March 10, 2025 • 50 mins
"Fudge-a-Mania," chapters 7-8. This 1990 Judy Blume classic HOLDS UP. Peter fantasizes about meeting Big Apfel and toxic toilet gas. Fudge plants a stupid rock garden. Libby sports her iconic snoopy tee. And we meet Mitzi! Molly and Jody do some dramatic readings and dive deeper into the themes of Maine Coon Cats, names that sound like desserts, and Jeff Probst's child gauntlet. And what a treat to receive notes from Blume Heads Dawn and Gracie, as well as a beautiful ode to Maine from Blume Head Alison. We also have a CELEBRITY LETTER to share. It's a Judy Blume book club. Join us every other week!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Hi.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
I'm Jody and I'm Mollie, and.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
You're listening to the Bloom Saloon.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
It's a Judy Bloom book club.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
We're reading fudge Mania Today by Judy Bloom, chapters seven
and eight. We have so much for you today. We've
got letters galore, we've got voice memos, we've got a
few mini special reports, and.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
We're both sick. So if you hear that, that's what's happening.
But I will say, Jody, this is a weird thinging
about me. I love when I'm listening to something and
I can tell the people are sick. This happens on
TV shows a lot, but I feel like you can
tell when someone's going to work with a cold, and
I'm like, yes, I love it.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
Is this a fetish? What's going on here?
Speaker 2 (01:03):
I think it's that I like, like, oh, you're a
real person. You're not you know, Rachel, You're Jennifer Anison
with the sniffles. This is wonderful. I love this.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
Celebrities, they're just like us.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
Yeah exactly. So if you also like this, congratulations, here's
an episode for you.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Tell us what kind of tea you're drinking to help
help her cold?
Speaker 2 (01:25):
I wish I was drinking mose Herb tea like in
the last chapters we read, but instead I'm reading I'm
drinking a throat coat tea and I just bought some more.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
So Oh my god, me too, Me too, Oh my god.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Twinsy's twins.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
Twins have hot cocoa and throat coat double Dippin' it
doesn't They don't go together very well, I'm realizing, because
the throat coat is a little bit liquoricy, you know, yeah,
and the hot cocoa is chocolate. E. I mean, I
guess some people might like liquorice and chocolate together, but
I guess I don't.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
Yeah. Yeah, it's like a little like fur net shot
in them. Mm hmm ah.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
Well, god speed.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
To us, Yeah, godspeed to us, Sanasana, let's get it going.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
Who should we start with. We have letters.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
From she should maybe do bloom Head letters, and then
a celebrity letter.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
Ooh ooh ooh.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Okay teaser. There's a big celebrity letter guest in this episode,
so stay tuned.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
We've got a letter from Gracie. This one's via Instagram.
So y'all, this just proves you can write us letters
on any of our channels. Oh, she sent a really
great old timey photo of her and her friends dressed
in like full on, like saloon hussywear. They're holding what
(02:46):
look like real guns. They've got hats and feather boas
and lots of corsets, and the sass on their faces
is very impressive.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
They got into character right away. You can tell them,
She says.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
It was the fall of two thousand. I had just
started at a boarding school for the performing arts.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
Wow, WHOA sounds so cool.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
Our class took a trip to an island between the
Lower and Upper Peninsula of Michigan. There were all kinds
of touristy things going on there, and my gang wanted
to do the old timey photos. My agreeing to take
this pick was a desperate attempt to make friends with
the girls who had already been at the boarding school
the year before. Guess what, it totally worked. I'm so
(03:38):
glad to hear that.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
See this is what I'm telling you. I have never
experienced true friendship, because no one's ever episode me. All
my friendships have been alt.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
Oh my god, what a sham. We all became friends
and the girls were all sweethearts, like Molly's friends and family.
I too thought taking these photos was too expensive, but
the girl on the top right had a mom with
access to a color photo printer, so we only paid
for one photo and the girls' mom made us copies.
(04:09):
Shout out to Gillian's mom.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
Gillian's mom, you the realist.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
And so she says, Mollie, you should tell your friends
to get on that train. So maybe your cheap ass
friends just need to get themselves a color Printer's so smart.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
Thank you, Thank you, Gracie, and yeah I do. I
totally remember you from the Red All Over Days, so
shout out. And also I remember su j Cool from
Red All Over Days too, so thanks everybody who's here too.
I'm so jealous of that story. I didn't know a
I didn't know there were performing arts boarding schools. That
(04:45):
sounds like I want to hear a whole podcast about that.
And secondly, yeah, good idea, hot savings tip. I hope
some of my friends will hop on this with me. Okay,
now we have a letter from bloom Head Dawn. Let
me pull that up. Hello, Jody and Molly per Molly's
mentioned that she wanted to visit Maine. I just wanted
(05:07):
to lend my perspective as a lifetime Bloomhead and Native maner.
Though I moved to the Boston area for college and
have lived here for over thirty years, I grew up
in western Maine. Most of my family is still up there.
I visit often, and to me, it will always be home.
Maine is vast, beautiful, varied, and complicated. It's also a
(05:30):
scrappy underdog of a state, and in the eighties, hearing
a mention of it in pop culture was huge. Unless
you lived there. Nobody knew anything or cared about Maine.
So when I read M. A and E spells Princeton
in Superfudge, my ass was like, oh, my god, Jude's
knows we exist. We're on the map now dog. Fast
(05:53):
forward to the late twenty tenths and my own kid
was given fudge Mania. I had no idea there were
other Fos books after the eighties, and I was super
excited to share the continuing story of the Hatchers and
Tubmans with him. The book being set in Maine was
a glorious bonus my home. Also, I had a longer
message that might not have made the cut, but I
can confirm the main smell is accurate. I don't know
(06:18):
what that means. I mean, I know the main smell,
but she says it's accurate. Is it accurate that it's weird?
Help me? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (06:25):
Is it accurate that it's mil dewey?
Speaker 2 (06:28):
Oh? Oh yeah, that's the money answered.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
Thank you, Don Mollie. I I keep thinking of your
obsession with Maine, and I think we need to keep
revisiting it because I have so many questions. So, wait,
was this book what got you into Maine? Or oh?
It was absolutely?
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Yes, this is it? And then I did my state
report in fifth grade on Mae's because I was so
hyped about it, and I continue to be hyped about
it to this day. I want to go so bad.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
What is your favorite fact about Maine?
Speaker 2 (07:03):
Yes? I love that the state cat is a Maine
coon cat, and Maine coon cats are amazing because they're
like similar to like tigers. They're good at swimming, so
they have like almost webbing between their little paws, and
their fur is in layers, kind of like Newfoundland dogs
(07:26):
is where there's like a layer that the water wicks
off of and a layer that keeps their body warm.
Maine coon cats have that too, and my friend has
two of them, and they're magnificent and weird and high maintenance,
but I love them.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
Are they the ones that have the tufted ears? Or
is that yes?
Speaker 2 (07:43):
Yeah? Did I tell you that for that main project
you had to make a visual representation of the state
that you wanted to write about. And so some people
made posters and some people made like paper mache things.
And I don't know why I did it this way.
I made a cake in the shape of Maine, and
I put little things on different parts of the cake.
(08:05):
So yeah, I'm in it to win it, and I
still have never been.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
Wait, that sounds like bribery to me, Like, hello, teacher,
I hear you like red velvet.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
Well I did. I'm sure I got a good grade,
So who knows? Shout out to you, miss Woodward, you
the realist. I think I also stole fudge Mania from
your library, so.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
Ha ha is the shape of Maine is a hard
cake to make. I'm just I thought it was like
maybe more rectangular, but it's like really wiggly.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
How did I do? Let me see? Oh yeah, how
that fuck did all those little islands?
Speaker 1 (08:45):
They were just like little cupcakes at the bottom.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
I'm positive I didn't do that. I bet you know what, Tody,
I bet you one thousand dollars. I just made a
rectangle cake and was like, that's Maine.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
You're a genius, all right. Well, speaking of Maine, we
have another main correspondence. This one is from Bloomhead Allison,
not co host Alison, but a different Allison, longtime bloom Head.
She left us a voice memo.
Speaker 3 (09:17):
I'm lucky that I spent a lot of my life
in Maine. I lived outside of the capital, Augusta, in
two little towns named Manchester and Readfield from second.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
Grade to fourth grade.
Speaker 3 (09:29):
My parents were struggling in this period of our life
in the early nineties. When we lived there, they would
rent gorgeous lake houses for about five hundred dollars a month,
but every summer we would move to a smaller place
where it was cheaper because the gorgeous houses would go
for five hundred dollars a week during the summer. We
(09:50):
had a TV, but didn't really get any clear channels
down by the lake. Therefore, my two sisters and I
spent most of our childhood frolic under the pine trees
and birch trees and slashing in creeks, eating tea berries
in the forest they taste like winter green, by the way,
and swimming, kayaking and canoeing in the lakes. We would
(10:14):
gather the gray clay from the bottom of the lake
and spirit all over our bodies, pretending we were at
a fancy spa.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
We stopped doing.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
That after we discovered leeches on our legs one day.
We love to go fishing, using hot dogs as bait.
We liked to put the fish in every pot that
my mother owned before releasing them back into the lake.
We would go night swimming and skinny dip. My dad
would wake up every morning in the summer when the
morning missed was still hovering along the surface of the lake,
(10:46):
and he'd swim across the lake and back. I remember
once he got too close to a loon in her
babies and she.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
Tried to attack him.
Speaker 3 (10:54):
The calls of the loons are the literal soundtrack to
the life in Maine.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
High ho else we lived in was next to the
train tracks.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
The trains would go by three times a day and
the entire house would shake. We would put pennies and
dimes on the track and the trains would smash them flat.
When we got bored, we would walk along the train
tracks for miles. Sometimes, when I look back, I realized
it's actually a miracle that my sisters and I made
it to adulthood. There was always lobster bakes and red
(11:24):
snappas also known as red hot dogs at every big
family gathering. At one family reunion, we happened to book
a campground at the same time the hermit crabs were mating.
