Rabia Chaudry, FATTY FATTY BOOM BOOM: A Memoir of Food, Fat, and Family
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[0:58]Robia Chaudry is the author of Fatty Fatty Boom Boom, a memoir of food, fat, and family.
[1:04]Robia is an attorney, advocate, and author of the New York Times best-selling book on non-story,
[1:09]an executive producer of the HBO documentary series The Case Against Ad Non-Sayed.
[1:15]Robia is also co-producer and co-host of the podcast undisclosed the 45th, 99th, and the hidden gin.
[1:22]With over 400 million downloads, that's insanely amazing and makes me feel like a complete failure.
[1:29]But anyway, with over 400 million downloads undisclosed is the most popular wrongful conviction podcast in the world.
[1:36]The undisclosed team has helped exonerate a dozen defendants and find new evidence to get nearly all their defendants back in court.
[1:44]Robia is a 2021 Aspen Institute, ADL Civil Society Fellow, and was a 2016 Aspen Idea Scholar, and on the Vanguard Board at the Aspen Institute.
[1:55]She's a Fellow of the Truman National Security Project, a Fellow of the American Muslim Civic Leadership Institute, a Fellow of the Shalom Harpen Institute, and a former board member of the ACLU of Connecticut, and Maryland.
[2:07]She's the recipient of the Truman National Security Project's 2015 Harry S. Truman Award for Communications and Video Influence, and is a 2015 Carnegie Corporation Great Immigrant.
[2:18]And the recipient of the 2015 Healing and Hope Award by the Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth.
[2:23]She is currently a founding board member of the Inter-Jewish Muslim Alliance and the Muslim Jewish Advisory Council, both of which focus on building Muslim Jewish coalitions around pressing policy issues,
[2:34]and educating across communities to break boundaries.
[2:38]Robia received her juris doctorate from the George Mason School of Law and practiced immigration and civil rights law for over a decade before moving into the CVE policy sphere.
[2:47]Her practice focus was asylum, and family immigration and civil rights defense of Muslim immigrants against federal law enforcement agencies.
[2:54]Her second book, Fatty Fatty Boom Boom, is out now.
[2:58]Robia is a frequent public speaker and writer on criminal justice, civil rights, and media advocacy.
[3:04]Welcome, Robia. Thank you so much for coming on Moms. Don't have time to read books to discuss Fatty Fatty Boom Boom, a memoir of food, fat, and family.
[3:11]Thanks for having me. I love the name of your show. I love the name of your book.
[3:15]Can you tell listeners what your book is about and why you decide to write it?
[3:22]I mean, as the subtitle tells you, it's a memoir about food, fat, and family.
[3:27]And when I, after publishing my first book, I was immediately asked by my publisher and literary agent, what are you going to write next?
[3:34]And I started thinking about it. I had never considered writing a memoir because, frankly, I always feel like you have to do something extraordinary in your life to do that.
[3:41]But I was encouraged to consider it. And when I did, I thought, well, you know, a lot of my work is public facing the work I do in advocacy, criminal justice, and other issues. You know, I do a lot of writing and public speaking about it.
[3:53]So, I've told those stories a lot of times. And I've decided the story that I really have never told anybody publicly is this story, which if there's one theme in my life, it is this theme of like body image issues and weight struggles, which I've had since childhood.
[4:09]And so that's, and fatty fatty boom boom is one of my nicknames when I was a kid.
[4:14]So, and so that's how I decided that, you know, this, and I also figured that this is the kind of story that would resonate with a lot of people.
[4:22]Certainly resonated with me.
[4:24]You talked about how when your family came to America, you were fed literally sticks of frozen butter to soften, to deal with your gums hurting, and they would like you would chew on the butter, is that right?
[4:38]Yeah, you know, I mean, I think my mom would contest the word fed.
[4:42]Okay, she was like, you know, what, what, what is going to cool her gums be nice and, but also something she won't choke on and something she can hold and a frozen stick of butter.
