So love is supposedly a many splendored thing and

sometimes includes 7,000 post offices and many, many

uncanceled stamps. All right, here we go. I'm going to pretend I'm

pushing record, because that feels right. Okay, I'm pressing record.

Boop. Hi, everybody. I'm Lauren Howard. I go

by L2. Yes, you can call me L2. Everybody does. It's

a long story. It's actually not that long a story, but we'll save it for

another time. Welcome to Different, Not Broken, which

is our podcast on exactly that. That there are a lot of people in

this world walking around feeling broken, and the reality is you're just different,

and that's fine.

So, quick rundown of the rules. We talk about this every time. If you want

to know more about them, pop back to our first episode. First, I'm

going to curse a lot if bad language is a problem. Sorry.

Second, I'm going to tell a lot of stories, even on things that don't sound

like they have stories. Third, I'm going to tell a bunch of dead dad joke.

It's just par for the course around here. And fourth, anything that

comes out of your face is appropriate here, so you do not

have to worry about filtering any part of you to

join us in this space. So one of my least

favorite things to do. I say that, but that's not actually true. I really like

building lists and, like, really

tactical, like, tangible, repeatable stuff. So,

like, building lists of people to send marketing

outreach to is like, it actually does really make me happy, though. I

do have a limit to how much I can do. And I'm really good at

it. Like, I'm excellent at it. The number of times in my career, people have

been like, oh, my God, where did you get this list? This list doesn't exist.

And I'm like, I made it. It's all publicly available information.

I just copy and paste it a lot. And people are like, really? Do you

do that? That's like a base skill that everybody has and just copy and

paste. Probably the most effective method of building a

referral base in medicine from other clinicians is

it just still works. Clinicians read their mail, and especially if there's a service

that they're always looking for, if you send them mail, they tend to read it,

which is reliable. And so we've been working on some mailing

campaigns, and I'm trying to do it the cheapest way

possible for very obvious, very cheap reasons.

Postage in the US right now is just insane. Like, one letter is

like 78 cents. And I promise there's a point here that is not about

postage. Though I do have a lot to say about postage. By the way, just

for the record, people talk a lot about how the problem with the post office

is that it is not profitable. And that's the issue with

the post office is that it's a poorly run business. The

post office is not a business, it's a service. It was never supposed to be

a business. It's a government entity that was supposed to provide a service to make

it possible to get information from one side of the country to the other without

having to get on a horse and take it there yourself. The

funding issue with the post office actually has nothing to do with the services that

they provide. It has everything to do with the fact that for some reason, not

that long ago they were required to fully fund their pension

fund up front and it basically bankrupted the

entire industry. It's not how you run a pension fund, but for some reason there

were completely different rules applied to their pension fund and it bankrupted the

entire organization across the government. So anybody who

has issues with the post office can bite me hard.

There's nothing wrong with the post office. It's not my favorite place to go. But

also the people there are mistreated. And also the people I talked to yesterday

in trying to deal with this postal situation were lovely and delightful and

really, really nice to me. And also I called and

talked to somebody and she was also very lovely and delightful. So I'm just

saying be nice to postal employees. They're under a lot

of stress and it's not a business. And we should not expect it to

operate like a business. It's not not supposed to run at a profit. It's supposed

to be an entity that makes communication possible.

Anyway, that is not what this is about. But because I said it's not what

it's about, I realized that there was a part of it that I wanted to

make it about anyway. In the US if you do some

of the work for sending out mail, when you're

sending out a lot of mail, which we're probably gonna do, they'll give you discounted

postal rates and it's like half, it's $0.78 to, to send a letter right now,

which is wild. And if you do it pre sorted, which there's

a whole process for, you get a permit, whatever, it takes it down to like

just about 40 cents, which is like a giant difference,

especially when you're running on the margins that we Are. And there's actually a lot

of really good information online, but it's not complete.

Like, it's good information if you already know what you're doing, but if

you're trying to cobble together how to do this process, it's not

so great. And I knew all the right words, but I didn't know what order

to use them in, basically was the problem I was running into. So

I had asked my husband if he would go out with me to this place,

because I just like having a

bodyguard when I go to

unmarked postal offices, I guess. And also, like, I'm not great

with directions, and I like to be a passenger, princess,

whatever. So he said we would go, but then we

realized our daughter had an orthodontist appointment, and so he

had to take her to that. And he called me on

the way back and said, do you want me to take you to the post

office this afternoon? And I was like, everything I see

online does not make it clear that this place is actually open, because

you have to go to a. Not any post office. It's a very specific post

office that has a very specific room that you have to go to,

unlike most postal systems. And if it's not this one,

the closest one is, like, two hours away. And I live in a big

city, so it's wild that there's only one. It was just, like, this

really complicated situation. And everything I saw online said that the

business unit was closed and that you couldn't even access it again. The

closest one was, like, two hours beyond that. And I was just already

overwhelmed with so much stuff. I just said to my husband, I was like, I

can't even figure out if it's open, and I don't want to drive out there

and find out that it's not. And so I don't know. I'll have to figure

it out. I don't know, because I had questions, and I wasn't sure how to

do certain things. And there's all these online options, but I didn't know which one

