Not just for only children! Info, stories and life experiences for anyone who feels like they didn't get the How-To brochure on life! Host Tracy Wallace, who has been a business owner, a successful fundraiser, a stand-up comedian, a caregiver and an animal lover, shares stories from the front lines of adulting to help others in this journey called life. She does this while finding the humor in the all situations.
Fifth year of the Only Child Diaries, and life still doesn’t hand out instructions. I’m checking in from the middle of a packed season where caregiving, health appointments, and constant time pressure are all competing for the same tiny slice of energy and focus.
One bright spot I refuse to give up is Halloween decorating. I’m talking front-lawn chaos, hauling bins out of the garage, putting up our signature headless horseman, and getting humbled by a new animatronic velociraptor skeleton that looked “easy” until it absolutely wasn’t. The best part isn’t even trick-or-treat night, it’s the moment neighbors slow down, kids react, and you remember that a little wonder still exists right outside your driveway.
I also share what’s been going on behind the scenes: Bill’s health ups and downs, the never-ending shuffle of medical and dental appointments, my own tooth injury that makes eating weirdly hard, plus the quieter stressors like pet anxiety when the house gets busy. We talk self-care in the most realistic sense of the word, sleep, managing pain, turning off a racing brain, and choosing something fun even when it feels “impractical.”
If you’ve ever felt stretched thin, this one will feel like company. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts (or wherever you listen), leave a rating and review, and share the show with a friend who could use a little humor and light right now.
Welcome to the Only Child Diaries Podcast. I'm your host, Tracy Wallace. Have you ever felt like you didn't receive the how-to brochure on life? That you didn't get enough guidance about major life issues? So did I. You don't have to be an only child to feel this way. In my podcast, we'll explore some of the best ways to better navigate adulthood while doing so with humor and light. Welcome everyone to the Only Child Diaries Podcast.
Today I'm going to talk about yes, entering the fifth year of the Only Child Diaries Podcast, which seems absolutely unbelievable to me, and also catch you up on a few things that have been happening. But this is going to be a short episode because, well, I don't have a lot of time.
As much as I try to be organized and all that stuff, I don't have a lot of time for myself. But I'm happy to report that last weekend and this weekend, I was able to get some of the Halloween decorations out on the front lawn. Most, like, well, I guess most of the big stuff, I would say. And it's really starting to take shape now that we're about to enter October. Halloween month. And really, I would like to have started earlier in September. But it was just too darn hot, first of all. And there were too many things going on in our lives. But let's face it, there's always something going on in our lives here at the Wallace Gifford household. So um yes, I would say my new friend, but she's not really my new friend. I've known her for about a year now. Uh, Marianna was gracious enough to come over and help me get most of the stuff, all of the stuff, the Halloween stuff, out of the garage last weekend. And we got maybe 25% of it up. And then we kind of ran out of we had it ran out of energy. And so this weekend she came back, she was gracious enough to come back, and we got up two of the big pieces. We got up the headless horseman, which is kind of like our signature piece here, and we got up um that went so well. I mean, so well, I guess you could say that. We had some little snafuos, but that went so well that we decided to tackle the smaller of the animatronic dinosaur skeletons that I bought this year that are new. The Trisor, no, not the Trisorop. I keep wanting to say the Trisoratops. I don't know why, but it's the Velociraptor. Okay. So we got it out of the box and we looked at it and we said, well, how hard does this look? It doesn't look hard at all. Oh, those are the you should you should never do something like that. You whammy yourself, as as one of my friends would say. Um, so we we started putting the legs together, and that's where we ran into a big problem that delayed us probably like an hour of fiddling with that. Um, and then ironically, or maybe not ironically, but ironically, one of the guys that I went to kindergarten with, so I've known him all that time. I mean, I haven't kept in close touch with him all that time, but I've seen him at reunions, and I went through all the way through school with him from kindergarten to high school, bicycled by our house, and I didn't recognize him, I didn't really give it a second thought. And he circled back, and then I heard Tracy. And I looked over and yeah, and he had a bike helmet on, and so anyway, that was that was unexpected, but I will say that when you're out there and you're decorating or you're working on your Halloween stuff, that people driving by will stop or they'll s or they'll slow down, especially if they have kids in the car, and they roll down the windows, and the kids are like, Oh, that's oh wow, that's so great. And everybody's like, Oh wow, you're doing a great job, and so it makes it all worthwhile, especially in a year that sucked so badly for both of us. I really wish that Bill could be out there with me, but it's just it's it would be too much for him. And right now, it would just be too much for him. But uh I show him I take pictures and I take videos and I tell them all about it. And um yeah, it's just a great experience, you know, just the the the actual action of putting the things together once you get it up and it's working, fingers crossed, it's very satisfying. And then to hear people's reaction to it. I mean, obviously, not everybody slows down or not everybody stops, but that's okay.
