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3 Cocktails In
Addicting conversations between friends who have been there, done that and still want more.
We are 3 friends who got this crazy idea to start a podcast based on our friendships, family lives, professional lives and experiences! This idea kept coming up in our conversations, especially after a cocktail or two or maybe three, and we finally decided to ACT on it!
We don't claim to be experts on too many things, but friendship? Well, we've got that down. We're making our way through major life changes, searching for work that excites us, busting myths associated with 'old' people, and keeping a sense of humor about it all.
Self employed, boss - CHECK
Mom, wife, single - CHECK
Rural, suburban, urban life - CHECK
Vodka, gin, wine - CHECK
Make sure to subscribe to our channel ~ FOMO is real and it sucks.
Amy, Kitty & Stacey
P.S. Isn't our intro music great?! Yah, we think so too. Thank you, Ivy States for "I Got That Wow".
3 Cocktails In
The Final Episode: Reflections on Our Podcast Journey
Three friends raise their red mocktails in a bittersweet toast as they announce their final podcast episode after nearly two years of weekly recordings. What began as pandemic-era Zoom calls evolved into a journey that pushed them far beyond their comfort zones, teaching them valuable lessons about technology, friendship, and embracing change.
"When you let something go, it doesn't mean it was a failure. It means it was accomplished," one host reflects, capturing the spirit of this farewell conversation. The trio looks back at favorite moments – from interviewing reluctant but ultimately enthusiastic guests to documenting their adventures in Paris, Florence, and Venice despite minimal language skills. They reminisce about episodes that resonated most with listeners, including discussions about making new friends in midlife, career transitions, and personal growth.
Throughout their podcasting journey, these women navigated significant life changes together. One returned to a relationship after five years apart, another received news of becoming a grandmother, and all three made career shifts that transformed their daily lives. One host shares how she finally established a consistent exercise routine after leaving her corporate job, noting that sometimes we need decompression periods before we can move forward: "It just wasn't time yet... but then, all of a sudden, it was time."
As they transition back to private weekly Zoom calls – "scheduling friendship" as they call it – the hosts express gratitude to their loyal listeners and leave the door open for possible "special edition" episodes for major life announcements. Their parting wisdom: "Do the thing and surround yourself with people who will cheer you on" and "Pour your energies into the good things that you want to happen."
Want more inspiration for embracing change and stepping outside your comfort zone? Follow our Facebook page, where the conversation continues even as this chapter closes.
Amy, Kitty & Stacey
P.S. Isn't our intro music great?! Yah, we think so too. Thank you, Ivy States for "I Got That Wow".
All right, look I got that. Wow, who wants some handsome right now? We got that. Turn it up loud. I know you're wondering how I got that. Wow, here I go. Here I go, coming. I can't ever stop. I'm a tour de force running. Get me to the top. I don't need an invitation. I'm about to start a celebration.
Speaker 2:Good evening, hi Amy, hi Stacey, hello, hello, hello Catherine. We're so formal, aren't we?
Speaker 3:Yes, we are nothing if we are not formal. Yeah, that's right. Oh, red drinks, do we all have red?
Speaker 2:I should have put it in my glass. Cheers, ladies forgot to send the memo, yeah all the other memos we forgot to send this has been. This has been my go-to mocktail the entire summer and I think it's going to go into the fall and it might be my year-round drink. It's sugar-free cranberry or like, like tiny, tiny amount of sugar in it, cranberry juice, like to hear, and then the rest is soda and a big squeeze of lemon. It is refreshing.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I would have to say that's what mine is as well, and I don't have vodka tonight either, it's just cranberry juice. Cranberry juice and my, you know, is Fresca. Yeah, and I have a San Pellegrino pomegranate and orange and it's super good. So refreshing, Look at us.
Speaker 2:Well, we are recording this on Sunday night. Stacey and I are beginning the week. Amy is getting ready to coast into her weekend. Beginning of the week. Amy is getting ready to coast into her weekend. We have some news for our devoted listeners and viewers. It's all good. We're letting everybody know that this is our last episode. Yeah, yep, we are wrapping it up. We're gonna we're just gonna chat a little bit here tonight and kind of reflect on why we did this and all that we've been through in the last year and a half and just kind of some general thoughts. So it's a little. It's a little melancholy, but I think it's also exciting.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, I mean, you know you think about it. We made it a year and 10 months. That's a long time Now. We were pretty consistent up until this last few weeks that we weren't Um, and then we made the decision to just stop. And who knows what we'll do?
