for it. I was like, it should be clasped hands. I'm glad it's gonna be clasped hands, you know, whatever. And it's like so on. believably perfect. It's good. verticity like it's Yeah, yeah. Yeah, the straw the flower two pedals. I love love it. I wrote I wrote Oh, the artist who painted it so seen by the cover, and she wrote me back a really long thing about her process like she read the book. Read the whole book. Wow. Read the book, right? Anyway. Amazing. Yes, I'm with you. The cover is linked astonishing. Yeah. Love it. Well, anything I'm okay. I just want to let you know, this has meant so much to her. And honestly, like Allison has never, I don't think this is the final part. We were just discussing this. She's never offered to come on. I knew she didn't want to come on. And then so she sent me this note. She's like, when they'd be great. Catherine comes on, he'll come on to and I knew you knew that you were, she knew you were never coming on. And I sent you an email, and you got back in a minute. And I was like, oh, god, okay. Okay. And then I never admitted until today. I knew she still didn't want to come on. But I was like, Ricky, this will be so fun. And so she she. I'm really glad you came up with this. I'm so glad. I'm so glad I can take something off my not my bucket list. But my, my my list of things I wanted to meet Katherine Newman. Well, I'm so glad I got to talk to you guys. Thank you. Lily's really sweet to be asked questions that went that far back. Very sweet for me. Good luck with your book and we're gonna be reading you. So okay, okay. Thanks. Hi. Hi. Ay, ay, they'll be either. And so I'm beaming. That was she is, you know, What's so weird. You're not exactly the same, but she's always reminded me of you. Thank you. That is a very high compliment. I was exactly the way I pictured it way back in the day that the three of us were just around and be BFFs. That's, that's what it felt like today. And, okay, so, you listen to the podcast, I want to send us out. And we'll have the Allison really likes my music. I love I love the same music reminds me of my favorite show Friday and so your voice is going to be carrying over okay, music, so Okay. Well, thanks for having me. Everyone listen, thanks for listening to Katherine. Thank you. It was an honor. Okay, Fine.