Posts Tagged ‘Laughter’
Lake Laughs
Friday at the lake is a time when friends and family arrive for the weekend, interrupting the quiet solitude of being just one couple here with the constant banter of multiple social interactions. It inevitably leads to periods of boisterous laughter.
We soaked in the water as well as in the sunshine on the beach. We went for a walk around Wildwood and visited with families along the way. We paused to gaze at the young eagle perched on a branch over its nest above the tennis court. We stopped by the cabin next door to preview the plan drawings for the new construction that will soon begin where the old lodge once stood.
After new arrivals all settled in, we feasted on leftover barbecued ribs that had been kept frozen since the Fourth of July weekend, along with fresh-picked sweetcorn for dinner. It tasted like summer. Top that off with games of cards, augmented with a dessert of peach cobbler with vanilla ice cream, and you have a spectacular start to a weekend at the lake.
Some game situations were laughable, and several of the stories shared were both poignant and humorous. It’s almost enough to help us forget about the worst things going on in the world around us for a day or two.
Our friends, Barb and Mike, have joined us for a few days. They are thoroughly experienced in all aspects of lake life, so hosting their visit is as comfortable as my 30-year-old moccasin slippers I keep in the closet up here.
The agenda for the rest of the weekend is pretty wide open, but I won’t be surprised if the most strenuous exertion we undertake involves splashing around in the lake before settling in for more games and consuming delicious and nutritious feasts. Several members of the current crowd are in recovery mode for a variety of issues, including a hamstring strain, a foot bone break, and a knee ligament repair surgery.
Luckily, all this laughter makes for great medicine for whatever ails a person.
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Hays Gang
We got the gang back together again yesterday for a little face-to-face catching up. The five surviving Hays siblings are successful in gathering all in one place every 18 months or so, and we try to capture photographic evidence that it truly happened. This time, we met at Elliott’s house in Richfield, which is mostly central to our distribution of homes to the north, south, and east of there.
It’s mind-boggling to fathom how much life experience has occurred since the time when we would have all lived under the same roof. It would have been in the farmhouse at Intervale Ranch on the border of Eden Prairie and Edina.
At a gathering we achieved in January of 2020, one of our group shots included what has become a meme where Elliott turns his back to the camera. Somewhere, I know there is a shot where he did that at the house Cyndie and I owned in Eden Prairie, but Cyndie’s quick search found this one from 2020:
Here is how we looked yesterday…
It makes us laugh every time.
I LOVE my siblings!
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Honorable Mention
There were many, many pictures taken over the weekend, most of which didn’t even make it into the photo contest. Some that were entered into the contest were overshadowed by those the panel of judges selected as winners. Today, I’d like to feature one such image from the most enthusiastic photographer in the contest.
Honorable Mention, Category: Nature by Abby S. (12yrs)
I’m a little partial toward it because I also submitted a view of the same frozen lake for the Nature category. Abby and I share a similar perspective when it comes to photography.
Even though the saying holds true that what happens at the lake stays at the lake, there are a few tidbits that are bound to leak. I figure that if I get out front of any rumors that may spring up, I have a better chance of controlling the narrative.
No one can blame me for drinking all the orange juice. And those cheese puff balls that only lasted a short time never once passed my lips.
One particularly noteworthy situation that I adored sprung up when Elysa showed off the fraying thumbs of her fancy knitted mittens. We’d hardly returned indoors when I found my sister, Mary, hand-spinning some yarn for use to repair those knitted thumbs. Faster than made sense to me, Elysa was showing off that her mittens looked as good as new. Way to go, Mary!
For four days, it seemed as though there was constant activity but it never once seemed like too much. With very little pre-planning, wildly entertaining games seemed to blossom out of nowhere.