Speaker 2:we might pick it up another day, I don't know we don't know yeah yeah, I mean, you never know if there might be like a big happening or something in one of our lives we might have to do a special edition right, there you go breaking news. We're gonna like really soup up the technology and get the words rolling across the bottom.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, you know, it's just been one of those things that, like most of what we've talked about over the last 10 months, is an opportunity presents itself. We, you know, we've done things, we still want to do things. Um, we're well, we're well set up for it and you know, we've got some stuff in the works that we're each kind of gonna march on to a different little try, something new thing yeah, as you were saying that.
Speaker 2:So and I wish I could repeat back exactly what you just said we wanted to do things, we did things, we did things, we did things and we've got some balls in the air right. We've got some. We've got some things going that are kind of taking time, that we, you know that we had before, and so it's just, it's a shift and it's like. This is we've talked about this consistently through our episodes that life is constantly shifting and changing and you have to be able to adapt and make changes. And when you let something go, it doesn't mean that it was a failure. It doesn't mean that it's done in a bad way. It means that that's accomplished. And now we're taking all of that and we continue on with it. I feel really good about the content that we created, the new friends that we made through it and the consistency. Stacey, you are absolutely right. People might not know we were recording every single week.
Speaker 3:Yep, every week. We learned at 10. We had no idea what we were doing literally in the beginning. We had no idea what sites to use. You know to record. You know we record one. The episodes are saved on another. You know we also put it out to YouTube. You know it was a lot at the beginning to get figured out and you know we learned a lot, that's for sure. Yeah, and even though we didn't conquer all the technology, we certainly now understand it, kind of. Yeah, we know what we don't know. Now, that's right.
Speaker 3:I've been thinking quite a lot in the last couple of weeks about just one of those kind of old cliches, but I really I mean most cliches have nugget of truth in them, but I really do believe that nothing great happens in your comfort zone. Yeah, and this was a big leap for us. This was, I can't believe we're going to do this. We had, you know, a little bit of family and friends. Go, you're doing what and why. And I feel like, because of the conversations the three of us have had, the conversations we've had with other people, all of you who have sent messages and chimed in, you know, again, some of the best and greatest compliments to me are the people who said yeah, I'm cleaning out my closet and I'm talking to you guys while I'm listening.
Speaker 3:And I just love that, which, for me, that makes this a big success. It also gives me confidence to know that I can tackle something new that I want to do, and if I don't know how to do it, I can figure it out. I will figure it out. Yeah, and I think that's probably one of the biggest things. I mean, so many people our age are trying how to trying to figure out how to dial back, kick back, you know, sort of thing, and I feel like the three of us are are are fired up from these new challenges that present themselves, decided to try some things.
Speaker 2:I agree.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:What were favorite, like favorite moments or conversations or episodes. What do you guys think back on? And smile.
Speaker 3:I don't know what my favorite one was. I put out, you know, like a re I don't know re post of our very first one. I think it's the funniest thing to watch if you watch it, or at least for me, because we were all trying to smile the entire time we were all trying to look, you know, up on the camera instead of down or fidget.
Speaker 3:You know what I mean. We were trying so hard to look, you know, like we were professional and then about oh, I don't know, after the, probably halfway through the first year, we just got a little more comfortable and you know. You know what I mean. Yeah, yeah, less, less smiley the whole time, not that we weren't funny, we thought we were hilarious, but not trying to, you know. You know, just be more ourselves the rest of the way. Growth.
Speaker 2:That's growth, there you go.
Speaker 3:There you go, and that was with a T-H, not G-R-r-o-s-s gross that's right, you know the sound cuts out.
Speaker 3:let's just clarify that. Yeah, we maybe had some of that too. Um, I really enjoyed the episodes when we didn't necessarily have a plan. Uh, you know, when we recapped our trip to France, when, Kitty, you talked about your trip to. You know some of the paparazzi stuff when we would talk about our most hated phrases. You know things like that that just those, I think for me were, were very enjoyable, very fun, more fun, yeah, yeah, and you know, part of it again, for me, I just wanted to get on and have good conversations and have other people, who maybe don't have tons of people around them to talk to all the time, to feel like they could join in. And you know, I hope people enjoyed that.
Speaker 3:Probably, we heard quite a few of phrases and words that people dislike, so I know that that was an episode that resonated. Yeah, that's true. The pet peeves, yeah, and I think one of our goals early on was to put out content that other people could identify with. Yes, absolutely, you know. So we were trying to come up with topics and have conversations on things that we thought people would want to hear. Yeah, Think back to where we were, all of us what 22 months ago in our jobs and what was really riling us up then and how, even we're in, we're doing slightly different things or we've adopted better, different attitudes about what it is we're doing.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean that's kind of huge.
