You're gonna plumb my pop filler. I'm so excited.

Ha - I almost choked. I will certainly plumb your pop filler.

Well, I did not mean that to be.

Well, the way you said it was was very much innuendo-ish.

Whatever it takes to get a pop filler, man. Welcome back to the manual transmission powered by coffee, curiosity, and conversation.

We're Brad and Monica Manuel, partners in marriage, business, and now insulation installation.

Apparently.

Let's do high low.

Let's do high low then.

Do you have a high low?

Yeah. You

wanna start with high or low?

I don't know what my low was. So the high part, I just got in my car, drove to the gym, did a bit of a workout, went to yoga, and then walked on the treadmill afterward. So I just spent, like, two solid hours with good music in my earbuds and sweating. It was it was needed. It was a great time to just step away.

And I did that several times this week, but this time I did it plus yoga.

That makes me feel good when you do that. Why? Because there hasn't been a time, like, you call me on your way home from the gym and you say, needed that.

Yeah. Yeah. It's always, you know, hard to get there, but then once I do it, I'm like, oh, yeah, I needed that. That was good. So this one in particular, I did it.

I did a bunch, but that one was great. Yeah. I'm not sure what my low is. Why don't you do your high low, and I'll see if I can come up with a low.

Okay. My high. My high is probably the progress that I made this week on the demo and getting the remnants of that swamp cooler.

The old 1972 swamp cooler that was left in the ceiling. Yep. You you kicked butt this week.

You you kicked my butt this week.

That might have been my low, just coming home and seeing how sore and tired you were and feeling a little guilty that you were doing it.

Well, I was I was bellyaching

a bit. Me.

Anyway, I spent Monday

I had to resort to providing our values of the insulation that was originally placed in the seventies versus what is available today, as well as the fire retardant nature of today's products versus what was there before, and among other among other very logical approaches. I don't know if it was my logical approaches, my emotional pleas, or just my dogged persistence that just wore you down and you finally just said, fine. Whatever. Let's do it. Or all of the above.

All of the above.

What made you decide to go with what I wanted?

That's how I've learned to stay married for twenty eight years.

I did make a pretty solid case and this was a weeks long debate. Oh, you also acquiesced to another request that you've been denying for several weeks.

So all you are communicating to anybody listening to this right now, whooped.

Oh, that's sweet.

Yeah. You weren't worried about that.

We're still whooped after twenty eight years.

Twenty eight. Almost twenty nine. That's awesome. So, well, said there were two things. You said there were

two things. New insulation Yeah. And new drywall.

Mhmm.

And the other one, you're gonna plumb my pot filler. I'm so excited. I

almost joked. I will certainly plumb your pop filler.

Please. Well, I did not mean that to me.

The way you said it was was very much. Wow. Hey.

Whatever it takes to get a pop filler, man.

Mhmm. Yeah.

I'm so excited. I'm putting this beautiful new range in there, which you also acquiesced to. I didn't really

There's a theme here.

Hey. Listen. This skin just gonna be great. You're gonna be glad when it's all said and done that it's done well. Mhmm.

So my low

In the meantime, thank you for not leaving me.

So my low was probably Monday. No. My low was Tuesday because Tuesday, I got back to work. Monday, I took off, and I was in my pouting phase.

When were you pouting?

Maybe was it Monday? Well, we worked

all Friday, Saturday, Sunday.

Monday that I was actually texted you. And I said, yo, I think I'm probably gonna die sooner than I want by working in this stuff. And you said, suck it up, cupcake.

I did not. I mean, I might have

You said

I said I said I don't

think don't workers deal with that all the time?

I said that I don't think the batting is

Asbestos?

No. Or for a fiberglass or it's just batting.

Cancerous?

No. It's fine. It's annoying and it's a pain in the butt to work in, but I don't think it's going to hurt you.

It's horrible. I'm sorry. Anyway, that was my low. That Monday was my low and I was frustrated and I was being rebellious.

Okay. Well, you made it through the bulk of it. You've got your system down, and you have a fresh new dumpster to fill up.

Yeah.

And this week, on tomorrow, you are putting in new insulation. Right?

The insulation will be delivered.

Yep. I ordered it.

R 19 external wall fiberglass batts. And r 38. R 38 for our ceiling.

I know way more about insulation than I ever thought I would know and cared to know. Okay. So, Milo, was was you feeling crappy about doing all that crappy work? Sorry about that, and thank you for doing it.

Well, you're welcome. We're in this annual tug of war, this desire to slow down and the pressure to tie everything up, all the loose ends before before the ball drops.

