Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Start your week smiling with your friends. Kathy's aunt and Michelle Frechette. It's time to get ready for some weekly motivation with WP motivate.
Hi, Cathy.
Wait. Hi, Kathy. What is it? What do I say? Oh, happy Thursday, Kathy. I'm, like, forgetting myself here.
[00:00:21] Speaker B: Well, it's like a new month and it's a new Thursday, so it's like, what? What? What are we doing here?
[00:00:28] Speaker A: Yeah, happy August.
[00:00:29] Speaker B: And it's August. We're supposed to be, like, taking the whole month of August off like politicians, right?
[00:00:35] Speaker A: Oh, gosh, wouldn't that be nice?
[00:00:38] Speaker B: It should be this way. Thoughts that just, like, Europeans, all of our european friends were like, oh, you Americans. With your two weeks of vacation, we're taking off a month and a half. We'll see ya.
[00:00:51] Speaker A: My first thought was, man, maybe my sciatica would feel better if I wasn't sitting in this desk chair every day.
[00:00:59] Speaker B: I have a question for you, though. Yeah. Like, on Saturdays, like, you don't have to, you know, you've got the day off. Do you sometimes go and sit and do stuff?
[00:01:09] Speaker A: Sometimes?
[00:01:09] Speaker B: Like, it's almost just a habit. Like, you just go to your.
[00:01:12] Speaker A: Sometimes. Not often, though. I will say I've been really a lot better at not sitting at this desk on my weekends. I will lay on the couch. If I don't leave my house, I'll lay on the couch and watch movies. I'll take a nap, you know, those kinds of things. Or I'll grab my cameras and head out into nature if it's a nice weekend and, you know, get some photography done.
[00:01:34] Speaker B: Nice.
[00:01:35] Speaker A: Yeah. But, but I have been known to sit here and do, like, almost every Saturday I have an interview for WP coffee talk, and I make myself walk away from the desk afterwards so I don't sit here and be like, oh, pooh, it's 05:00 and I just lost a whole day again, you know, kind of thing.
[00:01:51] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've been, like, at least once a day, you know, this is my living room, so there's like, a sofa over here. I will go and sit on the sofa and I'll take, you know, the laptop or the iPad over there, and I'll write from over there. Just to have. Just to be in a different.
Not just here. It's hard when you work from home, isn't it? Because it's like, yeah, you think about.
[00:02:16] Speaker A: Doing that, but, like, everything is so connected. Like, to have to disconnect everything and then, like. And then my lights won't reconnect next time I'll have to, like, go through the problem.
[00:02:26] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:02:27] Speaker A: The elgato lights are supposedly wonderful. They're nothing but a pain in the ass for me. I have to turn them off, turn them back on, and I practically have to get up on my desk to do that, which is not easy for me to do. So, like, unhooking the laptop. I mean, I do it when I travel, but it's like, oh, maybe I'll just work from my phone for a little while. Like, if I need a break, I will go sit on my couch or even just lay on my bed for an hour in the afternoon and do all my social media stuff for work from my phone, because I'm not really. I guess it is laying down on the job, but it's actually doing the job while I'm laying down.
[00:02:59] Speaker B: Right. Doesn't matter what position you're in, you know, from monkey bars, and as long as you're getting something done and have some productivity, or I.
[00:03:09] Speaker A: You know.
[00:03:09] Speaker B: But here's the other thing, too. I mean, have you. You've seen, I'm sure, that social media, little Mimi thing, where it's, like, ideas in a meeting and there's, like, the faucet is turned off and ideas on a walk, and it's just like a waterfall, you know? So. So a lot of times when you're not working, you're actually more creative and have better ideas and what ifs and, you know, intuitive downloads about things that you can do. I mean, some of my best ideas have. When I was, like, up in Shasta, I'd be out at the lake with the dog and, like, far away from the computer, and I have great ideas popping in when.
