Monika Casey is a”C Plus Single Mom”
We bring you a live chat with funny mama/actress/producer/standup comedian/co-host of Jeff Lewis Live on Sirius XM AND self-described “C+ Single Mom,” Monika Casey. Enjoy!
Jen: Hello everybody on Facebook World. I am here to hang out with you live on Facebook and behind the scenes on Instagram with Monika Casey and I can see that you’re a single mom and your kid’s talking to you. So if you need to talk to your kid, like go talk to your kid, right?
Monika Casey: I did the (gives stern look).
Jen (shocked): But it worked. She waited!
Monika Casey: I know. Well, I said, “If somebody calls on mommy’s phone,” (but this was, of course, half an hour ago) I said, “you have to let me know because I’m waiting to hear from a friend back and then of course, she’s like, “Someone’s calling!” And I’m like, “Tough.”
Jen: Well, I always thought I would master “The Look” look that parents give their kid and then-
Monika Casey: The fear of God, right? That look from my mom. My mom would do that she would go. (makes scary stern mom face.)
Jen: That’s it!
Monika Casey: But I think when I do it to my daughter, she just laughs! She thinks it’s hilarious.
Monika Casey & Jen Talk Discipline
Jen: That’s one of the worst things. So your daughter is seven?
Monika Casey: Yes.
Monika Casey and Jen Talk Discipline
Jen: I have a six-year-old and an 11-year-old. And with the eleven-year-old, it’s like, I feel like I have no power. But I don’t want him to know that because he thinks it’s funny. I’m like, “You think it’s funny because I don’t beat you!”… like my parents would have.
Monika Casey: Right, exactly. I mean, you just broke the case wide open. That’s why our parents spanked for sure. Maybe even like publicly spanked sometimes! Like there’d be spankings and then there’d be the threat of like, “I’m gonna pull down your pants right here and spank your bare ass!”
Jen: And that’s something to be terrified of!
Monika Casey: Like with a wooden spoon…
Jen: Right. But the things that I have to threaten are like, “Oh, that’s no dessert tonight.” Yeah. “I’m taking away screentime!” Which is-
Monika Casey: Or “We’re not buying that Polly Pocket tomorrow!”
Jen: Yeah. Like your wonderful life, you know? Yeah, it’s true. So I feel powerless, basically, with this whole parenting thing.
Monika Casey: And I tried to explain privilege recently, and it was so awkward for me because I was like, you know, what do they really understand at seven, you know, but they’re very smart. I was just like, How do I explain what the privilege of your life is without sounding like my parents?
Monika Casey on MomCave LIVE as a C+ Single Mom
Jen: It has occurred to me before, like to look up—this is terrible–to basically get like video on YouTube of starving children, and disasters and show them how some people actually live. And be like, “Let’s look at this instead of somebody playing games on YouTube. Let’s look at this and maybe you could see that we have a pretty damn good actually. It would probably be traumatizing…
Monika Casey: Who knows?
Jen: Our parents did not worry about whether we were traumatized or not.
Monika Casey: No, no, I think it was pretty much the to be seen and not heard. And, you know,
Jen: Yes, so, I didn’t tell everyone who you are, if they don’t already know.
Monika Casey: Hello.
Monika Casey’s Bio, Jeff Lewis Live, and Flipping Out
Jen: Monika is in California, and she’s an actress. She’s a comedian, a stand-up comedian. She writes sketches. And she co-hosts on the Jeff Lewis show on Sirius XM. Call me a little bit about that job. How’d you get that job?
Monika Casey: Well, it was total nepotism, of course. I hired Jeff Lewis to redesign my house when I was married. We have stayed friends ever since. And obviously, I was a fan of his show, “Flipping Out” on Bravo. And yeah, we had such a good time doing it. We’ve stayed friends. And then when he started doing the radio gig, he’s like, “You should come on” and then it just kind of happened more and more. And so now, you know, I’m part of his “gang of chumps.” And it’s pretty fun and his show, it’s like pop culture. It’s the show about nothing. It’s like his show, “Flipping Out” but on the radio. And it’s a good time, and you just kind of feel like you’re having brunch with your friends. And, you know, it’s not great if kids are in the car, but if you’re alone, it’s very entertaining.
Jen: We have Sirius XM in our car, and I love it, but mostly because we listen to Kid’s Place Live. Do you listen to that station?
