Hey guys! Thanks for stopping by for the transcript of Episode #163. If you’d rather listen to this episode than read 8,000 words (the big project news is in the first 26 minutes), you can click the player below or learn how to get our podcasts on your phone (for free) here.
[Intro music starts]
John: I’m John.
Sherry: And I’m Sherry.
John: We like home stuff.
Sherry: We like talking.
John: And we like the occasional game show sound effect. So welcome to Young House Love Has A Podcast, where we have deep and not so deep conversations about DIY, design, and life at home.
Sherry: Today we’ve got news about our next big renovation project, including why it has been something that we haven’t been brave enough to go for in the past, and why selling the duplex is finally helping us take the leap. And boy is it a leap.
[Intro music ends]
John: Let’s talk about Florida.
Sherry: You guys know how I’ve been on the train of like, let’s just get a little cottage in Florida, sell everything else and live life by the beach. It’s our family’s dream.
John: Yes. Sherry has been campaigning for this off and on for a while – both on the podcast and on Instagram. And I guess the news is…. “John said yes.”
Sherry: Oh you guys, we are officially moving to Florida. I know it sounds insane and rash. It has actually been something that we’ve talked about off and on for years. We kept chickening out for the last few years.
John: It probably sounds like an April Fool’s joke because I think even for us it felt like something out of the realm of possibility for years because you know, we’ve got so much established here in Richmond. We’ve lived in Richmond for 14 years, we’ve been in this house for almost seven years. But there are some reasons why we finally feel like this is the time to just go for it – as big and crazy as it may sound.
Sherry: Every time we thought about it we chickened out for one reason or another and we’d say things like, “No, I mean this is our forever house. We just love this neighborhood and we love our friends and we’ve been here so long.” And we’d just kind of say it would be nice but talk ourselves out of it. But now more than ever it just feels like it’s actually the time to… poop or get off the pot. [laughing]
John: [laughing] Yeah. And we’ll get into why, but-
Sherry: So, we’re pooping guys. It’s happening. [laughing]
John: I think that should be the title of this episode.
Sherry: John Said Yes! (We’re Pooping)
John: [laughing] Okay. Seriously, this is the thought process that really got me off the fence and onto the Florida side of things. It’s this idea that we could have one house that checks all the boxes for us and checks them year-round. Because right now we feel kind of split between our house in Richmond and our beach house out in Cape Charles. And that’s not a bad thing.
Sherry: First world problems, guys.
John: But I think spending all that time out in Cape Charles and really falling in love with the lifestyle out there, being near the beach and the water, someplace that’s walkable, that has a bit more of a small town urban feel versus the suburban feel that we have here in our home in Richmond. And we’ve talked off and on about maybe just moving to Cape Charles full time, but the thing that keeps holding us back is that because of the weather here in Virginia, we’d only really get to enjoy the things we love about Cape Charles for a few months out of the year. Right now it’s February, so it’s cold. It means it’s less comfortable to be outside. There’s fewer people out and about. Even like a lot of the shops and restaurants that we walk to are closed for the season. So like if we could magically extend the summer in Cape Charles and drag it out to be more months of the year, I think it would be a near perfect option for us.
Sherry: Yeah. And I’m not even kidding myself. Like I know you’re probably listening and saying, “It’s going to be super hot in Florida,” or, “It’s still going to get cold in the winter in Florida.” I am just looking at how much our family loves hot weather and a pool and a beach, and how much more walkable things are when it feels warm outside for us. And so yes, even if we do have a few months of cold there, it will definitely extend the summer season by a lot. Like in Cape Charles it might be three or four months out of the year that we get that summer feeling, but if we go to Florida we can get that summer feeling for like eight or nine months out of the year. And that makes a huge difference for our sun-loving family that wants to be outside walking around.
John: Right. And I think in addition to that we are looking for a place that checks the boxes that we get from Richmond. Like you know, having good schools nearby, lots of dining and shopping and activity options. And even those like little stupid things like being near Home Depot. I know that might sound silly, but those are things that contribute to daily quality of life.