[00:03:49] Speaker A: When I worked at the massage school, so I ran a massage school. People don't know this in Rochester and Syracuse, for a while they did. I ran it in Rochester for five years. They didn't always have a director in the Syracuse campus. So I would drive to Syracuse two days a week, which is about an hour and a half each way, and then I was in Rochester the other three days, and it wasn't two days in a row, so I couldn't stay overnight. No, I had to drive back and forth both of those times, but. So I would be out there, and I. I'm a good problem solver. Somebody says, we can't figure out how to make this work or that work. I'm a good problem solver, but I can't always solve a problem sitting at a desk. So when I was out there, like, I actually solved a few problems in the bathroom. Like, I would get up, walk to the bathroom.
[00:04:28] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:04:29] Speaker A: It's like, I wasn't bringing my phone in. It wasn't even smartphones back then. It was long enough ago. Right. So I just like sitting, and then they're doing my business and like, oh, I know how to fix that. And so, like, twice I came out of the bathroom and said, let's do this, this and this. They actually put a little, like, sign underneath where it said, like, ladies room. It says michelle's think tank. Like, it was one of those kind of things. So, yeah, you actually can do a lot of problem solving away from your desk, for sure.
[00:04:52] Speaker B: Yes, yes, definitely. There's, you know, part of, like, the job that I'm doing now where we're talking a lot in terms of, like, how people are motivated. And, you know, I think I have held this belief system that people who, like, are really good at optimizing processes or getting things done or organizing things, or, like, those kinds of people are the ones that are super productive and get things done type of things. But if you don't have the ideas people, if you don't have the visionaries, the people who are coming up with the ideas or dreaming up big things to do, what are the other people actually going to be doing that? You know, they're not coming up with ideas. They're just, like, getting things done and optimizing things and things like that. And so it actually has helped me because I'm a visionary, and I typically don't value that skill because it's easy for me. But I'm starting to value that I can do that more. And that feels pretty good.
[00:05:55] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah, I agree. It does. Without.
[00:05:59] Speaker B: Without me, y'all ain't got any ideas?
[00:06:03] Speaker A: I don't know what to do about this. Well, and sometimes the, like, the ideas come to you in place about things that you're not even thinking about or other places. Like, if somebody wants to steal my idea, I'm about to tell you. I know you are already. I think I already selected to you earlier, but I'm doing a very small event at wordcamp us, and my, one of my organizing the whole thing, this is on my desk to do this and also to, like, come up with a small gift idea, like a swag idea for. So it's going to be like 20 people or less, very small group. And I was like, what could we do? That's just like, I mean, I even posted on Twitter yesterday, like, hey, what's the best swag you ever got, blah, blah, blah. But I want something that's maybe a little bit interactive, but also that's memorable. That's not like, oh, look, another mug. Oh, look, another water bottle. Hey, now I have three backpacks. Like, I want something that's really unique. And I was scrolling TikTok. I swear, I say that at least once in every episode that we record as I was scrolling TikTok. And all you have to do is click one ad, like, one sponsored whatever, and then you're suddenly served everybody who's selling that in their TikTok shop, right?
[00:07:14] Speaker B: Yep, you're done.
[00:07:15] Speaker A: I did not understand what something was or how to pronounce it. And it's like q u e f e beads. And I think they call them quay beads or k beads or something like that, because if I pronounce it the way it looks, it's not a good word to say on a podcast. Anyway, so I clicked through to see what it was before they showed what it was. And it's these little beads with letters and numbers and colors and whatever, like, to make friendship bracelets. Like, it seems to be all the rage for swifties. And, like, you're a swifty, so, you know, I want somebody to make me a friendship bracelet, first of all. But that's another story. But I thought, wouldn't it be cool if I made a whole bunch of them? We brought it there, but we also brought the kits, right? So, like, if somebody doesn't really want to sit there and make a bracelet, there's one that says WordPress. There's one that says whatever. You know, I have all these ones pre made, but they could make or take a bracelet while we're chatting with them and that kind of thing, and have this experience of making friendship bracelets. Make two or three, give them to some of your friends or your family. Take one home to your kid. Like, whatever, right? And I thought that, to me, sounds like my boss isn't in until next week, so I don't know if it's going to live or die, this idea, but I like it. And I actually ordered beads so I can start practicing sing with them. They come to my office.
