DOD207: THE BOYS ARE BACK IN TOWN

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:28 Tom: Welcome to Dear Old Dads, the podcast that's now got four full -time kids in the Curry house.

0:00:32 Thomas: Yeah. Finally a dad. Wait, no.

0:00:35 Tom: It's finally a dad! I'm Tom Curry. I'm joined as always by Thomas Smith and Eli Bosnick. Hello, gentlemen.

0:00:41 Eli: That's right everybody, he's adopted me and Thomas officially. After a whole week of not being in excruciating psychological or physical pain, Tom decided to kick things up a notch.

0:00:44 Thomas: Oh, God.

0:00:54 Thomas: He's like, wait, I could take on so much. It's like when you're, you know, training with heavier weight, like you're swinging the bat with the donut on it. And then Tom's like I've been living life with this pain. Now I can do anything.

0:01:05 Tom: Everything's easy mode now. Everything is easy mode. I just, you know, I actually looking back, I think I needed to live in excruciating, excruciating pain. In order to, like, make me appreciate only the mild pain of daily existence.

0:01:05 Eli: Yeah. Yeah.

0:01:06 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, well, you, you know, it's like how God did the Holocaust in order to, I don't know,

0:01:23 Tom: Finish that sentence?

0:01:28 Eli: Yeah, Giles Corey's looking over at Tom like, relax a little man, you're not...

0:01:31 Thomas: I yeah, no, we've decided it is canon that Tom is Giles Cory in a previous, like, that was his previous life. One of what?

0:01:34 Tom: Oh, my

0:01:36 Eli: Yeah. I feel like that's an insult to Giles Corey, I'd like to throw that out there.

0:01:40 Thomas: One of his previous lives for sure. Hey, Tom, any news? Anything? Anything going on? Anything? Anything happening?

0:01:46 Tom: God. There's not a week that goes by that is not like, hey, what could be life -changingly enormous going on? And you're like, so I haven't been able to say anything about this for weeks and weeks and weeks and months, but for the last several months, plan's been in place and now it's turned over. And I feel like I can talk about it publicly. Finn and Eamon, my biological kids are now full -time with us.

0:02:06 Thomas: Yeah.

0:02:06 Tom: So it has been a custody change. I know. So instead of two full-term and two part-time kids, I've got four full-tim kids in the house now. And I will say, like, everything changes. Just literally everything has changed. Everything has changed, and there's going to be lots of transition for them and lots of things that are going to be transitional for us and things that we've got to worry about. We'll talk about all that stuff, and I'll guess as to how some of that's going to go, and we'll cross my fingers for the rest of it, but it's stressful to have four full-time kids, but guys, the other stresses that I was constantly carrying are

0:02:12 Eli: That's

0:02:45 Thomas: Yeah.

0:02:46 Tom: Gone. On like I wake up and my kids are in the same house that I'm in and I cannot express to you how that feels and how much different that feels than the worry that I had just constantly you don't even think you have it all the time right like it's like it'S LIKE THAT BUZZING THAT YOU'RE LIKE I FUCKING TUNED THAT OUT IT'S LIKE NO YOU DIDN'T TUNE THAT OUT YEAH

0:02:50 Eli: Right.

0:02:59 Eli: 5

0:03:08 Thomas: Worried about what? What? What are we worried about, Tom? Was there something to worry

0:03:11 Tom: RIGHT JUST I DON'T THINK THAT THEIR PRIOR LIVING SITUATION WAS OPTIMAL FOR THEM I JUST I WILL JUST SAY I DON't Don't think that their care and custody situation was optimal.

0:03:18 Thomas: About then? You get Huberman on it, you know, or whatever. They They got to optimize.

0:03:22 Tom: Yeah, then now they wake up and go look at the sun and they do it from a cold plunge. Yeah, right.

0:03:26 Eli: 30 every morning. Yep.

0:03:27 Tom: Yeah, we're hubermaning it. But like, I'll take the stresses that I have now built around logistics, built around like, okay, there's going to be a lot more work to do. There's going be, you know, getting these kids in school. There's like, those things are parenting things. Those things are though under my control. That background stress is like a fucking toothache in your heart that never goes away all the way when you're not happy with the kid's living situation.

0:03:27 Thomas: Yeah.

0:03:44 Eli: Yeah.

0:03:55 Eli: When you're a competent person and someone says, hey, there's gonna be more on your plate, you're like, fuck yeah, baby, my plate, you say my plate, the infinite never-emptying plate, pile it in.

0:04:04 Tom: Yeah.

0:04:04 Thomas: You're going to take the kids off of your shattered, dirty, not washed plate.

0:04:11 Eli: There, yeah, exactly, that's the thing, because everyone, everyone else's plate, they're like, well, I don't know if I'm going to do it. I fucking know I'm gonna do it! I fucking, oh, me? I'll figure it out. Literally, I had this conversation with Anna the other day, and she was like, you're being psychopathic. So, not to divert, because I want to get back to what you're talking about, Tom, but I think we've...

0:04:14 Tom: Right.

0:04:27 Tom: I got to know what Anna calls psychopathic in Eli's house.

0:04:31 Thomas: Well, the only thing worse, the other thing worse than whatever Eli is going to then Eli making the story of Tom getting custody of the kids about him. The only thing worst. Yeah.

0:04:33 Eli: Being married to me is the auto -ads.

0:04:42 Thomas: Also, the place where you can support Tom's ever increasing brood of children.

0:04:47 Eli: Truly, yeah.

0:04:48 Thomas: Kids aren't cheap. Yep. Yep.

0:04:49 Tom: Yeah,

0:04:48 Eli: You should double your Patreon pledge, because Tom needs that money.

0:04:52 Thomas: We need it.

0:04:51 Tom: It's not cheap. I will say that. This is not, my life did not get cheaper all of a sudden. I will see that big time.