I'll never forget about twenty of my relatives trying to
swim while the hermit crabs were literally swimming around and
boning all over our feet in the water. The smells
(11:46):
of Maine actually depend on where you live. Near the shore,
It's salty and fishy near the lakes. It's filled with
the scent of pine near the fields reeks of Cowanore,
especially in the hot summer. I have this one core
memory of my dad taking us out on the frozen Moran.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
Cooked lake we lived on.
Speaker 3 (12:06):
He would put on his ice skates and gather up
my sisters and I and the sled with a rope attached.
He'd grab the rope and skate us to the middle
of the frozen lake. Then he would start skating in
circles while holding the rope behind him. We would go
so fast we would get completely airborne. Then he would
let go of the rope. The sled would fly on
(12:28):
its own for about five seconds, then drop out of
the air with a loud thump onto the ice. We
would slide so far away from him. It was completely
dark unless the moon was out. It felt like we
were the only people on earth. It was absolutely magical,
and that's what it was like growing up in Maine.
(12:48):
Absolutely magical.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
Oh my gosh, that was so sweet. That was like
listening to a Garrison Geeler.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
It was totally totally. Does this confirm like what you've
always known about Maine?
Speaker 2 (13:02):
Yes, it main sounds like it has everything I like.
It has seafood, it has beaches, it has beautiful nights.
Don't like the part about the leeches. Hope I never
see a leech ever. But other than that, take me there.
I need it. Okay, And now are we ready for
our celebrity letter.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
I'm drum rolling.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
Thank you? Okay, So this week we got a celebrity
letter from Bicycle Bob. I sent him a letter a
few weeks ago and he responded to me almost immediately,
and this is what he wrote, Dear Molly and Jody,
I'm Bob Shields and I remember that book as well
(13:48):
as kids who were coming into the bike shop asking
for a book signing. Kids still come in. Judy summered
here way back then and wanted to trade in her
old bike for a new, more current model. I had
her try several bikes during her multiple visits to the shop.
I told her about swallowing a bee during a bike ride,
(14:10):
stopping on the side of the road and desperately trying
to cough it up. I then went to a store
and bought a pint of ice cream to soothe my
swollen throat. Judy amended it to a fly. That's the backstory, Okay,
that'll come up later. I did not know who she was,
as many celebrities came into the shop, so she was
(14:30):
just a customer as far as I was concerned. Then
a book signed by her arrived in the mail, along
with the message and the rest, as they say, is
and he didn't end it because people of a certain
generation love ellipses. But I thought that was so fricking cute.
Thank you so much, bicycle Bob.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
That was so bicycle Bob. He has no idea how
happy this makes us.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
And this is the week if you're listening to it,
keep an eye out. This is the week. I'm gonna
post all those pictures of bicycle Bob because he's so
cute and I love him and this was so generous
to send this a letter back.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
Ah, thank you, bicycle Bob. If you're listening, which I
know you're not.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
If you're listening, sorry about what I said about ellipses,
but you did it.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
Wait I have to ask, though, is it like the
properthree dot dot dot or is it like thirty?
Speaker 2 (15:19):
No? He he is like five.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
Okay, that's acceptable. My mom she likes to do as
many dots as she thinks the length of the pause
should be.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
You know what I mean, that's funny. That's my grammatical
pet peeve lately is I think weirdly Boomers do it
and gen Z does it where they use ellipses when
they meet mean commas and not when they mean space,
and it bugs the shit out of me. And I've
gotten in many fights about it, and I understand it's
something I need to let go.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
But no, never, you're a copywriter, like we need people
to gate keep these things. But I have I have
a weird little Lipsy's pet peeve two. So I like
to do dot dot dot and then a space and
then the capital of the next sentence. Right, That is
(16:12):
the way, right, because I see some people not putting
any spaces in there, and it just seems very cramped.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
The space is new to me, but I like it.
I like it because you're right, it does look cramped otherwise,
so I don't mind it. I think you get a
pass Yay?
Speaker 1 (16:32):
Is that it for our correspondence this week? This was
a really fun week for the mail bag.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
Yes, thanks for writing in. Everybody, We love it.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
Rollcal okay, uh, we've got Peter. We all know Peter.
He's eleven, he's a worrier, he's an all round good guy.
He's on the verge of pubescentce. We're learning.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
Don't please don't say it like that. I already feel
bad for saying Jimmy Fargo was hot and now like
I want to die, So please don't say it like that.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
Well, look, we did have to read then again, maybe
I won't. This was years ago on the pod, and
I do feel like if there were a next book
after Double Fudge. It might be rolling into then again,
maybe I won't territory.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
So maybe that's the only Gudy Bloom book I've only read.
Once read it and I was like, oh, ye, just
too much.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
I can't bring back Wifey.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
Oh and I have to say I wasn't on the podcast,
and I think that was like my last letter before
I became co host. As I read wife and I
love Wifey, You guys are way too mean about Wifey.
I fucking love wife.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
In hindsight, I very much love it, and I think
about it all the time and I want to reread it.
But during it, it was, it was, it was an experience.
Then we've got Fudge. He is a wild animal of
a five year old uncle feather. He's a bird, a
(18:26):
minor bird. He's not a scuba diver. Then we have
a mom and dad. We don't hear much from them
in these chapters, except where reminded again that dad is
an adman. We've got Twotsie. She is and one and
a half year old baby. She can say words. We
learn that she can say Pete for Peter. She says
(18:48):
up and she says, go Horsey.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
That's all you need, uh, huh.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
And then there's Grandma Muriel Cool, grandma of gymnastics Camp
Fame see, a five year old who lives in the area.
She's very precocious. She and Fudge are They're like those
two kids in Problem Child, Problem Child too. Maybe missus
(19:13):
A she's the kindly grandmother who does all the best
grandmother things like bake and make hot cocoa. Big app Fel,
He's or is it app ful? Ap Fell?
Speaker 2 (19:27):
In the audiobook which Judy narrates, she says, Appfell.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
Okay, Ooh, I'm so glad we have that as a reference,
because I think I've been reading it as appful my
entire life. But at Fell is a retired famous baseball
guy and he's the husband of missus A. Right, He's like,
he's not the son, okay? No, I was like, how
old is he? Okay? Jimmy Fargo, he's Peter's bestie. He's
(19:56):
currently back in New York. He has no idea what's
in store for him in Maine when he comes up
in a week. Sheila is Peter's nemesis. Also fudges babysitter
and future wife h Libby is just being such a
teenagery teenager. She's the big sister. She has a very
(20:18):
cool snoopy T shirt. The Tubman parents, I don't know
if we see them in these chapters, but they're just
I don't have a sense of their personalities. They're just parents.
Chapter seven, Best News of the Century. And here we
(20:39):
meet Mitzi. Oh, Mitzi. She is tiny with a long ponytail.
I imagine, just like a little mini Arianda Grande. Right,
that's swinging her pony. But now that I've seen the
picture of you and your tiny like orphan for sale,
get up, I'm kind of picturing you.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
That's funny because I picture her as a little girl
from the Florida Project, just like this little feral kid. Oh,
I know, but I like Ariana Grande the best. Okay,
Now if I do her, if I do her voice,
I'm gonna do it a ari voice.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
Oh oh so yeah. We meet her at missus A's.
There's a lot of confusion with names. Missus A thinks
the boy's last name is Feather, and then we have
this whole thing of like what they tell her their
last name is Hatcher. Your uncle's last name isn't Feather.
(21:38):
I just like that's his first name. So he's feather hatcher. Duh,
it's all very confusing.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
That is funny because if you think about it, a
bird with a first name feather, that'd be like if
you met a man whose first name was skin skin
Johnson didius skin.
Speaker 1 (21:58):
And I like that he's a ddie. Yes, that makes sense.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
Well that's what Michael in Forever. That was his alternate
penis name. If he couldn't have Ralse kids one of
these skin Johnson penias. Want to take a look at
those Moulers girl.
Speaker 4 (22:14):
Oh well, since we're talking about names, Nisy thinks Fudge
is kind of a weird one, and it's explained to
her that his real name.
Speaker 1 (22:25):
Is Farley, which she's like, that's weird too, But missus
A thinks it's great because it's just like Folly Granger
and I had to look him up and he is
very cool. He is hot. He is bisexual, which kudos
to him for being out at a time when that
(22:46):
was not common at all. He's in a ton of
stuff that I've never seen, but maybe we'll see one day.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
Yeah, you're not kidding. That's a very handsome.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
Man, very handsome man, Okay, bisexual King Sheila and Graham
go inside the house and they're just they've just left
Mitzi with Peter and Fudge, and Mitzy's kinda she's looking
at the ceiling, looking at the porch. She's getting a
little shy. Fudge watches her and hums a little tune.
Speaker 2 (23:17):
That's a good looking baseball club. Yeah, I call it
my Mitzi. Yeah, Big gave it to me. It's coming
out a little more Michael Jackson than I'm meaning it too,
which is horrible given, but I'm gonna keep going. It's Big,
(23:39):
It's my grandpa, Big Apfel, big ooh, Big Apfel. Are
you telling us your grandfather is Big app Fell, the
baseball player. I have his baseball card, I know his
stats by heart. You want to play in his game?
(24:02):
His game? Yeah, we play every Sunday. Are you saying
that anyone who wants to play ball with Big app Fell?
Can you have to pass the over undertest first? What's
the over undertest? You have to be over for an
under one hundred and for him?
Speaker 3 (24:27):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (24:29):
Okay, and that's it.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
That's it.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
She said, Yahoo, that's the best news I've heard in
a long time.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
Is it the best news of the century?
Speaker 2 (24:44):
It could be yahoo yoooo.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
So they are all yahooing and Sheila, the perfect babysitter,
comes out and she is not impressed. I'm gone for
five minutes five minutes and look at you carrying on
like a bunch of monkeys. So later that day, Peter
runs home and calls Jimmy Fargo because this is the
(25:13):
best news of the century. He makes a forbidden long
distance call, which is a huge deal because this is
probably like a thirty dollars phone call. But he just
he can't help himself, and he tells Jimmy all about it.