Speaker 2:It is, it is huge.
Speaker 3:Kitty had a side hustle and a corporate job. I just started in a new job with a new company.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, there's. There's stepping stones along. You know, there's so many metaphors that can be used. Everything leads you to what is next, and so I've been thinking about this lately, and I can't remember if this was something that we talked about on one of our one of the last episodes that we recorded, or if it was part of the three of the conversation the three of us were having after we got done. But do you remember when I was talking about how, like the year leading up to me leaving my job, when I would drive to work, I would daydream about what my days were going to look like once I finally quit? Uh-huh.
Speaker 2:I had the entire thing laid out and I was super excited about it. And it started with I've always been an early riser, so it would start with getting up early, getting my workout in and you know, doing this and this. And I said to you guys I was so disappointed in myself because I hadn't started that routine. I was still doing the. I would get up pretty early but I'd make coffee, which I'd love to just sit and you know drink my coffee and pull up my tablet, look at email and whatever. And I said I was so incredibly disappointed in myself.
Speaker 2:And Amy, I think you were the one who said just because you're not doing it right now doesn't mean you're not going to right. And it was probably right after that because I I looked at my app. Today I am 43 days in to a brand new routine that includes getting my little asterisk onto me, either outside or on onto the treadmill downstairs, um and a three, three mile walk. And then I found this amazing woman on YouTube. So I'm doing her um weight workouts in the morning and I and focusing on better eating and everything. I feel so good. So, physically, I feel like I feel the best that I've felt in probably the last 10 years and two. I'm so freaking proud of myself. Yeah.
Speaker 2:But, what I had to remind myself was that it just wasn't time yet yeah but then, all of a sudden, it was time. All of a sudden it was time. It was like this transition period, like I had to completely decompress that job out of my. I had to shed that.
Speaker 3:I had to get rid of the toxins yes, you did a corporate cleanse it was a 10-month corporate cleanse, but anyway it's done but wait, kitty, think about this how many years have you been working, working, working, working, working, working, working? Yeah, what 25?
Speaker 2:Well, no, no 35.
Speaker 3:Okay, so 30, 35 years. It took you 10 months. Yeah, you know that's really. I think you're allowed 10 months, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So and I'm you know, I'm watching Bill now as transition into retirement and, like, if it's middle of the afternoon and I see him taking a nap on the couch, I just stand there for a second and I look at him and I just think he's, he's decompressing.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know right and yeah, so I don't know I just think it'll.
Speaker 3:It'll take a bit. Is that what you're saying? It'll take? Them a bit to figure out. Okay, now I'm ready to get going Something.
Speaker 2:And I'm not saying that he's but that's all he's doing. That's not the case, but you know it's like. Yeah, but you know it's like yeah, you can take the nap at 2 o'clock in the afternoon. I just hope that everybody has heard us loud and clear that it's worth it to take risks and do the things that you have always dreamed of doing, and I just feel like the world that we live in today is way more accepting of that and will cheer you on. Yeah, absolutely ever before.
Speaker 3:Well, I mean, stacey, when we started this, you and I hadn't been to Paris. Well, I'd been to Paris a million years ago. We've been to Paris and Florence and Venice, yep, and we didn't know. We don't speak French beyond 7th grade French class and we spoke no Italian.
Speaker 3:I get asked for that. You know, now that people know that we went, I get asked well, how did you? You know how get asked, well, how did you? You know, how did you plan it and how did you? You know, know where to go and what to do and, um, you know how did you speak the language? You know all of these questions and you know my answer is always well, I mean, that's the, that's the great part about you, know the interwebs, you can plan your own trip, you can figure it out and, yeah, we didn't ever have too much issue with language. You know the, the language barrier. We just jumped in and we did it and, like stacy says, how are we gonna know if it was good or bad?
Speaker 1:we weren't there.
Speaker 3:We don't have anything to compare it to. Yeah, everything we did was good. So, yeah, I would highly recommend you not go to florence over fourth of july. I'm just to put that out there to the world. It was warm, yeah it was warm.
Speaker 3:Feel good about that. I think people have enjoyed listening to my Single Life, all the single ladies, all the single ladies. That often provided some good humor, I think. Yes, thank you for sharing that. Yeah, um, so now I'm gonna drop a nugget and then I'm not gonna talk about it, which will be super funny. Oh, okay, I've come full circle after five years and I'm finding myself back where I was, only better. I'm seeing the X. So who knew?