[4:54]I don't really know where she ever got the idea because when I asked her about it all these years later.
[4:59]She's like, I don't, I don't remember, but it just made sense and I loved it, obviously, and I have always loved butter, I think ever since.
[5:07]Butter is great, butter makes everything better.
[5:10]And so that was your first experience of gaining more weight and having your family when you would go back to visit, not be as excited that you had, you know, they were like, what did you do to my grandchild and all of that, which could not it felt good even though you're very young.
[5:27]You know, I, you know, I don't have a recollection of that happening, but it's a story that I have been told a million times growing up that, you know, when we met back at the start, I just remember feeling a door right like I was like this.
[5:40]Chunky little doll that was being passed around to all my relatives and they adored on me and, but my grandfather I guess could kind of see that this is, this is not good.
[5:48]It's not going in the right direction. My, my grandfather was always super fit, super healthy. He died in his late 90s and even though he'd gone blind.
[5:57]I mean, a decade earlier, he still went for a walk every day and to the cold shower every morning is real, you know, healthy guy.
[6:04]Well, you talk about how you were in grade school and how you started hiding food.
[6:09]By the way, I did too. I would like put Hershey kisses under my bed, but we don't have stuff because I had like my allowance and they had the store next to my grade school.
[6:19]And so I could go in and I would either get a bag of Hershey kisses because that was like a dollar 25 or I could do a 50 cent yodels because they often had a 30 yodel or sometimes devil, devil dogs were only 25 cents so I could get a couple.
[6:33]This is really dating me. Those might might not be right, but that's how I remember it in my head.
[6:37]But anyway, you said these were the years I learned to eat in secret to hide my insatiable hunger to wrap food and napkins and press it between the pages of my books to inhale entire mouthfuls without chewing when someone suddenly entered the room.
[6:48]And these were also the years I realized I may have been a bit chubby because it seemed everyone had begun commenting about my weight and noticing what I ate and how much I ate.
[6:56]I understood that if I was going to eat the things I loved and the amounts associated me, I had damn better hide it.
[7:03]Yeah.
[7:04]You know, I writing this book for me was like connecting a lot of dots and for the most part I haven't spent much of my life eating in secret, but there have been definitely moments in my life in that.
[7:15]I think that's really where it began at that point and then later when I was in my first marriage and it was a deeply abusive marriage.
[7:22]I also started eating in secret. And you know, my mom's always done that. She's she'll never eat with us. And so it was this interesting like, you know, we pick up these, you know, people around us model behavior and then kids pick it up.
[7:34]But yeah, I just, and I would compare myself to my younger sister who was only two years younger than me and I would watch how she ate and I would be like, how is she full like just eating like that banana and a glass of milk for a snack.
[7:48]And I just didn't understand what was wrong with me. I never felt full. So you feel full now.
[7:52]I do, but it took us surgical procedure to get me there. Yeah. And you feel literally a physical difference like you on this.
[7:59]Oh, I mean, you know, people ask me whether I regret getting gastric sleep surgery because frankly gastric sleep surgery was not a magic bullet to get to a goal later. And he like, you know, it really doesn't.
[8:10]It's not to still be on a very strict protocol, you know, for that procedure to be effective. And I just didn't follow it. And most of people I know who got the sleeve and have gained back almost all the weight.
[8:21]But I don't regret it because it does. It does give me the feeling of knowing what it's like to feel full. And I most of my adult life didn't know what that felt like.
[8:31]Actually, to me, it feels like a gift. Oh, really? Yeah, because it's finally a signal for my body that you can stop eating.
[8:39]And I never was able to do that. I would eat until the food in front of me is gone. If there's leftovers in the plate next to me from somebody else, I would eat those two. And I.
[8:48]And that felt terrible because I was like, I felt like something that's not normative.
[8:53]And I had other people's bodies function. So what was wrong with mind that it didn't send that signal.
