Laughter Makes Life Fun

I like to laugh. It lightens the mood, brightens my day, and is essential to a healthy life. When picking out movies, I pick romantic comedies or just comedies. I like to quote movies like Finding Nemo, Robin Hood: Men in Tights, and Wild Hogs.

I like books with happy endings and sit-coms. Two of my favorite sit-coms are Frasier and Friends. The new show coming out this fall, Back to You, looks fun. I also love Last Comic Standing. You can preview one of the comics below from this week’s show.

My family grew up laughing together and I hope to enjoy the same kind of silliness with my children. My sisters and I picked on each other and we learned not to take anything too seriously. My memories of living at home always come back to something we all laughed about. We laughed at my dad’s hair as a little tweed stuck up in the back of his head during church or when Brittany said “Excuse me” to Darth Vader as she walked into KFC. (Darth, a life-size sticker was stuck to a glass door. Britt thought he was leaving KFC).

Everyone needs a little comedy in their life. I can’t wait until the next time I laugh so hard my stomach muscles hurt or I blow coffee from my nose from a friend’s dry comment.

Until then, live, LAUGH, and love!

Last Comic Standing - Jon Reep - Final 4 Performance

Super-long catch-up-on-my-life post…

Whew! Where do I start? There are several topics to cover here, so I’ll just divide them into sections.

House
Sheldon and I recently moved into our new house last week. Yay! After battling with a title company for five days to get stuff done they should have had done several weeks prior to closing, we finally got the keys to our home on August 22 at 4:30 p.m. The original closing date was set for August 17, which is the day we had to move from our old house.

Luckily, we have great friends that opened their houses to us. We weren’t homeless for five days – that was a blessing. During the first two of the five days, we had our stuff still in the old house with plastic over it because painters were re-painting the entire house. Our dogs were at a friend’s house, and our poor cat was at the old house wondering why we had abandoned her. By the third day, we were able to move our stuff into a moving truck and park it in front of our new house. We had expected to move in the following day; however, the title company didn’t get their information straight yet again. So, our stuff sat in front of our new house for two days.

The afternoon of Wednesday, August 22, the title company received several very mean phone calls from my realtor, the seller’s agent, my husband, me and my “attorney.” Forty-five minutes after my “attorney” called, we had the keys in our hand. Heehee! “Attorney” = brother-in-law who is a partner in a real estate company. He’s talented in professional BS.

After an exhausting weekend, we have about half of our stuff organized. Boxes still litter the living room and kitchen, but we’re making progress. I love our house! I can’t wait to get everything in its place. Until then, Tigger will have fun scampering through all the newspaper and boxes scattered on the floor.

Baby
We were almost 10 weeks pregnant when I miscarried on August 10. I had to have a D & C on the same day that I found out we lost the baby. The surgery went well and I recovered pretty quickly. I’m lucky to have a great doctor.

The most frustrating part of the whole thing is that no one can tell me what went wrong. My blood work was fine and all the other tests the hospital did came back as normal. The doctor told us that there was nothing we could have done to change anything and that the baby was probably not developing correctly.

Sheldon and I have finally come to terms with it. We’re told we will be clear to start trying again in three months if we want to. We’ve had many conversations about when to start trying again. First Sheldon wanted to wait about a year because he wasn’t sure how I was handling it. After assuring him I was fine and I’d like to try again as soon as we could, we decided to start in exactly three months. Then after several conversations on the long drive to San Angelo this weekend to pick up our new refrigerator, we decided we’ll let nature take its course. No ovulation tracking or obsessing over getting pregnant. When it happens, it happens.

I’ll be less likely to freak out if it doesn’t happen on the first month again and I won’t stress about it so much. To comfort myself I have to believe that the miscarriage occurred for a reason. I don’t know that reason, and I may never know it, but I know that God is taking care of us.

One odd comment to add – the night that I knew I was probably miscarrying, Sheldon and I watched Bruce Almighty on TV. It’s a goofy movie, but it has a good point. It might seem like God is picking on you, but we don’t see the big picture like God does. I know he’s always taking care of us even though it doesn’t feel like it at times.

Career
It’s been crazy as usual at work. The more I dive into my work, the more I want out of this line of work. It’s all politics and paperwork. So, I decided to go through an Alternative Teaching program at a local community college.

Teaching has been in the back of my mind since sixth grade. I even majored in the elementary teaching for two years in college. Somehow I would always talk myself out of it. But after working for the government for so many years, I’m ready for something more creative and fun.

I have to take one class this fall and I can start looking for jobs in the spring. I’m nervous and excited. I currently teach 2-year-olds in Sunday school and they’re a handful. I was a TA for my sister’s fifth grade class and I taught sixth grade AWANAS one year. Each time I’ve had an opportunity to teach I’ve really enjoyed it. I think it’ll be fun to have my own classroom. Plus the big bonus of having summer off!

That’s about it for now. Hopefully my life has settled down a little bit and I’ll have more time to write blogs!

Simpsonizing is Fun

My Sentiments Exactly

I read this cute story in, believe it or not, Senior News. I’m sure others agree with me that at some point you’ve dreamed of just being a kid again. With everything going on right now in my life, it’s nice to remember summers when I was a child.

I am hereby officially tendering my resignation as an adult. I have decided I would like to accept the responsibilities of an eight-year-old again.

I want to go to McDonald’s and think that it’s a four-star restaurant. I want to sail sticks across a fresh mud puddle and make a sidewalk with rocks. I want to think M&Ms are better than money because you can eat them.

I want to run a lemonade stand with my friends on a hot summer’s day. I want to return to a time when life was simple, when all you knew were colors, multiplication tables and nursery rhymes, but that didn’t bother you because you didn’t know what you didn’t know and you didn’t care. All you knew was to be happy, because you were blissfully unaware of all the things that should make you worried or upset. I want to think the world is fair. That everything is honest and good.

I want to believe that anything is possible. I want to be oblivious to the complexities of life and be overly excited by the little things again. I want to live simply again. I don’t want my day to consist of computer crashes, mountains of paperwork, depressing news, how to survive when there are more days in a month than there is money in the bank, doctor bills, gossip, illness and loss of loved ones.

I want to believe in the power of smiles, hugs, a kind word, truth, justice, peace, dreams, mankind and making angels in the snow. I want to play with my pets and my days of imagination to last forever.

So here are my checkbook and my car keys, my credit card bills and my 401(k) statements. I am officially resigning from adulthood. And if you want to discuss this further, you’ll have to catch me first because,

“Tag! You’re it!”