The Good Oil: Edition 9

Greetings everyone, and welcome back to The Good Oil!  

If this is the first time you’re receiving this newsletter, my name’s Adrian Crawford and I’m a content strategist here at CBDistillery® as well as a native Australian, the father of a 3-year-old girl and an enthusiast of all things hemp-derived. 

Last time around we featured our Summer Survival Guide for parents. Time sure flies, because (as you can surely tell from your email inboxes) back-to-school season is upon us once again. To that end, we’ll hear from an early childhood educator to learn some ways that you can make the transition from long summer days to a school routine a little easier. 

Let’s dive in! 

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Expert’s Corner 

Thanks to a relaxation study we conducted in collaboration with Releaf/MoreBetter in 2022, we learned that many of our CBDistillery® customers are juggling parenthood as well as their wellness routines, careers and everything else. 

So, knowing that many of you out there in CBD Wellness Land have kids that are going back to school in the coming weeks, I sat down with New York-based early childhood educator Gabby Sankar. 

Adrian Crawford: First things first. Can you give me an idea of what being an early childhood paraprofessional and teacher’s assistant entails?  

Gabby Sankar: As an assistant teacher, I assist the lead teacher in various daily classroom tasks to alleviate their workload. As a paraprofessional, I am essentially a teacher’s assistant whose focus is to cater to a specific child that requires a higher level of supervision or assistance.  

AC: Next up, the origin story. What was it that started you on your journey to eventually end up working in early childhood education?  

GS: My mom became a teacher’s assistant at the preschool my younger brother attended. When I went to college, she suggested I work at that school during holiday and summer breaks. I ended up really enjoying the work and the kids, so after I graduated I began working as a TA full time.  

Our conversation continues on the blog. 

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Worthy Consumables

Back in January of 2020, before life changed significantly for me (parenting) and the world at large (pandemic), I uttered what some might call famous last words.

"I'm sure I'll still be able to get out and see a movie now and then once the baby comes along."

Like I said, famous last words. I don't think I went to the theater again until the summer of 2021. Nowadays my fiancee and I are able to free each other up once in a while to go sit in the dark and enjoy a flick for a couple of hours. 

A few weekends ago she met up with a friend to see Barbie and came home raving about it. The following weekend she went again with a different friend but offered up the same review, so I had to see what the fuss was about.

I'd heard extremely positive opinions from others, so I went in with pretty high expectations already, but they were absolutely blown out of the water.

It would be easy to assume on its face that Greta Gerwig's imagining of the world-famous doll's world mght be for kids or a shameless two-hour festival of product placement, but I was thrilled to find it was neither. There's plenty to be found online about the plot so I won't get too into the weeds on that, but the story follows Margot Robbie as the namesake doll who has an existential crisis and leaves Barbie World for the "real world" seeking purpose and self-discovery.

I certainly didn't anticipate it would be an emotional rollercoaster: I laughed loudly and often, I even got a little choked up during America Ferrera's monologue describing parenthood. Didn't see that coming!

As I walked out, I proclaimed (to myself) that Barbie should get every award at the Oscars. In case you couldn't tell, I thoroughly enjoyed it, despite presumably being outside of the target demographic as a 37-year-old man. Go see it! You won't regret it.

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The Last Drops

Well that’s it for this edition of The Good Oil! Thanks for joining me once again, and I hope your last weeks of summer are a blast! -- Adrian