I love to laugh!

Laughter is the best medicine for whatever ails me. A good belly-laugh is one of the things that snaps me out of a bad mood and refocuses my thoughts beyond myself. Any day that starts with laughter promises to be a good day -- like today. There were three moments that made me laugh right out loud today. Well, two were out loud, the other was in my head only.

It snowed again last night, and when I got up this morning, it was still snowing. I sat at the kitchen table drinking my second cup of coffee, and watched the snow come down in big, fluffy clumps of flakes. It was another wet, heavy snow. I noticed that most of the chickens had come down out of the hazelnut tree they roost in every night. But two roosters and a turkey were still hunkered down against the inclement weather. The roosters weren't even crowing -- I think they dislike this weather just as much as I do. Finally one of the roosters stirred -- it shook the snow off its feathers like a dog shaking water from its fur. Then it ruffled up its neck feathers and let out a better-late-than-never wake-up call. Up in the tree about fifteen feet, the rooster started to look around for a good spot to get down to the ground. It looked down on one side of the branch it was perched on, then on the other side. Back and forth it went for a couple of minutes. Several times I thought it was going to fly down, but after some false-starts, it settled back on its branch. Then, all at once, the rooster lost its balance and fell out of the tree! It flapped and squawked all the way down to the ground, I laughed right out loud -- birds aren't supposed to fall out of trees, but this one did!

The second thing that cracked me up today was something that I wasn't able to actually laugh at -- although I wanted to, and it was all I could do to not laugh out loud. The sixth graders had to write some sentences for homework to practice forming questions and negative statements in the past tense. For example: "I ate breakfast this morning. --> Did I eat breakfast this morning? --> I did not eat breakfast this morning." Lika and I checked the students' work in their notebooks to correct any mistakes they had made. One girl had misspelled the word "book" in the sentence, "He put his books in his bag." She wrote, "He put his boobs in his bag." I just about lost it. I mustered all the self-control I had to keep a straight face as I pointed out the misspelling. Of course, she had no idea what she had written.. Inside I was dying of laughter!

Tonight Tea cracked me up doing something that I would do. It was frigid outside, so we were both sitting by the stove in the kitchen absorbed in books that we are each reading. The fire was getting a little low, so Tea, eyes still glued to the book in her hand, absentmindedly moved to put a scoop of hazelnut shells into the fire. The teapot was sitting on top of the opening in the top of the stove. Instead of moving the teapot aside to pour the shells into the stove, she took the lid off the teapot and was just about ready to pour the shells into the teapot. At the last second, we both realized what she was about to do, and threw our heads back and laughed and laughed! I told her that that was something that I would do. We decided that neither of us should try to do something else when absorbed in a book.

After some difficult moments dealing with culture shock and nasty weather the last few days, it was so nice to have some good laughs today. My spirit is buoyed and I have a more positive outlook for the present. I will look for more humorous moments to see more joy in life in my here and now.