Sherry: I know. It’s so hard because we’re basically saying we want what we get from Cape Charles but we also want what we get from Richmond, smack it all together and also make it walkable and warm. Because it would keep us from having to drive between two places, having two houses to maintain, two houses worth of utilities to pay, double the things to take care of.
John: Double the yards to maintain. And that actually is a good transition to the other big part of why this was an exciting idea for us. And that’s this sort of downsizing and simplifying thing that we talk about a lot. We confessed in episode 95 (that was almost two years ago) that our current house in Richmond is too big for us. Like we have more space than we need, more space than we would like to maintain. And that goes for both the inside and the outside. So the yard and also the house itself. Our house is about 3,200 square feet, but we’ve found that our beach house, which is closer to 1800 square feet is a better size for us. And ever since we came to the conclusion that this house was too big, we’ve been kind of stuck as to what to do about it.
Sherry: We were kind of dum-dums about it in the beginning. Like if you listen to that episode (we’ll link it in the show notes), we’re like, “So yeah, our house is too big, but we’re not going to like close off rooms or knock parts off the house… so we’ll stay here even though it’s too big.”
John: Yeah.
Sherry: Again, first world problems.
John: One obvious option would be to move somewhere nearby into a smaller house, but it felt like a lot of trouble to move just to be in a smaller home but not have any of our better-weather/walkable/near-the-beach goals realized.
Sherry: Yes, it’s this concept that we were like: “what if we went to one smaller house, it had fewer utilities, it had fewer spaces to keep clean, it was walkable to everything and by the way, it’s in perpetual summer, near good schools?!” Like this is something we could at least research and hope exists before saying, “Eh, we’re too settled here. We can’t do it.”
John: Yeah. I think in the past years that this idea has crossed our minds, we wrote it off as being too difficult, too big of a change, or just made excuses as to why we had to stay here. Because you know, we had planned on this being a longterm house for us, a longterm community for us. Kind of like when we were talking about the duplex, we had envisioned our Richmond house and our beach house as part of our lives for years. And so it was hard to deviate from that plan.
Sherry: You guys know John with a plan. He is very married to said plan.
John: Well and I want to also address the duplex, because I realize the timing of this may seem like, “oh I get it, that’s really why they’re selling the duplex, so they can move to Florida!” And while that actually probably would have made the decision about the duplex easier, it was not the order in which things happened. It was actually me going through that experience of realizing you can deviate from your plan that helped me really open up to this idea of like, “if I can deviate from that plan and be really excited about it, maybe I can deviate from other plans.” Taking one thing off of our plates and feeling that lightness made us itch to do more of that. Less house, less maintenance, and more living. Even though we’re so emotionally attached to the duplex and all the work and time we put into it-
Sherry: And our house and the pink house. Like I think in years prior we were like, “But we can’t leave the pink house. We love that house. The back stairs, that patio, my hot tub!” But I also think there’s something funny about renovating houses that reminds you, you have the power to do that… you can do it again.
John: Right. I just think there was a variety of factors that kind of like all hit us at once in terms of wanting to downsize, wanting a change of lifestyle, and it suddenly felt like this was a really exciting thing we could do to kind of put our money where our mouth is. Like we’ve been talking for years about wanting to live more simply and in a smaller space and here’s something we can actually do to put it into action. So why not go for it? It’s a big change. Like I don’t want to downplay how much of a dramatic shift this is. Like that’s not lost on me and Sherry.
Sherry: Oh my gosh. Yeah.
John: We have done a lot of talking and a lot of considering all the factors, but it just comes down to like, this is the time to do it. And let’s talk about the timing actually, I’m glad I said that. Pat on the back, John.
Sherry: Good job John.
John: I love it when I set myself up for a transition. Again, I know it sounds like it’s very convenient how it lined up with the duplex. And it is convenient, but the reason we feel like now is the time to make this decision is really based on our children and their schooling – because we felt like it would be best and maybe easiest to transition them to a new community and a new school while they’re still in elementary school.
