Clean Countertops with Sara Petersen & Emily J. Smith

The Depression Episode

It's summer. The season of beaching, swimming, romping through flower gardens, and enjoying barbecues. But for Emily and I, depression can hit just as easily in the hopeless doom of February as it can in the sunny bliss of June. So if YOU TOO find yourself mired in sadness from time to time, this one's for you. We attempt to describe how our respective depressive moods feel, what triggers them, and also identify the particular shape of our central sadness. So yeah, TOTALLY a fun summer ep, but fear not, we cackle throughout, and maybe even land on some consoling truths. Let us know what you think of this one! We might record a part 2 since (as usual) we ended our recoding session feeling as though we'd barely scratched the surface. We actually recorded this ep after a listener wrote in requesting it, so PLEASE always let us know what you'd like us to talk about next. We love hearing from you!

What does VACATION even mean?

Summer is officially here and vacations are being scheduled and planned and enjoyed—or at least endured!—en masse. While the word alone may put some people’s entire body at ease, others may freeze up at the thought of endless decision making, managing children on the road, and a grab bag of unexpected costs. So this week on the pod, we’re discussing all things vacation! In fact, Sara is on a vacation at this very moment! And so it’s Emily here, while Sara (according to all she revealed in this ep) is hopefully laying comfortably in Cape Cod with a book right now and hopefully not managing a crew of small children bickering over sand toys.  In this ep, we discuss our ideal vacations and why, only to realize how devastatingly limited our imaginations have become. And yet, isn’t the acceptance of limitation our only real shot of happiness? We talk about the trade-offs of adventure vs. comfort, the impacts of age on our desire for the unknown, and whether it’s possible to bring the concept of “vacation” into our everyday life. An hour went by in a blink unpacking the heft of decisions and preferences and implications behind this single, innocent-seeming word.

Daring To Desire

Both Emily and I are huge fans of Amil Niazi. [https://www.instagram.com/amilniazi/?hl=en] She writes about middle age, motherhood, womanhood, and most recently ambition. You might be familiar with her excellent column at The Cut [https://www.thecut.com/tags/the-hard-part/], where she always manages to write about the exact thing I've been fruitlessly ruminating on with clarity, humor, and insight. She's a delight. And so is her new, bestselling book, My Life After Ambition: A Good Enough Memoir [https://bookshop.org/a/86808/9781668056035]. A few weeks ago, I interviewed Stefanie O'Connell about ambition [https://www.patreon.com/SaraPetersen/posts/alex-clark-is-158880204], and it feels like a topic that can be endlessly excavated. Especially for women. Amil's book is the book I needed to read when I was 25 and depressed that I hadn't "succeeded at life as an adult" yet. And it's the book I still need now that my definitions of success have changed. We had the absolute best conversation, delved deep into our personal histories of ambition, and came out on the other side ready to fuck up with abandon.

Lena Dunham's FAMESICK And The Price Of Redemption

In which Emily and I discuss the many revelations of Famesick, a book positively brimming with Hollywood gossip (Adam Driver! Jenni Konner! Nora Ephron! Fucking Bruce Springsteen!) and themes near and dear to our hearts (feminism! bodies! performance of self! people-pleasing as women!) We also review our personal histories with Girls and whether or not we were on the right side of history as it pertains to the gleeful misogyny of Lena Dunham Hating in the mid-aughts. We top everything off by playing a little game of compare and contrast with Famesick and Lindy West's Adult Braces.

WE Feel Bad About Our Hair

As mentioned in Wednesday's newsletter [https://www.patreon.com/posts/158078320], which was a self-indulgent rant about my hair woes and from whence they sprang, Emily and I spent an hour talking about why hair haunts us. And listen, while much of the episode is us bitching like BFFs at a slumber party, I legitimately think we landed on some actual insights as to why HAIR is such a fraught fucking thing for so many of us. Plus, a lot of you got in touch to say you liked us ranting about DINNER so perhaps we make this a regular thing? Chime in in the comments to let us know what very basic everyday thing we should bitch about cover next! HAPPY WEEKEND AND HAPPY HAIR!