was the right one. And we have a lot going on, so I just needed

to focus on other stuff. So it was a couple hours later, and I figured

maybe he took the girls out for lunch or something because he had been gone

for a while. And then he calls me and he. Says, the one

that you thought it was is correct. And I said,

did you go there? And he goes, no. I went to two other post

offices and asked. I was like, oh, that's a lot of driving.

Like, our post Office. It's not like post offices are like right across the street

from each other. Like, we live in an area that has been exploding

for the last 15 years and we still don't have a post office. We have

to drive like 25 minutes to get to the nearest one. He actually, like,

did some traveling to go to two different post offices.

He was like, but the one they confirmed, it's open. They called over there, it's

open, so. We can go there. I said, oh, thank you so much,

I really appreciate that. And then expected him to come home. And then I looked

at the clock and I was like, it's 4 o', clock, they close at

5. I think it's only 20 minutes away. I could probably get over there now

and I have a little bit of time. Maybe I should just bounce over

there. So I called him and I was like, do you think I should just

run over there now? And he goes, I'm standing here with.

The lady right now and I'm gonna put you on speaker and you can ask

her all your questions. He was like, she's got all the boxes, she's got all

the labels. You can just ask your questions. She'll give me the stuff, I'll bring

it home. And I was like, you did. You went

like, I didn't ask you to do okay. So he puts me on

speaker. And I was like, hello, stranger person. And she was so

nice. She was so super nice. And she was like, okay, so you're gonna go

online. You're gonna use this. You're gonna have to print this out. You're going to

need these things. If you already printed your labels, you might need to

reprint them. If it's already on your envelopes, you're going to have to put the

barcode on. Once you do this, then we can do these other

things. She walked me through all of it. She was like, you need the pre

canceled stamps. You can get them here. We don't carry them here.

She gave him all the materials. She was so nice. Then she

gave me her direct line and she was like, you can call. You can speak

to me, you can speak to these two other people will walk you through any

problems that you have. Or the other thing you can do is you can package

it all up, bring it here, we can do a test run, make sure you

did it all right? Because it's a little nerve wracking at first. It's not hard,

but it can be a little confusing. And we'll do as many test runs with

you as you want. And if you do it wrong, we just cancel them out

and you don't pay until it goes into the ether anyway.

And I was like, you're so nice. Can I buy you

cough? You're so insanely nice.

And so she said, okay, but the. Only thing I can't do, I'm gonna give

him the packages, I'm gonna give him the boxes, but the only thing I can't

do is the pre canceled mail or the pre canceled stamps. He's gonna have to

go somewhere else to go grab those. And I was like, okay, we can get

them tomorrow. And he goes, no, no, I'll go. Get them right now. It's not

that far. And I was like, okay, but that's like the fourth post office

of the day that you're going. That's a lot. That's so many post office

offices. But he did, he left and he brought me home

a package. Like, if you know me, you know,

I like research.

He took something gigantic

and insurmountable off my brain. Without

asking, without needing instruction, he just did

it. He could just tell that this thing had overstimulated

me and the sheer risk of

failure was enough that I might not do it, but that it was really important

that someone needed to figure it out. I think that's the most important part. Someone

needed to figure it out. I was acting as if I needed

to figure it out because of course you think these control

issues are new. But he took the initiative

to figure it out. And I was just thinking about it last night

as I was going through my very happy stack of documents that tell me where

I can get. Because he couldn't get the pre canceled stamps. But he also didn't

realize that he got me a document on it. And now I know where to

get the pre canceled stamps. And I was able to get it set up this

morning so that I can order them, because that's apparently a thing that you have

to do. But I was thinking about it

last night, just the sheer amount of stress that was no longer on

my brain, or even just the fact that I knew what the challenge was.

