Counting the Laughs

I was afraid this was going to happen. Start blogging again, then after two weeks, can't think of anything else to say. I must admit, since my girls don't live here anymore, half of my material walked out the door with them. They were always making me laugh. Not that Trey and Tary don't make me laugh, cuz they do, but at the moment I am drawing a blank as to the last time they made me laugh.


In my pursuit for funny, I've decided to count the number of times I laugh every day instead of calories. Not that I ever counted calories, but I should. I've decided laughs are easier to count, are more fun and good for you too. Laugher reduces stress and it's a great exercise for the abdominals.   Did you know that an average 5 year old laughs over 400 times a day? By the time we reach adulthood, that number shrivels down to just 14 times a day.


That number seems a little high to me, unless you're a mother of 5 children, all under the age of 7. I think it was a requirement in the pre-existence to have a good sense of humor in order to qualify for large families. I figure any woman with more than 5 children would have to laugh a lot, or cry a lot, in order to keep her sanity. Unless she wasn't sane to begin with, which explains why she had 5 children under the age of 7 in the first place. My mom had 7 children, and she was always laughing, it was my dad who was always crying, but that's another subject for another post.


So I did have a good laugh the other day. It was quite unexpected as most good laughs are. The sad part of the story, is that I was in a room full of people, and I was the only one laughing. Embarrassing, I know. And it was while I was exercising, not the most appropriate place to start laughing, in a room full of middle-age, middle weight women doing dance moves to Beyonce'.


It happened during Jazzercise. I was in the home stretch of the workout and we were working our arms with the resistance bands. Now my arms have always been the weakest part of my body, just ask my gymnastics teacher. I never could master the back-handspring because my arms always gave out on me and I would end up on my head. Anyway, standing on the bands with both arms extended above my head, we were doing bicep presses, keeping the triceps at the side of the head, and lowering the forearm to the side of your ear, then pushing it back up past the head. I was really kicking it through the first set of reps, but by the second go-around, as I stretched the bands above my head, my arms rebelled. They started to move to the beat of the song, the problem was, we weren't dancing, we were weight lifting (no weights, just bands. But it still kicks your...muscles) Raised above my head, they started shaking like a leaf, those little muscles that I had been working so hard to get decided they didn't want to get bigger and shook off any resistance I was trying to give them.
My arms refused to cooperate. I was trying to stretch my spastic arms into the proper upright position, but my elbows had to get in on the action as well and insisted on bending to the beat.


Being so close to my head, I could feel them jiggle as I struggled in my attempt. It was like having a twitch in your eye, or a leg spasm, they just kept shaking as if they were doing the mambo.
I wasn't sure what to do...is it safe to push the limits even when you're arms are about to shake out of their sockets? I persisted, but between my funky chicken arms dancing and the thought of what the ladies behind me were witnessing, I couldn't help myself and started to laugh, and laugh, and laugh.
My instructor threw me a strange look and I'm sure I made her second guess her technique because she quickly changed to a new move. I lucked out, since laughing and lifting don't go hand in hand. The music was blaring, so my belly laughs were not heard and therefore not reciprocated by the others. I was the lone laugher.


But hey, at least my abs got a great workout!