I had never seen most of the games and found them to be equally enjoyable whether I was in the middle of the actions or calmly observing from a safe distance. Off the top of my head, here are a few wonderfully descriptive titles:
Ouisi- Trash Pandas
- Tripoley
- Sushi Go Party
- Happy Salmon
- Cribbage
- Code Names
- Pokemon
- Twister (outdoors)
- Golf (with playing cards)
If we weren’t playing games or editing photos, we were eating. Smoked bbq meatballs, white chicken chili with cornbread, breakfasts with gooey caramel rolls, spicy biscuits and gravy, fruit salad, pizza from Coops, scrumptious salads, and dessert treats that shall not be named so no one has to think about those calories.
Additional honorable mentions go to Tim for his seamless ability to light pilot lights that inexplicably needed lighting, for tightening a loose toilet seat, cleaning the kitchen to exceptional levels, and for helping Nick on a run to the liquor store that included a stop at a hardware store for a wing nut I needed.
To top off all that fun, conversations flowed amiably in a wide variety of directions that included precious memories, humorous stories, and thoughtful considerations.
Now I miss everyone almost more than I can stand. Stopping all that brilliant sweet family fun so abruptly is not an easy thing to do. It’s really hard to explain to Asher where everyone disappeared to now that we are home where it’s just me, Cyndie, and him.
Hey, family… let’s not wait so long to plan another sleep-over gathering event next time!
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Family Funnest
I find this precious and true: the combination of extended days together where food, activity, laughter, late-night conversations, and early-morning lingering builds unique familial bonds. We are having a fabulous time.
It was so much fun that Asher fell so soundly asleep that he was left all alone in front of the fireplace after all the people had moved on to somewhere else.
I’d say more except…
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Cheery Morning
Neither Cyndie nor I are naturally fond of waking and getting out of bed in the morning. It tends to occur begrudgingly. I don’t view the occasion as being the opposite of not waking up at all, but rather of lingering in snoozeville and remaining snuggled beneath the warmth of our blankets and pillows. A much-preferred alternative.
Alas, pets demand and deserve timely attention first thing in the morning and Delilah must go out and the chickens want out of their coop for some breakfast.
This morning, against our everlasting preference, we both triumphed over the angst of getting up and entered into cheery histrionics while clumsily dressing and narrating and orating our comical foibles. I’ll just say, I’m not the one who has mistakenly ended up with bottoms on backward or inside out. I can’t claim that virtuosity with tops, however.
It was a beautiful day outside, reasonably mild in the hours preceding an expected bout of ice and snow on the way.
The chickens were all in fine form and very talkative while emerging from the coop to greet the day.
No sign whatsoever of sharing our hesitancy about greeting the day.
They continue to mature and are showing signs of dialing in the art of egg-laying. We received a 1-in-1000 double yolk the other day. By the looks of the size of the shell, that appeared to be an uncomfortable object to pass for a new layer.
Made for a doubly-delicious bullseye breakfast, however!
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Humorless Grind
Here’s the thing. Given a choice between being serious or having a laugh, I choose the laugh every time. Unfortunately, a year into a deadly pandemic, I’m finding it harder and harder to encounter the amount of funny that I prefer in a typical day.
I suppose part of it is a natural result of Cyndie and me shutting ourselves in at home weekend after weekend. Laughing at ourselves gets a little old after a while when that’s the only humor we are finding. I should probably scour our bookshelves for something written by Dave Barry or my anthologies of Berkeley Breathed’s “Bloom County” comics.
Despite some people’s best efforts, jokes about facemasks or social distancing don’t quite satisfy. Any humor about the good old days “BP” (Before Pandemic) just tend to make me sad.
We were watching a movie over the weekend that included a scene in which someone made a wish and blew out the candles on their birthday cake and it made us cringe and yell at the screen to tell them to throw away the cake.
I got a little chuckle last night when Cyndie set down an open soft-cover book with the pages down and Pequenita became obsessed with pawing at the glossy cover like she was trying to move all of her kitty-litter completely out of the box.
Even when we find something funny and surprise ourselves by laughing to tears over it when it didn’t really deserve that extreme, the pall of pandemic misery is still stuck on everything like an oily film.