Right now we have a kindergartener and a fourth-grader, so we’re coming up on that transition to middle school. Here in Richmond that takes place in sixth grade. So we were originally like “let’s make sure we move before sixth grade.” That would give us about a year and a half to make this decision. But then we found out that in some of the places we were looking in Florida, fifth grade is actually housed in the middle school. So that kind of lit a fire under our butts. Like, oh gosh if we end up in one of those spots, maybe we need to make the decision now so that we can be moved before the next school year starts. Like before next fall so that our daughter can start fifth grade at the same time that everyone else is transitioning to a new school (the new middle school). So that’s why now is kind of the time that we feel like we have to act on it.
Sherry: Yeah, because I think we both were like, oh there’s something comforting about having a year and a half to make this decision. I’ll just soak in my bathtub for a year and a half [laughing] And I still have a hall bathroom I have to renovate and I want to do a back patio. Like we still had plans for this house, things we could do to increase the value, things we could blog about. Like I can see how this might look like, oh because you finished your house it’s time to go. But like my house is not finished guys. I mean we still have two sea-shell shaped sinks [laughing]
John: I know. I was like, this probably reeks of like blogger finishes their bathroom, needs to move on for content.
Sherry: [laughing] Well, my new theory is I think there might be a curse when a blogger finishes their bathroom because I watched Julia finish her beautiful bathroom, you know Chris Loves Julia? And then she was like, “Guess what guys? We’re moving.” And I was like, “How can you lose that? Like how can you leave that beautiful bathroom? Just stay there a few more years to enjoy what you put into it!” Right? Like I think that’s all of us. We watch people put things together and we think never change it, never move. But obviously in real life there are these factors like kids’ schooling and what’s best for transitions and a lifestyle change you might want to make that are happening beyond just liking a bathroom you renovated.
John: Yeah I think it’s hard for blog readers to evaluate a choice based on anything other than the house because that’s the part that the blogger is sharing with you. It’s hard to communicate the other factors like location and schools and all the things that a lot of us kind of keep more private just for privacy reasons, so it’s understandably hard for people on the outside to see why we would ever live somewhere based on more than just a house itself. But in reality, you can love a house but just want a different lifestyle, location, commute, daily routine, or climate – something that has nothing to do with how pretty your four walls are. There are lots of things that go into why someone moves or stays put, and they’re not all based on what the house looks like at all. Like it is a hard pill to swallow that we just finished our bathroom that we’re really really happy with and now we’re only going to get to enjoy it for like five months before we go.
Sherry: So if the timing were up to us and there wasn’t this fifth-grade middle school shift in some of the areas we were looking at, we would have just been like, “Hey guess what? We’re going to stay another year, soak up the bathroom, do the hall bathroom-“
John: Do the patio.
Sherry: Yup, I also had this stepping stone path project planned that would lead from our front door all the way to the street – I love those houses that have big stepping stones from the road to the front door.
John: Yeah, I mean I won’t lie that I am excited for another project because I think just personally we have a certain itch that needs to be scratched by having something to do. So there might be some subliminal part to it where we realize that we are coming to the tail end of projects to do in this house. But I don’t think for me that would have been enough reason to move. Like there were other ways we could have scratched that itch that didn’t involve moving to another state – or even moving at all. So, long story short, there are a lot of factors outside of the physical condition of our house that are driving us to make this change. Because if it were just about the house, I would stay here, because I love this house.
Sherry: Except it’s too big.
John: Well, except it’s too big. But I would stay in most of the house. How about that?
Sherry: If only we could snap our fingers, lift this house up, make it smaller, put it in a different place that’s warm, and make it walkable. [laughing]
John: Well and the other thing I wanted to say, because I think we mentioned a couple of times that this has been an idea that has come up multiple times over the last few years. Actually even last year when we went to Florida for spring break, we took a day to go drive around to some neighborhoods in the Fort Lauderdale area because we thought, you know, “we’re here, we’ve had this kind of harebrained idea about moving to Florida full time. Let’s see if we could actually like picture ourselves here, like find a place that felt like home.” And for whatever reason, like no shade to Fort Lauderdale, it just didn’t feel like home to us. We just didn’t land on a spot that was motivating us to move there full time. So we kind of tabled the idea. We didn’t mention it to family, friends, you guys. We just figured that was the end of it. But the idea kind of bubbled up again.