[8:58]And so I feel very grateful for feelings full and satisfied. I'm like, Oh, I'm good. You know, I can get up on this table. Yeah.
[9:05]Maybe I just mean like overly full, which. Oh, stuffed and stuff to my stomach. No, I don't want to do feel that obviously. But this is a different sensation. This is just like, okay.
[9:17]So I feel satisfied. Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting. Yeah, you did not write in such a positive way about the sleeve situation. I feel like for anyone considering it if they read your book, they wouldn't necessarily run and get that operation.
[9:30]You look, I wanted to be real about it. You know what I mean. I also wanted to be really honest about why I got it. And, and I think I made the right decision based on my calculations based on my lived experience based on what science and research shows us about people who struggle with weight and how the odds are stacked against you for so many reasons.
[9:51]And there's a reason every time. And it's not like we don't know how to lose weight. You do over and over again in your life and you gain and it comes back with friends.
[10:00]And it's like I said over and over.
[10:01]So it just made sense to me in many ways.
[10:03]And I also thought that, you know,
[10:05]I don't know my physiology.
[10:07]Maybe my stomach is as big gaping black hole
[10:10]with the reason I never get full.
[10:12]So this might be the way.
[10:13]But yeah, I wanted to be honest about what
[10:15]that first six months, especially was like,
[10:17]it was very, very hard.
[10:19]And I was at a book event and I was talking about this
[10:21]and a woman raised her hand said,
[10:23]I just want you to know,
[10:24]I'm getting gastric sleeves surgery next week.
[10:26]I was like, oh no, listen.
[10:28]I don't mean to put you,
[10:29]but to those, they will prepare you for all that.
[10:31]When you are going through the evaluation
[10:35]and kind of the whole program to prepare you,
[10:37]they will explain that this is all gonna happen to you
[10:39]and you have to be mentally emotionally prepared for it.
[10:44]Well, it's good to have the real story.
[10:46]You know, super useful.
[10:47]You wrote really beautifully about your marriage ending.
[10:49]If I could just read this one other paragraph,
[10:51]is that all right?
[10:52]You said six months later,
[10:53]I was no longer with my husband.
[10:55]A marriage doesn't break in an instant.
[10:57]It takes hundreds of instances of words said
[11:00]and unsaid, of grief and resentment,
[11:03]disappointment and heartache.
[11:04]Our marriage didn't even have a chance to build much less
[11:07]break when AK hit me just weeks after I left my family
[11:10]so I'm to join him.
[11:11]He shattered any foundation,
[11:13]our relationship could have had.
[11:15]You cannot build on rubble,
[11:16]but for five years for the sake of our daughter,
[11:18]I had tried.
[11:20]Ultimately, I wasn't even the one who ended it, AK did.
[11:22]Yeah, everybody,
[11:23]I mean, like anybody who's been through divorce
[11:25]and understands that or the end of any relationship
[11:27]understands that it takes just lots of 1,000 cuts, right?
[11:31]Death by a million cuts or whatever.
[11:33]Yeah.
[11:35]I'm divorced also.
[11:36]So, okay.
[11:37]Yeah.
[11:38]And I used to be a Weight Watchers leader
[11:40]and I know you went to Weight Watchers for a while.
[11:42]Were you really?
[11:43]I really was.
[11:44]I know, can you believe it?
[11:45]I, as I said, I've like struggled with my weight forever
[11:48]and it finally works for me.
[11:50]Like when I tried it,
[11:50]it was like the only thing that had ever worked
[11:52]and when I get really excited about something,
[11:54]I'm kind of like all in.
[11:55]So I was like, oh, I'm going to be at goal weight.
[11:57]Oh, if you've been at goal weight for long enough,
[11:59]you can be a receptionist.
[12:00]And I was like, well, I'll just have to try that.
[12:02]And then you can be a leader.
