grateful for the gift of laughter

The other  night the hubs and I were relaxing on our "date night" and into our 2nd bottle of wine I was browsing Facebook.  Because I work from home, FB is an outlet of social interaction that I jump into often.   Sometimes it's just crap but sometimes it's good entertainment.

Such was the case when I saw my girlfriend from home had posted one of those silly things where screen shots from text messages are auto-corrected and it reads a bit off color or crazy.

The first one I read to the hubs had us laughing.  By the fourth, I was engaged in the laugh where you are bent over and not making any noise but tears are streaming from your eyes.  Then you just plain guffaw so loud that the neighbors would probably wonder what activity is taking place.

I read all the way through them and we laughed so hard our sides hurt.  Having had a good red blend also did not hurt to influence the hilarity that was taking place in our den.  Even the pups were having fun watching us.  We were a show all on our own laughing at those silly text messages that had been posted.

As I got up the next morning I thought about how great it felt to laugh.  REALLY laugh hard, out loud and have your sides hurt from it.  What great medicine.  What a release of tension and stress and what a great and simple way to put your heart in a good place.  And we had not laughed hard like that for any reason in a long time.

As I got the house ready for the holiday dinner, I continued to think of it and recalled a workshop my friend Andre did one year at a learning alliance conference.  Andre studies the brain and how it reacts to things such as laughter and exposure to different outside influences and emotions.  He told us how laughter literally reduces cortisol (the stress hormone) and relaxes muscles and helps your physical body heal in ways we don't realize.  And his workshop was a great example of how we need laughter to offset life.  It really was a great demonstration of how important laughter is in our lives.

Andre is from South Africa and we've been friends for years.   So this workshop he asked me to help him in an exercise and knew I would do it without hesitation.  What I did not know is how much fun we would have.  And it is a great example of how to refocus during the tough times and get on track with the laughter we need to heal us.

So here is Andre and he has a room full of people...I'm guessing close to 60.  He goes through all of the stuff that is the "information" relating to laughter shifting the body.  He then asks me to assist and help him in some storytelling.  OK, I'm pretty good at that I think.  And the story I was supposed to tell what my most embarrassing moment...

GAH, really?  How do you come up with that on the spot in front of a room?  I was stumped!  Then I remembered something that I knew would bring the laughter...at least from me.  I remembered a spring run in my old neighborhood...

I loved to run a good many years ago.  Coming off the train from work, I would go straight up and put on my running tights and a t-shirt and my walkman (yeah, that long ago...) and set off for an intersection a little over a mile down the road.  Didn't take long but it got the cobwebs out and got me in the right space.  Felt great to get a good pace in and listen to good music in the summer air.

Nice run, through a neighborhood of condos and ending up for a pause at a Mobil station on the corner where I would stop to breathe and either use the restroom or get a bottle of water for the run back home.  This particular day it was a bottle of water.  And off I went back home...

I had Elton John's Yellow Brick Road blasting in my ears when a car with Connecticut plates and loaded with guys about my age pulled up next to me.  They were doing the 25 year old guy thing hanging out the windows waving and whistling.  Could not hear over Elton but I rolled my eyes and took off faster away from them.

A little over a block later, a woman and her daughter drove slowly next to me and though the daughter did not roll  her window down to tell me anything, she kept motioning to me in a way I could not make out.  Oh well, Elton and I kept moving.  And they drove off.

Next was a car with a guy who just honked like crazy as he slowed next to me.  HONKED.  LIKE. A. MADMAN.  Pointing at me too. By this time I was thinking WTF?  I'm sweating like a horse, you cannot be honking at my looks. What the heck was going on?

So I stopped, bent over to tie my shoe that had come untied, and then it hit me.

There was a SIGNIFICANT breeze in the back.  One that felt like the word EXPOSURE was connected with it.  I ran my hand discreetly over my backside since my t-shirt was not a long one...

And there it was.

The seam in my tights had split WIDE open from waist to crotch.  And I didn't wear anything under those tights.  No wonder people were honking.  What a show...  FULL MOON!

OH.  MY.  GAWD.   I had been running down one of the busiest streets in one of the biggest suburbs of  Chicago with my bare ass hanging out singing at the top of my lungs.  And all of DuPage county was in the audience.  And guys from Connecticut...  And maybe some neighbors...

Bright RED running tights with NIKE written on the backside and clearly it now read NI      KE!

I was about half a mile from home.  How the hell was I going to get home without providing more of a show?  I could take off my shirt and wrap it around me...my sports bra actually covered more of me than my swimsuit.  Which part of my dignity do I sacrifice?

T-shirt it was.  I wrapped it around me and walked the rest of the way home.  When I got into the courtyard, everyone was sitting around the pool with an after-work beverage and talking in the summer evening's warm breeze.  Thank GAWD they thought nothing of me walking up the drive and having stripped my shirt off in the heat.  I tore up the stairs to get out of my clothes and into a swimsuit before anyone could notice.