Sherry: Yeah. It’s our third winter of thinking about it. It’s always triggered by cold [laughing]. Like three years ago, some of our really good friends moved to Florida in a different area than Fort Lauderdale and they were telling us it’s so amazing, this and that. And we were like, “That is so cool. I can’t believe your family did that. What a ballsy move… We can’t do that.”
John: Yeah.
Sherry: We thought about it and daydreamed about it and then immediately gave up on it. Then the following year we were like, “What if we go on spring break and we look around while we’re there,” and that was in that Fort Lauderdale area. We looked around, we just were like, “eh, it just doesn’t feel like home.” So we tabled it again and then it bubbled up again this winter. And we’re like, “This has to mean something.” Like it might seem to you guys like a harebrained idea out of nowhere but we have kept coming back to this idea and over time have given it more and more consideration. And something about deciding to sell the duplex and letting go of a plan definitely emboldened us – learning that we can pivot and be excited by new decisions that might not have been outlined for the last 10 years. Maybe you don’t have to follow a plan you’ve had for 10 years, you know?
John: Well, and so what we did this year, because as Sherry so elegantly said earlier in this episode, we decided that with this fifth-grade deadline we needed to poop or get off the pot. [laughing] We need to figure out if there was something to this idea, or if we should let it go entirely. So earlier this month, Sherry and I took a little recon trip to Florida.
Sherry: Actually our friends who live there and who have been telling us for three years, “You have to move to this part of Florida, you’d love it” – they invited us to their house and we met with realtors and we looked at neighborhoods. We met with schools, we met with a contractor. Like we were trying to figure out if we could make a nucleus there and do enough things to give us confidence, because you guys know how John is. John has to be really really sure about something. If we hadn’t gone to a school or met with the contractor he’d be like, “What if there is no contractor? What if the school feels weird?” So we pounded the pavement.
John: Yeah. We drove around to see tons of houses and various neighborhoods and then we were able to either dismiss them quickly or say like “let’s come back here with a realtor to see the inside.” We didn’t Instagram or share this recon trip because it’s just such a big personal decision. We wanted to make sure that we were making it for ourselves based on what we thought was best for our family. You know, we wanted to make sure that we were evaluating it between the two of us privately – not with all the voices of everyone on the internet chiming in on it.
Sherry: Yeah I think everyone would have been like, “this will be fun for me to watch – do it!” and we wouldn’t ever want to subconsciously be taking on this big life change just because the internet wants us to [laughing]. And also remember that online you can never really see the full picture. Like online you can show a picture of a house or a lot and someone could say, “Do that one,” but they don’t fully get an understanding of the walkability or the location or the neighborhood or the community feel.
John: Yeah, we saw a couple of houses online that we were like, “This is it. This checks all the boxes” and then we went there with the realtor and they weren’t what we had hoped. Because it was impossible to fully grasp the community feeling or the walkability from photos online or google map images.
Sherry: Yeah, it’s impossible to do this from far away, guys. Sidenote: if anyone is daydreaming about making a big move, I mean this sounds obvious, but I would definitely go there in person because there were a lot-
John: Good life advice, Sherry.
Sherry: Don’t move sight unseen online.
John: This is my advice, take a dart, get a map-
Sherry: Trow it.
John: There’s your new house.
Sherry: No, there literally were my favorite listings online and then we’d see the neighborhood in person and be like, “Nope, it’s not where I thought. It’s not as walkable as I thought.” So the crazy thing is that after all the pounding of the pavement and going to all these places, we drove ourselves first, then we had a realtor take us back to the ones we wanted to see the inside of. And we just fell in love with this one area and this one neighborhood. It’s very wooded. We saw a deer, crazy enough. It felt like we were home. Because you know in Richmond we have deer that hang out around our house. This house is walkable to the beach and yet there were deer. I was like, “If a house has ever called our name John, it is this house.”
John: And the deer was wearing sunglasses and flip flops.
Sherry: [laughing] Swim trunks.
John: Right. Wait, did we say this was on the Panhandle? I forget.