Um, so I think really the decorating part and the admiring part to me is almost more fun than the trick-or-treater part because the trick-or-treater part is just super stressful here. That's what I've realized with the with the pets. Uh, they both get super stressed now. I know last year the cat threw up several times. Our cat has anxiety. I don't mean to laugh, but it's true. Our cat has anxiety, and just like our horse did, and I don't know what that means, but as he got older, um, so I have to medicate him sometimes. And I don't know if I told you this, but when I was visiting Bill in the hospital, I was gone, you know, a really good portion of every day. And he hardly threw up when I was when I was gone, right? So I started to think it was me, which didn't make me feel very good. But also when I'm here, he keeps
begging because he wants to get up on the bathroom sink, because he wants to drink water out of the faucet. And we do have a new bathroom faucet, by the way. I don't know if I mentioned that, but um, we did get kind of a reprieve in time. I kind of felt like we had more time there for a while, and so I asked the plumber to come in and do some some work, and we got a new bathroom faucet, which is great. I love it. It's more up to date, and it's higher, so Bubby can uh more easily get the water coming out of it, which he loves. And we also got a new toilet, which was just so fantastic. I just I flush even when I don't have to flush because it's just it's so great that it actually works. That's probably more than you needed to know, but uh Bubby wants to get up on the sink all the time when I'm here with him, and then he'll just drink a lot of water because he gets obsessed with the water, and then he'll throw it all up. So I anyway, that's that's where we're at. Um and he gets and he gets anxious when a lot of people come by. I I kind of wish that I had the kind of cat that was like really chill, that was like, hey, how you doing? You know, I love people and I love activity. He's really not that kind of cat. Um, and I get it, that's fine. And then Brownie just our dog just goes hysterical when there's any kind of extra activity. I mean, later on she'll conk out, which is great, but she um she just gets hyperactive and she barks when there's strangers here, and that probably also freaks him out a little bit. Anyway, I digress. So I'm very grateful to Marianna. She's a great partner in Halloween decorating, she loves Halloween just like I do. I mean, she's the best partner. So thank you, Marianna, if you're listening. I love you. You're wonderful. And uh I wish that it could be Halloween every week. Um and there's always so much more that I want to do that I just that I just don't have the energy or the time to do. But uh, and I have to kind of do it, you know, on Saturdays because the rest of the week is kind of tied up with everything
else. Um, we had we've had another little snafu with Bill's health, and we're also trying to catch up on other things, so we had to go to another doctor visit today that was unexpected, but we're also trying to get caught up on his dental cleanings, which is not a lot of fun, but it's very necessary for him. And uh for me, my you might remember that I fell on my front tooth, and this was I think this was three weeks ago, or was it two? I think it was three. So I'm not in any pain, but I really can't bite off anything. Like I can't, you know, eat a sandwich. Um, because it doesn't feel like I have any strength there. It feels, I mean, I don't think my tooth would fall out. It's not loose or anything, but it just feels really funky if I put any pressure on it. So uh we delayed my deep cleanings for that. I'm gonna go tomorrow and have part of it done. Oh yay! I'm so excited about that. And we're supposed to have part of his deep cleanings done later in the week. So it's like dental week, uh, which is so fun. And I'm still trying to get my car back in to um, I took it in, I think, at the first part of when Bill was in the hospital, and something happened when I got it back that they didn't fix it right. And I've been trying to get it back in, and you know, that hasn't worked out so well for me because it just doesn't seem like there's enough hours in the day. So uh we had a discussion last night about should I really be taking time to do all these Halloween decorations? And my answer was yes, because I haven't really done a lot of stuff that's fun or that's you know, yeah, that's fun, right? I haven't done a lot, I mean it's work, of course, it's physical work. Last weekend when we did this, uh, I I ended up walking. I have my pedometer on my phone, and I had my phone with me the whole time. And I walked like three miles just here