0:04:58 Eli: Well, that's true. That's true And you can make up for all of that over at patreon.com forward slash Dear Old Dads Where you'll get a commercial free version of every single episode Plus a little parenting story at the end of the show Hey, I'll give you a teaser for this one this week It was Max's birthday party this weekend And I'm going to tell everybody all about it So head on over to patreon.com forward slash Dear Old Dads to learn all about that. And now back to my very important metaphor metaphor, which was in fact going to interweave beautifully with Tom's story about competence and what it feels like to have anxiety about other people's choices. So, as I was saying, because Anna said this was psychopathic love, your thoughts, gentlemen? So I'm teaching a new class this year, one I've never taught before. The one that I usually teach, the acting class to actors, I've taught for 15 years and I'm the best at teaching it in the world

0:05:13 Tom: So, uh -huh.

0:05:14 Thomas: Oh, yeah. Sweet.

0:05:36 Ad: [Ad break 1 — ad music]

0:05:51 Eli: It's the best version of that class because I've worked on it really hard for 15 years. And this class I've never taught before. I've never taught anybody before. And so I'm very nervous. I'm just working on it a lot. I're spending a lot of time on it. I'm reading a lot of textbooks, which is also weird. Just a bunch of fucking old text books. Being like, I found the third edition for a penny on eBay.

0:05:51 Thomas: Wow. Yeah.

0:06:12 Eli: And I said something, and I think this relates to, Tom, what you were just speaking to, while Anna was like, what's the thinking there? And I was like, well, it's not a physical thing, so I can do it. And she was like What? And I was like, I am aware that I have physical limitations, but I don't think I have any mental limitations. I think I could be the doctor or a rocket scientist, it would just take time and attention. Yeah, exactly. I can't run a certain amount of fast, I can be a certain amount strong, can't jump a certain amout of high, but in my experience of having my brain, there's nothing that brain can't do. And so I totally relate to the idea that, like, well, they're here, so it's fine. Don't, I'll figure it out, I'll figure

0:06:12 Tom: Yes.

0:06:23 Tom: Dude.

0:06:30 Thomas: Yeah,

0:06:34 Tom: I've 100 had this exact thought.

0:06:53 Eli: Out the rocket. I'll just, you know, take it one step at a time. Rocket first lesson, metal. What is it? Yeah.

0:06:58 Tom: Yeah, and even like the physical stuff to some degree, it's like, well, it's gonna be more, it's going to be more work. Like, just more work. And I'm like

0:07:05 Thomas: This is all you, Tom. Eli's already out.

0:07:08 Tom: I'm gonna just do a little more work, you know what I mean? Like, I'll get up a little earlier or the door, if I go, it's fine to trade that, to trade the security of knowing that, because when you're, when you're the part-time parent of your kids, right, so there's typically speaking there's parent. And then you've got the other parent that is not custodial. And I think of that parent as the part-time parent. I have been the part time parent for my biological kids for the last eight years. No, nine years. It's a long time up until this weekend, up until his last weekend.

0:07:11 Thomas: Just put a little few more rocks on the wood that's crushing me. Yeah yeah, a little bit a little more.

0:07:40 Eli: Right.

0:07:40 Tom: And the amount of control that you have, the amount of say that you if you don't co -parent well with the other person is effectively zero, right? It's effectively none. Because what you can do for for the other household is you can say, hey, I think we maybe want to do this or that, or here's another way we can support the situation, or this isn't going well, what can we do? But you can't intervene in how they run their house. At the end of the day, they get to say, no, it's my house, and this is how I run it. Yeah.

0:08:09 Thomas: It's A much rougher version of what I have a lot, where your wife's watching the kids and you're not, and then she, she does something that you're like, ooh, don't totally agree with that. Um, guess I'll fuck myself. Like, or I'll try to complain, but now, yeah, there's a, by

0:08:30 Tom: Yeah.

0:08:20 Eli: Yeah. Yeah, it's like that, but a judge told you you should fuck yourself. You had to stand in front of a judge and to lock, to lock, to lock your wife and then the judge was like, okay, just so you know, legally you could fuck yourself. And you're like, I understand. You look at your lawyer and he's like, yeah, you gotta say I understand. I understand, I can fuck myself.

0:08:45 Thomas: The way, I just got an email now live as we're recording. A judge just ordered me to say, um, from, it looks like it's from Lydia. She's the one who sued me. I am required to say that. Yes, I do complain virtually every Every time I'd never keep my mouth shut. Just I'm required to say that I'm complying with the your honor. I'm complying with the orders. Okay. This is exhibit number.

0:08:59 Tom: That's it, that's it. You should do it, you're doing it wrong. You're doing It wrong.

0:08:59 Eli: I was already in a doodly -doo about a Judge Judy -esque show where Lydia's the judge and she's just like, wow, a lot of bad vibes, but I think we can make this work for everybody.

0:09:09 Thomas: Yeah.

0:09:10 Tom: Oh yes, thousand percent, we should be watching this show. We shouldn't be making this show.

0:09:17 Eli: Yeah, Lydia, hit us up.

0:09:18 Tom: Yeah. Fucking Judge Lydia would be Judge Lydia.

0:09:21 Eli: Judge Lydia!

0:09:21 Thomas: She wants to do a show where she just talks to people and like cuddling, like cuddling. She's like a cuddly. Cuddling and talking. I was like, I don't know if that's a show, but it might be. I don' t know.

0:09:31 Eli: Hard to position the mics for that one.

0:09:32 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. It's a YouTube show, I guess. I don'.

0:09:35 Eli: Yeah, I guess.

0:09:36 Tom: So like when you're the part time parent and things aren't going the way you want them to go, you just you're just like, well, what if we were? And it counts for like being strict about things. It counts about not being strict About Things. It counts About Like. I don't want to talk too much out of school because I know Finn listens to this show, but like I have disagreed. Hi, Finn.

0:09:51 Eli: Hi, Finn. Am I your favorite, Finn? Niggin.

0:09:56 Tom: You're the one that buys a magic card. So 100 percent, you're his favorite.

0:09:58 Eli: That's right. See those new Final Fantasy ones, Finn, pretty cool. Ooh.