Right? My body wants like a a hot drink or a hot tub, probably not at the same time.

A little bit too warm.

Like, but like full hibernation mode, but my brain's over here, like opening a five tab spreadsheet and writing a strategic plan.

I know.

You say that like

Like what?

Like it's exhausting or something.

Only sometimes. Mhmm. Our Christmas gift, instead of gifts this year, we've chosen to go on a trip.

Yeah. I feel like that's the right that's the right thing for us, giving an experience instead of gifts. Although, it's a little hard for me to accept and admit that given how much I love giving gifts. But it's just this season of life is it feels like it's the right thing.

That's because you give gifts anyway.

What? I don't do that. I mean, not very many. Not like I would if we weren't giving them the trip.

What what does that look like? Gifts?

Well, like

a Like traditionally?

Something under the tree that they can open that goes with their, with the trip. So for example, I can say this because I don't think Riker listens to this podcast, but for Ryker We

should have him on it.

Yeah. That's a good idea. He's pretty, he's pretty, he's more woody than either of us. Well, already bought him some new Mickey swim trunks.

Did you? Uh-huh. Did I know that?

I don't know. I actually bought them a while ago.

Did you get me matching ones?

So I tried, but they I bought them because they were on sale and the grown up ones that match were sold out. So I didn't get you matching ones this time, But I'm gonna get him one of those snorkel masks that go over the whole face. Try to coax him into coax him off the boat. He wouldn't do it last last time. Remember the year that we we got all done?

It was, like, 03:00 in the morning, and we changed all the clocks in the house to say 9AM.

I was just about to tell that story.

Was like, you tell it.

No, no, no, no. That was funny that you brought it up because it was a memorable one.

We woke them up.

We did all this work, got everything ready. It's all set to go. And we were wired. So we're like, let's just trick them.

And I knew once we went to sleep, wasn't going to want to get up when they got up at like six.

Yep. And did we go back to bed?

After they opened all their stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Yeah. It worked. They were they were

like never wanted to do that again.

Oh, that

was it was less magical.

That was a one and done experience.

But Yeah. But this week's vinyl, Exodus, because Bob Marley accidentally wrote the soundtrack to December energy, movement, pressure, purpose, and trying to find out, you know, your center in the middle of it all.

In 1976, Marley was shot in Jamaica during a lot of political unrest. And if you've seen the movie, the recent movie, it's pretty good. It tells the story.

So it's wild. He leaves the country. He's exhausted. He's been displaced from his country, ends up in London.

And while he's there in exile, he creates Exodus. This album is about movement, survival, pressure, and ultimately clarity for him.

Which is cool, but also, given the circumstances in which it was created, it's pretty wild that it's both it is definitely restless, but it's also restful. And it's that feeling of wanting peace while knowing there's still still work to do.

It's one of my favorite albums of all time. And so

What makes it your favorite one of your favorite albums of all time?

I love the vibe.

You really like the island vibe.

I do.

I think that's cool. There's just times when I'm like, okay. That's been enough hours of island vibe. Can we switch it up?

You think so?

Yeah. I like Bob Marley, though. I like the whalers.

Bob Marley and the whalers.

So what does rest actually feel like for you? Not the not the idea of it, but the sensation of it. You know, we're talking about this December hustle. What was the moment you realized that the the scramble had started?

For me right now, it's this project, this remodel.

Pending date where they're coming to install the the cabinets.

Yeah. The the kitchen materials have been delivered. They're sitting in the house, and there's a date. In fact, Thursday is the date for everything to be installed, but it can't be installed until the electrical's in, the plumbing is in, and the drywall insulation is in. And we have the electrical and plumbing.

Well, you did a good job of getting the electrical and

plumbing in. The electrical.

One bit of plumbing left to do because you've acquiesced to give me my pop filler Yeah. Which I really appreciate.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm gonna have to figure that one out tomorrow.

Just call him. He'll do it. That's easy.

Having him do it.

I'll do it. What? It's just No. No.

No. No. It's a little y that's gonna come off that that flange and it's gonna I'm gonna bring it around. We have to drill holes. That's what they would do.

Just have them come do it.

You want me to pay them?

Yes. I do.

To come drill holes in the studs. Yep. It's all exposed.

When I asked you to give me a pot filler, nowhere in that request was the idea that you were going to do it for me. Just call the plumber, please. Oh, boy. Just got a little stressed out.

Oh my gosh.