[12:03]And I don't know.
[12:04]I just kept like, I like having goals.
[12:06]Yeah.
[12:07]So I did that for a couple of years.
[12:09]I never even gave it a chance as you found out in the book.
[12:11]I was like, yeah, I was like, I had 15.
[12:15]I was like, no, I did not belong here now.
[12:18]And I just refused.
[12:19]It just seemed like way too much work.
[12:20]And I was like, there's no way.
[12:21]Even at that very tender age, I was like,
[12:23]I know I can't live like this where I got to like figure out
[12:26]the point for every single thing.
[12:27]I just, I couldn't do it.
[12:28]I wouldn't do it.
[12:30]You just like took the money and went to the mall, right?
[12:32]It's me choosing like that.
[12:33]I took the money and I went to the convenience door
[12:35]to get junk food.
[12:36]I mean, like, but you know, my poor parents were like,
[12:39]this doesn't seem to be working much later.
[12:41]And you're like, no, I feel great.
[12:43]And they're like, OK, OK, can I ask you a question
[12:46]about your experience though?
[12:48]Yeah, yeah.
[12:50]Did is that when you said it worked,
[12:52]I mean, to me, it's like a lot of diets.
[12:54]It works while you're, every diet works when you're doing it.
[12:56]But the minute you stop doing it, the point is,
[12:58]is this sustainable for your life, I guess?
[13:01]Because diets aren't.
[13:02]I was able to do this through a couple of pregnancy.
[13:08]I did it for seven years.
[13:10]Wow.
[13:11]And it consumed me.
[13:13]I feel like it actually became like an eating disorder.
[13:15]Like all I would do was think about the points.
[13:18]So I feel like I got too obsessed about the perfection of it.
[13:23]But what I liked about it is that it
[13:25]took all the emotion out of food.
[13:28]Like it was like, oh, should I have this cake or should I not?
[13:31]Well, whatever.
[13:32]It's seven points.
[13:33]Do you have seven points to spare or not?
[13:34]So I kind of liked that it talked to me that way.
[13:37]Because anyway, this is, I don't know why I'm talking about myself.
[13:39]No, no, no, no, this is more like emotional.
[13:43]Like my issue is more emotional eating.
[13:45]Like I get upset and then I eat for two weeks.
[13:47]And it's not about the food.
[13:49]Like I feel full and I just ignore it.
[13:51]But because it's feeding something else in me.
[13:54]So wait for me just like took that whole piece of my brain
[13:58]and just like dropped it off on the side.
[14:01]But then I got like two into it.
[14:03]And I got like really thin.
[14:04]And it was, I mean, for me, not for most people.
[14:07]I also feel like I wait.
[14:08]Anyway, whatever.
[14:11]I'll never be too thin ready.
[14:12]It's all complicated.
[14:14]Yeah, you're right.
[14:15]You probably, well, although with my mother,
[14:16]you know, when I got to a certain point.
[14:19]And I felt, and I wasn't too thin.
[14:21]I weighed like around 165 pounds.
[14:23]But I was super fit because I was strength training.
[14:26]And this is literally just like four or five years ago.
[14:28]My mother was like, that's it.
[14:30]You were getting too skinny.
[14:31]And I think you have cancer.
[14:33]Like do you have cancer?
[14:34]Are you lying to me?
[14:34]So sometimes at least with my family,
[14:38]there is at this thing such as tooth.
[14:40]And I have to be just right.
[14:41]My mom said to me used to say to me and she still does it.
[14:43]Listen, as a lawyer, you have to have a little meat
[14:46]on your bones.
[14:46]If you're too tiny, then you won't have the gravitas.
[14:50]You won't have like the presence, you know,
[14:52]as an Italian, like, holy moly.
[14:54]Just give me the weight range that works for your mom.
[14:57]Oh, pleasing.
[14:59]My mom could be like five podcasts in a rep.
[15:01]No, I'm kidding.
