To Laugh

This week I remembered something very valuable—how to laugh at myself over situations. Unfortunately, the details are still being worked out. For example, I’ve remembered how to laugh at a situation after it’s been done for hours, but not during. That’s a true skill!!

I have a new schedule at work to go along with a new position I got. It’s a later schedule, which is hard, but it’s okay. A few nights ago as I was forcing Ben into his pajamas, he said, “Mom, we need go Gwama’s.”

I said, “Not tonight, Ben.”

“But we NEED to, Mom.”

“Mom, we need go fimming (swimming).”

“Not tonight, Ben.”

“But we NEED to, Mom.”

Now, imagine this conversation repeating itself about 50 times. Later that night, when I went to bed, I told Josh about the conversation, and we had a good laugh. Boy, I sure could have used that earlier!!

Or, how about when I’m feeding Claire, and she knocks the bottle out of my hand and it falls on the floor. She now says, “Uh-oh, Uh-oh. . .” Then she does it again and again. It’s dang cute, but not while it’s happening. It’s maddening, and I can’t bring myself to laugh about it until after the fact.

Here’s the kicker. A couple of nights ago, Josh was snoring. I felt bad, because I made him roll over, and over, and OVER again. Then, when I was legitimately afraid that the kids would wake up, I nudged him, and tried ever so gently to ease him into this fact. “Josh,” I said, “I really don’t want you to take this the wrong way, because I don’t mean it to be rude, but you’re snoring really loud, and I’m afraid you’re going to wake the kids up, so could you go sleep on the couch, or on the water bed, or something?” My dear, sweet husband, who really has a hard time waking up in the morning, let alone in the middle of the night, said, “Emily, that doesn’t make one bit of sense.” Rolled over, and started snoring away.

Me and my quick temper were furious. So, I got out of bed, closed the kids’ door, closed our bedroom door, and went downstairs to sleep on the waterbed. Josh told me the next part of the story—he woke up about five hours later, rolled over, saw that I was not there, and said to himself, “Crap. It’s going to be a bad morning.” And it was. I couldn’t bring myself to get over my temper until the afternoon. Now, I wasn’t overtly angry, or rude, I never yelled at him for it, I just kept running over the situation in my mind, until I was perturbed. What I said made PERFECT sense, why the heck could Josh not get it? Well, I had to get it out of my head.

So, that night when we went to bed, I said, “Josh? I have to say something. Last night when I asked you to go sleep somewhere else, because you were snoring so loud, you said that what I was asking did not make any sense. But it did—it made PERFECT sense. So, now I’ve decided that you were just being a jerk.” At that point I busted up laughing. Josh told me how the story went from his point of view, and that when he woke up he had realized what he’d said, and that it did make sense. It just did not connect at 2:00 in the morning. We must have laughed for half an hour at ourselves—again, I was in fear that we would wake up the kidlets, but luckily we didn’t. Phew!!! But what a relief to be able to laugh at myself. I’ve made a goal to do that more often.