Know, I realized somebody was telling me that they're going to, like, the Christmas market, and all these people are talking about putting up their lights and getting their trees. And I was like, oh, oh my gosh. It's December. I haven't even thought about that stuff, really. So I have I pushed really hard last week.

I'm gonna push really hard this week. The following weekend, I'm doing so I'm doing the I'll have, like, two weeks before Christmas. One one week before Christmas. About a week and a half before Christmas, I'm gonna get the tree and all the decorations done before the kids come home. And

So you're in holiday Not activation

yet. I have it scheduled so I can stop thinking about it. Oh, I started. I wasn't thinking about it. I was reminded.

I was like, yeah, guess I should do that. That stressed me out. So I looked at the calendar, looked at all these things and went, all right, that's the weekend. I know I could do it. So it's set up.

My sister's going to come do it with me. I don't have to think about it. No problem. I've got a lot of work to do this week before that. And then the following week, I have an off-site that I'll be going to do, and it's, like, the last big push before it really kind of quiets down for the last two weeks of the year.

And hopefully there'll be some rest, but I don't feel but we're leaving at the beginning of the year. So I feel like what I'm gonna do is while everyone else is taking a chill two holiday weeks, I'm gonna use that quiet time to catch up on stuff that I need to do.

From when to when?

Those last two weeks of the year.

Okay. So that's that's what I feel like it usually looks like. So the the hustle is usually right up until about December. I think most people are probably in that cycle where those last two weeks are what we look forward to in terms of rest.

Yeah. People turn to families and stuff. What that means for me, and we'll certainly will have a bunch of family stuff. So Monday, Tuesday, for sure, of those last two weeks, it'll be quiet because people will be out, and I'm just gonna put my head down down and work really hard those two days, and then I can let up Wednesday, Thursday, Friday of each of those weeks. But we are kind of in that rhythm you're talking about right now, which we haven't been in it for a while because our kids, you know, our kids have been out of school for a long time.

They're out of the house. But we have a son-in-law and a daughter-in-law who are both doing their advanced degrees right now. We have our daughter who's doing her she's finishing up her costume design degree. And then we have the two grandkids that are in school. So we're still kind of in that rhythm.

So when Syd finishes her last exams at Columbia, they will come home. Also, it's I think what's really cool for me I'll tell you another high from this week. I realized that for the first time in many years, 100% of all of our all the siblings, all their spouses, all the kids, everybody's gonna be home this Christmas. And we'd been trying to sync up. It's hard when everybody has their own stuff, but everybody has synced up because of this diagnosis that, you know, we don't take any Christmases for granted anymore.

That was another high. Last night was pretty good.

Yeah. We sat up till late just talking with our parents and sister, brother-in-law.

Yeah. It's getting real. Yeah. Every family is touched by cancer in some way and has to have these conversations whenever they're dealing with a family member who's going through something like this. They're having to have these really hard conversations.

Yeah. You you know, you might not get another good Christmas

Right.

With everybody. So you prioritize it. You make adjustments to your plans. Like, I know my sister wasn't planning to be in the country for Christmas, and neither were her kids, and neither were was my brother and sister-in-law. So everybody's adjusted.

Everybody's gonna be home. We're gonna get one big, full family Christmas photo.

Your parents are extremely fortunate to be able to have that happen.

Yeah. It's it's cool that, like, when we realized, oh my god. It just it just came together yesterday because people changed flights and decisions clicked in, and we just we had the realization last night, and everyone got so excited. Okay. All 21 of us will be here together.

So describe the holidays growing up for you when you were a kid.

Well, we always got one good present, and I was always I love Christmas. I love Christmas. I love the stockings. I love waking up Christmas morning.

You especially love the stockings.

The stockings are my favorite. You learned the hard way early on. It was like our second Christmas together.

It was almost the end of our

And you just didn't even think of stockings. And I was like and then after that, I don't, I think I, I wasn't too worried worried about it. It's like I was, I was still pretty young and I was like, I still wanted my own stocking. And after that, I, I didn't want it anymore.

I just like gift. Right. Right. Well, yeah, it's gift giving and I,

You don't have

failure at that.

No. It's I mean, we that's pretty common. Right? Right? Like, we tend to speak in our love language, but that's not always the right love language for

You're a very good gift giver.

It's a selfish thing. It seems like a selfless thing, but it's a selfish thing because I love to think of the right gift and then see the reaction and

I love getting gifts from you.

Do you really? No, you don't.

I do. I love getting thoughtful gifts from you.

Oh, boy.

