Category Archives: Laughter Is Healing

May12

I Go to the Bathroom With Cats

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Anyone who has cats has experienced this. When you go into the bathroom, your cats go with you, because, you know, there are SOOO many interesting things to play with in there! And privacy? As far as the cats are concerned, they’re the only ones who deserve any of that. You certainly don’t. So if you want to go into the bathroom to use the facilities, so to speak, you’ll just have to get used to doing it in the presence of your cats.

There are some people who’ve decided they don’t want their cats in the bathroom when they’re in there, so they close the door so the cats can’t follow them in. The only problem with that is that the cats don’t like being shut out, so they respond by sticking their paws under the door and moving them around. I don’t bother with that, because I live alone with my cats, so I just leave the door open.

My cats have discovered that they’re big enough to climb onto the bathroom counter, as well as my dining room table. Plus, I discovered that they found the three necklaces that I’d been keeping on the bathroom counter next to the sink. Silly me, it never occurred to me that I would need to find a different place to keep them before the cats found them.

Oh well! Too late! They found my necklaces and decided they were lovely to play with, since they were all shiny and sparkly, so they played with them until two of them went down the drain in the sink. The third one got shoved off onto the floor and played with down there, and then they got bored with it. I’m so glad that necklace didn’t end up down the drain like the other two. Otherwise I might not have noticed they were gone. Fortunately, once I realized they were gone, I was able to get my wonderful housekeeper to dredge the other two out of the drain while she was cleaning.

I have the BEST housekeeper!!

They also figured out how to pull out the drain plug and play with it. From now on the cats won’t be spending any time in the bathroom unless I’m in there too. The door will remain closed otherwise.

All of the above was written several months ago, after which I put this draft away for awhile. Solomon and Gracie have grown considerably since I last looked at this, so I thought I’d get it out again, and hopefully I’ll be able to finish it now.

Solomon and Gracie are now a little over a year old, thirteen months according to the vet, and I’ve come to the conclusion that if Solomon were human he would like bathroom jokes. I suppose that sounds a little strange, but the reason I think that is because one of his favorite pastimes is to stick his nose into Gracie’s butthole and take a sniff. Gracie almost never returns the favor, but that doesn’t seem to bother Solomon. He just sniffs on and on.

Another thing he likes to do is when I’m in the bathroom he likes to chase his tail behind the shower curtain. I haven’t seen him chase his tail anywhere else in my apartment, just behind the shower curtain. He also likes to play hide-and-seek behind the shower curtain. He likes to go back there and just sit. If I look at him back there he’ll look up at me and meow, otherwise he just sits there.

The two cats have very distinct personalities. Gracie is very dainty and ladylike, and Solomon is goofy, and all boy. His tail is thicker, and he lets it trail out behind him like a flag, while Gracie’s tail is thinner and kind of pointy, and she always has it curled tastefully and elegantly around her body. Plus, Solomon talks all the time, while Gracie is the silent type. Whenever Solomon moves he lets out a squeak. Every move is accompanied by some sort of vocalization. On the other hand, I call Gracie, Gracie the Inscrutable, because she’s quite mysterious most of the time.

Both of them are very affectionate, however, which is wonderful.

Below you’ll see the most current photo of them. I just took it a few minutes ago. Oh, the wonders of smart phone photography!

Solomon is on the left, and Gracie, looking her usual inscrutable self, is on the right. Aren’t they beautiful? Biased as I am, I think they’re gorgeous! And they’re so much FUN!!

I’m so grateful to God for giving me these two amazing and rambunctious cats. At times they try my patience, but even then I’m blessed to have them.

The godly care for their animals, but the wicked are always cruel. ~ Proverbs 12:10, NLT.

Jun24

Loneliness In All Its Combinations and Permutations

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I hope you will indulge me in a little goofiness here at the beginning . . .

Here I am again, trying to fill a blank page. Reminds me of the phone bills I used to get with pages that were blank. And then, if you look more carefully, you see this ridiculous phrase planted in the middle of the blank page that says,

This page intentionally left blank.

Which automatically invalidates itself, because by the presence of that phrase, the page is no longer blank.

At this point I’m giggling helplessly because it’s so illogical.

I think I get why they put it there ~ because if they left the page blank without telling you that it’s blank on purpose, they’d probably get all kinds of calls and emails from people wanting to know if there’s a mistake on their bill because there’s a blank page, and the phone company wants to avoid that if they can. Kinda silly, if you ask me.