But first he makes Jimmy sit so he doesn't faint,
which is such a movie thing. I've always wanted to
(25:33):
tell someone to do that in real life, but I've
never had the opportunity. Turns out, Jimmy Fargo has no
idea who big upfell is. He thinks Ty Cobb is
the best center fielder of all time, or maybe Willie Mays,
and Peter tries to convince him that even so, this
is gonna be so cool. There's a game every week
(25:55):
where they get to play with one of the greats.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
It's so cool.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
Oh, but it sounds like Jimmy Fargo is getting a
little shy about his ball skills and he might not
be the best player. He says that he uh, he
strikes out a lot. But Peter said, look, it's a
basic ball game. Jimmy Fargo latches onto the word basic,
and he says, speaking of basic to segue into Sheila Tubman,
(26:24):
which is a very early use of the word basic.
Like it's like they didn't use it in the way
they do now back then, So Judyyard, yeah, modern parlance.
Speaker 3 (26:38):
Aw.
Speaker 1 (26:40):
Peter lies and says that he never sees Sheila around,
like she's way way off on the other side of
the woods, and Jimmy says, that's the relief. That night,
Peter's conscience kind of creeps up on him. He can't sleep.
He's too excited about the big Appfel game, first of all,
but second of all, he's too anxious about what Jimmy's
(27:01):
gonna think when he finds out they're sharing a house
with Sheila. Oh, I get the stress of this, Like
there's nothing worse than like just like rehearsing the conversation
your head over and over and over again, and it
always happens in bed. I hate it. He goes to
the bathroom. But then like the idea clicks, there's the
(27:25):
light bulb flash, and he's like, toilets, poison gas, poison
gas in the toilets. He's thinking to himself, I'd say.
Speaker 2 (27:35):
See, when we first got to Maine, we moved into
this big old house. It had seven bedrooms and four bathrooms,
and you could see the ocean from every window. But
unfortunately there was a big problem. What problem, poison gas,
poison gas and all the toilets, green steamy, gurgling stuff
(27:59):
that bubbled up every time we flushed. Blaz Dad had
to call the health inspector. She took one look and
went nuts.
Speaker 1 (28:10):
This is a disaster.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
This is the serious environmental disaster. So then what she
condemned the place, even though she was sorry about ruining
our vacation. She had no choice. The police came up
and boarded up the house. They nailed a sign to
the front door warning poison gas and toilets. Flush at
(28:33):
your own wrists.
Speaker 1 (28:35):
Wow, you're lucky you got out alive.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
Yeah I know. Oh so you see Judy puts a
space between the ellipses.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
I see that. Okaye. So she's right, that's the final word.
So we should know that this conversation was all hypothetical.
I'm going to put a little echo effect on it
so we know it didn't actually happen. But Peter goes
back to bed, thinking that this is a brilliant idea, Like,
(29:08):
what a perfect solution, because Jimmy, see, he's like really
into kind of save the whales, save the dolphins, save
the rainforest, and so uh, why not save our vacation.
Speaker 2 (29:20):
Oh, such a brilliant idea, Peter. Nothing can go.
Speaker 1 (29:23):
Wrong, Nothing can go wrong. He goes back to sleep.
I imagine he's just got this smile on his face,
cool as a cucumber.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
Before we go to the next chapter. When I first
read this as a child, I was like, of course,
big apppel a real person done And I never looked
it up until now, and it doesn't appear to be
a real person. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
I was surprised too, because so there's so many other
real things mentioned in this book.
Speaker 2 (29:52):
It's like, yeah, she uses a brand of magical realism,
and like half is reel half of But what made
me curious is I wonder if there is a person
in Maine that is a like retired baseball player that
does or did stuff like this because I have heard
about similar things happening, for example humble Brag. But for work,
(30:19):
I met and worked with Jeff Probes from Survivor, and
he apparently when he goes on vacation in the Hamptons,
he'll do like a little mini Survivor game for all
the kids who live in the neighborhood. And so it's
like it's if you happen to live in that cul
de Sac or whatever in the Hamptons, you often will
(30:40):
play those games with him. And so it seemed like
it didn't seem that far fetched that there would be
a baseball player who lived in Maine at the time
that Judy was vacationing there that would do something like this.
So I wonder what inspired this.
Speaker 1 (30:53):
Yeah, oh that's such a good call. Oh my god,
Wait does Jeff Probes doing Wait what kind of minister
riber games is he playing with childer? This could go very.
Speaker 2 (31:03):
Wrong he still does this, or if this was like
when he was younger or whatever. But I think they
would do little relay races and little puzzle challenges and stuff,
and it was like a known thing that like if
you lived there, that's you'd get to do that the
week that Jeff was in town, which is funny, so
fun I heard that story before I met him and
was like, jeez, Loise, he can't turn it off. And
(31:26):
then I met him in real life, I was like, Oh,
he really can't. He loves this shit. It's his favorite thing.
So it's kind of nice.
Speaker 1 (31:33):
Oh that's really sweet.
Speaker 2 (31:35):
So if any main people know who this could be
based on, let.
Speaker 1 (31:39):
Us know, please. I have a little information about poison
gas and toilets, because for all I knew this could
be a real thing. Who knows. I know that there's
like shrats that can come up out of toilets and
snakes and stuff. But oh yeah, Bloomhead, a friend of
the pod Katie had a rat to come out of
her toilet and Francisco.
Speaker 2 (32:01):
No, oh my god, I want to die.
Speaker 1 (32:03):
I ate that. But fortunately you will be happy to
know that there have been no cases that I could
find of poison gas actually like gurgling up out of
toilets from like sewage stuff. But but, but but you
can make poison gas by pouring too much chemical cleaners
(32:25):
down your toilet or the wrong combo of chemical cleaners,
and this has happened a lot. People have had to
like call nine to one one because they've gassed themselves
out of the house. Like this. One woman poured like
gallons of bleach down her toilet, oh plus liquid plumber,
and she almost died. Oh my god. Yeah, it's bad.
(32:45):
It basically replicates kind of like chemical warfare poison people.
They suffocate, they can't breathe, they have burning throats. So
y'all be careful when you unclog your toilets. I have
a really good clogging method if anyone wants to know. Okay, wait,
why have I been talking about toilets a lot?
Speaker 2 (33:09):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (33:11):
I'm ready to listen though, But this is something I
learned years ago, and it works so well that everybody
is so impressed and excited when they get to try it.
So if you have a clog toilet, don't mess with
a disgusting like plunger or like brush or anything like that.
Take a bunch of dishwashing soap, like the blue don
liquid and like suwred a ton of it into the toilet,
(33:35):
and then boil water, maybe like a kettle full of water,
and then pour that boiling water into the toilet and
let it sit for about fifteen minutes. And I'm telling
you it will flush like magic.
Speaker 2 (33:47):
That's amazing. Yeah, it's a great sy Wow.
Speaker 1 (33:52):
So I'm happy to share this this life hack with y'all.
Speaker 2 (33:57):
Wow that's incredible.
Speaker 1 (34:00):
Oh my gosh, Wow, are you so excited to clog
your toilet?
Speaker 2 (34:03):
I've never been more excited to clog my toilet.
Speaker 1 (34:08):
Report back. I also have a mini special report on
names that are candy. So there's a whole bit about fudge,
Like fudge, that's a weird name, that's a name of
a dessert. And I thought like, okay, like what other
names out there are named after sweet things? And there's
(34:29):
surprisingly quite a few. So of course we have Candy
that's number one, short for Candace. And then there's like caramel, Carmela.
We've got Reese cocoa condo, Lisa means with sweetness. Oh
my god, so with sweetness rice yum.
Speaker 2 (34:52):
That is actually beautiful, isn't it.
Speaker 1 (34:56):
We've got dulce or dulcy or dulcinea, so pretty, ginger honey.
And then there's Melissa, which means like honeybee it does.
Speaker 2 (35:09):
Yeah, that's so cool.
Speaker 1 (35:12):
And then Charene. I used to know a charene that
means sweet and Persian. And then this was the most
interesting one, Pamela. There was a poem in the fifteen
hundreds that first used this name. It was a totally
made up name. It was inspired by pan, the Greek
word for like all and melly meaning honey, oh yeah.
(35:35):
And then two hundred years later, author Samuel Richardson used
the name for the heroine of his best seller Pamela
or also known as Virtue Rewarded was the alternate title,
and in this book, Pamela was a humble main servant
who refused the advances of her employer's son until he
(35:58):
finally proposed an honor marriage. And now the name caught
on in the UK around nineteen twenty and then became
a smash hit in the US in the fifties. That's
it for me.
Speaker 2 (36:11):
I'm surprised that you didn't mention Pavlova. Yes, because Pavlova
is an Australian dessert. But it's also named after Anna Pavlova,
who is a singer.
Speaker 1 (36:23):
Hmm oh wait, wasn't she a ballet dancer?
Speaker 2 (36:26):
Yep, which is of course singing with your feet. Chapter eight,
(36:48):
the titular chapter. It's called fudge Mania, So Peter wakes
up in a bad mood. He went to sleep shining,
sleeping like an angel, and he wakes up in a
foul mood because he realizes in the harsh light of
day that his brilliant idea is actually a bad idea
and it's not going to work. This has happened to
(37:09):
me so many times.
Speaker 1 (37:12):
Now.
Speaker 2 (37:13):
Listen. After breakfast, he goes back to bed, and this
line here says Dad says, falling asleep when your body's
not tired is a way of avoiding your problems. When
I tell you that that is the judy line that
has stuck with me the most, even more, then we
must increase our bust even more than Willia from Sally J. Friedman,
(37:36):
even more than Ralph the Penis. I once a month
think about falling asleep when your body's not tired as
a way of avoiding your problems. Ever since I read
this as a child, I think this is such a smart,
like sad line to put in a little kid's book.
