Weekly Roundup: “You’re a Winner, Gracie Wei,” “The Friday Afternoon Club,” and Messy Moms

Welcome to the Parenting Roundabout Podcast, I'm Terry Moro, and I'm Catherine Haleco.

Every Thursday, we're bringing you a library find, a pick from our archives, and a parenting

or pop culture tidbit or two.

Let's start with Catherine's library find of the week.

So this week's library find is I'm going back to the, hey, I know that person, and it's

a middle grade reader, early chapter book called You're a Winner Gracie Way, and it's by

Kristen May Chase, who I knew from the old blogging days.

She's actually written a novel for adults and a picture book, and now she has this new

three part, you know, three book series about this character.

And the first one is about a spelling bee, so like, I can relate, right?

The, you know, it's just a fourth grader who's really determined to win her spelling

bee and beat this other girl.

So anyway, it's just always...

Yeah, it's really important.

Let's get real.

So that's, it's always fun for me to see, you know, to see somebody that I follow on social

media, and I've seen all the lead up to this publication, and then to actually have

it in my hands in the library when it's, because like, especially on Tuesdays, because

that's like big book publishing day, we will get a cart full of new books to process, and

we all will like fight over and get to do that cart, because we love, you know, everybody

loves seeing all the new stuff.

And it just so happened that I was in the right place at the right time, and I got to see

this book.

So yeah, so it was exciting.

And it's, there's going to be two more, so that's cool.

Yeah.

Yes.

Fun.

Well, I also have a book from my random recommendation, not written by somebody I know personally, but

somebody who's acting career, I have followed for many years, written, done, who comes from

a very interesting family, I guess you could say.

And his book, The Friday Afternoon Club, is subtitled a family memoir.

And I've been on a kick of reading like Hollywood autobiographies of actors and people

behind the scenes, and so I picked this up sort of with the idea that that's what it was

going to be about somebody's career, and it's an audio book narrated by him.

And it turns out that it's really, as advertised, a family memoir.

So it's about him growing up in this very unusual family.

And then the murder of his sister, Dominic Dunn, and the trial that ensued from that outrageously.

And then it sort of ends when he has his first child.

So what about this movie, and what about that movie, and I was looking for anecdotes about

this?

It's not that kind of book, right?

So lots and lots about his childhood, some details, I could have personally done without

about being a young man in the age, but you know, but it is very well written, very well

narrated, very interesting, and I mean this is, I'm going to read a little bit of the description

from the publisher, it says, at eight Sean Connery saved him from drowning.

At 13, desperate to hook up with Janice Joplin, he attended his aunt, Joan Didian, and Uncle

John Gregory Dunn's legendary LA launch party for Tom Wolf's The Electric Blade Acetest.

At 16, he got kicked out of boarding school.

In his early 20s, he shared an apartment in Manhattan's Hotel Days Artists with his

best friend and soulmate, Carrie Fisher.

While she was filming some sci-fi movie called Star Wars, and he was a struggling actor

working as a popcorn concessionaire at Radio City Music Hall, so that sort of gives you

a feel for what sorts of things were going on.

The trial stuff, I mean I was curious about it because I knew there would be stuff about

his sister, who I remember when that whole thing went down, I remember having seen her

in Poltergeist, and had an impression that the trial had been sort of not what one would

want, and it was really difficult listening to that part.

But the rest of it was pretty enjoyable, a couple of things about his young life that

I could have also skipped over, very entertaining, very well done, well written and well done.

It just left me feeling like, and then, so maybe there will be another autobiography

down the line from another memoir that we'll deal with some of the other things he's done

right, and I will look forward to that, I mean you got to stop a memoir somewhere, this

is the thing, if you got a lot of stuff going on, you got to stop it.

I wouldn't have wanted to go on for another 10 hours, but anyway, that's what it is,

and if you're interested in his family and his background and the sort of things that

we're going on at various times in his life, it's very enjoyable, and I'm happy to have

listened to it, and we'll keep an eye out for more.

And what do we have from the archives this week?

Well, back in 2021, we were talking about, we had a post, or an episode titled A Messy

Mom Is A Good Mom, Dan Wright, and it was prompted by an article listing 14 signs, you're

a good mom, and God is talking about, you know, when there are Barbie dolls in the bathtub,

and when your car is full of, you know, juice boxes, and the chairs that you need to go

sit by the soccer field, and all that stuff, and the way that, you know, worrying about

more important things than how clean your home is, I feel like this is the sort of thing

that your mother-in-law, Candace Bergen, comes to the house and says, oh, a Messy Mom

is a good mom, and then she just looks at you.

Right.

You get a long enough for you, you know, so I, yeah, I mean, I definitely am of the school

of, there are more important things to deal with who cares about the mess, but I am now

having both of my adult children living at home, and their personal living spaces are so messy.

And I cannot say anything about it, because so is the rest of the house, and that is my

response about it.

So I can't really say, don't you want to put these somewhere, or a lot of dust on these

books, or, you know, I can't, you know, and my, my, when my daughter moved down to the

Department of Downstairs, we moved my son from his smaller bedroom to the larger bedroom

that had been hers upstairs, and he just, his stuff is just all strewn about, he's like

made no, no attempt to do anything with that space, to put things places to, it's just a pile.

Yeah.

But I have no, in order for me to do anything about it, I would have to go to my plea, right?