[15:02]She's probably listening.
[15:03]But yeah, there's no, there's no,
[15:06]it's also different, different generations.
[15:08]I feel like it's such different takes on your body
[15:10]and your eating and a different card to reconcile.
[15:13]Different cultures.
[15:14]Yep.
[15:14]Yep.
[15:15]So it's like an unwinnable situation, you know what I mean?
[15:18]Yeah.
[15:19]But unless you just do whatever you need to do
[15:20]and make yourself happy, and that's what I'm talking about.
[15:22]That's all that matters to me now.
[15:24]Yeah.
[15:24]But also, I want to be healthy, too.
[15:26]Yeah.
[15:27]And a lot of, like, all the science is like,
[15:29]no, like, I want to live long at, you know, I don't know.
[15:34]But then, on the other hand, when you have a little
[15:35]extra weight and your cheeks look better,
[15:37]you know, your face looks better.
[15:38]So I'm like, oh, look, I'm, you know,
[15:41]almost, I'll be 49 in a few months
[15:43]and folks, a lot of people think that I'm younger
[15:46]and they're like, you know, how come, what's the skincare?
[15:48]I'm like, it's, I think it's just the cheeks.
[15:50]Yeah.
[15:51]I think it's, I just have a little extra fat.
[15:53]Really, I mean, you know, it's not a skincare routine.
[15:55]It's just having, you know, a little extra chub.
[15:58]I think it keeps you looking really young,
[16:00]but yeah, healthy is important.
[16:03]And, but that is part of being happy for me now.
[16:05]It's just moving and putting things in my body
[16:07]that don't make me feel terrible.
[16:08]Yeah.
[16:09]So how did writing the book affect your relationship
[16:12]with food?
[16:13]Like, did it, did the analysis of it change anything?
[16:16]Or was it just, it was already in your head
[16:18]and you just dumped it out
[16:19]so it didn't really change anything anyway?
[16:22]The thing is, I could not have written the book
[16:23]until I had gotten to the point
[16:25]where my relationship with my body
[16:26]and food had already changed, stabilized, gotten better.
[16:30]I'm not saying I was at the point
[16:32]or I've ever been at the point where I'm like,
[16:33]I love my body, but I finally was at the point
[16:35]where I didn't hate my body.
[16:37]And that took a lot of work.
[16:39]And it took a lot of, I mean,
[16:42]I'm sure just living to a certain age
[16:45]makes a difference when you're over 40, 45.
[16:47]There is something to be said about
[16:49]just not caring anymore.
[16:50]I've had a lot of things, what people say, things like that.
[16:52]So I couldn't have written it until then.
[16:54]But what writing the book helped me do was just understand
[16:58]myself better and understand why I was doing,
[17:02]why I was where I was at different points in my life.
[17:04]It helped me understand people in my life,
[17:06]my family better as I wrote about them
[17:08]and tried like with my mother eating in secret.
[17:11]She's in her 70s.
[17:12]She still won't eat with us.
[17:13]But if you leave food out in the morning,
[17:15]it'll be gone, right?
[17:16]She'll eat it at night, like literally at 3 a.m.
[17:19]And we used to think, oh, she's just so antisocial.
[17:22]She doesn't want to like sit and have a meal with us.
[17:23]And we would take it personally.
[17:25]I mean, myself, links like we would resent you for it.
[17:28]And I realized I ate in secret when I had shame around it.
[17:32]So there is something, there's a story about her.
[17:34]We don't know, you know, this is not about us.
[17:37]This is about something else.
[17:38]And so that for that reason, I got to say,
[17:41]like it was a learning experience for me, you know,
[17:44]at the end of the book.
[17:45]And I closed, I remember when I finished it.
[17:47]And my eldest is 25.
[17:50]So there have been plenty of times that as I was writing
[17:54]the book and I was saying, you know, my family did this
[17:57]or my mother did whatever, I was like, oh, wait,
[17:59]I think I've done that too.