And it's stuck with me so much because she's so right, Oh.
Speaker 1 (37:56):
My god, right, yeah, but oh did this ruin you?
Speaker 2 (38:01):
Maybe I will say I'm not a napper?
Speaker 1 (38:03):
Yeah, me neither. Napping just makes me feel guilty.
Speaker 2 (38:07):
Yeah, you're right, I've almost never had like a satisfying nap.
Ooh duty, what have you done to us? Oh man?
But so I obviously go trying to take a nap
doesn't work, and so he's like, Oh, I don't know,
Maybe I shouldn't worry. Maybe the tummans will move before
(38:30):
Jimmy comes. I don't know. Anyway, he's like sitting outside
playing with his baseball cards, looking for the big upfell one,
and they see a card that is his old rookie card,
and then Mitsi walks by and they're looking at the
cards together, and she wants to find fudge, and since
(38:50):
fudge is behind the house, she asks Peter for an
escort because she's afraid to walk behind the house because
sometimes monsters the behind houses. And I didn't bring my
monster spray. And monster spray is apparently a spray that
missus A makes for Mitzi and when you spray the monsters,
(39:12):
they melt, And like Jody said at the beginning, Peter
immediately is because he's the son of an ad man,
starts fantasizing about the ad campaign for this, so he
makes the commercial that says Mitzi's monster spray made from
a grandmother's secret formula. Spray twice a day and melt
(39:32):
your monsters away. And this was another thing I got
from this book is I did make this. I put
food coloring in a water spray bottle, and I gave
it to my brother to help him, and then I
got in trouble because it stayed the couch. So so
a lot of people, you shouldn't be taking ideas from
(39:54):
Judy Bloom books and just doing them. Okay, you should
ask an adult first, But I was not in the
business of asking adults.
Speaker 1 (40:02):
I guess no, because you knew all about babysitting from
the American Girl books, Like who needs to ask?
Speaker 2 (40:09):
Grown ups need to ask?
Speaker 1 (40:11):
I just love how sweet and helpful you were. I
love that.
Speaker 2 (40:15):
Yeah, that's a word for it. Sure, he's just like
wanting to be the main character all the time. Yeah.
So Peter very gallantly takes Mitzi behind the house where
Sheila and Fudge are planting rocks. They're like digging up
the grass in the backyard and putting rocks in them,
and they do this whole spiel where Fudge says the
(40:38):
rocks are like the best thing to plant, and she
was like, don't ing me is his idea, and Peter
so relatably immediately kicks into worrying. I felt this so hard.
And he's you know, he's saying, you know, we're renting
(40:59):
this house. We can't be doing stuff like this to
a garden that's not our garden. And Peter says, you're
such a warrior. And in the margins I wrote, someone
has to be it's true. And when Peter says, I
don't worry, I think ahead. I felt that. Yeah, I
felt that so hard. So but Fudge and Mitzi get
(41:22):
on right away. They're playing in the dirt, they're eating
dirt off their fingers, they're having a great time, and
they get whipped into such a frenzy that they start
spinning around. Yeah, it's fudge Mania. Once you get it,
you can never stop.
Speaker 1 (41:39):
I'm going to count to three.
Speaker 2 (41:42):
You better watch up, because it's catching. Now.
Speaker 1 (41:47):
You've got a Pieter. You've got fudge mania too.
Speaker 2 (41:50):
Look out, Sheila, you just caught it from me.
Speaker 1 (41:54):
I did not catch anything from you. I will never
catch anything from you.
Speaker 2 (42:00):
So Libby stomps out, wearing her snoopy T shirt. That's
so big it hangs down to her knees. Iconic. She says,
guess what exactly is going on here? And how am
I supposed to sleep with this racket? Sleep now? Yes, now,
it's only ten o'clock in the morning. You sleep till
ten o'clock in the morning. I try. Good morning is
(42:24):
the best time to play? Who is this kid?
Speaker 1 (42:27):
Nixy appfell a neighbor.
Speaker 2 (42:30):
I'm five, and I walked here all by myself. I
didn't need anyone to show me the way. I'll tell
you what you need. It's virgin many her. You're all maniacs,
Vigo maniacs. This is all your fault, Peter, Chaos falls
you and your family. Chaos. I don't believe I know him.
(42:54):
Chaos a state of utter confusion and disorder. The end,
I just realized, it's so funny that like Peter is
the older sibling in his family, and he's always worrying
and he's always mad. But Libby's older sibling in her family,
and she's always worrying and she's always mad. They should
get along to maximize their joint sleigh, but they can't.
Speaker 3 (43:18):
I can't.
Speaker 1 (43:19):
That's such a good point. Also, those tubman girls love
a definition.
Speaker 2 (43:24):
Oh they do. They're so fucking pedantic. I love them.
Speaker 1 (43:27):
They would have those like art priends you can get
from home goods. That's like no happy colon adjective, the
state of bliss.
Speaker 2 (43:40):
They are very love last love. Later in the day,
Mom and Dad look at Fudge's rock garden and Peter
is like excited because he's like, Ooh, they're gonna be mad,
another feeling I'm familiar with. And then they're not, and
they're actually excited about it, and she was taking credit
for it, and Peter is incredulous and it's really annoying,
(44:05):
and everybody is losing their goddamn mind over Fudge putting
rocks in the garden that doesn't belong to them, and
everyone's mad at Peter for just existing. Oh, I hate
it so much, And Peter is grumpy and Fudge is
getting all the attention. And while this is happening, Tutsie
(44:27):
toddles over to him and like wants to be picked up,
and Peter is dealing with some stuff. He doesn't have
time to pick her up, so he kind of moves
his leg and she falls down on her butt, and
because she's a baby. She cries, and because she's a baby,
Dad picks her up and starts galloping around with her.
And then because he gets jealous, Fudge wants to be
(44:49):
picked up too, and so Mom picks Fudge up. So
what we have is the two youngest kids. There's a
kid for every parent, and everyone's romping around, and Peter
is just there, sad because once again order did not
happen the way he thinks, in his anxiety, thinks it
should happen. And to this, I say, justice for you, Peter,
(45:11):
justice for you.
Speaker 1 (45:12):
I'm waiting for justice as well.
Speaker 2 (45:14):
You're gonna wait a long time. Peter is never gonna come.
And Peter says this, which breaks my heart. He says,
being a baby is so easy, writing around on dad's shoulders.
We're knowing he'd never let you fall, and doing and
saying whatever you please without worrying about what the other
guy will think. Like it's so it's so sad, like
(45:35):
Peter really embodies, and Chila too, I think when we
see books from Sheila's perspective we see this more clearly.
But they both are kids who like really worry what
other people think of them. Mm hmm. In a way,
that is just like how you feel when you're that age,
you know, And so he like as much and I
relate to this too. Is like as much as Fudge's
(45:56):
disorder and chaos like stresses him out. I think there's
a part of him that like wishes he could be
as free and wishes he didn't care, and wishes like
he he could be like loved for the first draft
of who he is instead of like all this calculation.
It makes me so sad. Yes, yes, And then there's
(46:18):
a sweet moment where Grandma comes and puts her arm
around him and she goes, it's not easy being the firstborn,
is it? Like, yeah, Grandma, she gets it, Granma.
Speaker 1 (46:31):
And then she picks Peter up and RUMs around the
yard with him.
Speaker 2 (46:35):
Yeah she should have. Yeah, come on, someone picked Peter up. Please?
Speaker 1 (46:40):
She should do like a little like airplane with him,
you know, like yes, uh.
Speaker 2 (46:45):
Do airplanes with your older kids, please?
Speaker 1 (46:47):
I beg you, I would love to do airplane with somebody.
Sometimes I see if Tyler is up for it, And.
Speaker 2 (46:53):
See they're always saying you should be trying new physical
things with your partner, but nobody talks about doing airplanes.
Let's make sure we're on the same page. What are
you talking about.
Speaker 1 (47:03):
I'm talking about like when somebody lies on their back
with their feet up and then you put your stomach
on their feet and you do airplane.
Speaker 2 (47:12):
Yeah, yes, yes, yeah, I agree with you. Yeah, that's
what I thought too. My mom actually broke her arm
that way when she was little, and because she's the
younger sibling, the older sibling bullied her not to say
anything about it, so she was walking around like one
day with this like broken arm. So, okay, I guess
younger siblings have a bad too.
Speaker 1 (47:32):
I guess I was just gonna say, Okay, now we're
finally mine. Yeah. I guess it goes both way, all right,
But I'm glad we're both older siblings, and.
Speaker 2 (47:47):
That's why this podcast is organized.
Speaker 1 (47:49):
And that's why we think about potential outcomes.
Speaker 2 (47:53):
We're not worried, okay, just thinking about it.
Speaker 1 (47:56):
God, I think I've talked about this on the pod before,
but I immediately remembered the time where I was probably nine,
and I was with my mom and sister Ada McDonald's
in a mall somewhere, and my mom left to go
run some Errand's or do whatever, go to sears and
she was gone for a really long time, and so
(48:20):
long that in my head she had abandoned us forever.
And I had to ready my sister to get her
mentally prepared that we were going to have to leave
without my mom, and counting change to see if I
could afford any more food just so we wouldn't starve
as we found our way home alone. Oh my god, yes,
(48:42):
in my head, like we were going to be like
did you ever read Homecoming by Cynthia Boite? No, it's
so good. It's about kids who literally were abandoned in
a mall and I must have just read that or something,
But that's you know, that's who we were.
Speaker 2 (48:59):
I love how you immediate clicked in to It'll be like, well,
I guess I'm the head of this family now, yep, yeah,
I have to provide.
Speaker 1 (49:05):
Yeah, one medium fries please for two.
Speaker 2 (49:09):
You must make this last through the winter, just a
little nibble each day.
Speaker 1 (49:15):
Well, y'all, that's it for this week. We're loving your
letters and correspondence and voice notes, so keep them coming please.
