Happy Hour Hack: Laugh therapy, podcasts for kids, and Frances McDormand
The Rachel Yoder edition
Welcome to the Happy Hour Hack, a weekly Friday post of tips and inspiration to take you into the weekend. I always share one thing from my interviewee of the week, along with any ideas I receive from readers, plus some things that are piquing my own interest.
Hack
Our tip this week comes from the brilliant Rachel Yoder, author of Nightbitch. For anyone who can find bedtime to be…challenging, this is solid gold:
I’ve been having a lot of problem with tension and pain. My massage therapist said, “I want you to laugh with your son for five minutes every night before bed.” Which sounded phenomenally hokey to me and not at all of any therapeutic use. But I was willing to try it. So I started doing this thing with Coco, and he actually started running it because he likes it so much. He gets a timer, and every night before we go to bed, he’s like, “Five minutes of laughter?” And we just do silly stuff for five minutes. It’s been this really fun process of being like, What do we do when we’re being silly? Do I just tickle you for five minutes? Do you tell me some jokes you heard in the third grade? Do we hit each other with pillows?
It’s this whole readjustment before going to sleep, a reframing, where I can connect with him where I’m not grumpy and tired. There is something about making your body physically go through the motions that brings on some actual physiological change.
Frances McDormand
Yes, Frances McDormand gets her own category. She’s gotta be one of the wisest women out there. Rachel’s description of laughing before bed reminded me of this incredible conversation between Cal Peternell (the longtime chef of Chez Panisse) and Frances McDormand from Cal’s podcast, Cooking by Ear. She talks about housewifery, gut laughing, and hug therapy (apparently we’re supposed to get eight hugs a day?!), all while making risotto with Cal.
Podcasts for Kids
During my chat with Rachel, she gave some great recommendations for kid-friendly podcasts and shared a trick her son uses to process any more-adult content:
During the pandemic, we got really deep into podcasts. And he’s become an avid podcast listener. Story Pirates. Greeking Out. He now knows more about Greek history than I do. Circle Round, which is all these myths and fables from around the world. We often listen to them together and talk about them.
Anything that strikes him as a little too scary, like maybe it’s a Greek myth where someone kills someone else, he’ll re-create it in legos. He’ll build it over and over again. Or he’ll draw it or make his own comic about it. So it’s this constant process of watching things, taking the world in, and rebuilding it.
That has been really inspiring because he has this insane creative force that doesn’t shut off. He’ll get up before school so he can draw a comic. And I’m like, I have five hours today to write, I should be able to get something done if my child produced a comic before breakfast.
And speaking of Story Pirates, for anyone in the Northeast United States, there is a super fun, kid-friendly music festival called Solid Sound. It’s put on by Wilco and takes place every other year at MASS MoCA, a contemporary art museum in the Berkshires. We went last year, and Story Pirates put on a live show each day, which my kids loved.
The festival is so kid-friendly that you could even lose your five year old and not worry too much. She could be gone for a good half hour, to the point where you have an official about to make a festival-wide announcement, and you’re still not breaking a sweat. You could be so not worried—because it’s a festival filled with middle-aged people wearing comfortable shoes—that you took a break from looking for her to eat a salted caramel affogato (because it’s SO HOT and it’s SALTED CARAMEL). And then the not worrying would pay off when the cops walk up escorting her (while you’re stuffing your stupid face with an affogato). But it’s okay, because this festival is so kid-friendly that everyone took care of her, and she had the time of her life.
(Pro tip that I think everyone knows but me: Put your phone number somewhere on your child’s body—in a necklace, on a bracelet, in their damn pocket—if you’re going to be among hordes of people.)
Advice
I loved T Magazine’s Culture Therapist. Here’s one from a couple years ago that is encouraging for anyone who worries that their best creative years were wasted back when they had a hard body and nothing but time, which they squandered away, mostly having fun with that hard body. But Ligaya Mishan explains that there is still hope…and time.
We have listened to all those kid podcasts and love them!