Spin on Laughter (or, beating back Wordless Wednesday)

I have to do my weekly Spin for Sprite's Keeper early this week. Pray tell, why, you ask? Because I will be Blogging-MIA as of Friday for a trip down Historical Tourism lane to Williamsburg with my Mom and Sister. THAT will be a whole 'nother post, next week. Keep on the lookout for: "How I Restrained Myself".

Moving on! The Spin this week, funny enough, is on laughter. My husband's laugh is like his personality.. very quiet, until it is roused into raucousness. He'll quietly watch a college basketball game until an elbow is thrown at (our) player and he erupts into fist-pounding. Shouting "Oh Come ON"! And when the dust settles, you hardly know it happened.

We have this pepper grinder that looks normal enough: stainless steel. Grinds pepper. Sits there looking pretty. But, like every good-natured kitchen utensil I own, it has an issue. It has a little top that sits atop the thing that spins around, and... you guessed it! That little top is prone to pop off.

What's that? Buy another one, you say? Ah.... but you are not married to World's Cheapest Man! Variety is the spice of life, you say? Don't use pepper, you say? Ah.. that is a good point. But we still do. There I am, at the stove last night, grinding away into the homemade clam chowdah.

Can you see where this is going?

My husband is leaning against the cabinet, watching. Allll of a sudden, no warning, POP! Off comes the top. Down into the opaque-milky, formerly-delicious-looking clam chowder. As if that's not bad enough, I look up, into my husband's formerly-adoring eyes. They're kind of red. In fact, they're a little watery. He covers his mouth with a free hand. His laugh is silent, until I realize what's happening. This man, this guffawing person beside me shaking with laughter, the reason that I don't buy a new flipping pepper grinder, is unable to speak. He's laughing so hard. I'm fishing around in stew for a silver pepper grinder top, finding nothing but potatoes, he's laughing. I'm trying to get him to help me, but he can't move. He's laughing too hard to do anything useful. A tear squeezes out of the corner of his eye.

Of course I start laughing as well. It's wonderful! To laugh as hard and loud as we did, and not wake up the toddler.

If that doesn't do it for you, I've never laughed so hard at the stories my friend was telling at our Mom's Night Out dinner... the flames shooting out of the electrical panel while she and her toddler looked on in horror, her father-in-law, not an electrician, gently saying, "there's nothing to worry about. This is perfectly normal." The crazy neighbor down the street who accidentally rented her basement apartment to a registered sex offender. The grease flying off the Peking Duck in the traditional Peking restaurant, landing on a nearby restaurant goer's leather jacket, unbeknownst to her. Deciding which was worse: getting your shirts back from the dry cleaner with disintegrated buttons falling apart in your hands, or getting them back with no buttons at all.

If you can't laugh about grease and pepper grinders, what can you laugh about?

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Addendum! Head on over to my pal K's blog at Interstitial-Life for extra fun. I'm guest posting! It's kind of like guest hosting the Grammy's, but not really.