Monika Casey: I don’t know about that. Maybe I should?
Jen: So actually, it’s really good. So it’s a kids’ station that plays music that we like.
Monika Casey: That’s “appropriate?”
Jen: Yeah. And even some things it plays are like 90’s grunge that we know from growing up but the kids think it’s like new music. It also has kids’ music, but it just has great hosts that are really funny. And so I actually like it. And once my kids discovered Kid’s Place Live, anytime we’re in the car, that’s the station they want to listen to. When they’re not in a car. I just want silence.
Monika Casey: Yes. I know. It’s weird. I’ve just started listening to podcasts during the pandemic and driving and doing things and I just thought, “Well, I’m officially old.” Because normally I would just want to jam out and now I’m listening to podcasts every day.
Podcasts and True Crime for Moms
Jen: Which podcasts do you like?
Monika Casey: I love “SmartLess” with Jason Bateman and Wil Arnett and my gosh, Sean Hayes. And then I also love “Don’t Ask Tig” with Tig Notaro. So good. And then, of course, all the crime ones, but I think my favorite is literally with Rob Lowe.
Jen: Oh my God. He is so funny. He’s on TikTok now, too. We have some comments here from Lynn. Hi, Lynn. And “The Mother Struggle” is watching. You guys. Do you have favorite podcasts? Tell us in the comments which ones we need to listen to. Yeah, I do all the crime things, but I’m always coming to them like a year after everyone.
Monika Casey: Oh, yeah, me too. I think the first one I listened to was “The Root of Evil,” which is so good. But I think it was Yeah, like, way late in the game.
Jen: Yeah, the first one I listened to was “Serial.” Like every six months, I Google, “What happened? Like what’s going on with Adnan Syed?” And I don’t know. But Natatia in the comments says she is True Crime-obsessed. If you need people to solve crimes, get yourself some moms because totally… We can tell when kids are lying. We are sneaky ourselves. And we love true crime.
Monika Casey: Totally.
Jen: This is from “The Mother Struggle”- So she listens to “The Darkest Hour.”
Monika Casey: I’m gonna have to write them down.
Jen: Yeah. Now I know a lot of people that wear their air pods around the house and when they’re like, with their family and they’re cooking dinner, they listen to podcasts and stuff. I cannot get that to work. Have you tried that?
Monika Casey: Oh, air pods in my ear?
Jen: No, wearing them around the house when kids and other humans are here… needing things.
Monika Casey: No. Also, I wouldn’t be able to concentrate. I’d get maybe two minutes into it. And then somebody needs something. Yeah.
Jen: Right. It’s so distracting. And then you have to like go back and yeah. So I wish I had that skill, but I don’t.
Monika Casey: I also can’t do it on an airplane. There’s something about being stuck looking at a wall the whole time. I need the car to be moving or something. I can’t listen to audiobooks or podcasts on an airplane so I don’t know. Oh, that’s interesting. Yeah.
Jen: I used to try to run and I had a rule I made for myself I could only listen to the podcast when I was running. To like motivate me. But I gave that up because running, I gave it up.
Monika: Yeah, I gave up the running.
Jen: That doesn’t seem natural at all. Lynn is saying, “What’s the best podcast app?” I don’t know. I just use iTunes.
Monika Casey: You can go to Apple.
Jen: And did you know, THIS is actually a podcast. This MomCave LIVE podcast. Yep. It’s on iTunes. And it takes me a little while because I’m a mom and but I will put this on iTunes in a couple of days. I just realized we’re in a podcast talking about podcasts.
Monika: Amazing like “The Matrix.” It’s weird.
Monika Casey and Jen Talk TikTok
Jen: That reminds me of something crazy that I saw on TikTok. There’s a man who makes this great argument–I don’t believe it, of course–But that AI is like the, “apocalypse!” Like the book of Revelation. He thinks it’s AI. So he thinks the anti-Christ is AI .I got sucked into that one night.So now the algorithm things I like-
Monika Casey: So the AI Apocalypse and deworming we were talking about earlier, have now taken over your TikTok!
Jen: Right, so TikTok thinks I am just like-
Monika Casey: Oh, yeah. They’re like, This lady is in it to go down the vortex.
Jen: Like, I want to see weird things. Bring it on.