Speaker 3:Talk about personal growth and making changes and coming out better and taking risks and second chances. It just fits all those categories yes, yep, yeah, and plus. It's good, really good shock factor. It is Some people Kitty and I already knew. But I think when you told us the us first time, we were a little bit yeah, a little bit struck, you know. So, yeah, yeah, yeah, so there's that. So just just because you stopped doing something for a while, you can go back to it if you want. Yeah, yeah, hopefully, with the hindsight is always you know Right, you always learn, you learn, you move on, you know you go back to what you were doing.
Speaker 1:Come back better.
Speaker 3:We wish you the best Thank you. Always, yeah, always. So, yeah, come back better. We wish you the best, thank you, yeah, always, yeah, yep, always. Sure, kitty, did you say your?
Speaker 2:favorite episode, I think we got off um I. I think about all the episodes where we had special guests. I thought that was really fun and we tried to cover a lot of different topics within that, from travel experts, sarah launching her business by the way, her yoga six studio is wildly successful, so we were talking to sarah right before she opened maybe a month before she opened her studio. Yeah, talk about taking, taking a risk. Um, of course, of course, deanna, such wise.
Speaker 3:What was the first?
Speaker 2:topic. We had Anger issues, anger, anger, yep anger and then forgiveness, a life coach that we had. Yeah, I just I thought it was really fun. It was always interesting the reaction that we would get when we would ask people if they would like to be. Oh, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:If they would come on to the podcast Right, because there were some that we asked that said no.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 3:No way they were going to do it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:But I think they all had fun doing that.
Speaker 3:I did too. Yeah, when we asked my sister to come in for the whole Oscar thing, that's right. That's their deal, and I think that she gave us a really good good plan for for upcoming Oscar seasons. I think that that's kind of brilliant good plan for for upcoming oscar seasons I think that that's kind of brilliant.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I liked, I liked that one. Yeah, um, she really didn't want to do it, she absolutely did not want to do it. But I older sister, strong-armed her and got her to come on and, um, she did, and afterwards she said that was nothing like what I thought it was going to be. Yeah, it's a conversation. Yeah, we're just talking. What'd you want, what'd you watch, what'd you think?
Speaker 1:Should we?
Speaker 3:watch it, should we not? Yeah, so I think that I hope that, you know. I think everybody who came on was real good with it. Yeah, you know. So think everybody who came on was real good with it. Yeah, you know, so that was fun at least what we talked about and what we put out. Yeah, absolutely yeah. My daughter, mallory, was on one episode we talked. She talked about, um, you know, finding her soulmate, you know, after many years of dating. So that was interesting um and now she's having a baby, she's having a baby.
Speaker 3:Yes, she's having a baby. Um, due date in early october. So coming up, yeah, exciting. Yeah, it is silly things. Lots of success stories. Yeah, speaking of daughters, I did get my butt chewed once. Oh, you know, we had a great episode talking about her wedding and I was promptly scolded, like 10 days later, about how I overstepped boundaries and how she kindly asked that I take it down and I had to tell you guys and you're like, oh, that was so much fun. We love it was. Yeah, it was a really good one and got a lot of views. So, yeah, yeah, but my mama's make mistakes too. So took it down, learned a lesson, I learned a lesson, oh yeah.
Speaker 3:Never mind what you going to do so.
Speaker 2:So, when the activity that somewhat led up to us doing the podcast is that when COVID happened, our small group that we affectionately call the broad squad, which includes two others Well, actually there's more than that the delegate from Texas, she, she would be included as well Um, so, three others. But we would do weekly zoom calls just as a way of staying in touch, because I mean, we used to, like, monthly, make sure we were all going out for dinner and we just saw each other more regularly. So we started doing the zoom calls and then, when we were on a girl's weekend and we were three cocktails in then we said let's do the podcast. That's where we are right now, and so, as we close out the podcast, we're going to go back to that weekly routine of gathering on zoom, because life is busy and there's nothing wrong with scheduling conversations, scheduling right, I was gonna say scheduling friendship, but I mean right yeah, you're scheduling time, you're?
Speaker 2:I mean, it's an investment. Everybody's busy doing their lives and it's important to make time, because it's too easy for things to just disappear, right, if you don't schedule it.
Speaker 3:All of a sudden you're two weeks later, and two months later, you know, six months later, and you've done nothing, you know. So it's nice that we're still going to plan to have our conversations. It just won't be recorded all the time.
Speaker 1:And we won't always have makeup on. There might be jammies involved.
Speaker 3:Right, that's the biggest thing. Yeah, yeah, it's one of the. I will say one of the challenges is that I have I have the odd schedule, so either I'm putting makeup and getting dressed on my day off or these two have to put on makeup and get dressed on their days off, and so it wasn't as easy to always schedule.