[00:08:25] Speaker B: That's so awesome. That is so awesome.
[00:08:27] Speaker A: Don't be surprised. We get a friendship bracelet in the mail. Kathy from yours truly.
[00:08:31] Speaker B: Awesome as a swiftie. And so I pay attention to all this stuff. I love the whole Travis Kelsey Taylor Swift thing. I think they are adorable. I love Travis's brother, Jason Kelsey, who plays for the Philadelphia Eagles or played. He retired but they're at, like, a concert somewhere, maybe London or something, and this big football guy, his whole arm is, like, covered with bracelets, and he goes up to his wife, and he's like, look.
[00:09:05] Speaker A: It'S cute.
[00:09:05] Speaker B: Adorable thing.
[00:09:07] Speaker A: It's so cute.
[00:09:08] Speaker B: He's such a good person, too. There was another video I saw where somebody was wearing his jersey and, like, walking along, and Jason Kelsey actually went up to this kid and was like, hey, you're wearing my jersey. You want to take a picture out of his way to, like, make this kid's day.
I just love that, you know? I mean, if you can uplift someone like that, if you have that capability of, if you're, like, someone's hero and you can reach out to someone and just, like, be with them, why not do it?
[00:09:37] Speaker A: Yeah. Love it.
[00:09:39] Speaker B: So that I love all of that.
[00:09:41] Speaker A: Stuff so that my brain takes it one step further, and I'm like, I could get paper plates and, like, make a giant bracelet that looks like the. Like, s T e l l a r w p, but the colored ones at the end and, like, hang them over wherever we end up being. So it's like, it's a giant friendship bracelet that says dollar, wp or WordPress or whatever, right?
[00:10:04] Speaker B: Like, and it's big enough for everyone.
[00:10:08] Speaker A: I love it. Anyway, so there's an idea, but, yeah, so that's. Never know. This is why we work so well.
[00:10:15] Speaker B: Together, because you would have this idea, and I'd be like, oh, yeah. And we would just, like, run sometimes.
[00:10:21] Speaker A: Absolutely. Cadence beat.
[00:10:24] Speaker B: You were the one that came up with that name, and then I kind of ran with that. Yeah, yeah. You're such an idea generator.
[00:10:31] Speaker A: I had a meeting yesterday. I won't say the company or who and that kind of thing, but I had a meeting yesterday. Company asked if they could pick my brain if they decided they wanted to have their own podcast. And as we're talking, I'm like, oh, and you could name it this. And I gave them the name, and they're like, oh, we hadn't thought of that. Oh, that could really work. So if they end up naming that way, I'm gonna be like, but I named another podcast, but we'll see.
[00:10:54] Speaker B: There you go. There you go.
Oh, there's a cat behind you. Watch your drink.
[00:11:01] Speaker A: I know, right? Oh, I put catnip on the floor to keep them down. So she's. Oh, yeah, she's smart.
And I also have a candle on the counter and my secret weapon, which I'll have to pick the little black cat that jumps up here all the time. If I pick that up, she just skedaddles right out of the room. So she knows good deal. She knows better. I feel a little mean, like, threatening her, but I don't need to wear another cup of coffee.
[00:11:27] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:11:27] Speaker A: No, I need boundaries.
[00:11:30] Speaker B: I have a spray bottle. When the little dog likes to jump up on the husband's bed and he hates it, you know, half the time he forgets, like, that the dog even exists. He remembers the golden. He remembers older stuff, like, his short term memory, like, doesn't. So he doesn't remember that. You know, Milo is actually likes him and is a good dog, but he likes to jump up on the bed. And so we have the bottle and we just show it. We don't even have to squirt it. Adam, he just knows exactly.
[00:12:02] Speaker A: Yeah.
Yeah. Conditioning like that. Like, I mean, I'm probably conditioned that way, too, with certain things. I don't know. Yeah.
Oh, somebody will show you something. Like, no, please don't. My dad, we were always. This is gonna make it sound like we were abused as kids. We only had to get spanked once, though.
[00:12:21] Speaker B: Like, right.
