The Best Medicine

So, tonight I got downright stupid with laughter, for no apparent reason. I mean, there was a reason, but it was just a dumb joke...it involved smurfs, a misunderstanding...and it resulted in my having an attack of laughter that scared my oldest daughter. The hysterical kind of laughter you can't stop - maniacal, hysterical, holding your stomach because it hurts, tears streaming down your face and snot coming out of your nose kind of laughter. Katie didn't understand what was so funny. Neither did I, really. What made me laugh to start, doesn't really matter. I must have needed that, and with every whooping breath, I just started all over again, completely helpless to spasms of mirth. For a while I started to wonder if you could be humored to death. But then, it ended, as suddenly as it had started, leaving my daughter more bewildered than before it had begun.

Afterward, I was breathless and dizzy, and feeling better than I have in days. It's been a long couple of weeks around here. I've been sick and I've been stressed. What started as a small but irritating cold evolved into an annoying and lingering case of bronchitis. I've coughed at work, I've coughed at home, I have coughed in my sleep - until I have broken blood vessels in my face, my ribs hurt, and I have thrown up from coughing. It has, in the words of my daughter, sucked. There is never a good time to get sick, but I really couldn't afford it right now. Information for summer brochures is due and I need to get proof reading. Employees at work are sick, and I am needed to cover for them. I was strong armed into being a Girl Scout cookie mom, and I was needed to taxi cookies around town. No time to sit around and cough....and not much time to feel sorry for myself.

So, I've just sort of plowed on this week, trying to ignore the coughing and getting grumpier and grumpier because I wasn't sleeping at night. After a few nights of next to no sleep, I become less pleasant. My kids will attest to this. My coworkers will quietly second the motion, though perhaps not to my face. Case in point - I went ballistic yesterday because someone forgot to clean up after themselves. It wasn't the end of the world, and it only took me five minutes to correct, but it followed a scare involving someone else's child, and was the straw that broke my camel's back....and I took it out on hapless dishes and, well, maybe a loaf of french bread that got in my way might have accidentally been bludgeoned twenty or thirty times, with a pitcher that had been left out....it's all a blur, and I'm sticking to that story.

When I got home last night, I realized that we were out of diet coke...anyone who knows me knows this is not good, anyone who knows me and saw the place where I was last night knows that this was an omen of ugly to come....I went back out to the store to buy caffeine magic in a bottle, and picked up something for the kids to eat, because I was NOT cooking at that point....and I sat in the parking lot and cried - really bawled - for absolutely no good reason. And it didn't help at all....didn't make me feel any better.

I worked all day today with a stiff neck and a small grey cloud hanging over my head, for no one reason. Katie was studying for a science test last night and wrangled me into quizzing her...so I had the terms point-source and non-point-source pollution buzzing around in my brain. It was a non-point source pollution kind of day - no one clear cause, they just all got together and wrecked my day and soured my attitude.

It was with that same attitude, I climbed into my car and headed home...still not in a good mood, but at least with caffeine to hand, should I require it.

So, when I started my crazy lady laughter tonight, I'm sure Katie really did think that I was losing it for good this time. It probably looked even nuttier than it seemed from my point of view, and yet I felt better, and I felt relaxed, when the laughter had finally died off. I will never be able to understand all the mysteries of how our human brains work, or how God might have designed us to work in these strange ways, but I fully believe this was my own body saving me from a massive stress break. I was at a point earlier today, for no one single reason, that I couldn't have coped with even one more thing. My whole body was wound as tight as a human being can get. Who would have thought - laughter, xanax for the terminally type-A. A whole lot cheaper than a massage and a lot easier to come by than pharmaceuticals. No prescription required. My body, and maybe some higher power, knew what I needed better than I did.

They say that laughter is the best medicine. OK. Lesson learned - lighten up. See, every day I get a little bit less dumb....I figure I've got a lot of life left before me, as these lessons don't come easy to the hard headed.

For those who are feeling a little stressed themselves, give me a call, I'll tell you the joke about the smurf.