Enough of this foolishness. The whole blank-page-in-the-phone-bill thing is something I’ve wanted to mention to someone for years, but never had an opportunity before. But now I have my own platform of sorts. So you all are the (unfortunate?) recipients of my meandering thoughts.

Lucky you! Now on to more serious matters.

Last Sunday was Father’s Day. When I hear people talk about how amazing their dads are, I get all jumbled up and confused inside, and of course, I hear people’s stories about their wonderful dads everywhere on Father’s Day, and on the days leading up to it as well. So I spend the entire week before Father’s Day wanting to hide because I can’t stand how muddled I feel inside. It really kind of sucks, but there’s nothing I can do about it. I just have to ride it out, and look to God, who is my real Father.

But that’s the problem. Even though I love knowing that God loves me, and that He loved me enough to send Jesus to die on the cross for me, I also know that His love for me is spiritually based. And that’s amazing and marvelous and wonderful. It saved my life, both here on earth, and best of all, for all eternity. When I die I’ll get to meet Jesus face to face, the best reality imaginable.

However, until that becomes my reality, I’m stuck here on earth, and while I’m here I still need the physicality of a hug, or a spoken word from the mouth of a friend-in-front-of-me. It’s not that I don’t value my relationship with God. It’s the most important relationship in my life, and I can’t live without it. But there are times when you need something tangible, and you can’t get a hug from God.

This is especially true during the times of coronavirus, where we all have to stay home, and engage in social isolation and all that stuff. Enforced loneliness gets a little old after awhile, as much as I like being alone.

I have a close friend whom I haven’t seen in months because of COVID-19, and I miss her terribly. We used to get together on Thursday nights to watch Doc Martin on TV, and we haven’t been able to since sometime in March because of the pandemic. We talk on the phone and text back and forth, but it’s just not the same. You can’t hug someone through the phone or in a text. And you can’t see someone’s facial expressions in response to what you say to them through the phone or in a text.

There’s something about being able to see someone’s laughter when you tell them a joke, or see someone’s tears in response to something you said that saddened them. You don’t realize how important visual cues are in relating to people until you’ve been deprived of them.

And it’s all well and good if you’re quarantined with family, but I’m not. It’s me and my cat, and she doesn’t speak English. She also doesn’t laugh or cry. The most I get from Lily is purring. And don’t get me wrong. Her purring is great. She has a wonderfully loud motor, and it doesn’t take much to turn it on.

But I have no control over Lily and her motor, and she picks the most inopportune times to give me affection ~ like when I’m trying to cross stitch. Invariably when I want to cross stitch is when she decides it’s time to get in my lap. And there’s no room for both stitching and cat, so cat takes precedence.

I should just tell her to get lost, but I feel guilty when I do. Plus if I do that, she will get down, but then she comes back and we go through the same routine later, again and again and again. She’s gonna get her way, come hell or high water ~ or my cross stitch. And I can’t let her sit there while I stitch because if I do, then my stitching ends up full of cat hairs, and it’s a mess.

So what all this boils down to is, even people who like being alone get lonely at times. At least this hermit-person does. It doesn’t happen very often, but it does happen. And the cool thing is, I get to see my friend tomorrow night!

WAY COOL!! YIPPEE!!

Yup, I have a doctor’s appointment in Orange County tomorrow morning, and it’s an in-office visit, and my friend lives in Orange County. So after I’m done seeing my doctor, I’m going to goof around for awhile, and then I’m going to my friend’s house for the evening. We’ll watch Doc Martin, we’ll eat dinner, and we’ll talk about all the things we haven’t been able to talk about all these months. And we’ll hug each other, and we’ll look at each other, and we’ll LAUGH long and loudly.

I can’t wait, and neither can she. She told me so when I called her to tell her I was coming.

A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity. ~ Proverbs 17:17, NKJV.

Faithful are the wounds of a friend, but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful. ~ Proverbs 27:6, NKJV.

As iron sharpens iron, so a friend sharpens a friend. ~ Proverbs 27:17, NLT.

Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends. ~ John 15:13, NKJV.

So I guess what I’m learning out of all this is that it’s okay to be alone, but it’s also okay to need ~ and want ~ the fellowship of others.

Thank God for my friends!!

And maybe my blank page goofiness at the beginning was an expression of loneliness, because the page, when completely blank, might have been lonely in all it’s white blankness, and when they added that ridiculous phrase, maybe the words made it feel less lonely ~ if an inanimate object can feel anything at all.