Monika Casey: Mine’s boring. It’s just like people doing dance videos.
Jen: There’s a lot of those. There are a lot of dance videos, but no,
Monika Casey: I’ve never attempted it. I don’t know. It would probably take me a week to do it a 30-second dance or something.
Jen: I saw a really cute one. You know Barbara Corcoran. She’s on Shark Tank. She did a TikTok trying to do one of the dances and it was so cute. Because you know, she basically was like, “I’m old. I can’t figure this out”. And yeah, I love it. And I saw Brooke Shields do one.
Monika Casey: Crazy.
Jen: So Lynn says she’s an Android user. I don’t know. I don’t know.
Monika Casey: They’ve gotta have a podcast app… Just Google.
Jen: Someone tell me what to use on an Android. I don’t know here.
Jen: So are you working on any big projects?
Monika Casey’s Divorce Comedy and Other Projects…
Monika Casey: I did just shoot a movie for Amazon. But I don’t know anything, or whatever I can say about yet. And then I’m working on a scripted show about, you know, my journey. Life after divorce, You know how it takes forever to get anything done in this town, but we’re working on that. And then it’s like a side gig during, you know, the ‘Rona, I’ve sort of just started to help organizing for people. And that’s been really fun.
Monika Casey, Professional Organizer
Jen: Wait! What kind of organizing? Their lives or their homes?
Monika Casey: Mostly home-related. People’s kitchens and bathrooms and pantries. And I’ve done like Zooms just like this where I tell people to break out the garbage bags, and then I just sort of like, nicely shamed them into letting go of things and just getting their lives a little bit more streamlined. And it happened because of Jeff. He just asked me to come over and do his house one day, and I was like, “Okay.” And then he’s just sort of pimped me out to everybody since then.
Jen: You’ve got to do YOUR house or and show everyone your organization someday.
Monika Casey: Yes, I had to get back on it because I organized everything during lockdown. But then, you know, nine months later, your drawers and everything’s full again.
That’s where like the spring cleaning, you know, phrase came from, you have to, once or twice a year preferably go through. I just did my daughter’s room and all of that. And it was like nine bags to the Goodwill.
Jen: Did you do it while she was there?
Monika: Yes. But there was somebody else. So my friend Natasha was there with us. And she sort of worked with her and I was just the garbage bag sherpa. So as soon as something went in, I was out the door. Like no letting it sit there for tomorrow to revisit. No.
Jen: I am a bad mom, at least with my youngest. She’s not at that point where she can even comprehend letting go of a toy or something. So when she’s not home and I go through the room. Once in a while, I’ve forgotten to take that bag right out or put it in the garbage and she finds the thing. And then I’m like, yeah, busted. Totally busted. Because I threw away the McDonald’s toy.
Monika Casey: I think my mom got away with that until I was about 12. Okay. And I came home one day, and it was like she’d given away the cat, you know? And I’m like, okay,
Jen: Oh no. You can’t give away live things.
Monika Casey: She gave away my cat! Yeah, not live things. Yeah. No.
Jen: The kids, rooms are really hard to organize. I had to organize my house because during COVID… My husband is a musician. He tours, okay. He wasn’t touring during COVID. So his band, you know, staying home, they recorded online and stuff. But he wasn’t traveling. And we needed some way to replace that income. So we started renting our house out.
Monika Casey: Oh.
Jen: We have a cool house. It’s a modern house. It’s on 40 acres, and it’s in a kind of resort area.
Monika: Cool.
Jen: I know. It’s crazy. I never thought I would move to the country. But we’re in this sort of resort area people go to for the weekends and stuff. So we started leaving our house and going to stay with my in-laws, or camping or just you know, going somewhere for the weekend while renting our house. But to make your house into an Airbnb, and like, de-personalize it, right, has really made me have to be really, really strict about these things. And like, we can’t have more toys than we can fit in the toy closet to put away.
Monika: Yeah, yeah, you have to get really strict.
Jen: Natatia is watching. She says, “Take no shit and always let them know you’re happy to throw it all away if they’re too tied to their stuff”
Monika Casey: Okay, that’s a tactic. I like that. Yep.