We're at bloom Saloon at gmail dot com. We're at
what are we on Instagram? The Bloom Saloon, The Bloom
(49:35):
Saloon podcast. We're also on Facebook. We've got our private
and free Facebook group. People are sharing photos of their
old timey photos, making Molly feel so left out and.
Speaker 2 (49:46):
Jealous, So left out and jealous. That's it, Yes see
you next time. Bye bye.
Speaker 1 (50:01):
They differ
Hi.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
I'm Jody and I'm Mollie, and.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
You're listening to the Bloom Saloon.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
It's a Judy Bloom book club.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
We're reading fudge Mania Today by Judy Bloom, chapters seven
and eight. We have so much for you today. We've
got letters galore, we've got voice memos, we've got a
few mini special reports, and.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
We're both sick. So if you hear that, that's what's happening.
But I will say, Jody, this is a weird thinging
about me. I love when I'm listening to something and
I can tell the people are sick. This happens on
TV shows a lot, but I feel like you can
tell when someone's going to work with a cold, and
I'm like, yes, I love it.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
Is this a fetish? What's going on here?
Speaker 2 (01:03):
I think it's that I like, like, oh, you're a
real person. You're not you know, Rachel, You're Jennifer Anison
with the sniffles. This is wonderful. I love this.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
Celebrities, they're just like us.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
Yeah exactly. So if you also like this, congratulations, here's
an episode for you.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Tell us what kind of tea you're drinking to help
help her cold?
Speaker 2 (01:25):
I wish I was drinking mose Herb tea like in
the last chapters we read, but instead I'm reading I'm
drinking a throat coat tea and I just bought some more.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
So Oh my god, me too, Me too, Oh my god.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Twinsy's twins.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
Twins have hot cocoa and throat coat double Dippin' it
doesn't They don't go together very well, I'm realizing, because
the throat coat is a little bit liquoricy, you know, yeah,
and the hot cocoa is chocolate. E. I mean, I
guess some people might like liquorice and chocolate together, but
I guess I don't.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
Yeah. Yeah, it's like a little like fur net shot
in them. Mm hmm ah.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
Well, god speed.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
To us, Yeah, godspeed to us, Sanasana, let's get it going.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
Who should we start with. We have letters.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
From she should maybe do bloom Head letters, and then
a celebrity letter.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
Ooh ooh ooh.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Okay teaser. There's a big celebrity letter guest in this episode,
so stay tuned.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
We've got a letter from Gracie. This one's via Instagram.
So y'all, this just proves you can write us letters
on any of our channels. Oh, she sent a really
great old timey photo of her and her friends dressed
in like full on, like saloon hussywear. They're holding what
(02:46):
look like real guns. They've got hats and feather boas
and lots of corsets, and the sass on their faces
is very impressive.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
They got into character right away. You can tell them,
She says.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
It was the fall of two thousand. I had just
started at a boarding school for the performing arts.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
Wow, WHOA sounds so cool.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
Our class took a trip to an island between the
Lower and Upper Peninsula of Michigan. There were all kinds
of touristy things going on there, and my gang wanted
to do the old timey photos. My agreeing to take
this pick was a desperate attempt to make friends with
the girls who had already been at the boarding school
the year before. Guess what, it totally worked. I'm so
(03:38):
glad to hear that.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
See this is what I'm telling you. I have never
experienced true friendship, because no one's ever episode me. All
my friendships have been alt.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
Oh my god, what a sham. We all became friends
and the girls were all sweethearts, like Molly's friends and family.
I too thought taking these photos was too expensive, but
the girl on the top right had a mom with
access to a color photo printer, so we only paid
for one photo and the girls' mom made us copies.
(04:09):
Shout out to Gillian's mom.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
Gillian's mom, you the realist.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
And so she says, Mollie, you should tell your friends
to get on that train. So maybe your cheap ass
friends just need to get themselves a color Printer's so smart.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
Thank you, Thank you, Gracie, and yeah I do. I
totally remember you from the Red All Over Days, so
shout out. And also I remember su j Cool from
Red All Over Days too, so thanks everybody who's here too.
I'm so jealous of that story. I didn't know a
I didn't know there were performing arts boarding schools. That
(04:45):
sounds like I want to hear a whole podcast about that.
And secondly, yeah, good idea, hot savings tip. I hope
some of my friends will hop on this with me. Okay,
now we have a letter from bloom Head Dawn. Let
me pull that up. Hello, Jody and Molly per Molly's
mentioned that she wanted to visit Maine. I just wanted
(05:07):
to lend my perspective as a lifetime Bloomhead and Native maner.
Though I moved to the Boston area for college and
have lived here for over thirty years, I grew up
in western Maine. Most of my family is still up there.
I visit often, and to me, it will always be home.
Maine is vast, beautiful, varied, and complicated. It's also a
(05:30):
scrappy underdog of a state, and in the eighties, hearing
a mention of it in pop culture was huge. Unless
you lived there. Nobody knew anything or cared about Maine.
So when I read M. A and E spells Princeton
in Superfudge, my ass was like, oh, my god, Jude's
knows we exist. We're on the map now dog. Fast
(05:53):
forward to the late twenty tenths and my own kid
was given fudge Mania. I had no idea there were
other Fos books after the eighties, and I was super
excited to share the continuing story of the Hatchers and
Tubmans with him. The book being set in Maine was
a glorious bonus my home. Also, I had a longer
message that might not have made the cut, but I
can confirm the main smell is accurate. I don't know
(06:18):
what that means. I mean, I know the main smell,
but she says it's accurate. Is it accurate that it's weird?
Help me? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (06:25):
Is it accurate that it's mil dewey?
Speaker 2 (06:28):
Oh? Oh yeah, that's the money answered.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
Thank you, Don Mollie. I I keep thinking of your
obsession with Maine, and I think we need to keep
revisiting it because I have so many questions. So, wait,
was this book what got you into Maine? Or oh?
It was absolutely?
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Yes, this is it? And then I did my state
report in fifth grade on Mae's because I was so
hyped about it, and I continue to be hyped about
it to this day. I want to go so bad.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
What is your favorite fact about Maine?
Speaker 2 (07:03):
Yes? I love that the state cat is a Maine
coon cat, and Maine coon cats are amazing because they're
like similar to like tigers. They're good at swimming, so
they have like almost webbing between their little paws, and
their fur is in layers, kind of like Newfoundland dogs
(07:26):
is where there's like a layer that the water wicks
off of and a layer that keeps their body warm.
Maine coon cats have that too, and my friend has
two of them, and they're magnificent and weird and high maintenance,
but I love them.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
Are they the ones that have the tufted ears? Or
is that yes?
Speaker 2 (07:43):
Yeah? Did I tell you that for that main project
you had to make a visual representation of the state
that you wanted to write about. And so some people
made posters and some people made like paper mache things.
And I don't know why I did it this way.
I made a cake in the shape of Maine, and
I put little things on different parts of the cake.
(08:05):
So yeah, I'm in it to win it, and I
still have never been.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
Wait, that sounds like bribery to me, Like, hello, teacher,
I hear you like red velvet.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
Well I did. I'm sure I got a good grade,
So who knows? Shout out to you, miss Woodward, you
the realist. I think I also stole fudge Mania from
your library, so.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
Ha ha is the shape of Maine is a hard
cake to make. I'm just I thought it was like
maybe more rectangular, but it's like really wiggly.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
How did I do? Let me see? Oh yeah, how
that fuck did all those little islands?
Speaker 1 (08:45):
They were just like little cupcakes at the bottom.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
I'm positive I didn't do that. I bet you know what, Tody,
I bet you one thousand dollars. I just made a
rectangle cake and was like, that's Maine.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
You're a genius, all right. Well, speaking of Maine, we
have another main correspondence. This one is from Bloomhead Allison,
not co host Alison, but a different Allison, longtime bloom Head.
She left us a voice memo.
Speaker 3 (09:17):
I'm lucky that I spent a lot of my life
in Maine. I lived outside of the capital, Augusta, in
two little towns named Manchester and Readfield from second.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
Grade to fourth grade.
Speaker 3 (09:29):
My parents were struggling in this period of our life
in the early nineties. When we lived there, they would
rent gorgeous lake houses for about five hundred dollars a month,
but every summer we would move to a smaller place
where it was cheaper because the gorgeous houses would go
for five hundred dollars a week during the summer. We
(09:50):
had a TV, but didn't really get any clear channels
down by the lake. Therefore, my two sisters and I
spent most of our childhood frolic under the pine trees
and birch trees and slashing in creeks, eating tea berries
in the forest they taste like winter green, by the way,
and swimming, kayaking and canoeing in the lakes. We would
(10:14):
gather the gray clay from the bottom of the lake
and spirit all over our bodies, pretending we were at
a fancy spa.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
We stopped doing.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
That after we discovered leeches on our legs one day.
We love to go fishing, using hot dogs as bait.
We liked to put the fish in every pot that
my mother owned before releasing them back into the lake.
We would go night swimming and skinny dip. My dad
would wake up every morning in the summer when the
morning missed was still hovering along the surface of the lake,
(10:46):
and he'd swim across the lake and back. I remember
once he got too close to a loon in her
babies and she.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
Tried to attack him.
Speaker 3 (10:54):
The calls of the loons are the literal soundtrack to
the life in Maine.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
High ho else we lived in was next to the
train tracks.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
The trains would go by three times a day and
the entire house would shake. We would put pennies and
dimes on the track and the trains would smash them flat.
When we got bored, we would walk along the train
tracks for miles. Sometimes, when I look back, I realized
it's actually a miracle that my sisters and I made
it to adulthood. There was always lobster bakes and red
(11:24):
snappas also known as red hot dogs at every big
family gathering. At one family reunion, we happened to book
a campground at the same time the hermit crabs were mating.
I'll never forget about twenty of my relatives trying to
swim while the hermit crabs were literally swimming around and
boning all over our feet in the water. The smells
(11:46):
of Maine actually depend on where you live. Near the shore,
It's salty and fishy near the lakes. It's filled with
the scent of pine near the fields reeks of Cowanore,
especially in the hot summer. I have this one core
memory of my dad taking us out on the frozen Moran.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
Cooked lake we lived on.