[00:12:22] Speaker A: That we never actually. I never in my entire life felt my father's belt on any part of my body.
But my dad's threat was always, do I need to get the belt?
[00:12:33] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:12:34] Speaker A: None of us actually got beat with the belt, but we were so afraid that we were gonna get beat with the belt that, like, the word belt still makes me go, oh, like, I don't even own a belt.
I also don't own any pants with loops, so I'm good. But, you know.
[00:12:51] Speaker B: Yeah, we. We got. We had the belt, too. I'm glad we were a belt family. Rather than a wooden spoon.
[00:12:58] Speaker A: Oh, my mother did the wooden spoon. I did feel the spoon in my life.
[00:13:02] Speaker B: I feel the spoon.
[00:13:03] Speaker A: I did feel the spoon. Yeah.
[00:13:05] Speaker B: We never got. Mom never really came at us. Well, she'd come at you. She'd make this face and, you know, oh, gosh, you do not want to be around for this. She had this face, and you would just be like, well, we're out.
[00:13:17] Speaker A: We're out.
[00:13:17] Speaker B: Check out. But, yeah, dad. Dad had the belt. Did you have the dad? Thanks for all the therapy.
[00:13:25] Speaker A: Did your parents do the middle name thing, too? Like, if I heard Michelle Marie, I knew I did something wrong, or I. At least they thought I did. Yeah.
[00:13:32] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:13:33] Speaker A: Michelle Marie, Robert Phillip, Gregory William. Yeah.
[00:13:37] Speaker B: Yeah.
Yep.
[00:13:40] Speaker A: Before Craig could really speak, well, he learned his name. Gregory William Freshet. And so my mom would say, what's your name? And he'd say, gege Willow Machete. That's how he'd say it. And so when mom would be out shopping around somebody, you know, people say a little kid like, oh, what's your name? He'd say, geggy Willow Machete. And people thought my mom's last name was Willow Machete. They didn't think because you wouldn't think it was freshet, right? Yeah.
[00:14:05] Speaker B: So that's cute.
[00:14:07] Speaker A: That's cute. Oh, gosh. This is the episode where we just ramble about everything. We didn't even have a topic at the beginning of this.
[00:14:13] Speaker B: We're all over the place. Well, we had a topic, but we knew we weren't even going to make it there, I think because we kept finding each other. What we talking about again?
[00:14:21] Speaker A: We kind of have that.
We abandoned the topic before we hit record.
[00:14:27] Speaker B: Hey, we could save it for next week and we can dance around it again then, too.
[00:14:33] Speaker A: People are going to be like, what was the topic?
[00:14:36] Speaker B: What was it?
[00:14:37] Speaker A: Yeah, I don't know.
[00:14:39] Speaker B: Yeah, maybe we'll never tell what the topic is. And it'll just be like a Twitter parody account someday.
[00:14:45] Speaker A: It could be.
[00:14:46] Speaker B: That'll tease people there.
[00:14:52] Speaker A: But just for the record, I am not the person behind the awesome motive parody account, and neither are you. At least I don't think you are.
[00:15:00] Speaker B: No, I'm not.
[00:15:01] Speaker A: I don't have the time to do that.
[00:15:04] Speaker B: Do I have time for that? Honestly? Like, my YouTube channel says, new video every week. It's been two months. I finally put out a video inspired by you, actually, in our conversation on the post status happy hour when we started talking about auto updates. And I'm like, let me tell you what I think about that. And then, of course, I record the video right after that. Takes my son a little bit of time to get it edited. So I finally, he posted it yesterday, and I'm like, okay, I guess gotta market this now. And, uh, yeah, and that day yesterday, there was a plugin update that went wrong. And I'm like, see? See? So, yeah, anyway, I don't even know how I got on that, but, yeah, no, I don't have time to do parody Twitter accounts yet.
[00:15:47] Speaker A: Yet.
[00:15:47] Speaker B: I did have one.
[00:15:48] Speaker A: This is my retirement job.
[00:15:51] Speaker B: Your retirement job?
[00:15:53] Speaker A: That's how I'm going to stay connected to the community.
