There she is--Miss A-Swiney Flu

Our family planned to tailgate last Saturday at the BYU-TCU game, but when we arrived three hours ahead of time, the heavens opened, and the rains came down and the floods came up. So, the Explorer was chosen to house all of us. We began dishing up and eating stew (I know, I know. But we weren't grilling because of the weather), and drinking sodas and trying not to spill all over each other. In the front seat, Lisa agreed to honey-butter the biscuits and pass them around (and this is an important point) to everyone who wanted them (she developed bursitis in her shoulder shortly after, evidence of her Hurculean efforts.)

Now, we all know and love Lisa for her willingness to help out. But what we didn't know, during our get-to-know-your-family-closer-than-you'd-really-like-to festivities, was that she had swine flu. She was diagnosed the next day. And one by one, to demonstrate the closeness of our relationship, some of us have followed suit. Jenni, Brandon, Luke, and Trevor are all crazy sick. Along with Lisa, they are quarantined. The last pillars to fall will be Scott and Bob, if those strong conquering heroes allow it (y'know how guys are). I've had a headache but no fever, so I will designate myself as the crazy but non-sick one until proven otherwise (proof of the sickness, that is). Proof of my craziness is to be found in copious amounts anywhere you care to look.

Isn't Miss Piggy adorable? I have a great idea for her platform: "Stamping out the paranoia surrounding H1N1, thus insuring that we will at last have world peace."

The little swine.

I Find A Funny

Last night I was sitting on our bed playing “Tetris” on my old useless cell phone that I keep around so T can have his own phone when he visits, or when I need something completely mindless to occupy my thinking. Even playing “Tetris,” though, occasionally the thoughts creep in, and suddenly I was thinking about an entry our daughter had made in a recent blog post wherein she mentioned that she was having trouble finding her “funny.” I remember thinking at the time, “Us, too, honey. Us, too.”

I looked over at Bob, sitting on the other side of the bed, examining his recently surgicized right foot. When he examines a wound, he examines it. He's a wannabe veterinarian, and I'm a wannabe dictionarian. (I like to make up words like surgicized and dictionarian.) Anyway, that foot has been one of the few things that continues to give him grief from his motorcycle accident a couple of years ago. I thoughtfully observed him unwrapping the bandage in preparation for the foot's nightly soaking in a bucket of Epsom Salts, followed by the re-dressing and the re-wrap. "Kinda hurts," he mumbled.

Suddenly, the whole process, the intensity of his face while performing this ritual, inexplicably awakened my funny. "I’ll raise your foot by two knees,” I suddenly blurted out rather loudly. He looked at me a bit oddly, but, quick on the trigger like he is, he replied, “Well, I’ll swap your two knees straight across for five broken ribs!”

“Ribs? Hah!” I replied. “I’ll raise you by two herniated discs!” And finally, tentatively, came the “Bob smile” I haven’t seen often in the last year. Grinning, he yelled, “ I’ll see your dang double discs and raise you an entire left leg!”

After a momentary pause, while I marveled at the great alliterative catch he had just made, I started calculating, and I realized that there wasn’t any way at all that I was going to win this game. Especially if he pulled out the three litres of pure . . . um . . . pus incident. And I knew he would. I knew it. And that would be a royal flush. So as tough as it was, I finally said, “Oh, nuts. I fold.” And we were off--for a brief spot of laughter.

But, darn it, I don’t fold. I won’t. There have been a few times in the last year that I felt it coming, but double-disc-three-litre-dang it, I refuse to fold.
And, sweet daughter, you won’t fold either. You will find your “funny” again. That’s a promise.