LAUGH OUT LOUD OFTEN

Party

See this Instagram photo by @elephant_soap * 5 likes

Michael and I use a calendar app called Cozi to organize dates because it is a calendar app that we can use on multiple devices. When I add something to the calendar through my iPhone, it shows up on Michael's Android (or whatever phone he has). Cozi also pulls from a Random Act of Kindness calendar and we get little reminders to do things like buy a homeless person a meal or be nice to a strange and then it reminds us to take out the trash. Sunday, Michael said "According to Cozi, tomorrow's Laugh Out Loud Often and Share Your Smile Generously Day." My reply was "That sounds about right because tomorrow would be Chris's birthday." Meaning today. Today would be Chris's forty sixth birthday. 

I am usually bombarded with Facebook notification to wish Chris a Happy Birthday! or someone has wished Chris a Happy Birthday. That's not happening this year because I have managed to fuck up Chris's Facebook account. Back in December, maybe even Christmas Day, I discovered that Chris's Facebook account had been hacked. I know his account was hacked because Chris sent me a message through Facebook. Getting an email from a dead person is creepy and not at all helpful during the holiday season. Any way in my attempts to hack into Chris's hacked account, I ended up locking his account. I thought I had gone through the process of unlocking that account, but I noticed a few weeks ago that Chris was no longer in my friends list. When you search for him, he doesn't exist. Which actually makes sense because Chris doesn't really exist any more. Chris is dead. I am working on getting his account unlocked so we can at least turn it into a memorial page. 

I woke up at 3:00 AM Sunday morning to the Cabbage screaming. I opened the door to find her standing in the living room, yelling at Michael to wake up and crying because she had a nose bleed. She looked like she had just stepped off the set of the latest slasher film. I took her into the bathroom and cleaned her up, calmed her down and got the nose bleed to stop. I put her back to bed and then went through the process of trying to wake Michael up to go lay with the Cabbage. After the fifth time of telling Michael about the Cabbage's nose bleed he finally looked at me and said "Well..I didn't know any of this." He got up and went to the Cabbage's room. Later in the day, the Cabbage squirted soap into her eye during bath time which brought on another round of screaming along with a nose bleed. Micheal started getting mad because he couldn't tell why the Cabbage was screaming because she was incoherent. I made him step away and once again found myself cleaning her up, calming her down (so I could rinse out her eye) and stopping a nose bleed. Once she was dressed, she sat whimpering while I brushed her hair. She let out a loud whining "Am I going to die?!?!?". 

My first instinct was to tell her the truth but then common sense clicked on. I figured that it wasn't a good idea to tell a six year old that, yeah...someday, you're going to die. Instead, I explained that soap in the eye is not life threatening, it just stings a whole lot. I continued to brush her hair in an out of body sort of way, letting my brain float somewhere far away. It's a practice I perfected during the summer when their complaining would reach a limit I could no longer bare. I would imaging getting in my car and just driving away somewhere. Wow, my life sure is different then it was five years ago when I was frantic to make Chris's birthday a good birthday for him, seeing as it was his last and all. He never complained about it, but Chris was not one to complain. The guy had a tumor on his liver, blocking his bile ducts for more than two months before he would finally admit that his pain was bad enough to go the emergency room. Maybe that's why I have a low tolerance for complainers and this entry feels a little derailed.  

Laugh out loud often and share your smile generously. I might be struggling with that today, but on most days I think I share my smile with others. I admit that I don't laugh out loud as often as I used to, but I still laugh daily. Some time I purposefully think back to a moment where Chris said or did something that made me fall over with laughter. I never have to think too hard, because it was pretty much a daily occurrence. I take a moment to contain a fit of giggles over the memory and then I go about my day a little lighter.   

NOTIONS

Right now

"Right now"

The moment I saw her, I started to judge. I don't know why. There was something about her that reminded me of the kind of girl who makes fun of someone for not wearing a certain brand of shoes. She was petite, with slim lanky legs sticking out of short gym shorts. Her blond hair was tied back into a pony tail under her pink sorority hat. She carried a camera, a 35 mm maybe, and wielded it around like she was really trying to get some artistic shots. She was obviously a student taking pictures for art class. A tag dangled off the side of the camera indicating it to be a loner and property of the art department. The thing that bothered me the most about her was the way she scowled at everything, sizing it up. She had this way of making me feel like I was in her way even though we were on my turf walking around the work fountains. She was the trespasser.