Sherry: Oh yeah, it’s on the Florida Panhandle. So you know it’s warm but it doesn’t get super hot like the more southern parts of Florida. And it’s that Gulf side of Florida where you get that beautiful blue-green water that looks almost like it’s fake because it’s so lovely.
John: Well and I feel like we should stop beating around the bush and say that we not only fell in love with this neighborhood but we fell in love with a house and we met with a contractor who gave us the confidence that we could make it what we wanted. And we put an offer in on this house and we found out as our plane touched down on the way home that our offer was accepted. So guys, we actually now almost own five houses. [laughing] I think we’re doing this wrong.
Sherry: [laughing] The duplex will close before we close on that house, although the Florida house has a very fast closing. The loan guy was like, “I can do this in a few weeks.” We were like, “Wow.”
John: Yeah.
Sherry: So yes there will be a small amount of time where we have too many houses still, but it’s towards the goal of just one smaller house. We’re moving in the right direction.
John: Yeah, so it does mean if you haven’t picked up on this already that we will be selling both our beach house, you know, the pink one out in Cape Charles and our home here in Richmond. Which you know, is really bittersweet. Because as much as we are excited about this next phase and the new adventure, it’s sad. I mean we love both of those houses and what they have meant to our family and all of the time, love and energy we have put into them. But I think I’m at a place right now where I realize like those things can exist and you can sort of treasure what they are and what they’ve meant to you and still move on to something else. It doesn’t mean you have to stay in a house forever, especially if it’s not giving you all the things that you’re looking for.
Sherry: Yeah, I mean I think we still love our first house. You know our cute little ranch? When we drive by it, we’re always like, “Oh we love that house.” Like we will continue to love these houses. It feels much like the duplex where it will be in the care of someone else but we loved the opportunity to make it over and show it some love. Because I think that is one of our passions – finding these houses that need love and fixing them up. And so we are sad to leave what’s here but we are so excited about what we found. I think we both went on that Florida recon trip thinking maybe we’ll find an area we liked – but not expecting that we’d find The House. And then when we went in it and we were like, “This feels so right. We love this house so much.” And we were being really picky – like we had to say, “Do we just like this neighborhood but this isn’t the house?”
John: Um, I am not going to go through the whole rigmarole of packing up two houses and moving if it’s not the right house. I think I’ve probably said “I’m never moving again” because I really don’t like it.
Sherry: We hate moving.
John: I don’t like the logistics of moving and packing and all that stuff. So I’m not looking forward to that. But because we feel so confident in what’s next, we’re willing to put ourselves through that.
Sherry: [laughing] The annoyance of moving. Well the good news is we can’t move all that much stuff because why don’t you share the size of this house?
John: Oh yeah. So we talked about downsizing. The house that we are buying is currently less than half the size of our current house. So we’re looking forward to that challenge, but I’m also not kidding myself that it’s going to be a challenge. Like we currently have way more stuff than we are going to have room for or that we will need there. And I think it will be an interesting experiment to see how we get to the downsizing. We know from having lived at the beach house that we can live with less space, but getting there and making the choices about what we keep, what we don’t keep, what actually fits in these smaller bedrooms – I think will be interesting to work through. I’m most excited that we’re going to have 1/10th of the lot size.
Sherry: Yes, our yard in Florida is 90% smaller than our yard in Richmond. It’s 0.1 of an acre instead of an entire acre. We are thrilled because our beach house is on a little lot and we love that small but very private and lush backyard – and it just feels so much like a community in a small town and you can walk to your neighbors and shops and the park. Where this Florida house is located, it’s a few blocks from the beach, that beautiful greeny-blue Gulf water, but it’s also a few blocks to restaurants, parks, bookstores, a grocery store. Like all these things that feel unbelievable to be walkable, we can walk to them. And it’s golf-cartable, which we’re very excited about. We love a golf cart.
John: I can finally golf cart to a grocery store. Like a legit grocery store.
Sherry: And load up the back and bring our little apples and bananas home. It’s going to be the best. [laughing]
John: I’m trying to figure out if there’s anything we didn’t say. We made notes for ourselves because we knew there was a lot that we had to catch you all up on because this is again a big thing that we’ve been thinking about for a while but haven’t really mentioned more than in passing.
