the most wasted of all days is one without laughter - ee cummings

Laughter comes easy in the Baldwin home. Example: Ryanna has discovered the most amazing place for her fingers to hang out...in her nose of course. Not picking, just sitting there. And if we try to stop her she frantically jabs both pointer fingers at her face... we try not to laugh but her determination alone makes us giggle.

Brian tickles Ryanna, throws her in the air, is a live horsey ride for her, and loves to tease me (in good taste of course). My favorite tease is when an exercise commercial comes on TV; the camera zooms in on the hot blonde instructor and in a voice dripping with shock and amazement he exclaims, "HEY when did you record that? I didn't know you were on TV!" I usually respond, "You know, in my spare time."

Day to day life is not perfect. Lately we've been stressed and had a few trials but we have our faith, our family, our friends, and most importantly we have each other.

Every trial endured and weathered in the right spirit makes a soul nobler and stronger than it was before. -William Butler Yeats

I found the following on the Beckman family website and it cracked me up. If you haven't had a laugh today this should do it!

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Every year, English teachers from across the country can submit their collections of actual analogies and metaphors found in high school essays. [Who receives and sorts through these?] These excerpts are published each year to the amusement of teachers across the country. Here are last year’s [when was that?] winners…

1. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.

2. His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.

3. He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.

4. She grew on him like she was a colony of E. Coli, and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.

5. She had a deep, throaty genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.

6. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.

7. He was as tall as a six-foot, three-inch tree.

8. The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife’s infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM machine.

9. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn’t.

10. [Ickiness warning!] McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty Bag filled with vegetable soup.

11. From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you’re on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 p.m. instead of 7:30.

12. Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.

13. The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.

14. Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.

15. They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan’s teeth. [This would seem to imply that the “list” is fairly dated. Do today’s high school students even know who Nancy Kerrigan is?]

16. John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.

17. He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant, and she was the East River.

18. Even in his last years, Granddad had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long, it had rusted shut.

19. Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.

20. The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.

21. The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.

22. He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame, maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.

23. The ballerina rose gracefully en Pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.

24. It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools.

25. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.