on our our lot, on our, you know, backyard, front yard, backyard, front yard. And I was exhausted uh by nighttime. And then Sunday, I was like, oh my gosh, what did I do to myself? It was like I had gone to Disneyland or something. But this weekend, I did a lot of, I still did a lot of walking, but I felt better. I felt stronger. So I mean, maybe I should be doing this every weekend. Just just imagine. I'm not eating as much because I can't chew off anything, like can't have a hamburger. Um, so I'm eating mostly saw food, um, which is kind of a bummer. Like, I couldn't even eat pizza or like a sandwich or a hamburger or really or a taco or anything crunchy that has to be bitten off with your front teeth, forget about it. Uh so I'm trying to be patient. Trying to be patient with that. Um trying to just not go like, do I need a root canal? I hope not, because I will I will be very upset. That would be a um, that would be a disaster for me. And at some point, I still need to get my cataract, at least one of my cataracts fixed, because now my vision is it's getting more challenging to read. I can still read, I can still drive, I'm fine, but I can tell that it's getting worse slowly, but it's getting worse, and I need to take time to do that. I'm also catching up on some of my medical checkups that got put on hold because of Bill's hospitalization, but I had to wait to get the new appointments. So we'll see. So there's just a lot going on.
Do I take care of myself? I really try. Uh, I really try to sleep as much as I possibly can every night. I tweaked my back the other day. Uh was the end of last week, I think. My back was like, you have just my back was saying to me, you have just got to be kidding. Right? Just does your body ever say that to you? Well, my back was saying that to me. And so I went to bed. I took, not only did I take my Benadryl, which I've always taken to try to help me fall asleep, I took um my Motrin, and I took my melatonin, which I never thought that worked, but it's really, really helped me, I think, to fall asleep. Because it's hard for me to turn my brain off, let's face it. You know, there's a lot going on in this brain. Good or bad, there's a lot going on in this brain. Uh, I also took um slightly expired muscle relaxer, baclefin. So I slept like a baby, and I woke up completely. I mean, is that enough? Like it's, you know, it's not like taking narcotics or anything. But uh I slept like a baby and I did that two nights. My back felt great. I felt like I had really slept. So I do. I take care of myself as much as I can, you know, sleeping, eating, drinking water. I need to probably be a little bit better about that. Um, but I, you know, I want to try to find the time to get my hair dyed again. Because I'm starting to look like old gray hag woman. And uh I need to I need to set aside like three hours to go and get that done, right? Uh so anyway, the challenges of caretaking. I really hand it to people that do this full-time or do it for a living. I have reached out to some people to ask for help, but uh the people that I've asked, it's not the right time for them. So I continue to look for opportunities for help because I realize that I'm not gonna be able to do this full-time forever. Uh, and Bill needs more help some days than I can really give him. So there you go. That's
that. And yeah, happy fifth anniversary to me. I know that there have been some people that have reached out to me wanting to do interviews on the Only Child Diaries, and I'll say that I I'm so very open to that, and I would love to interview people. To me, it's finding the time to do that, but also the editing. And I I don't have an editor, I edit all my own episodes for better or for worse. And um, so I know a lot of people have reached out to me, and I just don't I don't have the time to set that up and to do it. Uh, I'm sad to say right now, I don't have the bandwidth within me to do that. So um if you've sent me a request and you're listening to this, I apologize. I will get back to you though, I promise. Just uh don't give up on me, okay? That's what I say to myself every day. Tracy, don't give up on yourself. Anyway, stay positive. That's all I've got for today. Next week, we'll tackle another topic together. I hope you'll
join me. If you like this episode, please follow the Only Child Diaries Podcast on Apple Podcasts or other platforms you might listen on. And consider rating Only Child Diaries and writing a review. It helps others to find us. Please share it with a friend you think might like it as well. Visit my Instagram page, Only Child Diaries, or Facebook, Only Child Diaries Podcast. Thanks for listening. I'm Tracy Wallace, and these are the Only Child Diaries.