Sherry: Right. Well I think one thing I would like to just expound on for one more sentence, even though I know this is getting long, is that I’m very much looking forward to the downsizing process and sharing that with you guys. I’ve been searching Pinterest, like how to choose what to keep because like John said, it’s less than half the square footage of our current house. It’s actually, of all the houses we’ve ever owned, the closest in square footage to our very first house, which was 1300 square feet.
John: Which we moved out of because it felt too small when we had just one baby. One baby!
Sherry: But the issue was we only had one full bath and we are going to create two full baths in this one. Right now it currently only has one and the sink is in the toilet. [laughing] No, the sink is in the tub. There’s no water running to it. There are holes in the floor. Like perhaps we should explain that this is definitely a fixer-upper.
John: Yes.
Sherry: And that’s why part of the reason was meeting with a contractor while we were there to make sure we could take this on and have someone we could trust from far away to get it to livable so that by the time we moved there it is safe for our children to inhabit.
John: That’s what I wanted to say. I knew I was forgetting something. If it wasn’t clear from the discussion about schooling – we’re planning to move there probably sometime in June or early July once our kids are done with school. School ends here in Richmond in mid-June, so they’re going to be able to finish out their school year before we go. And that gives us between now and then to not only get these other houses sold, but also to do some work via the contractor in Florida to get the new house ready for us to occupy it. Because yeah, right now it doesn’t even have a single functioning bathroom.
Sherry: There’s no water running to the house at all right now.
John: Yes, and it’s missing some flooring…
Sherry: … the HVAC doesn’t work. You know what’s funny you guys? We have a pattern when we buy a house. The house has been uninhabited for ages. [laughing] Even our house in Richmond that we’ve been in for the last seven years, when we bought this house, no one had lived in it for two years and there was a possum living in the house.
John: If that’s not foreshadowing, I don’t know what it is.
Sherry: We forgot all about the possum until recently and I was like, “You know, it’s funny? All this talk about possums, when we bought our house it had a possum in it.” So I’m just waiting for someone to discover a possum at the new house in Florida because it’s the same situation. No one has been in it for years. It didn’t have water running to it. In fact, the real estate agent assumed whoever bought this house would bulldoze it and build a big old house on the lot. And we’re like, “Oh no, we will save this little old house.”
It’s so cute you guys. And we can’t share pictures or anything yet because we’re not closed on it. And it just feels jinxy. We usually wait until we’re closed on something to even talk about it but we wanted to keep you guys posted because it’s such a big change. So we are just sharing it as it goes, but cross your fingers that everything goes well.
Again the plan is to move this summer thanks to the work that the contractor will do to get it to be livable by then. And then we plan obviously to do more work as we live there over time. We’ve even talked about adding a pool and an itty bitty guest house for our friends and family to stay because we know we’re going to be further from them and we want to host people like we do at the pink beach house. And the way that this house is right now, it’s significantly smaller than the pink house. So there’s not really space for guests to stay. There are just bedrooms for our family. And you know John loves his shed. It’s basically going to be another shed for John.
John: It’s going to be an air-conditioned shed.
Sherry: With plumbing.
John: And a bed. So not really a shed. And speaking of which, you guys may know that we have a lot of family here in the Richmond area. So it goes without saying, that’s one of the toughest parts of this move, leaving our friends and family. But we’re reassured by the fact that since we have family here, we’ll be visiting Richmond a lot. So we’ll have lots of opportunities to see our family and friends again. And our families are already accustomed to being spread out around the country.
Sherry: Yeah, John’s sister and my mom live on the West coast. My dad and my brothers live in New Jersey. John’s oldest sister lives in New York City. So we have family all over and we still figure out ways to get together and see everyone. So that gives us the confidence to do this and know that we’re not just like disappearing from the family.