Making it through a full year of pandemic restrictions should be its own reward and the “light at the end of the tunnel” vaccine distribution is supposed to be fueling hope, but the stark reality of many months more of it all still ahead of us is quick to extinguish the best of laughs.
You’d think I might appreciate getting tickled by my face mask, but it just triggers sneezing and then I get the sniffles.
I don’t find sniffling to be very funny.
I’m pretty sure I know what’s really bugging me. My friends make me laugh and socializing has long been discouraged. Wisecracking banter loses all its charm through the clumsy video-chat apps. Makes me just want to put on my best mittens, cross my arms and legs, and slouch back curmudgeonly in my chair, I tell ya.
News reports are announcing that SNL is returning from their holiday hiatus this coming weekend with the first new show of 2021 being hosted by John Krasinski. Something to look forward to.
All I have to do is survive the humorless grind of reported new cases and more deaths for another five days.
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Real Joy
We are up at the lake for our US holiday weekend closest to Independence Day and large numbers of family are in attendance. That makes for special times. Even though the earth is shaking in California and stupid statements fly in Washington, D.C., our attention is localized in the here and now.
Last night the cousins and friends gathered around a table for a rousing game of “Catch Phrase” which blossomed into a classic manifestation of unbridled joy.
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It’s as much fun to watch as it is being a contestant.
Today, the seven families of our Wildwood Lodge Club will congregate at the lodge for a flag raising and National Anthem followed by a parade up and down the driveway. Then, the games commence. Fierce competitions of coordination and silliness between teams labeled “bats” and “mice” as we toss balloons, kick shoes, and gobble watermelon.
Next, there will be a massive community feast in the lodge and maybe a few fireworks after dark.
Laughter abounds throughout it all.
Extended family, and friends and neighbors who have always been close as family, sharing time and activities together in the glorious lakeside summer sunshine.
Even though there are harsh realities in the world, moments of our freedom and independence can be celebrated among smaller communities who know how to show love to others and be loved ourselves.
We are very lucky, and I absolutely cherish these times when we get to be at the lake with the people who know us best, experiencing real joy and sharing so much genuine love.
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Far Away
This feels so far away from home. Breakfast on the lanai by the pool in shorts and a t-shirt is so mind-bogglingly different from my normal routine that I feel like this is a dream. Well, it is a dream, actually. We are living the dream.
Besides power-lounging the day away, the most work I did involved figuring out how to connect Fred and Marie’s smart TV to the internet so they could watch shows on Amazon Prime, and then helping Fred put air in his bike tires.
He hadn’t ridden the bike for about 2 years, but Marie told him other visitors have been using the bikes every year. He wanted to take a little ride, so we just added some air and off he went.
When we next saw him again an hour or so later, he reported he had gone for a short bike ride followed by a long walk. His front tire had blown out. First, he reported noticing a ticking sound as the wheel turned round and round. Then it POPPED!
Forensic analysis revealed a failure in the sidewall of the tire. The inner tube had ballooned out and was rubbing the brake with each revolution, until the rubber tube burst.
Turned out to be a pretty impressive level of activity for the guy turning 80 this weekend.
Otherwise, the afternoon became a blur of card games, napping, and floating in the pool. Cyndie served Barry and Carlos drinks by the pool.
Around dinner time, the surprises for Fred continued as Cyndie’s brother, Steve arrived. Then, after dessert had been served, her last brother, Ben appeared with his wife, Sara. The last secret had been revealed and the kids were all present.
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We sat around the table sharing life stories and lost our breath in laughter multiple times. Fred shared a memory of his 60th birthday when the kids all showed up for a surprise gathering on a ski vacation in the mountains out west. That year, they left spouses at home.
Cyndie and I have been married for 35 years and had dated off and on for 7 years before that, so I recognized plenty of the tales that were being recollected. Reliving the many stories reveals a weird combination of my being part of the family, but not being one of the family. I’m here, but I’m not as here here as they are, if that makes any sense.
One thing that is clear, we are noticeably far away from our home in Wisconsin right now.
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Relative Something 