I chose to laugh

Gooooooood morning, lovelies. It's a nice and cool fall day down here in Arizona. By nice and cool, I mean the highs are in the mid 80s. So that means the AC will run for maybe only 2 hours today instead of 24! (We never run it for 24 hrs. Jokes. Calm down, you economical people.)

It was a pretty stellar weekend. The nursery is close enough to being done that I'll just say it's done. We watched the ASU/Utah football game, and watched my Utes win. And then I felt a little weird about living in Arizona for a few minutes and then got over it. The game ran late, we came home and put some finishing touches on some furniture we've been working on, and then watched a billion America's Funniest Home Videos (because you don't have to be a child or elderly to laugh your head off at them) and then finally tucked in and knocked out. It was pretty late at this point, and we had an early day on Sunday, per the norm. We're now that fun couple that can't operate on less than 8 hrs of sleep (not just for the children or elderly!) and so maybe this whole story is fueled by lack of sleep.

Sunday, church, practicing in a lil quartet, cooking 2 lasagnas and 40 cookies. And then Evening of Excellence! For those of you who don't know what this is, Evening in Excellence is kinda like a really low key talent show, where the 12-18 year old girls in our church share what they've been working on the last year with each other and with family members who were invited. We kicked it up a notch this year and served dinner as well. Hence, the 2 lasagnas and 40 cookies.

I was wearing my confident dress. I don't have a lot of confident dresses since getting pregnant, and this was like... the ONE confident dress. It's blue, floral pattern, wrap style, maxi, 3/4 sleeves, kinda a low empire waist on it. I'd post a picture of me in it, but one such picture doesn't exist and I'm not about to go dress up and do one now because

Yours truly, morning blogging. 

Anyways. I really love this dress.

So we packed up the car with the cookies and lasagnas, with this conversation happening:

"Lara, should we cover the cookies?"
"Nah, the frosting will stick."

I did my best to juggle the plates of cookies while driving because heaven forbid a precious cookie slide off the plate and onto the seat of our car. Joe was being very dear and driving very dearly, meaning, slow and cautious. And the very first turn we took at some speedy 1mph (Walking would have given us a sharper turn...)

Like 10 cookies flew off the plate that I was holding. There were a few options on where the cookies could land. They could fly to the left and land on Joe. They could fly forward and land on the windshield. They could land on the arm rest thingy... and they all took the same choice. To land on me.

Frosting down, because was there ever any other option? Not to them.

I was covered in cookies, head to toe. And Joe just stared at me.

Here's where the sleep deprivation comes in, perhaps. I laughed. I laughed and laughed and laughed. I laughed so hard that tears pooled up in my glasses. I laughed so hard I even pulled out my genuine snort-laugh. We got to the church and got some towels and cleaned up and I still laughed.

Because I feel like at this point, I've been through enough to know when a situation warrants frustration and anger. And I know how my mind and body reacts to frustration and anger, it usually leads to heightened stress for the rest of the day, a crease in between my eyebrows, and a sapping of energy, over things that may or may not have been avoidable and certainly don't impact me long run.

And being covered in cookies head to toe didn't impact me long run. I counted my lucky stars that the fleeting thought of "Should I put green food coloring in the frosting?" was followed by a lazy "Nah."

This isn't to say that I never get angry or frustrated, that I'm never upset. Things do come along that really truly upset me. The appropriate and expected reaction for the situation is sadness. It's happened to me. It's happened more than I want it too (because who really ever wants it to happen). But sometimes a situation is so fleeting, so non issue, so temporary, that you really do have a choice, to either be angry or frustrated, or to laugh. And sometimes it really has to be a conscious choice because maybe your initial reaction would be anger. But the choice is still there, the choice to laugh and brush it off and move on.

And this was one of those situations where I chose to laugh.