John: Yeah. We won’t be the only ones traveling for family events. And we already have friends and family that have called dibs on spring break next year to come visit us in Florida – and I’m like, “guys, we haven’t even moved yet.” [laughing]
Sherry: Well after we told one of our friends we were moving they were like, “I don’t know what took you so long. You can work anywhere and you’re such beach people. This feels so YOU.” And that was just a really nice thing to hear. When you’re telling people you’re so nervous about what they’re going to say.
John: Yeah. But we should wrap this up. Obviously we are very excited about it. We’re also excited to share it with you guys as we go through this big transition. Our kids are very excited about it too. They didn’t come with us on that recent recon mission, but we’ve shown them pictures. We also took a video for them as we walked through the house, and we’re all going in April for spring break and staying in a nearby Airbnb so they can see our new house and our new neighborhood in person. Plus we can meet with the contractor and you know, do some things.
Sherry: Take care of business. Anyway, I hope you guys can hear the excitement that we have for this, but it’s not without acknowledging that certainly, it is a big change. There is fear with it. It’s why we kept vacillating for years and years and saying we wanted to do it to ourselves but never saying it publicly. But there is something very exciting about deciding to pull the ripcord… and poop.
John: [laughing] Oh my gosh. I don’t know where else to go from here except to say that we should get to what we’re digging this week. We’re actually both digging books because we had a lot of time on planes and in airports during our recon trip to Florida because due to weather and mechanical issues, we ended up seeing six different airports just to get from Richmond to Florida and back.
Sherry: I was standing in line at the airport tearing up, because I’m a frustration crier, so I’m like tearing up and saying to myself “get it together, everyone in this line got their flight canceled. You’re the only one crying” – and then someone walked up to me and was like, “I love your blog.” And I was like, “Dang it.” Totally busted crying in line.
John: Well, at least she was in the line too so she understood our frustration. I should clarify why we saw six different airports. We knew we would be in least three airports because there was a connection flight. It’s not a direct flight between Richmond and we flew into the Destin airport. But because of weather, our flight out of the Destin airport got canceled. So, we found another similar flight that left from a nearby airport, the Panama City, Northern Florida beaches airport, I forget what it’s officially called. So, we left out of a different airport and had a connection through another city. And when we got there, our flight to Richmond got canceled. That’s what prompted Sherry’s crying.
Sherry: My breakdown. It was the second flight canceled and I just was like, I’m never going to get home to my children.
John: And we were also going off of two hours of sleep because our flight got canceled in the middle of the night and we had to stay awake for another two hours just to book the new flights.. you know, the ones that then ended up being canceled.
Sherry: Right. We re-booked all night long only to have that canceled.
John: And the only way we could finally get home because of the Richmond flight being canceled for the second time was to go to a sixth airport. We had to fly into DC instead of Richmond and then had to drive for two hours to get home. So, it was not one of our better travel days.
Sherry: It was really bad. I was like, Florida really wants to keep us.
John: [laughing] Maybe that was it. But anyways, we had a lot of time to consume some books and stuff, so we’re digging a couple of things.
Sherry: Okay, so this week I’m digging two books by an unknown to me author. I found one of her books in a little free library. And I loved it so much that I got her other book from the library. The first one that I read is actually her second book. It’s called 99% Mine, her name is Sally Thorne, and it just looked like a cute chick-lit light fluffy romance book. I have not been doing those very much lately because I went on this like weird spree of books that are nonfiction about money and finances. And before that I had been reading sexy fairy novels, which is like a genre all its own.
John: Yes.
Sherry: So moving back into a regular old romance book, I thought “this will be fine” but it actually was a joy. I loved the characters. I loved the story. It actually has to do with fixing up a house. Like there’s a lot of old-home-being-restored vibes going on in the background. And I was like “this little free library really did me right with this romance novel.”
John: It really knew its customer.
Sherry: Seriously. It was made for me. It was joyful, it was very easy to read. And then I got the second one, called The Hating Game, which isn’t about fixing up a house, but it’s about these coworkers who are kind of like enemies… and obviously you guys see this coming a mile away… they fall in love. So both books, I loved them. They were super quick reads.
Oh and she’s only written two books, because after that I was like, “I want to read all of Sally Thorne’s books” but these are the only two so far. So if you’re looking for something light and romantic and cute, they’re great. I didn’t want to stop reading because I just wanted to see how it would all play out and it didn’t disappoint.