So I judged her. I'm not proud of it, but she became that girl who jabbed with cruel words in high school. You know the kind. She's the one who looked like she had everything, best clothes, perfect hair and skin, popular. Other's flocked around her trying to be just like her and she took sport out of being cruel to those not like her.  The mean girl who preyed on nerd girls like me. I pretended that her sharp tongued comments didn't sting. I put on my false armor of confidence and looked back at her with eyes that said "you are pathetic". Later on I would see this type as less of a mean girl and more of a vapid shallow girl/woman. I say girl/woman because this type never seems to mature past pink velour track suits and Chihuahuas with matching nail polish. Desperate housewife. More concerned with appearances than reality. That was this girl. She was currently in the state between mean girl and desperate housewife. She had that look about her that said "I'm in college to meet a good husband." I knew girls like that. Hell, I inadvertently ended up being a girl like that. 

Now I'm the mean girl with my mean judgmental thoughts. I don't know where they even come from. I'm disgruntled these days, weighed down with complaints from others. I hear someone complaining about a cold sausage and cheese McMuffin and I just want to jab a pointed finger in to the flesh of their upper arm. Don't you realize that there are people living on a Navajo Reservation that do not have running water? There are people in the US without access to running water and your sausage cheese McMuffin is cold? Your life is the worst. These are my thoughts. It's no wonder I'm disgruntled and prickly with these kinds of thoughts flooding my body. Right view. Right intention. Right mindfulness. Right  speech. I am lacking in all of these paths. I remember a moment in yoga class last week as I was settling into pigeon pose, Eka Pada Rajakapotasana. Our teacher told us to soften those areas of tension and to even soften our thoughts.

Soften our thoughts.

I soften my thoughts for this girl. She's just a girl in an art class trying to find inspiration. She's working on an assignment and really, I am probably in her way, blocking a shot. This girl is not that mean girl or that vapid shallow girl I am imagining. She's just a girl. Then I start to soften my thoughts towards other things. Things get lighter. The days get less wrinkled. I realize that I am not judging this girl as much as I am judging myself. I should be the one with the camera. I should be that thin and fit. I should. I should.

I soften my thoughts towards myself. 

THANKFUL FRIDAY

The voices of negativity, complaint and anger have been swirling around me all week. Some of those voices are from others, but some of those are also coming from inside my own head. Honestly those voices have been buzzing around for longer than a week. I've been hearing them for quite a while now. I just think that with Dad's passing I've realized that I've had enough. The second stage of grief is anger and I've tumbled right on past denial straight to it. I am not angry at Dad or even at the disease that took him. I understand all of that. It's not like he was driving while intoxicated, playing chicken with a train or performing careless gun cleaning acts. I'm angry at other things. Circumstances. Reactions. People not behaving the way I would behave in this or that situation. What's worse is that when I hear some complaint or piece of negativity, I glom onto it and feel the need to respond in kind. I'm falling into old yucky habits. 

Yesterday, as I sat stewing over something I suddenly realized what I was missing. Compassion and patience. I'd tossed those two things aside and into the Goodwill pile ready for donation. I need to have compassion to those who have their own way of reacting and behaving. Even if it's not my way. Isn't this something we all learned in preschool? So, I told myself to have some compassion and some patience. Suddenly I wasn't stewing any more and I felt a little lighter. Such a simple epiphany, but one to be thankful for certainly. It made me feel inspired enough to pull out a complaint free bracelet. I also see a salt bath in my future this weekend. 

I have many things to be thankful for this week. We ate green beans fresh from the garden. The weather has dropped from what people around here call sweltering (90) to an easy 85. I have ridden the scooter every day. But the thing I am most thankful for this week is you. The kindness and words that you've sent to me and my family do not go unnoticed. Thank you. Here's to a restorative weekend and a truly Thankful Friday.