February 10

1. Kinetic Sand
2. Mario Kart
3. Anchor

We had a quiet day in, yesterday, so part of our time was spent on finding things to do around the house. I went with an oldie and pulled the kinetic sand down from the place it resides. Not quite the place where lost things go. More “the place where unremembered things go”. It was fun!

And something we haven’t talked about on the blog since restarting: I’ve been doing a podcast! I started telling Nash imaginary stories about a cat named Jenkins and a dog named Alfred. They were only about 5 minutes long and I would do them with zero preparation as part of the bedtime routine.

Amanda suggested I record them. My first attempt at recording resulted in a disjointed mess. Turns out, I was thinking more about being recorded than I was the actual story. So I stopped recording. Then I tried again. And this time it was doable. So, yay! But why a podcast?

The kids had asked to listen to one of the recordings during the day when I was at work. I didn’t want to try sending audio files over text every time they wanted to listen. If only there were a way to publish, distribute, and allow subscriptions to audio files…hey-o! Podcasting.

And with that, the “Jenkins and Alfred” podcast began. If you have young ones who can benefit from slightly looney stories around bedtime, or, if you are young at heart and enjoy things unpolished and top of mind, this may be fun.

And the reason I’m able to stick with it? Anchor. I record the story with my phone (thanks Voice Memos), import the audio to Anchor, add a title and description, and we’re done. I do this each night, while putting the kids to bed. So the ease of posting that the app offers is crazy helpful. There wouldn’t be a consistent podcast (we’re up to Part 135 as of this writing) without Anchor.

I’ve embedded an episode below, in case you are interested. In this one, Jenkins the cat is dealing with his 9 lives. Alfred has questions.