Laughing is better than crying, right?

I will admit, I'm easily tickled. More embarrassingly, I crack myself up all the time. Something simple comes up, and my brain takes it in a direction that just makes me laugh, and there I am, an appreciative audience of one to my own stand-up act. Loser-y, but true.

Typos really make me giggle. This takes me back to my high school typing class, in which I performed miserably, at least partly because Richard League was in my class, and that guy was FUNNY. I am absolutely no good at typing without glancing at my hands, and I was perpetually shifting over a key, which Richard dubbed "typing in Swedish". Today, though, I'm always giggling by myself at other people's typos, though I am pretty good about not pointing them out.

Tonight, though, I have to share. I'm a member of an online mother's group, and though I mostly go on there to hang out with other moms who have children the same age as my Small One, I have recently discovered a group for moms of teens as well, which I'm thinking I could really use, because dealing with teenaged kids pretty much REQUIRES a support group. Today, one of the topics was "How to keep your cool when they get so mouthy", which is, of course, pertinent. People were talking about all the same things I deal with on a weekly basis with Middle Child... the eye rolling, the door slamming, the yelling, the back talk, the fit throwing... I can't decide whether it's encouraging or depressing to know we're all in the same boat.

One post in particular, though, caught my eye. This mom states that her daughter throws fits that involve "screaming and whaling".

REALLY?!?!? Whaling? Now, that's interesting. Ingenious, even! What a creative way to burn off that negative energy!!! Where does the child get the whaling vessel and harpoons? And isn't that illegal most places? Surely the legality is an issue which needs attention. I am telling you, I elaborated on this and giggled at myself for hours. The mental image of that child dressed as a whaler was enough to keep me going for a long time. Call her Ishmael. (See, I'm still going with this!)

In her defense, the mom who wrote that is extremely intelligent and articulate, and I don't know that I've ever even caught her in a typo before, but somehow, that made it funnier.

Well, anyway, I guess laughter is my drug of choice. And red wine, but that's a topic for another day. Middle Child is back, as I've said, and she is back with a vengeance. Many days I'm actually physically tired from standing my ground. Boarding school, where art thou?

(I'm kidding, we can't afford boarding school, I've already checked.)

The other day, after suffering through a particularly ugly "mouthing off" incident at Target, I put M.C. out of the car. Yes, I did. It wasn't too far from home, it wasn't a busy street, but I was making a point. At first she tried to stare me down and refuse to get out of the car, but I won that one by offering her a chance to trade the walk home for two weeks of being grounded. She has enough sense to know that was a bad deal, so she reluctantly left the vehicle, but not without yelling at me, just before she slammed the door,

"You'd better HOPE I come HOME!!!"

Oh, I laughed so hard at that one! I'm still laughing, truth be told. I mean, seriously? What was her plan? And if you're going to threaten me, at LEAST pick something SCARY!

Someday, she'll look back on all this and laugh too, right?