Some of them, you know, you you go a little bit overboard, like when you get me a mug from a city and then they turn into 60 mugs that are hanging on my wall right now.

Joke because it bugged you. I've gotten you good gifts, but I've backed off the last several years because, well, for one, I took a lot of crap for it. And so I just said, fine. I won't do it. But, yes, I don't do it as much anymore, but I used to really lean in hard.

Why do you think that is?

Which part?

Why would you lean in hard?

I liked I would go over the top. I would I would just I would go a little bit over the top, and that's why I took a lot of crap for it. And so I'm just like, alright, fine.

Should we talk about that?

Nope. We don't need to talk about that.

Okay. Any rituals growing up? Tradition the just traditions that you remember?

Just that Christmas Eve, we got to open one present on Christmas Eve and then the stockings and, there weren't that many, but a few other presents and, like, one main present would be Christmas morning. And I just remember being so excited.

We used to do the same thing. We do the one present the night before.

Uh-huh.

But my dad was horrible at it. And this is where we've I've kind of, think I brought this into the relationship where one turned into all but one.

Well, you get so excited and swept up. You're like, no, open another one. Open another one.

For for years

The wind

kids would open up almost everything before Christmas.

So maybe that's where my over the top went. Because I was like, alright. I've got a plan for that. We're still gonna open a bunch on Christmas Eve, but I'm gonna have a secret stash

So I

screwed a bunch more that I can put out Christmas morning so we don't ruin Christmas morning. Bad. Well, I did. I wasn't any better. It was like, yeah.

Let's do it. I get too eager to open presents. That was what I was gonna say. So Thanksgiving, it was always we went down to the under the 4th Street Viaduct, and we made Viaduct, and we made Thanksgiving dinner for the homeless. We did that every year, early in the morning, all day, with Jenny Dudley.

I think she still does it.

Mhmm.

Just crazy. She's amazing. But we we would always do that for Thanksgiving. And then for Christmas, it was just we got to stay home. We decorated the tree.

We had the same ornaments year after year, so was always fun to pull those out. And then Christmas Eve, we would open one present. And Christmas morning, we'd open our stockings and our presents, we would just hang out at home. It was it was nothing fancy, but I loved it. I was thinking about what you were saying about the family and everybody coming around.

You know, he was talking about I mean, he's facing like, best case scenario is he's got two years, but probably the likelihood is that he's probably got a lot less than that. So he's reconciling all of that, and he was talking about what he's achieved, and he thought he would have achieved more. And I was just saying, there are really wealthy people. I know many of them, billionaires even, who don't they money can't buy it or they would have it, but they don't have the family that you have. They don't have, you know, people who want to be around you and, are happy, thrilled that everybody's going to be together and wants to get their family photo taken.

Now, not everybody's thrilled about the photo, but they're all willing to do it.

Yeah. Everybody's willing to come together and spend this time and enjoy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

There's no.

That is true wealth.

That's I think we've mentioned this before, but that's a legacy to leave.

It's interesting. It's probably just lucky, but, I don't know if you had a premonition or whatever, but last year, it might have even been earlier this year, they had me do all of their stuff for them. So we set up their living will. We set up their power of attorney, their, health directives. So we had already worked through all of that, thankfully.

But when he when you go in for brain surgery, you have to you have to go through the paperwork and do your health directive all over again. But we got to have those tough conversations about, okay, when it's this or that, or when it comes down to this action or that action, like, what do you want? Those are tough conversations. So so it'll be a little easier for me to ask you this question to lighten it up a little bit. Moving into 2026, what's something that you want more of next year?

I want more ease.

More ease. Okay.

I love the feeling, feeling of not having any expectations of me. Okay. What about you?

Yeah. I think I think we end up in this in a similar place, but I'm coming at it from a different angle. For sure, I wanna look ahead and build in rest places of rest. Some of that will look like some of the international travel that we talked about. Yep.

But, you know, I all all growing up all while our kids were growing up, I always felt this torn this torn, internally of anytime I'm working, I'm missing something

Mhmm.

At home. And, you know, a good mom is be supposed there and be in the kitchen baking cookies, or be there when they get home, all these societal norms and expectations that we just set things up differently. I was the one who was working. I would remember commuting home while I knew dinner had started and being stuck in traffic and just coming out of my skin. But I don't have that anymore.

I like working. I there's nobody at home except for you, waiting for me to get home or needing me to get home. Like, I'll see you when I see you and it'll be great. And I think I was we were talking about this earlier in the week, but we can enjoy the overlap, the parts where we're doing the same things and having quality time together. But I can enjoy the independence and the freedom of doing what I wanna do.