Now before that morning, the challenge was, am I even

gonna be able to figure this out? Is there anybody to help me? Is

there anybody I can call? Is this place even open? Do I have to

actually put pants on and go find out if this place is open? What's gonna

happen if I put pants on and the thing is not open? In the light

of all of the other 10,000 really difficult things that are going on, how

Hard am I gonna take it if I can't get my

cheap postage that I so rightfully deserve for somebody to

just show up. I know he's my husband, but still, this

still shocked me. To just take care of it, to just

know, like this is out of her wheelhouse right now, this is not

something that she is capable of right now. I'm going to go take care of

this and to come back with not only all of the answers, but all of

the tools that I needed to do it. It was just this like beautiful

picture of, I guess, what love looks like. When you've been married as long

as we have. We're coming up on like 15 years

married and together a lot longer than that. And

it is really, really easy to forget that

there was a reason that you married this person to begin with. And

I obviously love my husband dearly and he

is very good to me. I'm also very good to him. But he does stuff

like this all the time where if there is a solution that is

escaping me that I can't just reach out and grab and

it's something that he can figure out, he'll just go figure it out. But it

was like 20 years ago, it would have been date

nights and flowers and shiny things and

almost 20 years in, it's stacks of paperwork

that make me very happy that I can take notes on and highlight and

bins from the post office and just something off of

my giant never ending to do list that is percolating in

my brain and causing me so much stress. And for

somebody else, that might be their nightmare for somebody to just show up and handle

something like that. But he knew that this

particular thing was sidelining me in a way that maybe it shouldn't have. Other

people who are more likely to leave the house

all willy nilly, you people who just like go outside all the time

would have just been like, oh, let's just go see if the place is open.

My brain could not process that. And so him being a,

let's just go see that the place was open. Took a car full of our

kids. It's two, but it feels like a lot to go to

7,000 different post offices to get

this done for me so that I could focus on the 7,000 other

things that we have going on. And it felt like kind of the

greatest display of love and understanding that I

think I've felt in a long time. And now I have postal bins and

labels and if you know me, you know I love a good label. I now

can put Barcodes on everything, which also feels very

legitimate. And I could also become a

commercial postal center if I wanted to because I have a permit now.

And maybe that's the future. Maybe we'll get out of this healthcare thing

and we'll start mailing shit. But at a minimum,

if you get a letter from me, no, it cost me about 40 cents as

opposed to the 78 cents that it should have because I sorted

it myself into separate bins with

labels

for this week's small talk again. Remember, this is something we do every week. My

husband and I have been married a long, long time and there is rarely anything

about him that surprises me anymore. In fact, I can very much predict,

like, he'll walk into my office and literally before he can open his mouth, I'm

like, you're not dying. Because it means he's found some new ailment.

He'll be like, I don't know, I think I have armpit cancer. And I'm like,

you don't have armpit cancer. But like, there's a way that he

walks into my office that I can hear in his gait that he's a about

to tell me that he has a new man cold, and it's going to kill

him. We took the kids for my oldest birthday to

stay at a hotel nearby. And the kids were swimming and

they're finally good enough swimmers that we can kind of let them

be a little more willy nilly. And so they were going. There was this big

water slide. They were going up and down. They loved it. He was like being

dad at the bottom of the slide. He had like his hat on. And

he was the lifeguard for a long time before I met him. I decided to

go in the hot tub. And he was still in the pool, like catching the

children as they came down the slide. And I looked at him and he just

like looked like a lifeguard. And I was like, I find this kind of

attractive. I don't know what's happening here. What is happening that

I find my husband attractive? This is weird. I might need

an adult. What is happening? So that was

interesting and fun. But then our youngest, our kids birthdays are 19 days

apart, which in the middle of the recent chaos has been just a

blast. And they have. I don't know that they've gotten the best version of mom

for their birthdays, but we'll fix that next year, I guess.

My youngest wanted a garden party.

I don't know where she got this idea. I said, what do you mean you

want a garden Party. She was like, I want a garden party. What is wrong

with you, Mom? And I did not have the time or bandwidth to dedicate

any thought to it whatsoever. As far as I was concerned, we were going to

show up in flowery dresses and have a plastic tea set, and that was going

to be the garden party. So he had told me he was working

on something. He basically made it clear that he had it handled. He was going

to take care of it. Okay, fine. My youngest told me two days

before her birthday that she wanted a special dress to wear.

And usually I get her, like, a shirt with

her age on it and, like, a tutu because she loves

tutus. She said, mom, I want a dress. And

I was like, I wasn't understanding. And our nanny said, I think she's

trying to tell you that she doesn't want another tutu. She wants,

like, an actual dress. And so I'm like, oh,

shit, I have two days to figure this out. So I said to her, I

was like, I don't know that I'm going to be able to do this in

time. This is a very short timeline. And it didn't occur to me to actually

go to a store. I was like, I don't know how I'm going to order

one in time. Did you know they have these places where you

can go buy things in person? This is new to me.