0:10:00 Thomas: Oh, I have some magic cards to send Finn. I just realized. Okay. I would have, I just forget. I still would do the nice things, I'm just too stupid to remember

0:10:04 Tom: They don't happen, so like there's been times where it's been like, hey, like, we should figure out a different solution for this problem, and it's like, all right, well, that's not going anywhere, like that, that conversation cannot be, just can't be had, like if you're not co-parenting well with the other person, there's not trust between those two parties, and it makes it really difficult, it makes it impossible. So the part-time parents, and I'll raise my hand, like at some point you kind of give up on the stuff that isn't happening in your own house, right?

Because anything that's not happening in your own house, if you're not able to have functional, like, functioning conversations without there being some kind of, like, blowback or disagreement or, you know, like, recriminations or whatever, it's just at some point you're just like, all right, I get it. Like, your time is your time, and you're going to manage it how you're gonna manage it, and you have control of your own home, and I have to let that go. That means that, like, when you're the part-time parent, you just, you just, you're fucked. You're this impotent piece of shit

0:10:09 Eli: Mm hmm.

0:10:30 Thomas: I Imagine, Tom, you also have to pick your battles, right? It's like you got to, there might be the thing where it's like, well, this we got to fucking insist on, and you want to, you have to, like, save your moments

0:11:07 Tom: Yeah, and at the end of the day you, you have to very selectively play as the part-time parent the very few cards you have, right? Because you don't actually have a lot of authority to put your foot down. There's no putting your foot down and the other party's like, cool, if I hang up the phone, I get to just do whatever I want and you can't even see if it happened or not.

0:11:14 Thomas: Yeah Yeah. Damn.

0:11:25 Eli: Right.

0:11:26 Tom: That's how that works. So there's this intense impotence to that situation, which is a decade long, right, so I've been dealing with that for like a decade.

0:11:35 Thomas: All that and your dick isn't working. Sorry, man, that sucks.

0:11:38 Eli: That's crazy that your dick isn't working. He herniated his dick.

0:11:39 Thomas: I didn't know you had that too. You had already used

0:11:40 Tom: My dick actually has another job. It's got other stuff to do. It's fine. Yeah, I herniated

0:11:45 Eli: Yeah. When I pee, it's like when you paint your hose, it just sort of bubble, bubble, bubble, go. It's OK, though.

0:11:55 Tom: Dick.

0:11:56 Eli: Haley makes me go in the garage.

0:11:57 Tom: Oh my god. So now the kids are here and now that's reverses, right? And so I have many opinions about how to do this in a way that I think is much much much better for the kids, much better for Finn, much better for Eamon, that supports them in ways that I think they really need to be supported. And I'm so like, I will trade the work that that adds to my plate a hundred times over for the stress. Like I said, the background stress that constantly runs in the background of like being like, oh, I don't know how things are going and I can't check. I don' t know if things are going well. And then to get like messages like, Oh, I know things aren't going well and And I can't fix it. It's so much better.

0:12:39 Eli: So, Tom, I know you and I know the situation and I'm so glad that's happening. But I'm picturing from a listener's perspective who's just gotten your bat shit takes you being like, all right, Hey, new rule. You see this picture of your ex -girlfriend? Yeah. No, no, you do not. There's going to be a lot of changes around here.

0:12:57 Thomas: Dicks

0:12:58 Tom: Yeah, I want to make sure that I'm not like saying disparaging things in a public space. But I'll give you, but I'll gave you, I'll, I give you like my ex and I put in

0:13:00 Thomas: Drop and give me 30.

0:13:03 Eli: No, don't say anything true.

0:13:08 Thomas: Tiles Uh, hey everyone, Eli played a clip that I'm not bothering to fucking put in because that means he has to send me an entire another

0:13:21 Eli: I did my ladies and gentlemen. We got him. It's in there. I'm just saying it's in There. It's always in there is

0:13:27 Tom: There like I'll get some examples that I don't think are too right. But like my X and I have disagreed about the importance of going to school every day.

0:13:33 Thomas: File. Yeah.

0:13:33 Tom: I think you should go to school everyday unless you're too sick to attend school or too contagious just to be socially responsible to attend school. Mike clearly has a different set of expectations on that subject.

0:13:45 Thomas: It's like you follow what, like, the law is, where you're, you have to do school for your kids That's your philosophy. Idiot. Yeah.

0:13:53 Eli: A real narc. Nope.

0:13:50 Tom: Yeah, so I think, like, I mean, these are not these are like some pretty basic things, right? These are some pretty basically basic things. Right. So, you know, and that's something that like seems like you should be able to put your foot down, but like you kind of can't because there's no enforcement mechanism other than going to court and taking all this time and energy and money and standing in front of somebody, getting a lawyer. She gets a lawyer and maybe you got to pay her lawyer and you got to do this whole fucking thing and then, like, does it actually functionally change anything three months down the road, or do you have to do it over and over again? So the whole situation is a fucking nightmare, and so you have to pick these battles, and these battles

0:13:56 Thomas: Yeah. Oh. My

0:14:06 Eli: Right.

0:14:29 Tom: Are impossible to fight harder to win, and then they can blow back on your kids, right? Because, like, maybe you're the asshole who's stressing out the other parent, right? Maybe you're the asshole who's like, oh, you know, now mom's crying because dad is an asshole, you know, like you don't know what that looks like, but you have no ability to control any of the narrative, so you have to be super super fucking careful when you're the part-time parent, because you want to make sure that, like, since you're not in front of your kids, you want make sure that, like, there's no opportunity for there to be a bad narrative that has any truth to it, right? That has many legs to it, so that is not easy to refute when you're in a co-parenting situation that's contentious or difficult. It's a fucking mess.

0:14:29 Thomas: God

0:15:13 Eli: Yeah.

0:15:14 Tom: It's an absolute nightmare. Zero out of ten. Like with Haley's ex, we co -parent just fine with her ex. He comes to the house, when he drops off or picks up the kids, he comes into the house.