Speaker 3 (12:06):
He would put on his ice skates and gather up
my sisters and I and the sled with a rope attached.
He'd grab the rope and skate us to the middle
of the frozen lake. Then he would start skating in
circles while holding the rope behind him. We would go
so fast we would get completely airborne. Then he would
let go of the rope. The sled would fly on
(12:28):
its own for about five seconds, then drop out of
the air with a loud thump onto the ice. We
would slide so far away from him. It was completely
dark unless the moon was out. It felt like we
were the only people on earth. It was absolutely magical,
and that's what it was like growing up in Maine.
(12:48):
Absolutely magical.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
Oh my gosh, that was so sweet. That was like
listening to a Garrison Geeler.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
It was totally totally. Does this confirm like what you've
always known about Maine?
Speaker 2 (13:02):
Yes, it main sounds like it has everything I like.
It has seafood, it has beaches, it has beautiful nights.
Don't like the part about the leeches. Hope I never
see a leech ever. But other than that, take me there.
I need it. Okay, And now are we ready for
our celebrity letter.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
I'm drum rolling.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
Thank you? Okay, So this week we got a celebrity
letter from Bicycle Bob. I sent him a letter a
few weeks ago and he responded to me almost immediately,
and this is what he wrote, Dear Molly and Jody,
I'm Bob Shields and I remember that book as well
(13:48):
as kids who were coming into the bike shop asking
for a book signing. Kids still come in. Judy summered
here way back then and wanted to trade in her
old bike for a new, more current model. I had
her try several bikes during her multiple visits to the shop.
I told her about swallowing a bee during a bike ride,
(14:10):
stopping on the side of the road and desperately trying
to cough it up. I then went to a store
and bought a pint of ice cream to soothe my
swollen throat. Judy amended it to a fly. That's the backstory, Okay,
that'll come up later. I did not know who she was,
as many celebrities came into the shop, so she was
(14:30):
just a customer as far as I was concerned. Then
a book signed by her arrived in the mail, along
with the message and the rest, as they say, is
and he didn't end it because people of a certain
generation love ellipses. But I thought that was so fricking cute.
Thank you so much, bicycle Bob.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
That was so bicycle Bob. He has no idea how
happy this makes us.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
And this is the week if you're listening to it,
keep an eye out. This is the week. I'm gonna
post all those pictures of bicycle Bob because he's so
cute and I love him and this was so generous
to send this a letter back.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
Ah, thank you, bicycle Bob. If you're listening, which I
know you're not.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
If you're listening, sorry about what I said about ellipses,
but you did it.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
Wait I have to ask, though, is it like the
properthree dot dot dot or is it like thirty?
Speaker 2 (15:19):
No? He he is like five.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
Okay, that's acceptable. My mom she likes to do as
many dots as she thinks the length of the pause
should be.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
You know what I mean, that's funny. That's my grammatical
pet peeve lately is I think weirdly Boomers do it
and gen Z does it where they use ellipses when
they meet mean commas and not when they mean space,
and it bugs the shit out of me. And I've
gotten in many fights about it, and I understand it's
something I need to let go.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
But no, never, you're a copywriter, like we need people
to gate keep these things. But I have I have
a weird little Lipsy's pet peeve two. So I like
to do dot dot dot and then a space and
then the capital of the next sentence. Right, That is
(16:12):
the way, right, because I see some people not putting
any spaces in there, and it just seems very cramped.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
The space is new to me, but I like it.
I like it because you're right, it does look cramped otherwise,
so I don't mind it. I think you get a
pass Yay?
Speaker 1 (16:32):
Is that it for our correspondence this week? This was
a really fun week for the mail bag.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
Yes, thanks for writing in. Everybody, We love it.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
Rollcal okay, uh, we've got Peter. We all know Peter.
He's eleven, he's a worrier, he's an all round good guy.
He's on the verge of pubescentce. We're learning.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
Don't please don't say it like that. I already feel
bad for saying Jimmy Fargo was hot and now like
I want to die, So please don't say it like that.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
Well, look, we did have to read then again, maybe
I won't. This was years ago on the pod, and
I do feel like if there were a next book
after Double Fudge. It might be rolling into then again,
maybe I won't territory.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
So maybe that's the only Gudy Bloom book I've only read.
Once read it and I was like, oh, ye, just
too much.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
I can't bring back Wifey.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
Oh and I have to say I wasn't on the podcast,
and I think that was like my last letter before
I became co host. As I read wife and I
love Wifey, You guys are way too mean about Wifey.
I fucking love wife.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
In hindsight, I very much love it, and I think
about it all the time and I want to reread it.
But during it, it was, it was, it was an experience.
Then we've got Fudge. He is a wild animal of
a five year old uncle feather. He's a bird, a
(18:26):
minor bird. He's not a scuba diver. Then we have
a mom and dad. We don't hear much from them
in these chapters, except where reminded again that dad is
an adman. We've got Twotsie. She is and one and
a half year old baby. She can say words. We
learn that she can say Pete for Peter. She says
(18:48):
up and she says, go Horsey.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
That's all you need, uh, huh.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
And then there's Grandma Muriel Cool, grandma of gymnastics Camp
Fame see, a five year old who lives in the area.
She's very precocious. She and Fudge are They're like those
two kids in Problem Child, Problem Child too. Maybe missus
(19:13):
A she's the kindly grandmother who does all the best
grandmother things like bake and make hot cocoa. Big app Fel,
He's or is it app ful? Ap Fell?
Speaker 2 (19:27):
In the audiobook which Judy narrates, she says, Appfell.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
Okay, Ooh, I'm so glad we have that as a reference,
because I think I've been reading it as appful my
entire life. But at Fell is a retired famous baseball
guy and he's the husband of missus A. Right, He's like,
he's not the son, okay? No, I was like, how
old is he? Okay? Jimmy Fargo, he's Peter's bestie. He's
(19:56):
currently back in New York. He has no idea what's
in store for him in Maine when he comes up
in a week. Sheila is Peter's nemesis. Also fudges babysitter
and future wife h Libby is just being such a
teenagery teenager. She's the big sister. She has a very
(20:18):
cool snoopy T shirt. The Tubman parents, I don't know
if we see them in these chapters, but they're just
I don't have a sense of their personalities. They're just parents.
Chapter seven, Best News of the Century. And here we
(20:39):
meet Mitzi. Oh, Mitzi. She is tiny with a long ponytail.
I imagine, just like a little mini Arianda Grande. Right,
that's swinging her pony. But now that I've seen the
picture of you and your tiny like orphan for sale,
get up, I'm kind of picturing you.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
That's funny because I picture her as a little girl
from the Florida Project, just like this little feral kid. Oh,
I know, but I like Ariana Grande the best. Okay,
Now if I do her, if I do her voice,
I'm gonna do it a ari voice.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
Oh oh so yeah. We meet her at missus A's.
There's a lot of confusion with names. Missus A thinks
the boy's last name is Feather, and then we have
this whole thing of like what they tell her their
last name is Hatcher. Your uncle's last name isn't Feather.
(21:38):
I just like that's his first name. So he's feather hatcher. Duh,
it's all very confusing.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
That is funny because if you think about it, a
bird with a first name feather, that'd be like if
you met a man whose first name was skin skin
Johnson didius skin.
Speaker 1 (21:58):
And I like that he's a ddie. Yes, that makes sense.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
Well that's what Michael in Forever. That was his alternate
penis name. If he couldn't have Ralse kids one of
these skin Johnson penias. Want to take a look at
those Moulers girl.
Speaker 4 (22:14):
Oh well, since we're talking about names, Nisy thinks Fudge
is kind of a weird one, and it's explained to
her that his real name.
Speaker 1 (22:25):
Is Farley, which she's like, that's weird too, But missus
A thinks it's great because it's just like Folly Granger
and I had to look him up and he is
very cool. He is hot. He is bisexual, which kudos
to him for being out at a time when that
(22:46):
was not common at all. He's in a ton of
stuff that I've never seen, but maybe we'll see one day.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
Yeah, you're not kidding. That's a very handsome.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
Man, very handsome man, Okay, bisexual King Sheila and Graham
go inside the house and they're just they've just left
Mitzi with Peter and Fudge, and Mitzy's kinda she's looking
at the ceiling, looking at the porch. She's getting a
little shy. Fudge watches her and hums a little tune.
Speaker 2 (23:17):
That's a good looking baseball club. Yeah, I call it
my Mitzi. Yeah, Big gave it to me. It's coming
out a little more Michael Jackson than I'm meaning it too,
which is horrible given, but I'm gonna keep going. It's Big,
(23:39):
It's my grandpa, Big Apfel, big ooh, Big Apfel. Are
you telling us your grandfather is Big app Fell, the
baseball player. I have his baseball card, I know his
stats by heart. You want to play in his game?
(24:02):
His game? Yeah, we play every Sunday. Are you saying
that anyone who wants to play ball with Big app Fell?
Can you have to pass the over undertest first? What's
the over undertest? You have to be over for an
under one hundred and for him?
Speaker 3 (24:27):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (24:29):
Okay, and that's it.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
That's it.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
She said, Yahoo, that's the best news I've heard in
a long time.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
Is it the best news of the century?
Speaker 2 (24:44):
It could be yahoo yoooo.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
So they are all yahooing and Sheila, the perfect babysitter,
comes out and she is not impressed. I'm gone for
five minutes five minutes and look at you carrying on
like a bunch of monkeys. So later that day, Peter
runs home and calls Jimmy Fargo because this is the
(25:13):
best news of the century. He makes a forbidden long
distance call, which is a huge deal because this is
probably like a thirty dollars phone call. But he just
he can't help himself, and he tells Jimmy all about it.