Dear GAWD please don't let anyone I know be in the crowd that passed by.  THANK GAWD it was before the age of smart phones, digital cameras, and social media!!!!

So fast forward to Andre's group listening to me engage them in the details of my evening run.  I swear, there were times that I don't think they heard me because the laughter was 90 decibels above a jet engine.  And I don't  think details mattered, it was the picture in their mind and the laughter that took them happily away.  Took them to a place where the laughter made them feel light and above the stress.

And at the end of the workshop, Andre asked them all how they felt.  Were they still engaged in thoughts of emails not answered and voicemails pending?  Were they still fretting over flight reservations for the following day to go home?  Or were they 100 pounds lighter from having had the kind of laugh where your sides hurt and you engage in letting go and letting loose in laughter and finding humor in the simplest things?

So as I sit and smile at the thought of my evening run in those tights that left nothing to the imagination, I laugh out loud again.  And I think of the silly post I read the other night.  And I think of all of the things in my life that make me laugh out loud and the good result of all of that laughter.

We are in a rough world these days.  We need more laughter.  Find it and see if you can also put it in places that need it.  We need it mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually.  We need to laugh in place of the things that are making us cry or become angry.  We need to have those belly laughs where we have tears in our eyes and our sides hurt.  We need to refocus and stop listening to the bad stuff.

But I will refrain from providing bare-assed runs to provide it.  I'll stick to reading the text messages :)

grateful for the rear view mirror

They say hindsight is 20/20.  The view in the rear view is perfect.

The clarity of looking back.  It is a treasure.

A few years back, I was dealing with a plate full of shit...

A dean I reported to who literally wanted me to pay a student MANY thousands of dollars because the student did not want to take my class.  Are you shaking your head too?  He screamed and came totally unzipped and when I refused and told him further conversation would be with HR, I ended up without a job.  A job that I loved and was my passion.  A job I had been in for many years.

I was dumbfounded.

I had a sick pup who was about to have surgery.  You know what my pups mean to me if you read this blog.  Cancer under his tongue and the surgery is rough.

I had a family member that required extremely invasive biopsies.  But the surgeon felt it necessary to put off the procedure four times (twice so he could take a vacation) and kick it out 9 months.  And I felt crippled not being able to do what I wanted to do without it serving up retaliation on my family.

My own significant health issues that could have been dire.

A clergy person that did some unethical things hurting us.

When it rains it pours and it felt like it was raining boulders.

And I felt I had no solid and reliable support system to turn to.  No one to really unload and process this all with and vent and cry at the behavior of people.  The unfairness of it.  No one to listen to me and say "this too shall pass."  No one to process it all and say "this is a path and you'll be glad someday, I promise."  When you don't have that balance, the only thing you hear is your own screaming.

The grief it was creating was overwhelming.

The sleepless nights and the stress felt like glass shattering in my head day after day.

The world was a really ugly place right around that time.

So, like many people, I blathered bullshit all over Facebook in ire and anger and was over the top myself.  I was just a big balloon of FUCK YOU on so many levels.

I was sad.

I was angry.

I was heartbroken and grieving.

I was alone drowning in my riptide.  No lifejacket.  No lifeguard.

And a friend I valued and was in touch with from so many years ago in school gently reached out and let me know that he was struggling with my posts and didn't think we could stay connected if I was going to continue to be this evil twin of the person he knew and this whack job I had become.  And instead of processing that and figuring it out, I stood my ground and told him that I was who I was.  End of story.

I think he knew me better but he took me off Facebook.

Geez, I cannot imagine why.

Several years have gone by and I had the occasion to reach out to him for another reason (sending clients his way) and in the process of that, I also had the opportunity to reflect on what tore our friendship apart a few years back.

I did not like what I saw.  It was not a pretty picture.

That pain as a vision in the rear view is tough.  And if you are like me, it feels unforgivable at times.  You have to be very gentle with yourself when you see what it was during those tough times.

I wrote and told him first I had some friends that I wanted to send him but I also took the time to tell him that I profoundly apologized for the nut case that he had dealt with back then.  I told him that though it may not make sense, life was a bit overwhelming and I did not handle it all well, all of that stress.  Not well at all.  I said I hoped he would see past it and forgive it and reconnect.

I was pleased, touched, and happy to hear from him recently and reconnect.  Kind and peaceful words from a pal who didn't judge but did understand that sometimes the gremlins take the wheel and it is not an easy ride.  Someone who just said they were glad to reconnect.

We don't always have the blessing of people who forgive and understand the pain and grieving and that it takes on so many faces.  That being alone in your grief and pain and loneliness escalates it and creates more of it, real or imagined.  We don't always have people who can listen, process and say and do the things that bring peace and offer calm into a world that swirls like a category 5 hurricane with negativity and pain.  And when you don't have those resources, processing and moving beyond the pain and grief to realize that you are being guided on a path to where you are exactly meant to be can take time.