And that is not going to happen, so occasionally, I don't know if you have this happen with

your health insurance, or your kids do, but his health insurance has contracted with

something called, I think it's called signify, anyway, it was something that will come to

your house and give you a health consultation, and also probably look around your house

to see if you have cookies in the pantry and dust on the floor and stuff like that, is

my fear, is what they're doing, but they keep calling and saying, it's a free service

for your coverage, please call us back, let us come over, wouldn't you like to have

a one-on-one at home with a home, with a health care person?

No, and I'm like, no, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, like, I'm the one who always answers

the phone and we're just like, no, no, no, no, no, delete, delete, delete, delete, because

I don't want them to come in and see how we live and then report back to his health insurance

going, he is living in an inappropriate environment, perhaps we should notify the authorities.

And it's, I mean, it's no messier than anybody else's house can.

Those of you listening and sending me a Candace Bergen icy glare right now, look at your

own space first before you cast that stone, and you know what, on the occasional times

I put stuff away, then I need stuff and I can't find it, so it's just, it's my filing system

is to have everything that I could possibly need in easy reach distance.

Why do I have one, two, three, four, five, six empty pill bottles, sitting to the side

of my desk, along with a bracelet that they put on my hand when I had my osteoporosis

medication done, it's a decorative statement, the state of my health, 2026, six empty bottles

of pills, any hospital wristband, no, oh well, yeah, I mean, I, it's a lifestyle, I,

I can deal with a certain amount of mess because I usually feel like that's not my stuff,

I don't want to have to clean it up, yeah, yeah, which is, you know, maybe not 90, you

know, not 100, true 100% of the time, but I live with someone who needs everything to

be out in the open or it has disappeared from, yeah, from life, yeah, blame it on him.

And that is hard, I mean, it, we unearthed something out of a cabinet the other day and he

was like, oh, I want to bring this to our daughter when we go see her next month and proceeded

to just put it on the kitchen counter. And I was like, no, it can't, can it please not

live there for six weeks? And he was like, oh, okay. And so he put it back where it was

and, and then forgot to bring it. Well, we didn't go yet. So, okay, stay tuned. Now it's

your responsibility. Yeah, just mail it. If it doesn't go, it doesn't go, it's nothing

important. The thing that is most often found strewn about our house right now is dog toys

there. Ah, truly everywhere. And it's, it's, I laugh because, you know, I've been, since

we got this second dog, I've been working upstairs where I didn't use to. So we have a

little office and, and I've been working up there. And she does like to bring offerings.

And so every once in a while, I have to just go through and sweep, you know, just clear

out, you know, 14 dog toys that have ended up on the floor in the, in this very small,

you know, the room is like, yeah, you know, it's not, it's not a big room at all. It also

has like two milk crates and two, like of those big giant rubber-made totes full of truly

random stuff that it's just been sitting there for, I think, if I can really cast my

mind back probably since COVID times when my son excavated a closet and turned it into

his little game office. And stuff is still here because I don't know, no one knows what

to do with it. So there's a, there's an old computer keyboard. There's a New York

Metz little tote bag that my husband had when he was a kid. There's like file folders.

I mean, it goes on and on. Oh my God. And I just, no one knows what to do with it. So,

you know, it goes, it stays where it landed because there's nowhere else for it to go.

Why struggle with things that my husband, that are, I struggle when things are like, not

necessarily trash, but also not necessarily able to be donated. And this is what you get.

When we, my daughter moved downstairs, we had to clear out a whole bunch of stuff. And there's

a place called Rick's Cleanouts and they just bring a dumpster to your house and come in and

take everything. It's like, I cannot see it go. If I see it, I will want to keep it. We're

putting it all in this room. Just have them take it. Yeah. They did take a couple of things

I didn't mean to be taken. But that's all in all the price you pay. They just, they charge you

by how much of the dumpster you fill. And that is, that is what you do. Yeah. If you can't donate it

and you need to get rid of it, I'm sure there's a place like that there. Yeah. It just will come

and unjudgmentally relieve you of decades of clutter. All of your stuff. Yes. That pile.

I got one. We are at our also free cycles sometimes. Yeah. Get rid of some stuff. Yes.

We did that. My albums. You made someone very happy. I did. Yes. At the library. He's enjoying

them or he sold them and made a lot of money. Yeah. One where the other way he's happy.

We did get a notice at the library that in the summer, they're going to have a program,

a kids program where they're going to make franken toys. So remember in toy story when the,

this scary, the kid next door had made all those like weird toys by putting like the baby head

on the like spider leg body and all that stuff. So they're going to do a program like that at the

library and they want broken toys. So I could get rid of a few things that way. There you go.

But you're going to look at it. And you're going to say, can I really part with this? Yeah.

Yeah. I recommend going away for a weekend and telling your, your spouse just have them take it.

All right. Let me see it. Don't let me see it. It needs to go. I'm not here. Right. Right. I am too

sentimental. Yeah. And also just, you have dog toys everywhere. This is the time of year

when there are tissues everywhere. I just, because I can't just like blow once and throw it away.

That's wasteful. So I save them. And then like when I get up from the couch, there's like 20

tissues. Right. Many of them push down between the suffocations. And then I'll like in my desk.

I'm just going to save this. This tissue is still good. So my desk drawers are full of tissues.

Come on over everybody. I bitch can't wait to visit us.

You just, just brush those tissues aside. They're not infectious. It's fine.

One possibly two blows a snot in it. That's okay. Yeah. That's still usable. You bad.

That's for sure where I am right now, which you may have noticed from listening to this week's

podcast. Yes. Welcome to the parenting roundabout infirmary. Yes. It's sinus.

Sinus Hell Week here on parenting roundabout. Thank you for listening. You can find all our

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