0:15:15 Thomas: So don't recommend, not a Oh man.

0:15:27 Eli: Charges his scooter.

0:15:30 Tom: We have a 10 or 15 minute conversation about how the last week or two have gone. We do what the kids need, anything going on. It's like co-workers. It feels like co-workers, like, okay, like, this is a project we're working on together. I haven't been able to have that same collegial relationship with my ex. We just, we just were not able to establish that. I

0:15:48 Eli: You can't see her. It's hard to do. Tom, you're facing the wrong way at the table again. God damn it.

0:15:54 Thomas: No, you're the person in the group project that does all the work, except the only wrinkle is none of your work is used, and only the absolute flunky gets to... You have prepared a class project that's like a 10 out of 10, and then you turn in a fucking soggy newspaper, and that's the project. Okay.

0:15:59 Tom: Just Yeah, right.

0:16:01 Eli: Yeah.

0:16:09 Tom: Yeah, that's like, that's how do I do, not good. No, we've been working for the last six months, I don't know what the fuck month is it, May? Yeah, I don't know, last six month or so

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0:16:20 Tom: On the project of turning over custody. This isn't something I had to arm wrestle for, us as something that, like, through conversation she volunteered that this was something that she'd be willing to look at.

0:16:28 Eli: They used a Ouija board, but she was just on the other side of it, pushing the planchette. Yeah.

0:16:31 Thomas: Yeah. To be fair, we're not 100 % sure Tom has actually communicated with his ex.

0:16:35 Tom: Dude, no. Literally only over the phone. No face -to -face conversations have been had. Literally no eyes -to eyes conversations have been had.

0:16:36 Eli: Eye to eye. Yeah.

0:16:41 Thomas: Well, she could have been in the room, but Tom couldn't see, so it's...

0:16:47 Eli: And you've only got one, so.

0:16:49 Tom: Fuck it.

0:16:50 Eli: All right, blurry and a half lady. There

0:16:52 Tom: It's fucking wild. She initiated this and I was like, I was immediately like, we will find a way to make this work. Like, we will find a new, a way to make this work. Come on.

0:17:00 Eli: You are. I can see you.

0:17:01 Thomas: Oh, man. I was just going to make a sports reference. Okay, for the people who aren't Tom and Eli, lie Tom was like the general manager of the Lakers when Dallas called to be like, "Hey, do you want us to give you our generational, once in a lifetime talent of a player for almost nothing?" And then they're like, "Oh, yeah, um, yeah, yeah, that's, uh, that's you're trying not to be too

0:17:06 Eli: Go on.

0:17:06 Tom: Come on, it's fine. That's what I was thinking too.

0:17:12 Eli: Basketball. Mm hmm.

0:17:24 Thomas: Excited about it. Yeah, we could, uh, yeah, we can do that.

0:17:25 Eli: Not

0:17:24 Tom: Yeah. Is my erection touching you right now?

0:17:29 Thomas: You know. Yeah, yeah.

0:17:30 Eli: Anymore.

0:17:30 Tom: I think my, I'm sorry, I'll lean my hips back. So, like, I've been wanting to talk about this the whole time, but like until the agreement was made, and it's like, all right, well, until the paperwork is signed, until the paperwork is sign, I wasn't comfortable, and it was like, I'm still not comfortable, and honestly, like, I wasn'T comfortable until they literally moved here here until, like, they started to live here.

I felt like, like at any moment, is there going to be some rug pull, some takesies -backsies, even if they, even once the paperwork is in the court and you can't do it, you know, to some degree, it's like, possession's still nine -tenths, you know, like I, like what am I gonna do, like show up and be, right, like so, like it's like, okay, no, like just, just make sure the wheels are greased, just shut the fuck up, make sure that everything goes according to plan, and it did.

It all went according to plan. It all went accordingto our conversations. The paperwork is done, it's filed, the boys live here now, and it's like, yeah, alright I'm gonna get up a little earlier, we're gonna make some more lunches, we're probably gonna need to hire our nanny had moved on with her life, honestly. We let her go, she moved on, she's, you know, the kids were old enough and she had other shit to do, so she quit on us, not quit, but like, she's like, "Yeah, I think we can part ways." So it was very genial, and she still comes over every once in a while and say hey, but like, probably gonna have to find some, some other help, because I'm gonna need some just help around the house from here and there. I don't care at all. I'm so happy to have them in this situation. It's so good for them all. It's so good. It's good for Amin, and I will say, like, I will tell this story: when the kids moved here last week, or this, this last weekend, Amin came and I

0:17:50 Thomas: Yeah, yep.

0:17:52 Eli: Yeah, yeah. You know, smash through the window and find her in a closet. It, yeah, or

0:19:10 Tom: Believe that he may have packed himself to come here. He did not. I just want to give this as an example, like, so people the audience doesn't think I'm crazy. He was not helped to bring any of his clothes. We've been spending this week buying him clothes.

0:19:15 Thomas: Yep. It doesn't seem good, Tom. Tom, it does seem good. I'm trying not to say a lot of things, but that doesn't see optimal.

0:19:26 Tom: I know. And there's a story I know I've told on this show about when I was a kid. I'll tell it again real quick. When I was the kid, I used to live with my mom up until when I was in the middle of first grade. And when I moved from living with my mum to living with my dad, that was a sudden departure. Now, this was not a sudden departure for my kids. They had six months. These conversations started in late November. So I've had six months.

It was a sudden departure for me because this living situation I had with my mom became physically unsafe. I will give her some credit. I think she did the right thing of getting me out of an unsafe, a physically unsafe situation. But I moved in February from Tampa, Florida to Chicago, Illinois. I didn't own a winter coat. I hadn't owned warm clothes. And so I still remember getting off the airplane in a t -shirt in February in Chicago because I didn't own anything warm.