Jen: You want another tactic that works for my older kid? When I told him he could have a yard sale and sell some of his toys. And then he did it and he actually made like $30 or something in a few hours. He now wants to do it all the time. Right? He’s like,
Monika Casey: “Let’s just sell everything. You don’t need this mom.” Yeah. Which is great because it’s self-motivating. He got a taste of that sweet, sweet money.
Jen: Yeah, it’s always about the financial motivation.
So I jump around a lot in conversation because that’s who I am. So jumping back a second to the show about your post-divorce life. Is that is that fictitious? Is it biographical? Is this a reality show? Is it a comedy?
Monika Casey: It is like all of it in one. Comedy and fiction, but of course, always some reality thrown in there. I like to think of it as “Schitt’s Creek” meets “Dead to Me.” Oh, it’s a really fun gal pal situation. And yeah, we’ll see what happens.
Monika Funny Breastfeeding Video
Jen: And then I saw something else you made online. That was really funny. I saw your M.O.M. sketch.
Monika Casey: So I wrote that with a friend when we were both breastfeeding, And we wanted to create because we were both stuck at home. And she knew how to play the guitar. And I said, “I have this really funny idea. Like, what if we did a sketch about moms that did a pyramid scheme selling their breast milk?” And so from there, we met, you know, a couple of times. And then we got all of our friends together as you do when you’re, you know, a mom and shooting things on a budget. And we shot it in, I want to say one day, and it was so much fun.
Jen: It’s really fun. My favorite part is where there’s like a drone, the drone will come to pick up your breastmilk.
Monika Casey: We call it MOMazon drone. And I feel like you know, this was like seven years ago. I mean, Amazon was a thing, but it wasn’t like now. I think it was even before they made all the jokes about the Amazon drones.
Jen: Yeah. You were a visionary.
Monika. Yeah, moms coming together.
Jen: I made a bunch of videos in the beginning of this whole journey, called “Double Leche.” And they were about funny moments in breastfeeding. Hmm, that was fun. There’s so much comedy around breastfeeding.
Monika Casey: Right? Because it’s such a taboo for some people. And I mean, I think it’s funny. Before I had a kid it was like breastfeeding, I’m not gonna do it. And then, of course, I did and then ended up going way longer than I had anticipated. Because once it’s hard to stop, you know, or there’s you get scared, you’re like, it’s gonna hurt my boobs are gonna fall off.
Jen: With my youngest, if I would have not stopped her, she’d still be breastfeeding. And she started first grade yesterday. So I did come to a point with her and we planned this whole thing we said, on a certain day, we’re gonna have the “Farewell to Milky party”
Monika: Did she call it mikly.
Jen: That’s what she called it, “milky.” So we were like, it’s going to be “Farewell to Milky Day.” And we got her a feather boa and a tiara. And we had a cake and we said farewell to milky.
Monika: That is awesome.
Jen: It was. It kind of worked. Like she then knew after that, that it’s not something she should do. And she would still like try if she was sick or something. She’d still try. But not like an everyday thing.
Monika Casey: My daughter’s still… So my daughter called it, “Booboo.” And when she was little, like, if I hadn’t been around her for a few hours, I’d come home and she’d say, “Booboo!” But every now and then, she’ll go, “I smell Booboo…..” And I’m like, “Lady, you drink it all. There’s no more.” So my smell to her is milk.
Jen: I mean, and it’s funny, but it’s also adorable and wonderful. And I know my mom didn’t breastfeed me because it was the 70s and she didn’t. But now– to this day– I can right now bring up my mom’s smell. I know my mom’s smell.
Monika Casey: Yeah, I think my mom said she gave me six months of the boob but I don’t think we have the bond the same bond that you to smell your mom when she isn’t there. My mom doesn’t have a smell. I’m not that attached.
Jen: Well, I hope that if our kids think we smell, it’s a good smell.
Monika Casey: I mean, yeah. They love us. We’re perfect. Nah, we’re not perfect.
Jen: Great note to end on that we’re perfectly not perfect. I could talk to you much, much longer but we have lives to lead and you’ve got a kid that is being so good. I have to put mine to bed. So I’m going to share this on all the places and I’m so happy to introduce you to my MomCavers because you’re so funny. Thank you for being here.
Monika Casey: It’s great. Thanks for having me. Oh, we’ll talk again.
Did you know MomCave LIVE is also a podcast? Listen to the podcast version of this episode on iTunes or below:
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