What to Do When Times are Rough

Sitting here eating a plate of pretzels and the remains of a bag of ripple potato chips. Got an extra large bottle of refrigerated, filtered, water, too. Breakfast.

The chips are leftover from Son's snack time last night. The pretzels are leftovers from Spouse's work on Thanksgiving to the next day. Spouse worked from 9 p.m. Thursday until 5 a.m. Friday. All employees were told to bring in some sort of snack to see the staff through the night. (Interestingly, when Spouse worked at Old Navy the store supplied the food.) Anyway, there was so much food that only half the bag of pretzels was eaten. So Spouse brought the rest back here.

They're holiday pretzels, shaped like Christmas trees, bells and stars. Or maybe they're snowflakes. Kind of cute. I'm eating all of the broken pieces first. I like to do that. Eat the damaged pieces first and leave the whole pieces for last. That way it's not so depressing when the bowl, plate, bag, is nearly empty. Same for chips, although finding whole chips in a bag is not easy.

Maybe I'm wrong but it seems to me potato chips used to be larger. I suppose that's a sign of age. Everything was better in the 'olden days'. When I was very young it never occurred to me that I was living in the 'olden days'.

Spoke with my mother over the weekend. Couldn't reach her on Thanksgiving Day. Either she was taking a nap or was down in the community room. But she mentioned how my sister, Judayl, had called and they were talking about life in The Old House. Judayl said it wasn't all bad. She remembered lots of good times. Times we laughed anyway.

That's true. Everyone in my family can complain with the best of 'em. Or worst, depending on one's point of view. But we can laugh at pretty much anything, too. Even while we're complaining. I guess we just accept the the old adage: Life Sucks - And Then You Die.

My first job was at a pizza restaurant. The owner's son and I were good friends. He liked to pull out a bowl of lemons from the refrigerator and walk around the place saying, "Life is just a bowl of lemons."

The thing is, it is so true. Life really does suck. And then we die. But that doesn't mean we can't have laughs along the way. It's the lack of laughs, I think, that really makes people unpleasant. And I don't mean just laughing when things are going well. Any slob can do that. It's laughing when life really sucks. If you can do that you can survive to find the next good time island in the sea of disasters. It's what I find most wrong about Spouse's family. They cannot laugh at bad things. Bad things are serious, and they have to be treated serious. Both of those positions are true, but they leave out the fact that there is still humor. Grandma Amy was telling jokes while laying on her deathbed in immense pain. She referenced her last husband, who had died a few years earlier at the ate of ninety-something. She and the young nurse attending her got to talking about marriage relations for some reason and Grandma said of step-grandpa, "He still had a wiggle to his waggle." When the nurse told us what Grandma had said I saw Grandma smile. Twenty-four hours later Grandma would be gone.

It's okay to laugh and make fun of oneself when things are bad. Sometimes it's the only way to survive.

That, and a plate of Christmas pretzels, a leftover bag of ripple potato chips, and a bottle of filtered water. Maybe I'll open my last bottle of pop and really splurge. Son's been teasing me because the pop has been sitting in the back of the refrigerator for about a month or two. I told him I would drink it. When?

Soon.