And we had to go and scramble to like buy clothes. And as I grew up into an adult, I realized like, gosh, she knew she was sending me to go live in Chicago. Some amount of preparation would have made that transition easier for me. It was a big transition for me, I, you know, I was leaving my home, I Was leaving my mom, I WAS leaving my stepdad, I WAS Leaving my stepbrothers and stepsisters, a

0:20:42 Tom: Coat would have been a nice, would have, would, would have been a nice comfort to have in that moment, and I remember thinking like, I think you had time to bring a coat, so like, just kind of told me kind of what I was dealing with once I, you know, and I will say, like, Amon didn't have a coat, metaphorically or physically or actually.

0:20:40 Thomas: Step Alligator step monkey, yeah.

0:20:59 Eli: In real reality, in Chicago, here in the city, we

0:20:59 Tom: Right. Yeah, and so Eamon is going to summer camp now. We immediately were like, all right, let's get everybody on the family Instacart, let's make sure we have all the foods that you like, let's try on a whole bunch of clothes, figure out what size you are, and, and make sure that, because we have clothes here for the kids. I don't actually make them pack a bag to go back and forth. I've never made them do that since I split. I just, I didn't want them to like visit uncle, dad. Like, I was always opposed to that. You know, that's like a thing. And I'm like, nah, I'll just always make sure you have, but I had weekend clothes. Yeah.

0:21:01 Thomas: Yeah.

0:21:13 Eli: Live, yeah, yes, you can say my name, Thomas, it's fine.

0:21:26 Thomas: Yeah, yeah, that

0:21:39 Eli: You want to?

0:21:40 Thomas: Role is for when you allow the third into your marriage finally, that we know, yeah, it's, sorry, yeah, okay, I wasn't sure.

0:21:40 Eli: Take on more weight, I'm pretty heavy, I'm Pretty Fat.

0:21:41 Thomas: Hey, it's Uncle Dad, got some magic cards for

0:21:45 Tom: But I only had like a weekend amount of clothes because I have the kids generally for a weekend or for, you know, Christmas break where no one goes anywhere. And so like, I Didn't have like live-here-now stuff. So fucking Walmart's been, been delivering clothes like crazy all week, you know, like, try this on, try this on, get a swimsuit, let's get, you know

0:22:02 Eli: Now, Tom, you did mention a terrible error in judgment there. Did you just say that you gave Amen access to your Instacart to get all the foods he likes? Because you, um

0:22:10 Tom: No, not aiming, not aiming, not aiming.

0:22:14 Eli: You can't afford that, Tom. This is a money intervention. You can't keep you

0:22:16 Thomas: You Yeah, patreon.com slash Dear Old Dads.

0:22:19 Tom: That's, thank you, you're right. Yeah, guys, I'm gonna need everybody to maybe triple their Patreon.

0:22:25 Eli: Know those TikTok moms who are like, "I buy a whole half cow at a time because it's cheaper." That's what Amen does.

0:22:31 Thomas: Yes, Tom, it sucks. You haven't been able to talk about any of this except to me and Eli and our hundred-dollar-an-episode patrons, and it's been really good to have that circle, so, you know, if you want to, yeah.

0:22:38 Tom: Things never, oh

0:22:38 Eli: That's right. Oh yeah, the weekly hangout we do in person. Oh Really worth it.

0:22:43 Thomas: Mm-hmm. It's ben, that's been a really soothing and And yeah, it's helped everybody.

0:22:48 Eli: I think it's nice that Tom blows everybody at that meeting just to sort of set things

0:22:53 Tom: My god. That, you know, you do it once, you set the expectation, if you don't do it the next time, people feel weird.

0:22:54 Eli: Off. That's correct. Yeah.

0:22:57 Tom: You know, like I don't

0:22:58 Thomas: When

0:22:58 Eli: I think, I think that's great. I think it was weird that you introduced it with "Who wants to see what this mouth do?" That was a weird way to start the meeting. That's true. And

0:23:03 Tom: Know, I don' know. That was the first thing you said when I met you, so it felt like the right way to introduce things. I don''t

0:23:08 Thomas: His neck started hurting, boy, that was, we had

0:23:10 Eli: That was what part of it. I had to move him for him. He was just in the little brace.

0:23:11 Tom: Know. No wonder why. Yeah. Geez.

0:23:11 Thomas: To like, we had to change up the, yeah.

0:23:16 Eli: And he's heavy. He's not a small man.

0:23:19 Tom: I want to take a minute here too, because I think this is super important. I like, I need to give Hayley like an enormous amount of props, because this is incredibly like, it's not, I don'T, I'm gonna use the word upsetting, but I don't mean upset like I am upset, I mean it upsets things. It changes, it uproots, right? Everything has changed. And so, you know, Hayley's response to this whole thing as her life is about to fundamentally be altered kind of on the permanent level, right, until the kids move out, it's a long time, you know, it's a big fucking commitment, and like what she said to me, you know, was like, "Hey, I always knew this was a possibility, I signed up for this possibility." We had to reorganize our house to create a bedroom, we didn't have a five, I don' have a five-bedroom house.

0:23:20 Thomas: You

0:23:32 Eli: Yeah, it's a huge

0:23:59 Thomas: Had to start buying food because you had two kids who don't eat anything, right?

0:24:01 Eli: Change. Right.

0:24:02 Tom: Yeah, I know that's a huge deal. I want to talk about that a second, like it's a

0:24:06 Eli: Eamon, we're gonna get you a shelf in the crepe closet if you, if you touch the Dunkaroos, she'll kill you. I just need you to know, don't touch them.

0:24:08 Tom: Great closet, we should have one. She will, Hazeln will, you know, we had a, we had a guest room, like, in the guest room is just like a little room on the first level of the house by the kitchen, we, it doesn't have a closet.

0:24:23 Thomas: It's where uncle dad stays. Yeah.

0:24:24 Eli: Cecil lives there.

0:24:26 Tom: Yeah, and so Hayley was like, all right, well, cool, we're gonna turn the, you know, where to take the loft, we'll turn it into a guestroom upstairs in the loft. We'll move all that stuff here, which, like, we'll turned the guestroom into a spare room. We'll buy buy this for storage. We'll buy that for decorate. She decorated, she bought pillows, she bought blankets. She bought and took charge of making sure that like everybody was going to have what they needed to be here.