And it's okay. It's okay that I enjoy working, that I love what I do, that I love working with the people that I work with. That's all right.

Mhmm. It's Instead of feeling the guilt.

It's so liberating. I'm like, this is awesome. I don't have the Monday night or, excuse me, Sunday night scaries anymore. I'm I'm excited to go to work. And so I wanna lean in.

I'm gonna continue to lean in. And to your point, that's why I said I'm kind of coming at it from a different angle. I did it in reverse order. But those respites, that's when I can truly rest, is when I know I've dealt with stuff, I've leaned in hard, I've gotten all of the work done that I need to get done, and I've created space for a rest where there's nothing I'm procrastinating, I've taken care of business, and now I can go chill. So that's why I'm like so busy in December because I know we're taking the first, almost January to go lay on a beach.

That is wonderful.

It's pretty great.

That is wonderful. That makes me think. Do you remember when we were in Jamaica in Negril, we were on the beach, and that local came up, and he played three little birds.

Three little birds.

And I still have that video somewhere.

I love that video.

And it was such a great rendition.

I love that. That was toward the end of the trip. It was winding down. That's when we went with my siblings.

That's right.

That was great.

That was our first real trip.

With the siblings.

Like all eight of us.

That's what kicked off our tradition.

It did.

That that was the the inaugural siblings trip, and now we go every year. The one kind of curveball is it's hard to as I look ahead at 2026 and try to plan, it's really hard to know. We can make our plans, but we kinda have to hold them loosely because we don't know how this is gonna go.

Mhmm. Yep.

So so the one thing you want more of next year is ease.

What about you?

The one thing I want more of is yeah. Just, I guess, freedom. Just in the sense that I'm just not gonna freedom from what anybody else is worried about or thinking about and just do what I think is best, not without worrying about what anyone else thinks.

I like it.

So the thing I would want to protect in 2026 is just, you know, prioritization. There's some things that just don't matter enough to get energy. You know, if it's disputes or debates that just aren't that important, just prioritizing relationships and not letting the little stuff the the little naggy stuff get in the way of the more important stuff. Just keeping perspective on what's really important.

I'm okay with helping protect that.

There's this concept. It's not really it's like a parable from the bible, But it talks about the little the little foxes spoil the vines. It's because they'll eat at the vines at the base of it, which disconnects the vines from the roots. Like, it would be fine if the birds came and picked at the vines from the top or if, you know, the grapes get pulled off or what have you. But if you disconnect the vines from the root root base, it'll obviously, they die.

And so just staying connected to the roots, the things that are the most grounding and important and nourishing.

What would get in the way of that?

Getting swept up or carried away by circumstantial stuff.

It's always the circumstances.

Gotta stay connected to the roots. I'm looking forward to enjoying the next two weeks of just, like, rhythm, regular work weeks. So if you're feeling that tug of war, wanting rest, craving change, overwhelmed by both, you're not alone. That's what it means to be human in December. This has been a manual transmission.

See you next Sunday.

Have a great week.

Have a great week. Merry Christmas. Happy Hanukkah. Happy Kwanzaa. Whatever you celebrate.

Oh, Festivus. Yes. Festivus is for the rest of us.

Is is that the tradition of the airing of the grievances?

Yes. Should we do that next?

No. You

don't you don't wanna air anything?

Nobody wants to listen to that.

Alright. If you're listening and you wanna hear the airing of the grievances

Nobody wants to hear that.

Well, we'll see.

I think they have heard plenty of that. You you I made you tear out insulation. I made you give me plumbing for a pot filler, replace the insulation.

I would plumb

Tear out the

pot filler.

My god. That's gross. Nobody wants to hear that. I'm done now. Stop the recording.

Take your headphone off headphones off. Let's go get in the hot tub. See you next week.

See you next week.

Hey. So if you're listening on Apple or Spotify, you can hit follow and, come hang out with us on Instagram.

And if you're ready for your own little exodus into a new year, join us on January 2 for a free live goal setting session. Sixty minutes to get clear on your 2026. The link's in the episode notes.

Why did the man fall in the well? Do you know what? I told this joke this week. Somebody was like, hey. Somebody tell a dad joke.

So I said this joke, and somebody said, oh, are you gonna make a joke about your name, Manuel? I was like, I didn't even think about that, but nope. Plus, I don't say it like that. But okay. You ready?

Why did the man fall in the well?

Why did the man fall in the well?

Because he did not see that well.