John: And I realized, I said I’m digging a book but I’m actually digging a book I want to read. I listened to a podcast on the plane about a book and now I want to read the book.
Sherry: So you’re technically digging the podcast so far because you can’t really endorse the book without having read it, but it sounds interesting?
John: Yes, and if you’re someone who doesn’t have time for a book right now and just wants a 45 minute podcast episode, here you go. It’s actually a book by Malcolm Gladwell. He’s the one who has written The Tipping Point and Outliers and all those really popular books about human nature and all that stuff. And I guess he’s got a new one out called Talking To Strangers. The subtitle is “What We Should Know About the People We Don’t.” And this episode on his podcast (because he has a podcast called Revisionist History) was actually the airing of the audio from his appearance on Oprah’s Super Soul Sunday. Now I feel like I’m talking about a podcast of a TV show about a book. This is very roundabout.
Sherry: It really is. I was just thinking that we should put the audio of Oprah Winfrey herself saying “John and Sherry Petersik” in the show notes. She said our name’s once because we were on Super Soul Sunday. The day I threw out my back they came and recorded us. I was walking like I had something in my diaper. And good news, it was on Oprah so everyone saw it. [launghing]
John: Well, we didn’t see nor meet Oprah. Her crew just filmed at our house.
Sherry: But she pronounced our names perfectly.
John: Yes. I would have held that against her had she not. Anyways, the interview on the podcast sounded really fascinating because I guess the general subject of the book is about how we make snap judgments and evaluations of people in our lives and how sometimes those help us and sometimes they lead us astray. Because I think we all know that you can’t assume you know everything about someone just by the way they look or the way they carry themselves or the situation in which you meet them. There’s so much more to a person. And I guess he gives a lot of examples about how in current times and also historically how those sorts of snap judgments have changed the course of events – and even the course of history.
So I’m really interested to dive into it because if you’ve read any Malcolm Gladwell books before, he always has really fascinating case studies that help you look at a situation or something you thought you knew and reevaluate your assumption on it. And based on the reviews I’ve read about the book, it sounds like he also has some really eye opening thoughts about why we should give people the benefit of the doubt and maybe even some tactical ways that we can go into situations with more of an open mind so that we don’t make harmful snap judgements about people. So I plan to check out the book at some point. I guess if I end up not liking it, do I need to recant this?
Sherry: I don’t know. What I was just going to say is I like how you’re like, “So if that sounds interesting, read my book,” and I’m like, “Or if you just want like a cupcake romance then read my book.”
[Outro music begins]
Sherry: Thanks for listening to Young House Love Has A Podcast.
John: And if you know someone who might be interested in hearing the news of our big move, please share this episode with them. Or if that person would rather read the news, we’re going to link a transcript of this week’s show in the show notes. It’s a long read and Sherry’s poop jokes might not translate in writing, but it’s there if you want it.
Sherry: And we’re loving all the messages we’re getting about what you guys do while you listen. Like Ms. Josephine on Instagram, who sent a video of herself snow blowing her driveway with the caption, “Gotta love Alaskan winters.”
John: Exhibit A as to why we honeymooned during the Alaskan summer.
Sherry: And while we’re going to hold off on sharing pictures of the new house at the moment, we did throw a couple of pictures from our trip in the show notes at YoungHouseLove.com/podcast.
John: Yep. And we’ll link up those books, that podcast, and the clip of Oprah saying our names.
Sherry: [channeling Oprah] “John and Sherry Petersik” – I sounded just like her.
John: Nope.
Sherry: Bye!
[Outro music ends]
Sherry: [singing] I have three cups of teaaaaa, three cups of tea for meeeeee, because when I record a podcast, it won’t take one or two, it has to be threeeeeee.
John: [singing] Then she’ll have to peeeee.
Sherry: [singing] I will have to peeeee.
John: That’s why when we say, “Now we have to take a quick break,” that’s a bathroom break.
Sherry: It’s tinkle time!
*This transcript was edited for clarity & readability*