[18:01]I don't know.
[18:01]Yeah.
[18:02]So by the time I got done, I decided I'm never having,
[18:05]I'm never bringing these issues up again with her, you know.
[18:08]She has, everybody has to have their own journey.
[18:10]It just, no matter how right you play it with your own kids.
[18:14]So I feel I have four kids.
[18:15]It's like, the messages they get from their peers
[18:18]are so much more important.
[18:20]I'm like, wait, what did I do wrong that you feel like that?
[18:22]She's like, this is nothing to do with you.
[18:24]Do you know, like sometimes it doesn't come from the home.
[18:26]It's like, no, that's for sure.
[18:28]I know, I know that's true.
[18:30]And I have a 14-year-old as well.
[18:32]And she, there was a number of years where,
[18:35]and this is when she was around 11, 12 years old,
[18:37]and she's very, kind of slender, built naturally.
[18:42]But she kind of stopped eating.
[18:44]Like, we would watch, I mean, my husband,
[18:45]and we'd say, what are you doing?
[18:47]She would have little smidges of food on her plate
[18:49]and say, I'm not hungry.
[18:51]And we realized she was, like, it was social media.
[18:54]It was friends.
[18:54]It was other people who were like, you know,
[18:56]we want to be super thin.
[18:58]And this was around the time that I discovered strength
[19:02]training and began strength training.
[19:04]And as she watched me do this,
[19:06]and not only did it change my body,
[19:08]my emotional state, my mental health, everything.
[19:11]And I felt incredible in my 40s feeling so strong,
[19:14]doing things I never thought my body could do.
[19:16]She was like, mama, I want to go to the gym with you.
[19:17]And so, as soon as she got old and I started taking her,
[19:20]and when she sort of lifting weights,
[19:22]she started eating, she started eating.
[19:25]I mean, really eating.
[19:26]And now she runs cross country,
[19:28]and she eats like an athlete, which is good.
[19:31]Good food, but a lot of food, you know, a lot of calories.
[19:34]And I'm like, oh, thank God.
[19:35]Like that, I didn't even have to tell her
[19:37]she just saw this happen.
[19:38]And she, you know, I modeled it for her.
[19:41]Wow.
[19:42]So do you have memoirs by other authors that you love,
[19:45]or that you hope to make your book like, or that, you know,
[19:47]well, I mean, I wrote a memoirs, Food memoirs,
[19:51]and a couple of weight-related memoirs before I started
[19:56]writing this, and I realized none of these,
[19:59]I mean, obviously there are-
[20:00]are times when certain stories you're like, you're like, okay, I get that, but none of them
[20:03]resonated with me in terms of like, oh, this is just like how I felt at the time, like, um,
[20:09]rocks and days hunger. You know, I mean, that that's a really deeply her experience was
[20:14]incredibly traumatic and as a child. And I didn't have that frankly, you know what I mean? I mean,
[20:20]yeah, my parents, but like, but for me, like the story that resonated for me was my big fact
[20:25]regretting when I watched that film. Oh, that that's my family. You know, they're loving,
[20:30]but they just are going about their concern the wrong way. Um, but I love them more. I just
[20:34]started reading this one last night. Oh, my gosh, my favorite book. It's literally my favorite
[20:39]book of the whole year, a place called home, David Ambrose. Well, I won't take that personally,
[20:43]but I'm sorry. I love your book too, but this book is like, you know, David, I, and I shared a panel
[20:51]in Boston. And then, uh, you know, he signed a book for me. I signed a book for him. And then
[20:56]we've just become friends since, and my book tour just ended two days ago. So I didn't have time
[21:00]to start reading it. And last night, I get one AM I cracked it and I couldn't put it down. That's how
[21:05]I saw a beautiful writer, but his story is just heartbreaking, shattering. And, um, I'm going to
[21:13]get through it probably pretty quickly. And then I'm going to reach out to him. I only know
[21:17]if I'm going to have the words to process the emotions and convey how incredibly. And he's an
[21:23]incredible human being. He's so accomplished and so kind and positive. Anyway, I'm so glad you said
[21:31]that because I read it over Thanksgiving. And I haven't like talked to anybody who's been reading it
[21:35]yet. Like just on Instagram. So anyway, and he's a beautiful writer. The writer is crying.
