-Pop it over.
Oh! There it goes.
All right, do you need a towel?
Next is the egg.
I'm a federal employee.
-Do the egg. -Do the egg.
And so, like a lot of federal employees in the area,
I'm currently furloughed. Okay.
So, let's not use that egg.
The thing that makes it interesting for us is that my 2
1/2-year-old daughter, because she goes to a school
in a federal building, she is also --
I've been saying she's also furloughed.
Okay, do you want to start stirring?
-Stir it. -Yeah.
-There's a lot of things that we would normally do
when we're home that we can't.
You know, we can't go to the museums.
There's a lot of national parks we can't go to.
And on top of that,
we can't really do anything that costs much money
because we're not getting a paycheck right now
and it's not a guarantee that we'll get back pay.
So I'm trying to figure out ways to entertain her, keep her,
like, engaged and enriched, without spending money.
Do you want to taste one of these?
-No. -What kind of --
What kind of 2-year-old are you?
The thing about childcare in the D.
C. area is that, for us, childcare,
between her school and my son's after care --
that expense is more than our mortgage.
It's the biggest expense we have.
And for a lot of childcare in the area,
you're not just paying for the service.
You're paying for, like, your spot.
Good job.
So, if you stop paying, you lose your spot,
and then you don't, like, get it back.
And so our childcare for Lulu has actually been really great.
We're still paying for a few weeks,
and then they're going to shut off the auto-debit.
But if we get back pay, we need to pay that back.
And so right now I'm paying for daycare
that I'm not using, which is hard.
You haven't seen your friends in a while, huh?
-It's been for a while. -Yeah.
Do you miss them?
-I miss them. -What is harder, I think,
though, is being a teacher who works at the daycare
who is potentially not getting paid.
So, I completely understand the need to pay for the daycare
because the teachers are amazing
and I want them to be paid and be able to live.
But it is hard to not be using a service and be paying for it.
It's really terrifying.
We're not gonna be okay for a year.
We're not gonna be okay for more than a month.
The complication that we have is,
because her daycare is closed,
it's not like I can go and get a job, right?
I have to care for her.
If I pay someone else to care for her, then I'm paying double.
-Squeeze it! -Squeeze it!
Okay. That's good.
-Let's squeeze again. -I think we can get --
You think we can get all the rest of this in one last spoon?
There's so much that is not --
people are not aware of when it comes to this sort of thing.
They sort of assume, "Oh, you know,
all those government workers with those cushy jobs --
they'll get their money back, and it'll be fine."
And that's just so not the case for so many people
I talk to, you know?
There's so many of us that are --
Like, "A," I miss my job so much.
I love my job.
I love doing my job, and I think my job is important.
But I'm sort of being told it's not, in this way.
And then just being told that, like, my ability
to pay my bills is not important,
my ability to care for my children.
And I don't think -- I don't think that's partisan.
It's almost time to check on our cookies.
I don't think it's partisan to say
we want the people who work for our government, like,
to have money to pay their bills and buy food.
It doesn't feel like that should be partisan.
It feels like everyone should hear about that.
So, yeah, that's where I am right now with that.
They are a bit of a mess, aren't they?
Should we go back to our tea party?
Do people want seconds?
-Yes.