Sometimes more time than we realize or would like :)

There has been a lot in the last several years that has been unspeakably painful and hard to process as a potential good thing.  As a good path ahead that just had some speed bumps and detours.  Life has a way of doing that.  Adulting sucks at times.  And I did not grow up with a soft place to fall during painful times.  No one to help me process logically and sort it all out.  Living your life without that and with criticism in its place creates something that is not good.  And you don't even realize it.

But then you reconnect with someone who says "nah, we're cool, I totally get it.  Life happens in the worst ways sometimes."

Someone who presents that look in the rear view.

The vision is always perfect in that view, what you would have/could have/should have done or said. The lesson that you are learning and taking forward.  The growth and reflection.  The introspection of how to kick it to the curb and know it was the best thing that could happen but just came wrapped in an ugly wrapper.   That perfect vision and view of what would have worked best.

So I am grateful that my bud and I have reconnected and shared some great messages and insight.  He's been kind and I am grateful for this artistic soul who has also taught me that forgiving someone's crazy shit is a great thing.

I've been lucky that the hubs forgives my crazy shit, but he did that "for better or for worse" thing so sometimes I wonder if he'd like to clock me instead of forgiving :)

I think my next lesson is to forgive my own crazy shit.  I think learning how other people forgive themselves is the next plan.  How do you do that?  I struggle with that one ...  profoundly.   I'm pretty sure my family is OK with me (well they did survive menopause!)  And I have some great peeps in my life these days.  I'm grateful for those amazing people every moment of every day and their love and support.

Thank you for the look in the rear view my friend, it means a lot and is a beautiful lesson for me.  I'm glad you're back :)

Grateful for one more...weekend of beauty

We are supposed to despise the global warming.  And I do for all of its damage.

But this fall, I'm pretty OK with it and El Nino...

Every weekend for the last four I have written on the TO DO list to put the garden to bed for the winter.  But we have run into one obstacle that has pulled me back.

It has been 60+ degrees every weekend.  Last Sunday it was 63.  I had windows open.  On the 15th of November.  In the NORTHERN Mid-west, not far from the Canadian border!  I was in a t-shirt and the hubs in his shorts.  The pups ran in the yard chasing mice who were still running through the leaves in the woods.

It was Heaven!

That heliotrope that I wrote about over a month ago is blooming fuller than in July. My petunias are still there and the geraniums need to be deadheaded again.  The grass is green despite the leaves all being down, including many of the red oaks.

In a season that has torn our hearts apart losing a loved one and dealing with family pain and drama, the beautiful weather has hung on to fill our souls with days of sun and warmth and beauty.  Even the last 3 days of rain were 58 degrees and smelled more of spring than coming dark days with snow and bitter cold.

We have gone for rides with the pups with the sun roof open.  We have blown leaves and planted bulbs to await their faces announcing spring next year.  We have cut and stacked firewood in the sun preparing for warming fires scented with an occasional piñon log in the winter.

We have stood outside with the music from the radio blaring taking in the beauty of a season that is hanging on to give us its last smile before sleep.

Simple post here today but this was the corner we turned this morning.  The temperature is now 36 and when the pups ran across the deck to get into the yard I saw frost.  Our first now with more to come.  Thanksgiving is next week and while it will be, as always, one we are grateful for, I will be extra thankful that we have had such an amazing fling of warm and sunny weekends to fill my soul with brightness and the last blooming of my beautiful space.

This weekend we will finally put the garden pots to bed until spring.  Each of the last several weekends I have gone out with the intention of emptying the pots of their blooms and storing them for the winter.  And each Sunday, I have stood in the sun and told the hubs I just can't yet...those beautiful red and purple and pink blooms are begging for one more weekend.  The vinca vines look like Rapunzel's flowing locks.  The beauty needed one more week.

And now it's time.

I am grateful for one more..weekend or week or day of the beauty we've had.  Of watching the pups run in the sun.  Of seeing my blooms tell me that they are there to make me smile and remind me of renewal and healing.  Of having the music and game on Sunday to listen to as we puttered in the sun cleaning the garage and putting furniture away and tucking the fishing boat in for the winter.  Of the piercing blue sky and warm air gently flowing through the house.

Of standing on the deck as the sun goes down and the cool dramatically comes back for the night as I have a glass of wine and continue to take in my space and it's love and beauty.

And I remember how blessed I am to have the weekends of beauty and smiles and flowers and green grass and crisp leaves.  And recall the days of late where my space knew my heart needed a boost and continued to bloom and keep me in the days of the season I love best where it all is in full bloom and my space lifts me to Heaven.

Thank you space, I am so grateful for one more, one more, one more weekend for the last 7 or 8 weeks.  Until we connect again next spring when my bulbs announce planting time and we begin the renewal again.

Until then, it will be warm fires, cozy blankets, puppy cuddles, red wine and good books mixed with sewing time.

But... I'm already dreaming of daffodils...

#love #gratitude #beauty #summercoming #life #garden #myspace #peace