[21:41]No, I know. I read it in one day. I just like, my family was like, hello, you want to hang out with us?
[21:47]No, okay. It's beautiful. Yeah, it's really great. I mean, I loved you Rick too.
[21:53]It's I probably otherwise you wouldn't be on the podcast. And I wouldn't have read the whole thing
[21:58]which I did. So um, do you have any advice for aspiring memoirists? You know, most people, I know a
[22:04]lot of people want to write memoirs. And for almost every single one, the thing that stops them is
[22:08]they have family who are living that they wouldn't want, you know, them to read it. That's true
[22:14]for me as well. But I'm lucky number one, most of my family doesn't read. They really just don't
[22:18]read. They're not readers. I am the only real reader in my family. And my dad would have read it,
[22:24]but he had a stroke, really severe stroke. And he's not capable of reading anymore. So to that
[22:29]helps me, but also, you know, I could have been much more, I was kind to a lot of people in the
[22:36]club. I mean, you know, because I wanted to talk about our relationship when it came to this
[22:41]specific issue, not about them as whole human beings, right? I'm not there to expose their lives
[22:46]and their, you know what I mean? All these things. And so I think there's a way to do, to do this
[22:52]right, like you shouldn't have to wait for everybody. You know to die off to write a memoir.
[22:57]And the other thing that people usually have a concern about is like to like verifying the facts,
[23:03]right? But it's kind of like what you said that earlier. I don't remember what you, what
[23:07]memory you're talking about. You're like, that's how I remember. Oh, the food, what matters is
[23:12]how we remember it, right? I mean, like, they're, there are stories in the book in which there
[23:16]are lots of other family members there, but I'm not going to check in with them say, how do you
[23:20]remember it? How do you, just what matters is how I remember it. And that's my story. And so
[23:24]don't let those things hold you back from from just sitting down and starting and putting pen
[23:28]to paper. And it's just powerful for you to kind of learn your who you are. I mean, I feel like I
[23:33]solved a little mystery of myself at the time. I was done writing the book. That's great.
[23:37]That's the best line. Because I mean, it's like the greatest feeling to sort through stuff. And
[23:44]anyway, that's wonderful. I would have met more too. Actually, you did. Okay, wonderful. Yeah,
[23:49]but I put that in the beginning. I was like, I don't know. This is probably, this is just how I
[23:52]remember it. But you know, I don't know what I did yesterday. So, like I hope this matters. That's
[23:58]your approximation of the truth. No, I'm, it's not that far off. But you know, I mean, I feel very
[24:04]confident that I remember it the way it happened. But maybe I'm wrong. But anyway, okay, well,
[24:09]congratulations on fatty fatty boom boom. And I love chatting with you about food and family and
[24:15]all the good stuff. And I feel like I could have this conversation for a million years. So I couldn't
[24:19]wait to talk to you about it. Thank you so much, Debbie. Thank you. And I know we've had some
[24:22]scheduling difficulties. I appreciate your patience with all worries. This worked out even better for
[24:26]me too. So, okay. I'll get thanks so much. All right. Thanks a lot. Nice to meet you. Bye bye.
[24:32]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Don't forget to
[24:36]follow me on Instagram at ZB Owens and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Also sign up for
[24:41]my newsletter at ZB Owens.com and sign up for my virtual book club and meet lots of authors on Zoom
[24:46]every other week. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan in fact, Texture Sound for the Sound Editing.
[24:51]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and outroom music.