I also think. Was it us? Yeah, it was us talking to, because you're the only person I've talked to today, so it had to be you.
I would love, like, a Bridgerton WP. Account. Right.
[00:16:06] Speaker B: Like a gentle readers we present for you. Right.
[00:16:12] Speaker A: All the WP drama, but in, but sounding fairly edwardian as we tell it to you.
[00:16:18] Speaker B: Yeah. Oh, there's this, um, this, uh, it's a blog, but it's like, called crazy days and nights. And it's all this, like, they do blinds. So it's like the a lister who did this thing and has like a cocaine problem, right. And all this stuff. And, uh, so it'd be fun. We could do like, WordPress crazy days and nights or WordPress blinds and stuff like that and be like WordPress a lister that had, uh. So I'll just do myself the WordPress a lister whose husband had a stroke and also she's doing a.
What was that?
Oh, it's got to be that Kathy's aunt.
[00:16:58] Speaker A: Almost like WP Gossip Girl.
[00:17:00] Speaker B: Yes. WB gossip girl.
Oh, my gosh.
[00:17:04] Speaker A: But you have to sound like. But you have to do it like you sounded like Julie Andrews. Cause that's what it makes. Like, it's just so highfalutin. You have to listen.
[00:17:13] Speaker B: Yes, yes, exactly.
[00:17:15] Speaker A: Well, there's a word I don't use too often, highfalutin, where I pulled that out from, but.
Oh, my goodness gracious.
So I am starting to prep for Wordcamp us. I know it's still a little ways away, but stellar has, you know, we're sponsoring and I'm doing this other event and I created a calendar for myself there. So if people are interested in meeting up, I put a calendar out there.
Yeah. Because, you know, I usually think of these things at the very last minute, so I'm trying to be proactive. I get things done in advance, but we'll see. We'll see how it goes.
[00:17:52] Speaker B: Well, I got my first invite to, to a word camp party, so I RSVP'd for that. So I guess I'm, I'm on my way. I'm coming. Got a lot of stuff to do beforehand, though. It's coming up fast, though. It's what, six weeks away now?
[00:18:09] Speaker A: Yeah. It's going to be here before you know it.
[00:18:12] Speaker B: Yeah. And there's an eclipse right in the middle of that. There's, uh, is there. There's an eclipse happening right in the middle of word camp us. So I don't know if it's like, going right over. Like, I think it might be a lunar eclipse. I'm not sure, but, yeah, another fun, you know, gotta, gotta throw a little something something into the whole word camp drama.
[00:18:31] Speaker A: Sorry, back to TikTok. I do follow a couple of meteorologists on there, and there's this one woman who talks about, like, what's happening. She's the one that I first heard about, like, what the eclipse was gonna be doing earlier this year. There was two, you know, when you were talking about that earlier this summer, and I found out on. I think it was on Monday night, I was watching TikToks and watching her, and she said that on Tuesday, at Tuesday night, there was gonna be not one, but two meteor showers that were colliding at the same time this past Tuesday, and that you would see them better in the south of the United States, but that you still were going to be able to see them in the north, but the same as what happened during the eclipse. Rochester had cloud cover that night, so I didn't get to see a darn thing.
At least I got to see the northern lights this year. It was good.
[00:19:31] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah, that's good. That's good. I slept right through that, and I didn't saw everybody's pictures, and I was like, all right, well, yeah, maybe I'll go look for meteors.
[00:19:44] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm sure.
[00:19:45] Speaker B: I don't know how.
[00:19:46] Speaker A: How long those things, but usually it's more than a day, so that you might still be able to see some tonight.
[00:19:51] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, in the Leon, cloudy here. Was it the lean oids that. Because they usually come, like, middle, I think 1213.
[00:19:59] Speaker A: Yeah. Is it the Perseids that are in March, and I'm looking it up now.
I think it. I can't spell talk at the same time. Meteor shower, August 2024.
It's the Perseids. Okay, so the Perseids.
[00:20:15] Speaker B: Okay. Mm hmm.