But first he makes Jimmy sit so he doesn't faint,
which is such a movie thing. I've always wanted to
(25:33):
tell someone to do that in real life, but I've
never had the opportunity. Turns out, Jimmy Fargo has no
idea who big upfell is. He thinks Ty Cobb is
the best center fielder of all time, or maybe Willie Mays,
and Peter tries to convince him that even so, this
is gonna be so cool. There's a game every week
(25:55):
where they get to play with one of the greats.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
It's so cool.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
Oh, but it sounds like Jimmy Fargo is getting a
little shy about his ball skills and he might not
be the best player. He says that he uh, he
strikes out a lot. But Peter said, look, it's a
basic ball game. Jimmy Fargo latches onto the word basic,
and he says, speaking of basic to segue into Sheila Tubman,
(26:24):
which is a very early use of the word basic.
Like it's like they didn't use it in the way
they do now back then, So Judyyard, yeah, modern parlance.
Speaker 3 (26:38):
Aw.
Speaker 1 (26:40):
Peter lies and says that he never sees Sheila around,
like she's way way off on the other side of
the woods, and Jimmy says, that's the relief. That night,
Peter's conscience kind of creeps up on him. He can't sleep.
He's too excited about the big Appfel game, first of all,
but second of all, he's too anxious about what Jimmy's
(27:01):
gonna think when he finds out they're sharing a house
with Sheila. Oh, I get the stress of this, Like
there's nothing worse than like just like rehearsing the conversation
your head over and over and over again, and it
always happens in bed. I hate it. He goes to
the bathroom. But then like the idea clicks, there's the
(27:25):
light bulb flash, and he's like, toilets, poison gas, poison
gas in the toilets. He's thinking to himself, I'd say.
Speaker 2 (27:35):
See, when we first got to Maine, we moved into
this big old house. It had seven bedrooms and four bathrooms,
and you could see the ocean from every window. But
unfortunately there was a big problem. What problem, poison gas,
poison gas and all the toilets, green steamy, gurgling stuff
(27:59):
that bubbled up every time we flushed. Blaz Dad had
to call the health inspector. She took one look and
went nuts.
Speaker 1 (28:10):
This is a disaster.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
This is the serious environmental disaster. So then what she
condemned the place, even though she was sorry about ruining
our vacation. She had no choice. The police came up
and boarded up the house. They nailed a sign to
the front door warning poison gas and toilets. Flush at
(28:33):
your own wrists.
Speaker 1 (28:35):
Wow, you're lucky you got out alive.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
Yeah I know. Oh so you see Judy puts a
space between the ellipses.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
I see that. Okaye. So she's right, that's the final word.
So we should know that this conversation was all hypothetical.
I'm going to put a little echo effect on it
so we know it didn't actually happen. But Peter goes
back to bed, thinking that this is a brilliant idea, Like,
(29:08):
what a perfect solution, because Jimmy, see, he's like really
into kind of save the whales, save the dolphins, save
the rainforest, and so uh, why not save our vacation.
Speaker 2 (29:20):
Oh, such a brilliant idea, Peter. Nothing can go.
Speaker 1 (29:23):
Wrong, Nothing can go wrong. He goes back to sleep.
I imagine he's just got this smile on his face,
cool as a cucumber.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
Before we go to the next chapter. When I first
read this as a child, I was like, of course,
big apppel a real person done And I never looked
it up until now, and it doesn't appear to be
a real person. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
I was surprised too, because so there's so many other
real things mentioned in this book.
Speaker 2 (29:52):
It's like, yeah, she uses a brand of magical realism,
and like half is reel half of But what made
me curious is I wonder if there is a person
in Maine that is a like retired baseball player that
does or did stuff like this because I have heard
about similar things happening, for example humble Brag. But for work,
(30:19):
I met and worked with Jeff Probes from Survivor, and
he apparently when he goes on vacation in the Hamptons,
he'll do like a little mini Survivor game for all
the kids who live in the neighborhood. And so it's
like it's if you happen to live in that cul
de Sac or whatever in the Hamptons, you often will
(30:40):
play those games with him. And so it seemed like
it didn't seem that far fetched that there would be
a baseball player who lived in Maine at the time
that Judy was vacationing there that would do something like this.
So I wonder what inspired this.
Speaker 1 (30:53):
Yeah, oh that's such a good call. Oh my god,
Wait does Jeff Probes doing Wait what kind of minister
riber games is he playing with childer? This could go very.
Speaker 2 (31:03):
Wrong he still does this, or if this was like
when he was younger or whatever. But I think they
would do little relay races and little puzzle challenges and stuff,
and it was like a known thing that like if
you lived there, that's you'd get to do that the
week that Jeff was in town, which is funny, so
fun I heard that story before I met him and
was like, jeez, Loise, he can't turn it off. And
(31:26):
then I met him in real life, I was like, Oh,
he really can't. He loves this shit. It's his favorite thing.
So it's kind of nice.
Speaker 1 (31:33):
Oh that's really sweet.
Speaker 2 (31:35):
So if any main people know who this could be
based on, let.
Speaker 1 (31:39):
Us know, please. I have a little information about poison
gas and toilets, because for all I knew this could
be a real thing. Who knows. I know that there's
like shrats that can come up out of toilets and
snakes and stuff. But oh yeah, Bloomhead, a friend of
the pod Katie had a rat to come out of
her toilet and Francisco.
Speaker 2 (32:01):
No, oh my god, I want to die.
Speaker 1 (32:03):
I ate that. But fortunately you will be happy to
know that there have been no cases that I could
find of poison gas actually like gurgling up out of
toilets from like sewage stuff. But but, but but you
can make poison gas by pouring too much chemical cleaners
(32:25):
down your toilet or the wrong combo of chemical cleaners,
and this has happened a lot. People have had to
like call nine to one one because they've gassed themselves
out of the house. Like this. One woman poured like
gallons of bleach down her toilet, oh plus liquid plumber,
and she almost died. Oh my god. Yeah, it's bad.
(32:45):
It basically replicates kind of like chemical warfare poison people.
They suffocate, they can't breathe, they have burning throats. So
y'all be careful when you unclog your toilets. I have
a really good clogging method if anyone wants to know. Okay, wait,
why have I been talking about toilets a lot?
Speaker 2 (33:09):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (33:11):
I'm ready to listen though, But this is something I
learned years ago, and it works so well that everybody
is so impressed and excited when they get to try it.
So if you have a clog toilet, don't mess with
a disgusting like plunger or like brush or anything like that.
Take a bunch of dishwashing soap, like the blue don
liquid and like suwred a ton of it into the toilet,
(33:35):
and then boil water, maybe like a kettle full of water,
and then pour that boiling water into the toilet and
let it sit for about fifteen minutes. And I'm telling
you it will flush like magic.
Speaker 2 (33:47):
That's amazing. Yeah, it's a great sy Wow.
Speaker 1 (33:52):
So I'm happy to share this this life hack with y'all.
Speaker 2 (33:57):
Wow that's incredible.
Speaker 1 (34:00):
Oh my gosh, Wow, are you so excited to clog
your toilet?
Speaker 2 (34:03):
I've never been more excited to clog my toilet.
Speaker 1 (34:08):
Report back. I also have a mini special report on
names that are candy. So there's a whole bit about fudge,
Like fudge, that's a weird name, that's a name of
a dessert. And I thought like, okay, like what other
names out there are named after sweet things? And there's
(34:29):
surprisingly quite a few. So of course we have Candy
that's number one, short for Candace. And then there's like caramel, Carmela.
We've got Reese cocoa condo, Lisa means with sweetness. Oh
my god, so with sweetness rice yum.
Speaker 2 (34:52):
That is actually beautiful, isn't it.
Speaker 1 (34:56):
We've got dulce or dulcy or dulcinea, so pretty, ginger honey.
And then there's Melissa, which means like honeybee it does.
Speaker 2 (35:09):
Yeah, that's so cool.
Speaker 1 (35:12):
And then Charene. I used to know a charene that
means sweet and Persian. And then this was the most
interesting one, Pamela. There was a poem in the fifteen
hundreds that first used this name. It was a totally
made up name. It was inspired by pan, the Greek
word for like all and melly meaning honey, oh yeah.
(35:35):
And then two hundred years later, author Samuel Richardson used
the name for the heroine of his best seller Pamela
or also known as Virtue Rewarded was the alternate title,
and in this book, Pamela was a humble main servant
who refused the advances of her employer's son until he
(35:58):
finally proposed an honor marriage. And now the name caught
on in the UK around nineteen twenty and then became
a smash hit in the US in the fifties. That's
it for me.
Speaker 2 (36:11):
I'm surprised that you didn't mention Pavlova. Yes, because Pavlova
is an Australian dessert. But it's also named after Anna Pavlova,
who is a singer.
Speaker 1 (36:23):
Hmm oh wait, wasn't she a ballet dancer?
Speaker 2 (36:26):
Yep, which is of course singing with your feet. Chapter eight,
(36:48):
the titular chapter. It's called fudge Mania, So Peter wakes
up in a bad mood. He went to sleep shining,
sleeping like an angel, and he wakes up in a
foul mood because he realizes in the harsh light of
day that his brilliant idea is actually a bad idea
and it's not going to work. This has happened to
(37:09):
me so many times.
Speaker 1 (37:12):
Now.
Speaker 2 (37:13):
Listen. After breakfast, he goes back to bed, and this
line here says Dad says, falling asleep when your body's
not tired is a way of avoiding your problems. When
I tell you that that is the judy line that
has stuck with me the most, even more, then we
must increase our bust even more than Willia from Sally J. Friedman,
(37:36):
even more than Ralph the Penis. I once a month
think about falling asleep when your body's not tired as
a way of avoiding your problems. Ever since I read
this as a child, I think this is such a smart,
like sad line to put in a little kid's book.
And it's stuck with me so much because she's so right, Oh.
Speaker 1 (37:56):
My god, right, yeah, but oh did this ruin you?
Speaker 2 (38:01):
Maybe I will say I'm not a napper?
Speaker 1 (38:03):
Yeah, me neither. Napping just makes me feel guilty.
Speaker 2 (38:07):
Yeah, you're right, I've almost never had like a satisfying nap.