Whenever I was younger, when I wanted a cute dress, I would go to

Dillard's. And I was like, do they even have

Dillard's anymore? They do. There is a mall that is not that

far from our house. Like, 20, 25 minutes away that is,

like, desolate. Like, it's empty. And so if I'm gonna

go to a mall, I'm gonna go to that mall. But I also didn't know

if the Dillard's had anything in it. I thought it would just be

like a wasted husk of a Dillard's. Cause, like, literally the

mall is empty. Empty. The stores that are in there, there's

like a theater, there's like a gym. There's like a

paint your pottery place. Like, there's not a lot of retail left in there. They're

trying to survive. Basically, I said to her, I said, do you want to go

shop for a dress? You and I can go and just have a special day.

And so, of course she wanted to go. She tried on dresses for the first

time for her seventh birthday. She had never been in a fitting room before

because that shows you how often we leave the house and she did find a

dress that she loved. And it was not the sparkly,

frilly, tulle y dress that I thought she was going to pick. She picked it.

I had nothing to do with it. This very understated floral dress that, like, fit

her like a glove. And it looked amazing. And it was so cute. And it

looked like it belonged to a garden party. And I was like, great. Awesome. She

got a dress. She was very happy with it. And then she kept walking around

going, okay, well, well, I would also like this. And I was like, no. And

she was like, but it's my birthday. And I was like, that doesn't mean you

just get everything. And she was like, what do you mean? It's my birthday.

I get what I want. And I was like, no, that's not how. I don't

know. I don't know who you think I am, but that is not how this

works. Not at all. We wandered around a little bit, and then I took her

to Five Below. I'd never been to Five Below before. I walked

into Five Below. I immediately texted my husband to say I made a

mistake. I took our child to Five Below

because holy crap. And I was like, apparently this is where all

of my dopamine was. Because this place

is like an impulse by Hellscape. I just,

like, kept grabbing shit. I got a desk vacuum plugs into

usb. I can vacuum my desk. It doesn't. I mean, it's filled with glitter because

I spilled glitter on my desk the other day. But I didn't need that. But

it was $5 and it made me feel good. And so I think I'm gonna

go to Five Below and get some more stupid shit. She also ran

around the whole time going, this is the best place I've ever been.

She made me buy her a disco ball for her garden party.

We brought it all home. But while we were out,

my husband had been setting up this party for the next

day. And when we drove up to the house, glad the neighbors weren't

looking, as if they were, the police would have been called. He literally came outside

and, like, put a bag over her head and was like, close your eyes, you're

not allowed to see. And he, like, ran upstairs with her.

He did take the bag off. She's fine. But just so that she wouldn't see

anything. And so I walk in, and this man has

turned our dining room into a full

garden. There were curtains on the outside.

Like, our dining room is open to our living room. He

hung a curtain rod, hung curtains on the inside. There were

curtains on the wall. They were sheer and he put twinkle lights

behind them. There was garland all over

the tops of it. He put butterflies into the

curtains. He stuck little bees everywhere. There was this

beautiful tea set. I have no idea where he got it. I think it might

have been his mother's. I don't know. He got little tiny

tea sandwiches and all of these, like,

jams and scones and all of these little

foods that you eat at tea parties and garden

parties. He got the girls gloves, these like,

lace gloves so that they could be fancy. And they

had like, I guess, headbands and fascinators and whatever.

The bow that I got her that matched her dress was immediate trash.

When she saw the fascinator, she was like, I need that

headband on my head right immediately. And I was like, oh, well, I will just

go fuck myself. That's fine. Without help. He just, like

turned himself into a Pinterest mom for a minute and

magically turned our whole dining

room into this beautiful area

that is so pretty that it's still up. It's been over a week and I

would not let him take it down because it's that pretty. And

just because this kid said she wanted a garden party, he got her a bee

cake. And he bought all of these,

like, tiered dessert stands that he, like, filled

with snacks. He bought a charcuterie

board or a charcuterie tray. I don't even think he knows how to say charcuterie.

And it was beautiful. And, like, my mom came over, his mom came over. And

everybody just keeps walking around going like, this is just beautiful. Like, it's not like,

I have an ugly, trashy house. Like, our house is pretty nice. Regardless,

that room itself has, like, mirrored detail walls like, that we paid a lot of

money for. And this is better. So, yeah, he's just

been knocking it out of the park lately. And I bet if I was a

full time kept fan, I also could knock it out of the park as such

occasionally. But I'm not. Which I had to get that in there because

I just had to. So happy birthday to both of

my children. But also my husband is a Pinterest

mom. Thanks for being here, guys. Have a good day. Love you. Mean it.

Listen, there's this like, little whiteboard container thing. It's got a little,

like a whiteboard you can draw on. I'm also realizing that my children

have already damaged it and it's broken now. Awesome. But, like, I've

seen it on Amazon for like two years and every time I go to buy

it, I'm like, I'm not spending 30 bucks on that. Well, it was $5 five

below. And so I bought it. Now it's also already broken, and my children have

destroyed it. So, like, every time I'm a little sad, I'm like, I should go

to five below below, below, below.