[00:20:19] Speaker A: Yeah. Perseid meteor show 5 hours ago. It says it's tonight. So there you go. You can go outside. It's overcast here, so I won't be able to see a thing, but, yes, you should be able to see the Percy. It's tonight. Percy. Of media shower peaks overnight. Oh, no, I'm sorry. What am I looking at? August. That's on the 11th.
[00:20:39] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:20:39] Speaker A: Yep. I was looking at August instead of July meteor shower. July. Let's see, what was.
[00:20:47] Speaker B: I'll go make some wishes and to some shooting stars.
[00:20:51] Speaker A: Yeah, that'd be good. Make a few for me, too, will ya? It was the aquarium. Aquarium.
[00:20:55] Speaker B: I know what you want. I know what you want. I got you.
[00:21:00] Speaker A: I want a matador, and I want a firefighter, because they're really hot on TikTok, too. Anyway, earlier this week was the aquariids and the Capricornids peaked together. The 30th, 31st. So that was.
Yep. So that was two nights ago. But I'm sure you could probably still see them a little bit. But on the 11th is the perseids, so hopefully we'll have good weather for that.
[00:21:26] Speaker B: Awesome. Well, I'm gonna go look for them.
[00:21:29] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:21:30] Speaker B: I like shooting stars.
[00:21:31] Speaker A: Send me a message if you see one.
[00:21:34] Speaker B: 2009, we went to Mount Shasta for the summer. We were living in Austin. Claire was, like, a year old, and for the. We went in the middle of August, and we stayed in this house, and there were everybody's like, oh, well, don't leave anything out or the bears are gonna come. And so, like, Mark wanted me to stay on the ground floor, and I'm like, hell, no, I've got a baby. I'm not staying where there's bears. You know, I was, like, kind of scared and everything, and I can't climb.
[00:21:59] Speaker A: Stairs.
[00:22:02] Speaker B: But they can. They can, and they also have just.
[00:22:05] Speaker A: Give you hard times.
[00:22:05] Speaker B: But I wanted to be upstairs, and so, like, there was this room upstairs that had glass. It was like, there was a bedroom, and there was glass, and so I. And it was so cold, like, it dropped into the forties that night. And I'm, like, hugging on claire, like, sleeping, and.
But it was all glass, and it was, like, clear as clear could be. And one of the mountains, black butte, that's up there. And it looked like pyramids. And I'm, like, watching it, and there were so many shooting stars, and every single one, I was like, I want to live here. I want to live here. I want to live here. And six months later, I was living there, so.
[00:22:42] Speaker A: All right, well, when you go out tonight and you wish on a couple shooting stars, spare a few wishes for me, too, then.
[00:22:46] Speaker B: Yep. Yep. I know what you want. I gotcha.
[00:22:50] Speaker A: Yep. Even if it's not matadors and firemen, the more important stuff is good. See?
[00:22:58] Speaker B: We'll see what we can sneak in there. You know?
[00:23:00] Speaker A: I know if you see hundreds, there's lot of. A lot of wishes.
[00:23:04] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, exactly. I'll just keep.
Yeah, keep wishing. Keep wishing on stars.
[00:23:12] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:23:13] Speaker B: It's. I believe I got a file.
Exactly.
Order in.
[00:23:22] Speaker A: I'm waiting.
[00:23:24] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm waiting.
[00:23:27] Speaker A: Send it now. Anyway.
Oh, goodness. Oh, goodness. Well, I guess I don't got a whole lot more to say today.
[00:23:39] Speaker B: No.
I gotta remember what we talked about so I can write up our little thing.
[00:23:45] Speaker A: This is like. This is the. The Seinfeld episode. It was the show about nothing, and yet we talked about everything.
[00:23:50] Speaker B: And everything.
[00:23:53] Speaker A: And shooting stars anyway. Yeah, well, I will. We'll be back next week where we talk about hopefully what happen. We won't ramble that quite as much, but we will be back next week and we'll get to see each other and hopefully a bunch of you at work camp us in about six weeks. So see you then.
[00:24:12] Speaker B: Bye bye.
[00:24:15] Speaker A: This has been WP motivate with Kathy Zant and Michelle Frechette. To learn more or to sponsor us, go to wpmotivate.com.