Speaker 3:And then we'd been recording on Sundays, but then it was football season. Certain people got mad that we were kicking them off the internet, so there were some challenges there. What are we going to do? Yeah, what are we going to do? I know, nope, I've enjoyed this past. Um, you know, since our flip over to our new, our second year, we've talked a lot about making new friends.
Speaker 3:Um even though we have. Each of us have a ton of friends. Um, we literally talked about how, at our age, do you make new friends? Right, and I just saw a good you know reel as I'm flipping through stuff that talked about. You know, a woman of our age moved across the country and her, you know, she sat around for a while and just was not doing anything. So then one day it clicked and she decided she was never going to say no to anything, you know. So if she got invited somewhere, she would say she would go, if you know, and she would be the one to invite people. If something was going on, she'd find the people to get, you know, to go. And that's how she um, met new people, made new friends. You know, and I think that's a good good thing to think about. You know, don't ever say no. If people invite you somewhere, go. You know, if someone invites you, by all means say yes, yes, absolutely Right, very good.
Speaker 3:Um, speaking of of which, how's the pickleball league going? Stacy? Well, pickleball, I mean, we try, we try our you know, our schedules have been so busy, plus we have two that are injured, not from pickleball. I was going to ask no, no pickleball injuries, but we do have two that were are injured, so they're out and, like I said, we've kind of we, we, when we went to italy, that was kind of a fell over to, you know, early monday, tuesdays, and then some others went on vacation and other you know, so it's been hard to get together. But I think this week, tomorrow and Tuesday I think, we'll have a bigger, bigger group.
Speaker 3:So, yeah, it's still going to be, a really fun thing to carry on into the fall too. There's no reason you can't play with. You know, switch it on. Oh yeah, no, we will. We'll keep it going until we all get bored of it, or I don't know, who knows. And we have a potential place we can play this winter too. So it just depends on how you know, how we want to, how long we want to go. Very good, I know We'll see.
Speaker 2:It's awesome.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, any other thoughts I?
Speaker 3:just want to say thank you to you too. I mean, you've always been sounding boards, you've always listened, you've always been supportive, made little corrections and nudges where they've needed to be. I know this won't end, but I hope that other people get have people in their world that they can do the same for them.
Speaker 3:Yes, well, I think we should shout out to the people that were listening you know, I am guessing some of our regular listeners are going to go oh, now what you know? Now what am I going to listen to? Because, oddly enough, I had no expectations going in and early on. You know we have some of our earlier episodes that have you know a couple hundred listens or watches, whatever. But there's a pretty steady 70, 80 listeners per week, yeah, which I'm always surprised that anyone hung with us this long, honestly. But yeah, there were a bunch. So, like I said, I thank all the listeners. Um, certainly family. We found out who was supportive and who wasn't. That's for sure Between our, between our family and friends, right?
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Well, I think we're gonna. Um, I do think we're going to keep the Facebook page going for a bit. We will Get your conversations in over there.
Speaker 1:We're not totally disappearing.
Speaker 3:There might be some big announcements, breaking events, you never know, right. I mean, we might win the lottery we do need to spend the money. We got to start playing, though, didn't we? Didn't we decide that if we're going to win, we need to play? Yeah, you miss 100% of the shots. You don't take people, there you go. That is true. Yes, that's right, take the shot. Do we have any shots as we sign off? I used mine early because I was going to mention that of never saying no, always, never saying no.
Speaker 2:Awesome, yeah, kitty. Well, I think it's just the main, the main takeaway and the driving thought behind why we did this. Do the thing and surround yourself with people who will cheer you on. There are people in your life that don't, yeah, there are people in your life who question or don't support you. You don't, you don't need those people in your life, nope, and that might feel a little harsh, but if you've got loved ones around you and they don't support you, it's not right.
Speaker 3:So, yeah, similar, mine is going to be. Use whatever energy you have to put forth in the positive. No need to worry about what could happen the negative. Pour your energies into the good things that you want to happen. Yeah, yeah, yes, that's good advice. Yes, want to happen, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yes, that's good advice. Yes, it is Good. There we go.
Speaker 2:There we go. So one last time we will listen to that fabulous music that was selected for our opening and closing, Right and yeah, just a huge thank you to everybody who's been along this adventure with us.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Alright one more time.
Speaker 3:Cheers, cheers.
Speaker 1:Bye-bye, all right, stop. I'm a tour de force running. Give me to the top. I don't need a invitation. I'm about to start a celebration. Let me in. Brought a good time for some friends. Turn it up loud past 10.