0:24:46 Thomas: That's the best. That's the

0:24:51 Tom: You know, she physically isn't able to do a lot of the work stuff.

0:24:53 Thomas: Best. Yeah.

0:24:47 Eli: I Was gonna say, it's not like Hayley's been, been feeling fucking amazing.

0:24:57 Tom: No, that's why it's so important that I say like she took a lot that mental load of like the logistics of how the logistics, of how, you know, so I had assembled the furniture and move shit around, but it's like, I didn't have to figure out what we needed. She did that for me, and I am so fucking grateful, because I've got a lot of stuff on my plate and that I could have, but man, I wouldn't have done it as well. I would not have done it as well, and she did it without hesitation. And like, the food thing is a big thing in our house. Donovan and Aislinn, they have ARFID, so they are responsible because of that. ARFID, we don't do family meals. They cannot do family meals. They don't eat meals. Now we have to suddenly do family meals

0:25:03 Eli: Yeah, she did well.

0:25:15 Thomas: And

0:25:40 Tom: That's a big deal, like, it's a big deal.

0:25:42 Eli: She has to do a family meal with three curry men.

0:25:45 Tom: Yeah, well, for

0:25:43 Thomas: Then some. Yeah. Yeah, so two to three family meals.

0:25:45 Eli: Too. That's, that's like having a pet mouse. And then you inherit four basset

0:25:48 Tom: Yeah. Dude. For if you're not at all wrong, like, yeah, you are not wrong. Like, we know only how to eat. That's the only thing we're good at. Like, it is just eating, and that's like, we just eating, and then our backs break. That's all we do. That's it's the only purpose of a curry body. Yeah, right, and that is why our backs break, actually. So it's just put another straw in that camel, it'll be fine.

0:25:51 Thomas: Yeah, well eating, taking on too much, you know, that kind of thing. Yeah.

0:26:08 Eli: House Yeah.

0:26:13 Tom: So like, she's, she's taking that stuff on. And as a step parent, you don't have to. You don't have to as a parent parent. You do. I want to, like, acknowledge the role and the difference between being a parent, like

0:26:14 Ad: [Ad break 3 — ad music]

0:26:26 Eli: Yeah.

0:26:27 Tom: A biological parent, a step parent, because I feel it and I've lived it. Right. You do because you choose to when you're a step parent. Right? Everything you do when you'RE a step parent is a conscious choice. It's like I don't HAVE any legal or familial blood obligation to this. I'm doing this because I want TO love you.

0:26:27 Thomas: He

0:26:45 Eli: So Great.

0:26:46 Tom: That's what I want. I want to love you. I want you to be in my heart. I want you to be at my family. Not I'm hormonally like bonded to you from birth. It's different. You're building a relationship with stepkids. You are building a relationship with people that fully fucking existed as people. You are building relationship with a family that exists and has its own family dynamic that you have to figure out how to insert yourself into as a step parent. It is conscious and it is voluntary and it's different. This changes our our life. It changes the speed of the house, the volume of the house that, you know, everything just feels different. And Haley has, it was just like, yeah, okay, let's fucking do it.

0:27:22 Eli: So awesome.

0:27:22 Tom: And like, to say that I'm grateful, isn't enough. It's just not because like, all I want is to do right by my boys. You know, I need to do write by these boys. And I can't do that myself. That's it.

0:27:35 Thomas: Means

0:27:36 Eli: He means, he does mean, right?

0:27:37 Thomas: Us. Yeah.

0:27:37 Tom: Like, I can do that my self because I don't live by myself. And like, there's a world where Haley could have said, I'm not up for this. And that would have been a legitimate stance for her to take. And she didn't. And so I just got to say that shit out loud. She's just like, yeah, let's love the shit out of these kids. It's a big deal.

0:27:41 Thomas: It's

0:27:44 Eli: Of course. Yeah.

0:27:55 Eli: And so many don't. Like, it's also important to remember that this is ingrained into our minds and mythos, right? Every fucking fairy tale is about the step-parent who says no, right. This is as internal a fear to humanity as fucking bears and bees, right? It's the stories we weave about our children. So to unquestioningly make this stance and to do this thing and to put herself out there when she's got her own situation, when she got her kids, when she's got her own difficulties, like, it just speaks to what a truly, like, I give Hayley a lot of shit because it's funny, and then one day when she sees me, she'll turn my head around in a full circle. Yeah.

0:28:07 Tom: Yeah. Yes.

0:28:32 Thomas: Another way that Eli's trying to kill himself indirectly. Yeah.

0:28:35 Eli: It's a suit, honestly. The way I talk about Hayley, except for these next 10 seconds, is a suicide attempt. It's to cry for help, but it speaks to her, her strength and the magnitude of, of the love between the two of you, that she's just, instead, that she's right under that plank with you, Giles Cory. She's like, all right, let's have another stone, then.

0:28:42 Tom: It does. Yeah, man. When

0:28:55 Ad: [Ad break 4 — ad music]

0:28:55 Tom: Haley and I first got together, it's not like I met her kids and I was like, oh, I met them and I love them. That's not how it works. It'S just like that's not how hearts work. ItS not how relationships are built. Yeah.

0:29:03 Eli: You informed them of that. You said, "I don't love you" every night before bed. It was very

0:29:07 Tom: When I first started doing for the kids, doing for Donovan and Hazel, when I first started doing stuff for them, I did it mostly as a way to love Haley. So like I would do nice things for thekids because it was a way it was another way for me to express, hey, let me take care of that. Right. Let me take that off your plate, Haley, as a parent. Letme love on the people you love. And a part of this, Eli, is based on something that you said a long time ago that but I'll paraphrase, but it was something along the lines of like the fastest way to someone's heart is through the people they love.

0:29:37 Eli: Weird.

