Quotes, Bugs & Big Truths: What’s Crawling Across Your Mind (and Legs)
This one opens with trauma — the 3 a.m. kind. Lori, deep asleep, felt something crawl across the back of her thigh, screamed, and launched out of bed, while her husband Mark bolted up yelling through his CPAP mask like a furious Top Gun pilot and Bo the dog watched the whole scene like they'd both lost their minds. The bug was never found; Mark maintains it was a dog whisker; the bug man has been summoned regardless. Once everyone recovers, Lori pulls out something she wouldn't let Vonda preview — a Medium article called "10 Quotes That Have Elevated My Life" — so she can get Vonda's reactions live. What follows is a conversation about growth, mindset, leadership, and control that lands squarely on flower shop life.
Rivers, silence, and the mirror
"No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river, and he's not the same man." Lori had to read it three times, then went down a research rabbit hole about particles and constant change. Vonda's take is more practical: the same situation at 25, 35, and 45 is never actually the same situation, because you're different each time. (Lori's proof: first labor, "I'm not having this baby"; third baby, a friend shows up with a Sonic Dr Pepper — here we go again.)
"When you can bear your own silence, you're free" hit Lori hardest. Her brain is rarely quiet, and a heavy season last year forced her to learn to be okay in silence and aloneness — for her, sitting on a blanket in front of the fireplace, praying and listening, because "he's not gonna speak over my loud mouth." The hosts' challenge to listeners: try a walk with no earbuds, no podcast, no music. Just look up and be aware.
"Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding about ourselves" (Carl Jung). Lori now catches herself mid-irritation and asks: why is that triggering me? What is it about me that I haven't dealt with? They're just being who they are — I can't change them, but I can change me. And Matthew McConaughey's "be less impressed and more involved" sparks a fun disagreement: Vonda protests that she can be genuinely impressed by design skill — what she can't stand is people trying to impress her. The quote's real point, the hosts land on, is trading spectating ("I could never do that") for curiosity, openness, and showing up.
Opinions, perspective, and owning your story
Marcus Aurelius's "everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact; everything we see is a perspective, not a truth" gets a florist-flavored workout — yes, absolute truths exist (water is wet), but the hosts had literally just been laughing over their differing design-style opinions, and millions of people love a different design perspective. That's what makes the world go around. "Be the change you want to see in the world" is one Lori has heard come out of Vonda's mouth: practice what you preach, start with yourself, lead by example. And Brené Brown's "owning our story can be hard, but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it" brings both hosts to Marlon, a past podcast guest whose bravery in telling a beautiful, hard story has surely changed lives — because he owns it instead of running from it. The companion quote, "not why the addiction, but why the pain," extends that into compassion: seeing past a behavior to the hurt underneath, and — as Vonda adds — actually letting people move forward instead of keeping them chained to a story they don't want to live anymore.
Patterns, and the myth of control
Therapist and author Esther Perel's line — "it takes two people to create a pattern, but only one to change it" — turns out to be a leadership quote in disguise. Lori connects it straight to the toxic-employee talk she and Vonda gave at Texas State: a toxic employee creates a pattern, and it's the manager's job to break it, often by removing them. It's hard, loud, and sometimes tearful — but the peace afterward is incredible, the whole team feels it, and they finally see how bad the environment had become and that you truly care for them.
The closer: "Relax. Nothing is under control." Nobody knows what they're doing; we're all figuring it out day by day, and all you control is how you respond. Vonda — a self-declared control person — concedes the point with a story from the Texas State expo: a shop owner beside her fielding call after call (driver didn't show, employee out sick) while visibly deflating, unable to fix any of it from a convention hall. That's exactly why so many owners never leave the shop — Murphy's Law feels guaranteed — and exactly why they should go anyway, because being in a room of people with the same passion and the same problems is where you learn how others handle them. You're not in it by yourself. We're all in this together.
Key takeaways
- You're never the same person twice — old situations deserve fresh responses, not old reactions.
- Practice bearing silence: one walk a week with no earbuds makes room for the quiet voice you can't hear otherwise.
- When someone irritates you, ask what it's revealing about you before you try to change them.
- It only takes one person to break a pattern — including the toxic-employee pattern in your shop, and the peace afterward is worth the hard conversation.
- Nothing is under control; your response is. Leave the shop, get the education, and stop letting Murphy's Law keep you home.