Laugh

Last night I was able to spend time with my parents. I called my mom and said..."can I come over"? She said..."of course, did you eat"?  Naturally, I hadn't eaten yet. This was part of the plan for my visit, meatloaf, Mac and cheese, corn, and good company.

They have this little cute dog that goes wild when people visit. She is so cute but she rolls and jumps and runs around. It's funny because she is so little yet so full of energy. My dad tries to yell at her...."Ellie Mae....come here, calm down, knock it off". Its hilarious cause she don't listen. The more he tells her to quit, the more wound up she gets. I was laughing at my dad and the dog most of the night.

It never fails that when we get together as a family, the laughs come out. Last night we got to talking about when my dad brought my brother and I a kitten home after work one night. My dad hates cats, yet thought we would like one. I would have liked it had it been "normal". It was wild. He found it on his job site and said it looked pitiful, so he brought it home. The night he got it, we had to go for food and a litter box and all the stuff you need for a cat. My mom was not to thrilled about going out for cat supplies after she was all cozy in the house for the night....but she had to. This little nightmare needed stuff. And a nightmare this cat was. It destroyed curtains, it hissed a lot, bit me, scratched me, bit my dad when he tried to give it a flea bath, it was crazy. We only had it 3 months before it died. Something was wrong with it the vet had told my mom.....I was 11 so I don't know the technical term for it. Anyway, the cat scratched me and I got real sick. I had to go to the doctor and he said I had cat scratch disease. The symptoms were bad, so I won't go into detail, but who would have thought cat scratch disease was a legit thing? But I had it.....and it wasn't pleasant. The doctor who diagnosed me was about 85 years old as my doctor wasn't in the office. My family never went to the ER so we got a grand pappy doctor in my doctor's place. What a mess. But....retelling this story last night had all of us laughing so hard my belly hurt and I was crying. Each of us kept adding to it. My grandma was there and never knew any of this, so she laughed just as hard as we did. As we grow.....so do the details of stories at times. Our family is good at telling stories and we can laugh good together.

We talked of other things that were more serious.....but the crazy cat story came up out of nowhere. I guess God knew we needed a good laugh together. I guess God uses things in our life over and over to remind us we are human and need to live through craziness so we can get a chuckle from it later in life. I don't know if this is why we had that cat at all, but last night was a good reminder of how laughing is good for us. I am thankful my family is fun and we can joke and pick and be there to laugh at each other.....without fear of being offended. That's a blessing today and that's something I don't ever want to take for granted.