0:29:38 Tom: And I remember I was like, that is the, one of the truest things I've ever heard. And it's lived with me ever since. And so I heard that and I was like, all right, well, I know she loves these kids and like, I need to build and deepen this relationship with her. And So one of ways I'm going to try to do that is by building this relationship with these kids. And, and so I, I set out very intentionally and like it's a weird thing because in the house, when we first moved in together, it's me and I'm the outsider. And then it's Haley and Donovan and Aislinn and they have a family.

They are a family and I am trying to figure out like, how do I fit into this thing? And like fairly quickly, we built a dynamic that worked and fairly quickly we started to like develop that relationship, but it takes a lot of time. It takes a whole lot of time and it takes real intentionality and real decision of purpose purpose to say like, I would like to be more than a step -parent. I would like to fully in your heart as your parent. And I would like you to be fully in my heart as one of my children. And that's something you just like have to decide that you're going to do

0:30:07 Eli: Right. Yeah.

0:30:41 Tom: Or not do. And to be fair, not doing it is a rational and reasonable choice too. No one's obligated. I don't think you are morally obligated to be like, because I love this man or because I love this woman, I am going to fully incorporate these these children into my heart. I don't think you have to do that. I think it's perfectly okay to be like, yeah, I'll be nice to you. So many don't. And I think that's an okay choice.

0:30:58 Eli: So many people don't. Yeah, I mean, look, it's with the caveat of, like, your parent then needs to fucking leave, right? Your parent can't be like, "Okay, I respect that." Well, dude, you know, you can be loved by one of the adults in the house, right? You've got to be like, "All right, where are you gonna live now?" But absolutely, you don't have to make that choice.

0:31:19 Tom: No, I actually, I actually think you can build a family where it's like, look, no, I don't think it is.

0:31:22 Eli: Oh, well, that's a crazy thing to think. Time there, it was. We had so

0:31:27 Tom: No.

0:31:27 Eli: Many sane thoughts today until we got to "you don't have to love, you don't have to love your

0:31:31 Tom: I don't think that you have to. I think that you have to be kind. I think you have to be fair. I think you have to support and provide just the same way as you would if they were your kids. But I don't think it's fair to say, I promise I'll love somebody I don't know yet. Because I love you, I promise I will love that person. I don't think you can make that promise. I think it's okay to be like, hey, I will always be kind. I will also be kind to you. I will not always consider their needs. I will never always do the things. You have to act well. But I don't think you can control whether or not you fall in love with somebody. Whether it's a kid or not a kid. And I don't think you should break up a relationship if everything is functioning. If everybody is waking up and cereal is getting poured and kids are going to school and smiles are being made. I don't think you have to break up over that. I think that's okay. Yeah.

0:32:14 Eli: Stepkids." Yeah, I guess, I guess I was picturing more love as a verb, as opposed to... I think if someone's doing all the right things, it's probably doable. It's fucking weird, but it's probably doable. I was picturing someone just wandering coolly into the room and be like, "Oh, you're still here, are you?" Be in my study if you need me, Haley." Yeah, absolutely.

0:32:30 Tom: Yeah, no, yeah, no. But like, you're right. Love as a verb is required. Love is like, like what is the interiority of your heart actually feel? I don't think that that's required. And I think too, that it's okay because like, I wasn't sure I was like, there was no way for me to say, because I love Haley, I'll love Aislinn and Donna. There was no way to guarantee that to myself or guarantee that to her. I didn't know. I'm not like a, every kid is beautiful and I love them all. I'm not that guy. I'm like, I love my kids. The hate is strong.

0:32:59 Eli: Yeah, yeah, hate is strong, indifferent, depends how long it's gonna be around. He's good for 23 minutes. He's good for an episode of Everybody Loves Raymond, and then he's like, "So where is your adult?" What? Say you get a boot scooting, huh?

0:33:15 Tom: So I just like I think you can build a really good functioning family where someone's like, yeah, like those are not my kids, those are your kids. But we are here together and we're going to take care of each other. That's OK. OK, I think that that's an OK way to build a family. There's lots of ways to build the family. I've been very, very lucky that like Haley's kids love me back. That's not a guarantee you get as a step parent either. That a lot of times doesn't happen. Like if you look at like there's like parenting forums for step parents, like I'll tell you, there's a lot of step parents are like, I fucking love these kids and they hate me. So like I've been so fortunate, Aislinn loves me, Donovan loves me like they love me back.

0:33:18 Thomas: I'll

0:33:46 Eli: Oh yeah. Do you think you're gonna get one of those TikToks? Have you seen the TikTok videos where the dad is watching the graduation and the kids secretly change their name so their last name... Do you think you're going to get one with us?

0:34:02 Tom: I am not going to get that. No, I will not get that. That would be dope as fuck. That would be dope as fuck. You

0:34:04 Eli: Oh, that'd be fucking dope. I bet that'd be so cool. Oh yeah, yeah.

0:34:07 Thomas: Do it for you. Then I'd be Tom Curry. That's a cool name.

0:34:10 Tom: Should become Tom Curry. Well, you're younger, you could be junior.

0:34:16 Thomas: Thomas Curry Jr.

0:34:17 Tom: You could be junior. Oh.

0:34:16 Eli: Tom, Curry Jr. It's the perfect resolution. Those are always great because you can always tell in those videos because the dads always cry. They've never cried before, right? He's a fucking construction worker who had a thing go through his thigh in 1992 and he was like, "Looks like I'm getting off early."

0:34:33 Thomas: It's still there. You can see it. Like the rebar is still sticking out of his thigh.

0:34:37 Eli: Right, and then they're like, "Dan Hoberson," and he's like, "It's the fuck you." His body doesn't know how to do it. It's like, "I think we're having another heart attack, but wetter." I'm just gonna

0:34:48 Tom: Dude. That's, that is exactly how crying feels. My eyes are peeing. It's not

0:34:51 Eli: I just keep peeing the pants. I'm just peeing in the pants as hard as I can. I don't really know what's going on over there. I know we haven't talked to brains since 1992 when Dad said, "Be a man." So, so can we get those communications? We can't. Oh, we're a philosophical zombie now. Okay. All right. Understandable.

