Good Medicine

Sometimes I think I may be the most blessed person on the planet. Lot's of reasons, the typical ones like my kids and all. But I'm talking about my friends today. Do we ever give our friends enough credit for the influence they have on our lives? I don't think I do.
My friends are always there for me. They hurt with me, they get angry for me, they listen to me and, my favorite, they make me laugh. I'm the kind of person that has absolutely zero hesitation in making fun of myself, and I think this is one of the biggest common denominators between my friends and I, we all enjoy laughing at me. C'mon, I'm kidding there, slightly. We all enjoy laughing at ourselves. If I had a friend that was offended easily or took themselves too seriously, well, let's just say there is a reason I don't have any friends that are like this. I do have a few acquaintances that are serious in nature, but truth be told, I seldom answer the phone when they call...caller i.d.? You bet. Please, don't tell me you don't ever use caller i.d.

Anyway, talking about my friends. I can't imagine having gone through a lot of the things I've gone through in my life without my friends. When I'm taking my life too seriously, I've got 3 friends that will always put it into prospective, KJ, TA and LB. Always. If there isn't much to laugh about in my life, they'll tell me about theirs, and the old saying 'laughter is the best medicine' is true.
Kids, when they're younger, get a kick out of their family laughing at them, they're all clowns. The older they get, it's like they take it personally if you laugh at them, unless they are actually trying to get you to laugh. I try very hard not to instill this in my kids. May not always succeed, but you know teenage hormones...so unpredictable. Completely unlike a woman's, lol. But I have let my kids see me make fun of myself, like when I fall, I always get up laughing. Yeah, I know, it does seem to happen a lot and as I get older it may seriously be a problem.
I think it may be one reason we've not had a lot of the normal problems with our kids as you have with most teenagers. They simply don't take life too seriously, they're not afraid to laugh. One of my all time favorite things in the world is Charlie's laugh. I should record it sometime, it's the best laugh. It's that contagious sort of laugh.

I think I may have taken things more seriously when I was younger, but with my mom dying in her sleep a couple of months after turning 53...well, if it had any influence on me whatsoever, it was that tomorrow isn't guaranteed. The idea of spending my last day or my last hour alive depressed, in tears of sorrow or consumed in self pity, just seems like such a waste of life.

At the beginning of the year, our church started a three week fast of fruit, vegetables and unprocessed foods. Casey lost 20 pounds in three weeks. Me, I put on 2 pounds. I don't know how, that's not my point anyway. They encouraged us to start journaling. I've always kept a journal, but I started a new one. A joy journal. I'm keeping things in it that make me smile, things that make me laugh. I wrote down a story a friend who told me about how her hubby had tried on her undies. We laughed till we cried. I wrote down another friends story about her dad living with a rat without knowing it because he was losing his eyesight, and how she and her brother got rid of it, this story was hysterical. Another entry was a story about a friend who is trying the 'dating' scene through the personals and recently had a date with someone who'd had a part of their face re-attached earlier in life from a dog attack, and even though they didn't see anything wrong with the persons face, they were afraid to look directly at them through the entire date, because they were afraid it'd seem like they were staring (and that maybe they actually would be staring without realizing it). One I need to put in that I just remembered is when my neighbor was using the bathroom, she heard splashing underneath her that had nothing to do with her, and when she stood up, a squirrel came swimming up out of the toilet.

Life is so full of things that could be taken several ways. There is the 'woe is me' and the friends that enjoy keeping you there, whether they realize it or not. I have a friend that no matter how many times I try to turn the conversation towards laughter tries to bring it back to anger. Seriously, caller i.d. is worth every penny.

Anyway, I'm thankful for my buddies that share my outlook on what is important in life. Life without joy, without smiles and without laughter...what's the point? KJ, TA and LB...love you much.