Here’s to a little laughter during COVID-19!

Oct6

1 2 3 4 5 6

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It doesn’t take much to entertain me. Almost nothing, in fact. My stepdad used to tell me that he could make me laugh just by saying, “Pass the mustard.” And of course, because he’d said that, I’d laugh, so he’d say, “See? I told you so!” It used to make me mad, but then I realized that it was probably a good thing, because laughter is good for the soul. So if I laugh easily, then maybe I have a healthy soul. Proverbs says,

A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a broken spirit saps a person’s strength. ~ Proverbs 17:22, NLT.

The Bible also says that God laughs (for example, Psalm 59:8, where God laughs at His enemies), and if God laughs, then it must be okay for me to do so.

All of that is to say that God cares about the little things in our lives as well as the big and important things, things that don’t make a difference or mean anything to anyone at all. For example, I love numbers, at least partly because God created them. Also, I drive a 2012 Toyota Matrix. As I was driving down the freeway the other day, the odometer turned over so the numbers read, 1 2 3 4 5 6.

Now, I realize that event doesn’t mean anything to anyone, and is of absolutely no importance to anyone, but I had been hoping to notice when the numbers on my odometer read that. It was exciting to me. And if I keep this car long enough so the odometer reads 3 1 4 1 5 9 (the first six numbers of Pi), that will be an exciting event for me as well.

I also love it when palindromes show up on my odometer. A palindrome is a number or word, or even a sentence, that reads the same forwards and backwards. An example of a numeric palindrome would 123321, or 24566542. Radar is an example of a palindromic word, and an example of a palindromic sentence is “Madam, I’m Adam”.

I think palindromes are, dare I say it, beautiful. That might sound kind of silly, but I do, because they’re so wonderfully ordered, and God is a God of order.

The reason I’m writing about this is because, as I said above, God cares about what we care about. As silly as it sounds, I had asked God to let me see it when my odometer turned over to read that number, because it’s a once-in-a-lifetime event, and you have to be in the right place at the right time to catch it. That number, 1 2 3 4 5 6, will only happen once in this car, and it felt like a special thing for me. And God allowed me to see it. I’m very grateful to Him for that. It might not mean anything to anyone else, but it meant a lot to me, at least partly because it was a small indication of just how much He loves me.

1 2 3 4 5 6. How cool is that!! Jesus loves me!!

Jul27

It Wasn’t a Can of Tuna, It Was a Hole Punch!

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I have a crooked smile and a hearty laugh. It’s part of my charm, and it’s the way God made me ~ and God thinks I’m beautiful, so it must be part of what makes me beautiful as well. Additionally, I love to laugh. So when something strikes my funny bone, everyone knows it, because everyone can hear me laughing loud and long.

All that is to say that I was playing June’s Journey earlier, and was working on a hidden object scene that consisted of a desk in a police station. One of the objects I had to find was a hole punch, but the only thing left after all the other objects were gone looked like a can of tuna. As it turned out, it was a hole punch.

A hole punch!

Since when does a hole punch look like a can of tuna??

I started to laugh, and I’m still laughing now, hours later.

I think the reason why I’m making such a big deal of this is because it’s an indication of just how healed I really am.

In the post dated July 16, 2019, and entitled Go To Forgiveness, Go Right To Forgiveness. Don’t Pass Through Guilt, Don’t Go To Condemnation, I wrote about God healing me of serious and long-standing frustration and anger that ofttimes expressed itself in self-abuse. Well, I’m still feeling a deep sense of contentment and abiding joy, and when I play my games ~ all of them ~ and I make a mistake, I’m able to laugh about it, and not feel even a LITTLE BIT of frustration or anger, and there is NO self-abuse.

I thank God for that.

I am SOOO GRATEFUL to God for that!!

So when I was working on the scene with the policeman’s desk, and it said I had to find a hole punch ~ and the only thing left was what, for all the world, looked like a can of tuna, and then it turned out to be a hole punch, all I could do was giggle, where, in the past I would have gotten frustrated and angry at myself. I would have called myself stupid, and an idiot, and then I would have hit myself several times ~ HARD. 

You have no idea how amazing and wonderful it is to be free of that, and to be able to giggle and laugh at a mistake. To be able to see the humor in a mistake is something I’ve never been able to do before, and I thank God for that freedom.

And it still looks like a can of tuna!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!