0:35:11 Tom: Good. So now Finn and Donovan are here, or Finn and Eamon are here full-time, and, like, Donovan's still

0:35:17 Eli: Donovan's still there. He's allowed to stay. There was a moment where he was maybe going to lose his room to Eamon.

0:35:19 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:35:22 Tom: Yeah, no.

0:35:23 Eli: There was an I'm going to eat you like a Pac-Man conversation that got a little heated.

0:35:27 Tom: That's a little weird, a little

0:35:29 Thomas: Well, Tom's ex did say he had to trade one kid back. Like, you can't just there's no free lunch. Like, wait, come

0:35:32 Tom: Weird, and like...

0:35:32 Eli: That's true. Send Aislinn over there. She'll take care of business.

0:35:39 Tom: I've got a bunch of worries. I have a bunch of worries because now we're all here full time now. Like, I got, I've, I've got, like, I've got worries about, like, well, fuck, like, there are days, like Donovan and Aislinn are 14 and 19. Like, I don't have a lot of work to do. The caretaking stuff, but like Eamon's 10. It's different. Like now all of a sudden I've gotten 10 year old work to do. I haven't had 10 year old work in a long time and I got 10 year old to do, you know? And so there's going to be more work and there's probably going to be strife and there's likely going to be, you know, some shit that we're not thinking about. And there's certainly going to be a lot more expense. And like, I don't give a fuck. I don't give a fuck about any of it. I don't give a fuck, because that's just work to do. That's all that is.

0:36:05 Thomas: On

0:36:21 Tom: That's just work to do, but, like, I wake up and they're here and I cannot express to you how much I didn't know how much that background buzz of anxiety as a dad has just turned off. And I don't think I would have felt it if I had a better co-parenting relationship with my ex. I think I would have been able to be much, much, much more comfortable, comfortable that they were being cared for the way that I want to care for them. But now I wake up and I'm like, "Okay, that I don't have to do that. I don't have to, like, feel." Now I just get to make sure that I do all the labor. Okay.

0:36:21 Eli: Mm Hmm. Right.

0:36:58 Tom: I'll fold some more socks. Who fucking cares?

0:37:02 Thomas: Who folds their socks? Just fucking just throw those in.

0:37:05 Eli: Okay, Smith family, relax over there,

0:37:06 Tom: What? You don't, you match

0:37:08 Thomas: The, fold them.

0:37:08 Eli: Don't listen. Of the Smith family Robertson over here, they fucking, they

0:37:10 Thomas: I mean, you might put them together or whatever.

0:37:12 Eli: Go into the clothes pitch. Yeah.

0:37:12 Tom: Your socks together. Do you not match your socks and like fold them over?

0:37:14 Thomas: Do you do, like, a five-part fold on... yeah?

0:37:19 Eli: You roll them up, you wrap it around, it's the only fold that feels

0:37:22 Thomas: Yeah, yeah, that's not... Oh.

0:37:23 Tom: Yeah, okay, well.

0:37:23 Thomas: That, you call that folding? Oh, okay.

0:37:25 Tom: I did, but it clearly started a controversy. Uh.

0:37:25 Eli: Good, yeah.

0:37:27 Thomas: Do you fold your underwear?

0:37:29 Eli: Of course, you gotta roll.

0:37:29 Tom: I Uh, no.

0:37:31 Thomas: Okay, now that's the Tom I know and love. Okay, there's no point, there's not a reason.

0:37:33 Tom: I, you know, when Haley and I got together, we were like, when we were dating, we're on video call like all the time, and so we're like on these like 24-hour video calls for like months on it, you know, and like, so we just like hang out, you know, on these video calls together while we were long distance, and so I'm doing laundry, she's doing laundry, she looks over and she's like, "What are you doing?" And this is when I was just in my apartment by myself, I'm putting my laundry away, she's not gonna fold your like, like, I'm putting white t-shirts that are just like underdressed shirts. I'm just throwing them in a drawer. And they're like, they're, like, washed and dried and clean, but, like. They're gonna go under another shirt. She's like, They're gonna get wrinkled. I go to

0:37:34 Eli: It, I fold everything.

0:38:09 Thomas: To

0:38:09 Tom: The dry cleaner. I get a perfectly pressed shirt. Nobody sees. The white shirt is just there to soak up my flop sweat. That's all it is, but that's a no-go. That's, yeah.

0:38:17 Eli: Yeah, but she knows, she knows it's there. She knows that wrinkly-ass shirt is underneath. Obviously, standards. All right, gentlemen, speaking of Tom's ex, how do witches heat up their potions? They use a microwave coven.

0:38:24 Clip: Dear Old Dads

0:38:42 Thomas: That was a long wait. I might have to leave that in the edit. It was like four minutes, we were just sitting there like, I

0:38:44 Tom: Is

0:38:46 Eli: I left the pause so that you could cut "speaking of Tom's ex" if he didn't like it. So I paused "speaking of Tom's ex," pause afterwards so that it could just do the "all right" into it if you wanted to.

0:38:50 Thomas: Don't, it's not how editing works, but yeah, it's fine.

0:39:42 Eli: There's gonna be a lot of changes around here.

0:39:46 Tom: My erection touching you right now?

0:39:48 Thomas: Hey.

0:39:52 Eli: Oh, well, that's a crazy thing to think.

0:39:54 Thomas: It's Uncle Dad. Got some magic cards for you. I still would do the nice things, I'm just too stupid to remember. Damn. Damn, all that and your dick isn't working? Sorry, man, that sucks.

0:40:02 Eli: That's crazy that your dick isn't working, Eamon.

0:40:06 Tom: Just there to soak up my flop sweat.

0:40:09 Eli: We're going to get you a shelf in the crepe closet.

0:40:12 Thomas: Drop and give me 30 tiles.

0:40:15 Eli: What say you get a boot scootin'? Humph!