Ooh duty, what have you done to us? Oh man?
But so I obviously go trying to take a nap
doesn't work, and so he's like, Oh, I don't know,
Maybe I shouldn't worry. Maybe the tummans will move before
(38:30):
Jimmy comes. I don't know. Anyway, he's like sitting outside
playing with his baseball cards, looking for the big upfell one,
and they see a card that is his old rookie card,
and then Mitsi walks by and they're looking at the
cards together, and she wants to find fudge, and since
(38:50):
fudge is behind the house, she asks Peter for an
escort because she's afraid to walk behind the house because
sometimes monsters the behind houses. And I didn't bring my
monster spray. And monster spray is apparently a spray that
missus A makes for Mitzi and when you spray the monsters,
(39:12):
they melt, And like Jody said at the beginning, Peter
immediately is because he's the son of an ad man,
starts fantasizing about the ad campaign for this, so he
makes the commercial that says Mitzi's monster spray made from
a grandmother's secret formula. Spray twice a day and melt
(39:32):
your monsters away. And this was another thing I got
from this book is I did make this. I put
food coloring in a water spray bottle, and I gave
it to my brother to help him, and then I
got in trouble because it stayed the couch. So so
a lot of people, you shouldn't be taking ideas from
(39:54):
Judy Bloom books and just doing them. Okay, you should
ask an adult first, But I was not in the
business of asking adults.
Speaker 1 (40:02):
I guess no, because you knew all about babysitting from
the American Girl books, Like who needs to ask?
Speaker 2 (40:09):
Grown ups need to ask?
Speaker 1 (40:11):
I just love how sweet and helpful you were. I
love that.
Speaker 2 (40:15):
Yeah, that's a word for it. Sure, he's just like
wanting to be the main character all the time. Yeah.
So Peter very gallantly takes Mitzi behind the house where
Sheila and Fudge are planting rocks. They're like digging up
the grass in the backyard and putting rocks in them,
and they do this whole spiel where Fudge says the
(40:38):
rocks are like the best thing to plant, and she
was like, don't ing me is his idea, and Peter
so relatably immediately kicks into worrying. I felt this so hard.
And he's you know, he's saying, you know, we're renting
(40:59):
this house. We can't be doing stuff like this to
a garden that's not our garden. And Peter says, you're
such a warrior. And in the margins I wrote, someone
has to be it's true. And when Peter says, I
don't worry, I think ahead. I felt that. Yeah, I
felt that so hard. So but Fudge and Mitzi get
(41:22):
on right away. They're playing in the dirt, they're eating
dirt off their fingers, they're having a great time, and
they get whipped into such a frenzy that they start
spinning around. Yeah, it's fudge Mania. Once you get it,
you can never stop.
Speaker 1 (41:39):
I'm going to count to three.
Speaker 2 (41:42):
You better watch up, because it's catching. Now.
Speaker 1 (41:47):
You've got a Pieter. You've got fudge mania too.
Speaker 2 (41:50):
Look out, Sheila, you just caught it from me.
Speaker 1 (41:54):
I did not catch anything from you. I will never
catch anything from you.
Speaker 2 (42:00):
So Libby stomps out, wearing her snoopy T shirt. That's
so big it hangs down to her knees. Iconic. She says,
guess what exactly is going on here? And how am
I supposed to sleep with this racket? Sleep now? Yes, now,
it's only ten o'clock in the morning. You sleep till
ten o'clock in the morning. I try. Good morning is
(42:24):
the best time to play? Who is this kid?
Speaker 1 (42:27):
Nixy appfell a neighbor.
Speaker 2 (42:30):
I'm five, and I walked here all by myself. I
didn't need anyone to show me the way. I'll tell
you what you need. It's virgin many her. You're all maniacs,
Vigo maniacs. This is all your fault, Peter, Chaos falls
you and your family. Chaos. I don't believe I know him.
(42:54):
Chaos a state of utter confusion and disorder. The end,
I just realized, it's so funny that like Peter is
the older sibling in his family, and he's always worrying
and he's always mad. But Libby's older sibling in her family,
and she's always worrying and she's always mad. They should
get along to maximize their joint sleigh, but they can't.
Speaker 3 (43:18):
I can't.
Speaker 1 (43:19):
That's such a good point. Also, those tubman girls love
a definition.
Speaker 2 (43:24):
Oh they do. They're so fucking pedantic. I love them.
Speaker 1 (43:27):
They would have those like art priends you can get
from home goods. That's like no happy colon adjective, the
state of bliss.
Speaker 2 (43:40):
They are very love last love. Later in the day,
Mom and Dad look at Fudge's rock garden and Peter
is like excited because he's like, Ooh, they're gonna be mad,
another feeling I'm familiar with. And then they're not, and
they're actually excited about it, and she was taking credit
for it, and Peter is incredulous and it's really annoying,
(44:05):
and everybody is losing their goddamn mind over Fudge putting
rocks in the garden that doesn't belong to them, and
everyone's mad at Peter for just existing. Oh, I hate
it so much, And Peter is grumpy and Fudge is
getting all the attention. And while this is happening, Tutsie
(44:27):
toddles over to him and like wants to be picked up,
and Peter is dealing with some stuff. He doesn't have
time to pick her up, so he kind of moves
his leg and she falls down on her butt, and
because she's a baby. She cries, and because she's a baby,
Dad picks her up and starts galloping around with her.
And then because he gets jealous, Fudge wants to be
(44:49):
picked up too, and so Mom picks Fudge up. So
what we have is the two youngest kids. There's a
kid for every parent, and everyone's romping around, and Peter
is just there, sad because once again order did not
happen the way he thinks, in his anxiety, thinks it
should happen. And to this, I say, justice for you, Peter,
(45:11):
justice for you.
Speaker 1 (45:12):
I'm waiting for justice as well.
Speaker 2 (45:14):
You're gonna wait a long time. Peter is never gonna come.
And Peter says this, which breaks my heart. He says,
being a baby is so easy, writing around on dad's shoulders.
We're knowing he'd never let you fall, and doing and
saying whatever you please without worrying about what the other
guy will think. Like it's so it's so sad, like
(45:35):
Peter really embodies, and Chila too, I think when we
see books from Sheila's perspective we see this more clearly.
But they both are kids who like really worry what
other people think of them. Mm hmm. In a way,
that is just like how you feel when you're that age,
you know, And so he like as much and I
relate to this too. Is like as much as Fudge's
(45:56):
disorder and chaos like stresses him out. I think there's
a part of him that like wishes he could be
as free and wishes he didn't care, and wishes like
he he could be like loved for the first draft
of who he is instead of like all this calculation.
It makes me so sad. Yes, yes, And then there's
(46:18):
a sweet moment where Grandma comes and puts her arm
around him and she goes, it's not easy being the firstborn,
is it? Like, yeah, Grandma, she gets it, Granma.
Speaker 1 (46:31):
And then she picks Peter up and RUMs around the
yard with him.
Speaker 2 (46:35):
Yeah she should have. Yeah, come on, someone picked Peter up. Please?
Speaker 1 (46:40):
She should do like a little like airplane with him,
you know, like yes, uh.
Speaker 2 (46:45):
Do airplanes with your older kids, please?
Speaker 1 (46:47):
I beg you, I would love to do airplane with somebody.
Sometimes I see if Tyler is up for it, And.
Speaker 2 (46:53):
See they're always saying you should be trying new physical
things with your partner, but nobody talks about doing airplanes.
Let's make sure we're on the same page. What are
you talking about.
Speaker 1 (47:03):
I'm talking about like when somebody lies on their back
with their feet up and then you put your stomach
on their feet and you do airplane.
Speaker 2 (47:12):
Yeah, yes, yes, yeah, I agree with you. Yeah, that's
what I thought too. My mom actually broke her arm
that way when she was little, and because she's the
younger sibling, the older sibling bullied her not to say
anything about it, so she was walking around like one
day with this like broken arm. So, okay, I guess
younger siblings have a bad too.
Speaker 1 (47:32):
I guess I was just gonna say, Okay, now we're
finally mine. Yeah. I guess it goes both way, all right,
But I'm glad we're both older siblings, and.
Speaker 2 (47:47):
That's why this podcast is organized.
Speaker 1 (47:49):
And that's why we think about potential outcomes.
Speaker 2 (47:53):
We're not worried, okay, just thinking about it.
Speaker 1 (47:56):
God, I think I've talked about this on the pod before,
but I immediately remembered the time where I was probably nine,
and I was with my mom and sister Ada McDonald's
in a mall somewhere, and my mom left to go
run some Errand's or do whatever, go to sears and
she was gone for a really long time, and so
(48:20):
long that in my head she had abandoned us forever.
And I had to ready my sister to get her
mentally prepared that we were going to have to leave
without my mom, and counting change to see if I
could afford any more food just so we wouldn't starve
as we found our way home alone. Oh my god, yes,
(48:42):
in my head, like we were going to be like
did you ever read Homecoming by Cynthia Boite? No, it's
so good. It's about kids who literally were abandoned in
a mall and I must have just read that or something,
But that's you know, that's who we were.
Speaker 2 (48:59):
I love how you immediate clicked in to It'll be like, well,
I guess I'm the head of this family now, yep, yeah,
I have to provide.
Speaker 1 (49:05):
Yeah, one medium fries please for two.
Speaker 2 (49:09):
You must make this last through the winter, just a
little nibble each day.
Speaker 1 (49:15):
Well, y'all, that's it for this week. We're loving your
letters and correspondence and voice notes, so keep them coming please.
We're at bloom Saloon at gmail dot com. We're at
what are we on Instagram? The Bloom Saloon, The Bloom
(49:35):
Saloon podcast. We're also on Facebook. We've got our private
and free Facebook group. People are sharing photos of their
old timey photos, making Molly feel so left out and.
Speaker 2 (49:46):
Jealous, So left out and jealous. That's it, Yes see
you next time. Bye bye.
Speaker 1 (50:01):
They differ
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